Video: William Breathes invites you to light up at ski area smoke shack

This week's Westword cover story, "Secret Stashes," explores the phenomenon of on-mountain shacks, shanties and huts commonly called smoke shacks by the skiers and riders who use them as a private place to light up herb. As part of our coverage, we sent the Mile Highs and Lows camera crew...

By William Breathes

February 29, 2012

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This week's Westword cover story, "Secret Stashes," explores the phenomenon of on-mountain shacks, shanties and huts commonly called smoke shacks by the skiers and riders who use them as a private place to light up herb.

As part of our coverage, we sent the Mile Highs and Lows camera crew (i.e., me and my iPhone) to the high country to get some video footage.

The snow coverage was horrible and our aforementioned cameraman suffered a few major gouges down to the core of his board from rolling over boulders, tree stumps and even a few patches of pure dirt before making his way to the powder field above the hut.

As we explain in the video: You aren't going to get the exact location of this or any other shack from us. We'll just say that aside from being devilishly hard to get to this season, it's a lot closer to a well-skied run than you'd imagine.

Here's the video:

Read more on Colorado's smoke shacks and William's adventures exploring them in "Ski resort "smoke shacks" have the bowls that really count."

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