“I’m skiing on 2023 ultra-light skis, whereas the original 10th Mountain people did this on wooden planks. They’re the real athletes.”
10th Mountain Division skiers hug one another as they arrive at the bottom of Vail Ski Area after completing the grueling 26 mile traverse on Feb. 21, 2024. Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division participated in a backcountry traverse from Camp Hale, near Leadville, to Vail Ski Area as part of the group’s Legacy Days.
1st Sgt. Dan Fields, senior enlisted advisor, left, Marc Cleveland, an information operations officer for the 10th Mountain Division, second from left and other members of the division wait and watch for the arrival of the troops at the bottom of Vail Ski Area on Feb. 21, 2024. They would ski from Camp Hale to Vail to commemorate the arduous D Series exercises that unfolded there over three weeks in 1944. D Series was, in effect, the 10th’s final exam before they fought in Italy’s Apennine Mountains. Peters was one of 975 10th Mountain soldiers killed in Italy.
For 10th Mountain today, it remains sacred ground. During the D Series, the ski troops held war games lugging heavy packs, rifles, and gas masks up steep 12,000-foot mountains and schussing down ravines, night and day, on seven-foot-long wooden skis. They slept in snow holes, enduring blizzards and sub-zero temperatures.
The Camp Hale D Series was designed to push troops to the limits of their endurance, and it did. A plaque quoting ski trooper Bruce Campbell currently hanging in the“Except for being shot at, the conditions were much worse during the D Series than anything we would face in combat,” Campbell said.“What these guys were doing here at Camp Hale was no easy feat,” Daniels said. “It took a lot of training, a lot of expertise and a lot of good instructors. It’s eye-opening when you see first-hand.
Early in the Hale to Vail traverse, the soldiers climbed 2,600 feet to Ptarmigan Pass, which is connected to a towering 12,000-foot ridge known to today’s backcountry mountaineers as Machine Gun Ridge. They call it that because spent shell casings and other Army paraphernalia from the 1940s still turn up occasionally.
“I stood facing toward snowy peaks and the pyramid that we called Ptarmigan Mountain,” the Montana native wrote. “Behind me abruptly rose the shoulders and peak of Sugarloaf . Around me the distant horizon was circled with jagged summits and snow-covered ridges, range after range of glorious mountains, all sparkling in the moonlight. … The wind whistled softly about my parka hood and blew whirling wisps of snow along the surface.
While visiting the “Winter Warriors” exhibition in downtown Denver last week with a few of his troops, Lt. Col. Marc Cleveland described the objective of the Hale to Vail trek — to “Link the Legacy” between the original 10th Mountain troops and those who serve today. The 10th is currently deployed in Iraq and Syria, and was deployed in Afghanistan during the U.S. presence there.
The Hale to Vail route took the soldiers from where Camp Hale was located, at the foot of Tennessee Pass, northeast to Ptarmigan Pass, then on a northward traverse along Shrine Mountain — a familiar landmark visible today from Interstate 70 at Vail Pass — to Shrine Pass . From there they skied northwest to the eastern limits of the Vail ski area above the back bowls, then down into Vail Village.
“I think the coolest moment was getting on Ptarmigan Pass together as a group, because that was really our biggest hurdle,” she said. “Getting to the top, seeing the mountains, seeing the sunrise, was probably my favorite moment in the entire thing.”Colorado road conditions: Vail, Berthoud pass reopen after safety closures
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