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

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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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6 comments
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joe mama
joe mama

what the hell ever happened to high country caregiver? thought for sure he'd be up in the comment section.

High Country Caregiver
High Country Caregiver

Here I am, guess I got high and forgot to post

cmack23
cmack23

I was gonna post on this shit but then I got high...then I got high!!

Evanzsimmons
Evanzsimmons

I know of close to a dozen on my home mountain of Crested Butte.  We entered one a few years ago and forest service d-bags came in searched us, commented we smell like booze even though we were old enough.  My friend got a $250 ticket.  That year the feds were trying to bust people a lot.  They would be just in the shack already, and after you light up theyll flash a badge but those cases didnt hold up since it was kinda entrapment.  There's shacks all over, and i dont see much of a problem with them, and neither does the community up here.

i420Colorado
i420Colorado

Breckenridge has more than a dozen also, I'd say more like 18 - 20 shacks....

Stan
Stan

I've always thought that it's best to keep them on a need-to-know basis, but now every asshole non-Coloradan tourist who reads this will try to pizza and french-fry their way into terrain beyond their skill level in order to find these smoke shacks.  I suppose nothing good lasts forever...

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