TREW Ambassador and Coalition Snow pal Evin Harris spends her days nestled in the San Juan mountains of Colorado in a small scrappy town called Silverton. At first glance this place can appear as just a hotspot for young folks to ski backcountry lines, tune their big mountain skills, hibernate for the winter and flex when they say “I live in Silverton” to which people respond NO WAY! 

However it is much more than what people see on the surface. It is a thriving town and also a struggling town. The ongoing tension between the young folks and the old timers can tell a deeper story of the growing pains of a town that holds onto mining history and new folks moving to town whose values do not always align. Many folks who live in Silverton are not extreme skiers; they are people who moved there for escape, solitude or other personal reasons. To think skiing is all that this town has to offer does a disservice and also causes erasure of all the various people who keep it going. I am grateful to live in such a stunning place with access right out my front doors to quiet outdoor spaces, and I also get tired of outdated ideas, needing to prove myself, and craving more diverse spaces. 

Evin shares more about this amazing place out her back door and the wonderful community that goes with it......

From Evin: For someone like myself with many identities, it can be hard to find your place, to find your community in such a small town. It can also be a place to reflect on those identities. When I first moved to Silverton, I was enthusiastic about how it would propel my freeride career as well as my art career. I had somewhat affordable housing and savings from working multiple jobs almost every day of the week in Breckenridge. I would have time to sew so many patches, focus on making a website, and get catapulted into great artistic success! I would be able to stretch my skills in the backcountry, find mentors who would help guide me, and have a few weeks every spring to rip SIlverton Mountain in the spring and find the best cliffs and powder! I would make so many new friends, I am good at that right? 

This wasn’t exactly how my winter went. I was sober at the time and going to the bar to make friends was no longer something I wanted. I struggled to make friends. I missed having a group of friends that would lay on the floor and craft and go snowboarding at the drop of a hat. I had that little person inside of me that said, “What is wrong with me?” I was so grateful to have my partner, Ian, in SIlverton, I had someone to share my feelings with, cook with, snowboard with, and walk with. 

I got a job at the library soon after moving to town which helped me meet people, get out of the house, and reignite my love of reading. Things were on the up! I decided to wait it out and give Silverton a chance for the summer. People were coming out of hibernation and making friends started to get a little easier.

In November 2023 I met Critt. My friendship with her is what gave me encouragement that living in Silverton could be filled with lots of joy and adventure. I had met someone who shared similar experiences with me and who never hesitated to invite me on some wild adventure, no matter how wild it sounded. 

I started to have a small group of close friends to walk with, ski with, watch movies with, cook for, call when I was sad, and lay on the floor with when I was injured this winter. I started to create space for the things that I enjoy outside of snowboarding. I joined the theatre group in town, I continue to go to town council meetings, watch the bachelor on Tuesdays with my pals, run the only Queer-owned business in town with my partner Ian (despite that being incredibly difficult and honestly scary at times), go for sunrise walks with Critt and Nora and Jen, talk about eco villages with Liv, sit on the floor of the library with Hannah and Wilder, and now, it seems the list can go on. 

It's not all unicorns and sparkles. It is a really hard place to have a chronic injury. Because I couldn’t drive myself all winter, Ian drove me to Durango for medical care while I laid in the back. Sometimes it feels lonely and isolating. At the same time it can be easier to strive for change in a town of less than 800. No place is ever going to be 100% perfect. Would I like to live in a place that doesn’t feel so hard to be queer and mixed? Yes. Do I also love that I can walk through our main street at night in the middle of summer and not be overwhelmed by people and traffic? Yes. I thought that living in such a beautiful place with incredible mountains would be all I needed, but without friends and places to express myself, it wouldn’t be possible. 

There are days I still want to leave, but after a bike adventure or improv night the thought of leaving makes me sad. I wish I lived closer to long time friends and family. But I have found friends and family in Silverton. I am grateful to live there. Grateful to live in a town that has not yet totally been exploited and sold out. I want to protect this place from further harm. 

For now I am taking things day by day. I am okay with not knowing if this will be my forever home. I want to get to know these mountains that surround me. I am continuing to give it chances and make deep friendships. I try to not take things for granted, such my 5 minute walk to work, driving my car once a week in the summer, being less than 5 minutes from my friends, and having the opportunity to have a storefront! 

Silverton is quirky, hard, fun, irritating, amazing, stubborn, slow and small. Silverton is my home. 

To all the amazing friends and humans who make Silverton a place I want to live, thank you, you know who you are. 

April is Earth Month! 

Join us in celebrating Earth Day all month long. We will be donating 10% of all profits from this month back to protecting + advocating for our public lands. Learn more here.