Nearly nothing about skiing with Alex Kaufman, aka WeirdFoothillGuy, is normal — and that’s the point.

Ski culture has many faces, styles and quirks embedded in its history, however Kaufman has found himself a nice niche away from the traditional aspects of ski culture — and that’s point, too.

He has more than 5,000 followers on X, pretty good for a local skier who’s just doing his own thing. But he also has an interesting perspective on skiing. Just a ski-dad vs. I-70!

I joined Kaufman on a late-January ski outing in the foothills west of Denver. I wasn’t apprehensive about meeting a fellow skier to ski low-angle slopes until I re-read one corresponding email between he and I.

“You are welcome to come try IT, just gotta get in the VAN,” he wrote to me, suggesting I might be getting in over my head. “Gotta get in the VAN,” what the heck does that mean?

The “IT” part were his wacky and unique Marquette Backcountry skis — 140 cm in length — made from whatever plastic Legos seem to be made of; actually polypropylene plastic. The fishscale-like bases help with climbing and does not interfere with downhill sliding, hence making the ‘cross-country skis’ manageable for shallow descents and floating on powder.

But the “get in the VAN” part, however, sounded intimidating. At first I thought he was going to be sporting a beat up VW Westfalia camper from the 1980s or some beat-up Chrysler Caravan with multi-colored doors and missing hub caps.

To my surprise, cruising up slushy lanes on Interstate 70 in his Toyota Sienna with a roof-rack box on top with the Grateful Dead satellite-radio station enchanting music from the speakers, gave me relief.

We blitzed passed Summit and Eagle county resort crusaders on our ascent up Genesee Hill, then exited the highway only 10 minutes later at the Chief Hosa Exit (253) to ski freshies at Genesee Mountain Park.

I learned a lot about Kaufman in those first 10 minutes. He’s like a kid in a candy store, hyped up on sugar and life, without a care in the world.

He told me about some of the lines he takes “interested-in-skiing-on-his-skis guests” to, his ski marketing background at Attitash, Mount Bachelor and Sunday River, the amount of Marquette Backcountry skis he owns (10) and even introduced me to a new term: The Skiing Industrial Complex.

He’s also very focused on the snow and the conditions on the slopes. After all, he skis primarily on slopes less than 20 degrees, north, northwest and northeast facing, and a lot of the time around sunrise. Kaufman told me he religiously monitors weather patterns and scouts his ski lines regularly, checking for melting, fill-in and other conditions affecting potential ski outings. The snow conditions below 6,000 feet, between 6,000-8,000 and between 8,000-10,000 feet all have different characteristics and act differently on his skis.

“Usually you need a few inches bases on top of the grass, then a fresh snow like today’s, and you’re skiing powder 15 minutes from town,” Kaufman said as we parked at Genesee Mountain Park to go ski “Home Depot” run.

I had not worn tele-mark ski boots or been in bindings in over 15 years, but strapping in and gliding on his Marquette’s was fairly easy. The hard part was keeping up while hiking to the runs. 

Kaufman tripled me 6:2 in runs taken, but hiking has never been my strong suit anyway. 

Kaufman aims for recording 100,000 vertical feet each season and notates his outings on his website 100 project.

Regardless, Kaufman said he’s not really interested in sitting in I-70 traffic in order to get his turns. Plus every run he hikes up he earns the turns down, it’s powder snow and gives him great exercise; a dopamine dump without $40 parking.

“I come out to think, clear my mind and be among the forest,” he said while we talked and skinned up the trail.

And after two runs I started understanding his reasoning more why he does this type of skiing. Like trail runners, I sensed Kaufman is out skiing for the nature experience and “skier’s high” instead of participating in the rat-race that is resort skiing and riding.

After our outing, Kaufman drove us past a couple other zones around Genesee Mountain, pointing out lines you can see from I-70, before dropping me off back in the Dino Lots at C-470 and I-70.

“Take a look to the right, right NOW, there’s another one,” he said as the Spaceship House came into view.

A week later, social media folks took to Reddit to wonder and comment about ski tracks above the Dino Lots on the east side of US-40 at I-70.

• plmtk509: “Weird foothill guy, getting his 100k of vert for season.”
• PHishfromVermont: “Thought I saw this on WFG den insta…Still would love to try out those weird plastic skis he used.”
• all-about-climate: “That’s funny. As we came back on I-70 today I commented, we should have just skied the foothills.

“My tracks from yesterday (Feb. 5) have been dragging people up non-stop,” he said. “They get to the top, then painfully survive their way down. I’ve never slapped 14 laps on it (Mount Dino Lots) before like I did yesterday.”

“It’s funny, but I also feel kind of guilty for just ripping peoples edges out.”

Weird Foothill Guy’s season starts in November and usually ends by April.