Nine Months of Winter: What It Really Takes to Live Here

When people ask what it’s like to live in Silverton, I usually start with the obvious: winter lasts about nine months. Snow comes early and lingers long. Our kids ride bikes on the only paved road in town, but for most of the year those bikes lean in the shed, waiting for a stretch of bare ground.

Brutaful Life Here

At 9,318 feet, life is both beautiful and brutal (or as Glennon says, “Brutaful”). On a clear morning, the peaks glow pink, and it feels like we’re living inside a postcard. On a stormy one, we’re shoveling for the third time before breakfast, and I wonder if we’ve lost our minds.

This town is a filter for the faint of heart. If you stay, it’s because you’ve learned to love the rhythm: stock up on groceries for two weeks at a time, plan around avalanche closures, and accept that winter is not a season—it’s a state of being.

Grit Balanced with Grace

For our family, winter means sledding in our backyard, endless hot chocolate, and kids who know how to bundle themselves without being asked. It also means long nights of wondering if we made the right choice raising children here—three to five kids per class, an hour’s drive to buy diapers or go to the dentist, and a community that feels both close-knit and complicated.

What it takes to live here is grit. But it also takes grace—learning to let go of convenience, embracing the absurdity, and finding joy in small-town quirks.

That’s why I started Life at 9,318. I want to share the real story of raising a family in the San Juan Mountains—equal parts adventure, resilience, and the humor that keeps us going. Some posts will be practical (what to pack for a family camping trip, how we manage grocery runs). Others will be more like this: reflections on beauty, wildness, and what it means to belong in a place that isn’t easy.

Nine months of winter doesn’t scare us anymore. It has shaped us. And maybe that’s the point.