DIY Art

[carpathian]

The Glacier Creek Climbing Compound

I lived in the house with Andy and two other bachelor types for about 8 months. I moved out on February 10, 2000. On February 8, 2000 I had decided on climbing Mt McKinley the following spring, so I figured I needed more ‘hands on’ winter camping experience. The roommates turned out to be flexible and they found my replacement in two days.

My plan was to move into the squatters cabin I had built two years prior, during my senior year at high school. Todd and I had built the original structure and we called it the Glacier Creek Climbing Compound or ‘The Compound’ for short. It was perched in the trees on a cliff 50ft above the green waters of Glacier Creek, two miles up Crow Creek Road in Girdwood Valley.

We were climbers and figured The Compound would be a good place to hole up if not live for free with a million dollar view of Alyeska. The structure was built with 2x4’s, plywood and tar paper/tarp combo for the roof. My parents called it a ‘tar paper shack’. They seemed more skeptical of my romantic notion of living in the woods.

I was not a bum though. I had a full time job as pro ski patroller at Alyeska Resort. It was perfect. I was outside in the elements all day doing avalanche ski cuts in the early morning then on to high speed Groomers during night skiing.

At the end of the day I would change and dry my ski gear in the locker room. I would usually hang out at friend’s house or the bar until I managed to force myself to drive up the single lane gravel road, stop the car and turn into the dark woods by myself. I don’t care who you are during the day; the woods at night can really play on your imagination. After a couple of weeks I became used to it and stopped carrying my shot gun to and from the car.

I was not the first or only person who had decided to live for free in the expensive resort town. People had been squatting in Girdwood for 20 years. The government would on occasion go though and run the hippies out but they keep coming back.

I met Hans on the ski hill. He too was living like a king in his own palace up Crow Creek road. He was closer to town but further from the roads, if that makes any sense. He had just moved to Girdwood from Anchorage where he had been a real bum for the last 6 months. I guess before that he played French horn for the New York symphony or Manhattan School of Arts I think. He just decided to pick up one day and move to Alaska to be a bum. Like literally dumpster diving and killing all day at the public library. He was a smart bum and more importantly, a bum by choice. He hosted a radio show on the local pirate station. He would play classical music with intelligent commentary and the occasional quote from Nietche.

Hans was obsessed with the quest for knowledge in general and I was obsessed with the quest for climbing new mountains so we got along. I would remind Hans to keep his hands forward and how to stomp a cliff and he would remind me to question reality.

I knew Hans had normal parents back in Tacoma who missed him. But as Hans put it,
they were ‘too normal’ and he would get annoyed that my parents were too normal and I would get irritated because I did not know what he meant by that.

Hans’ tree house was impressive. It was forty feet straight up in four trees. Apparently he built the entire structure by himself using ropes to hang from and to haul all the plywood and 2x4’s. I went out to visit his place a few times and each time I was stricken by fear just climbing the rope ladder to the hatch in the floor. After a couple of seasons he felt that the building was unsafe because of the wind always blowing the trees around and loosening all the nails.

He moved closer to town and built a pyramid out of canvas and 2x2’s. Around the same time he shaved all the hair on his head including the eyebrows so we started calling him Mummy.

My place was on Glacier Creek where Hans’ place was on California Creek, a small tributary of Glacier Creek. At the back of California Creek drainage is ‘Fishes Breath’, a huge pyramidal shaped mountain with the most aesthetic smooth flanks on any mountain in south central Alaska. People always said that it would take two days to climb and ski but I guessed 6 hours. The mountain is called Fishes Breath because a miner, back 100 years ago, was prospecting up the drainage and came face to with a huge Grizzly bear. He was so close to it that he could smell the rotting fish on its breath.

Mummy and I skied up to the base of the prominent east facing ridge in two hours. I told him that if he broke trail up the whole ridge, we would call the route ‘Mummy’s Ridge.’ He thought that was a good deal and proceeded to boot pack straight up the ridge for the next hour and a half. I even offered to help when he became tired but he refused and we topped out in three and a half hours from the road. The thing about Hans was that he was guaranteed to crash on every single run. No joking. At the bottom of most every single resort run, he would roll in late and all covered in snow as if he just rag dolled half the mountain. This run was no different.

To a skier the untracked snow is like a palette on which we express our art in the form of the ski turn. Hans was like one of those artists who would cover a room in canvas and start kicking over cans of paint if not throwing feces on the wall…

Since he broke trail he obviously would have first tracks on the coveted slope. He dropped in and did not turn for what seemed like forever. The slope turned out to be three times bigger then first appeared, as Hans is a small speck still straight lining across the 45deg astral plane of white light.

Right on cue, he explodes into a ball of snow and ski gear. One ski took off and Hans was left sliding on his butt the remaining 2000ft. I zippered about a million powder turns and checked on Hans who was super stoked on breaking through another boundary of the imagination.

Life was not always so rosy in the pyramid. I guess during construction Hans had used real black tar as an adhesive for his canvas walled building. He became dreadfully ill with a lung ailment and had to crash on a friends couch. In effect he was living inside a cigarette. Once he had healed enough to do something about it, he organized a house burning party. He burned his house and most possessions to the ground.

A couple of days later, there was Hans’ smoldering building on the front page of the local newspaper. A local do-gooder was appalled to have come across the charred remnants so near his home and business. In reality, the whole valley could have gone up in smoke so the government initiated another seek and destroy mission aimed at pushing the squatters out.

Luckily the Compound is well hidden and stands there to this day.

[carpathian]

The Indestructible Few

Abe and Hans did not always get along. Hans was too pompous and self-righteous to ‘come down’ to Abe’s sophomoric humor, which I appreciated. One night Hans invited Abe and I come on his radio show as guests. I was driving and Abe pounded about ten beers over the previous hour leading up to the show. So with classical music playing softly in the background, Abe is explaining in great detail the explicit specific of his latest sexual encounter. I remember bits of “reverse cowgirl… in mom’s living room… porn on TV… mom comes home…”

Like always I was immensely entertained by all of it. The station manager, however, was not and Hans was fired the next day.

It was around this time that we started skiing with Fred Bull. I met Fred at one of his infamous house parties. Fred lived with his bachelor father and they had a blast for a few years at least. His dad was the owner and creator of the Iditasport Adventure race series. Contestants would either cross-country ski, snowshoe, run or bike the same route as the famous dog sled race called the Iditarod.

The course goes from Anchorage to Nome over 1000 plus miles in the dark of winter. Fred was somewhat famous in the obscure endurance/mountaineer circles of Alaska and I was honored when he came to me and said, “We should ski.”

I agreed and we set off on many a night of drinking followed by early starts and long days in the dark mountains. I did a lot of skiing in the night with Fred. Sometimes we would go all day and come home in the dark. But sometimes we would not start climbing until eight o’clock at night. Fred was not a ski bum. He loved to ski every day possible but he also had a strong work ethic and would not be caught not working. He was a carpenter by trade and built like his name suggests.

I was working on the ski patrol all day and was just bursting to get out into the backcountry whenever possible. One season we went night skiing about three nights a week. A good headlamp can go a long way but intimate knowledge of the mountains objective features is worth way more. It is amazing to follow the tunnel vision of a light beam as the cold powder cushions every turn.

One night we climbed up the south side of Max’s Chute in a snowstorm. The lights from the day lodge parking lot barely illuminating the snow as the wind blew. The chute is pretty straight forward as far as ski cuts go. So one by one we zigzagged across the chute and yelled directions into the night, hopping from safe zone to safe zone.

Another night we skied the Headwall in early season conditions. The main chute was narrow and rocky with mandatory cliffs in the dark. On the smooth face below I remember seeing an avalanche tear away to my right, so I veered left and continued with my turns. The next day you could see my tracks with a fairly large slab and debris at the bottom.

In general our confidence grew. We had to make rules though. You could only drink as much as you climbed i.e. 1000 feet equaled one beer. 2000 feet equaled two beers etc until you reached 5000 feet climbed. At that point you could really party. The thing is though, once you climbed 5000 feet, you would only have two or three beers anyway before you had to go to sleep.

Fred taught all of us the skills for endurance winter backcountry travel. Attitude is everything. Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

We came up with a club and called ourselves “The Indestructible Few,” a take on the Marines saying, “the few, the proud, the Marines.” We death marched through the mountains trying to climb as much vertical as possible, trying to feel alive.

[carpathian]

Crow Pass

Abe and I set out on many such combination trips. One of the more outright dangerous trips was when we biked back Power line Pass with skis on our backpacks to climb and ski the north facing coulior on Ptarmigan Peak. It only took about an hour to reach the base of the climb. Abe was classic in that gear was usually falling apart or inadequate in general. This being the case when his back pack strap broke soon into our steep climb. So he had to carry his skis on his shoulder. And for some reason he was climbing in his little biking shoes as well.

A couple of weeks earlier a group of university students had a horrendous fall down the very same route. They were all roped together and when one fell, he pulled the rest off like Velcro. So we were here not die specifically and to ski a prized line in general.

The coulior climbs straight for a while then half way up it makes a hard dog leg left, so the entire upper part of the run is over 1000 foot cliffs. When you boot pack straight up something steep it can be relatively easy as long as you don’t look down and as long as you make it to the top so you can easily put your skis on.

The upper half was steep and we persevered to the summit free solo style. Because it was the summer time, the snow was thick and sludge like and it made deep runnels down the fall line, like a very steep river. On the way down we were on the skiers right side of the snow river that was about four feet deep by four feet wide. It came to the point where the river was cascading off the 1000 foot cliffs and we had to jump across. If the snow catches even the tiniest bit of your skis it will suck you in and pull you to certain death.

We turned and jumped one at a time and cruised down the safe lower slopes, conquering another mountain.

The next day we set our sights on a new adventure. The plan was to bike through Crow Pass from Girdwood to Eagle River. The route goes for 27 miles. The first 3 miles climb up 3000ft right to the pass and we planned on pushing our bikes at least this distance. From the pass it descends roughly 2500 feet down to the head-waters of the Eagle River over 12 miles. From the river crossing you follow the river course for 15 miles on flat terrain to the visitor center. We figured we could bike at least 20 miles of the route and still be fresh enough to finish the epic loop by biking 20 miles south to Anchorage and then the final 35 mile push back to Girdwood.

It would be roughly 85 miles of travel for the day but we were up to it. You build momentum from trip to trip as you constantly get stronger and gain experience.

We gained the pass in an hour and we were excited because in theory, it was all down hill from there. Right off the pass it was a bit too steep to bike so we kept walking. Down in the vegetation again and the trail was rocky and rooty. We were able to bike for maybe 50 yards at a time, then more walking.
The river crossing was deep and cold. The river flows out of the frigid Eagle Lake that is ringed by 7000 foot glaciated mountains and icebergs float around. After we negotiated the river we thought the going would get easier. It got harder. It seems that the water was high everywhere. The trail at this point is braided and disappears in a maze of swamp and oxbow ponds. We had to carry our bikes overhead and wade through waist deep water for another 5 miles. The final stretch to the visitor center was brutal. There were too many roots across the trail to really pedal efficiently. By the time we go to pavement 12 hours had passed and we were beat. The next 8 miles of pavement were all right but we were done for the day. Wet and exhausted, we called for a ride home.

More often then not our adventures were human powered feats of endurance or skill. On occasion it was necessary or convenient to adventure via motorized vehicle. My parents had a couple of scooters that they would bring along on camping trips with the motor home. One of them was the classic step through model like Barbie and Ken would ride with a whooping 70cc of power. The other scooter was more like a real motorcycle, similar to the one they rode in ‘Dumb and Dumber.’ It had big rearview mirrors that stick out like insect antennae and little 12” wheels. They were both street legal with a top speed of maybe 40mph.

I gave the Barbie style scooter to Abe and I took the lead. I could keep an eye on him in the very convenient mirrors on my bike. We crawled through town along the edge of the four-lane freeway and made our way to the Huffman and the Seward Highway beyond. It was a beautiful day and we just cruised down the shoulder as if we were bicyclists. For all intensive purpose we were on real bikes as far as the other motorist knew.

There was crux to the trip, similar to when we first bike the route in the winter the previous year. The Seward Highway goes for 25 miles or so and does not climb or drop more then 3 feet as you cruise along the mudflats of Turnagain Arm. At Bird Point the old highway turns and climbs up 800 feet and parallels above some large cliffs that were blown out for the rail way.

They were building a new stretch that would continue down along the water and remain under the cliffs. The problem was that the old road did not have a shoulder to speak of and it was twisty and bumpy and basically a bad idea to scooter on that route. The new road surface was gravel and it stretched all the way to Bird Point, except for the last 100 feet where they had ended construction from the previous season.

In the gap was a rocky embankment and a slough of sea water and dreaded glacial silt mud. It was our only route. I forgot to mention that Abe’s foot was in a cast and that is why we were on these bikes I the first place. And Abe being the trooper that he is would always put his discomfort second to the integrity of one of our missions. I remember him stumbling and pushing his scooter across the rocks and then slip sliding through the mud, no doubt filling his cast in the process. We struggled up on to the soon to be new highway with smiles on our faces and cruised the last ten miles to Girdwood in triumph.

The scooters did suffer some abuse. My friend Brian had a real dirt bike and he wanted to go exploring with me. Even though my little bike was street legal I could still get around on the dirt. We went to Bird Creek to go explore the old logging roads that criss cross the valley.

In the parking lot I got my bike ready and decided to cruise down the dirt road a ways to warm it up. I went about a half mile slowly and then turned around trying to go as fast as I could. The road was turning and rising over a hill when all of the sudden here come Brian at full speed from the opposite direction! I figure I was doing at least 30mph and Brian thinks he was doing 50mph.

There was only an instant when Brian slammed on his brakes and skidded his rear wheel around just as I T-boned his bike at full speed. Luckily he was leaning forward over his handlebars as I launched superman style straight overhead and tumbled to the ground. I was wearing a helmet along with a tank top and shorts.

I was pretty skidded up but all right. We decided to go home for the day. The funny thing is that I lied to my parents about why my bike was banged up and the frame was bent. I made up a story about how I ran off the road and hit a tree or something. I did not want them to think I was out being reckless or stupid or anything.

[carpathian]

Shoulder of Death

The last member to be initiated into the Indestructible Few was Ryan. One day in late August Hans and I decided to hitch hike to Seward for a couple of days of mountain climbing. On the way back to Girdwood we got picked up by a wood paneled station wagon with Maine plates.

Ethan and Ryan had just moved to town a couple of weeks ago and were super excited to do some real skiing. Ryan described Maine with pride and an accent that betrayed his east coast heritage. I did not hold it against him because he was game for a good time in the mountains.

You know how you have one friend over here and another friend over there and you know that they should meet because they would have a blast? I clearly remember looking across the sea of heads late into a New Years party in 2000. I saw Abe and Ryan face to face about to come to blows over some perceived drunken insult. I walked over to intervene/introduce the two right as Abe remembered that he had some firecrackers in his pocket and he changed the subject to “Should I light these firecrackers in the confined space of this garage full of people?” Ryan and I said “Yes!” but the girl throwing the party said “NO!” I would say that they have been best friends to this day. (Except for the time when Abe told Ryan to “Go back to Maine” and that seemed to really hurt Ryan’s feelings)

Abe, Ryan, Hans and I went out to ski a run called the “Shoulder of Death.” It is located on the Petersen Headwall just south of Girdwood. We hired a plane to drop us off on an adjacent glacier and had to tour up and over a pass before coming to the base of the run. It is a super steep, broad spine that rolls away on both sides into no fall zones. We had attempted the run a week prior and decided to back off because of imperfect snow conditions.

This being our second attempt, we were pretty pumped up to complete the climb. I was leading the whole route. We skinned up to the edge of the spine and had to take skis off to boot pack. The edge of the spine was so steep that the snow was coming to my chest and I had to cut each step with my ski poles.

Everything was going good. We were strong and the sun was warm but not too warm and the snow was fresh. The ridge is narrow as a knife edge for the lower 3/4 of the climb. On the last pitch the edge broadens into more of a micro face, leaving no safe zone. When you are right on the ridge edge, you at least feel safe because the snow cannot really slide from the edge. I pushed right up to the last pitch and the little voice in my head said “STOP!”

Within 30 seconds I had my skis on and dropped in, leaving Abe and Ryan with the honors of breaking trail and skiing the run. Hans in the meanwhile had blown his knee the week before but still insisted on getting out with us. So as he limped into our base camp I was sitting there, kind of feeling silly about ‘chickening out’ while I ate a sandwich. All of the sudden I hear this ROAR and look up to see a dust cloud rolling off the top of the shoulder, obliterating my tracks in the process. I sat there for a moment, stunned at the certainty of my friend’s apparent deaths as I could see a matching dust cloud rolling off the other side of the ridge into the next drainage. Whoa. Then I realized I could see both Abe and Ryan still on the ridge, as they were both frantically trying to put their gear on. They were each trying to rescue the other because they did not realize that neither had been taken because there was a roll in the ridge between them, obscuring sight. I was forced to yell that they were each all right because someone was on the wrong radio channel. (I don’t remember who) After a few moments of dread they figured the scene out and were stoked.

On the way up we were on a knife-edge ridge that was relatively safe because you are not on an actual slope that can slide. I bailed at the point where the ridge became less knife-like and became more wall-like. “I have become comfortably numb…” was what I was singing to myself. Ryan continued breaking trail and made it to the very top edge of the steep roll I did not like. Right there the whole thing fractured one and half foot thick as Ryan punched his hands through to the bed surface to arrest him self. Abe, on the other hand, was about 100 ft behind and he did not even see the slide coming until the last second when the slide literally parted at his feet, because he was still in the sharper ridge, and rocketed down both fall lines. If I had still been up on the ridge, one of us would have been caught somewhere in between these to ‘safe’ zones. I guess when you are on a run called ‘Shoulder of Death’, safe is relative.

After each trip we would feel even more Indestructible. Nothing could deviate us from the goal of the day. If the details began to get fuzzy, we all knew that a little improv could go a long way.

Ryan and I decided to pull off a little traveling. He was back home visiting family in Maine, so we coordinated over the phone. He was planning on flying to Seattle to visit a cousin and I was in Anchorage. I flew to Salt Lake City. My plane was to arrive at 8:15 in the morning. Ryan started driving from Seattle to meet me in a rental car. From Salt Lake the plan was to go to Tahoe, California to compete in an extreme ski event.

I located my bags and groggily lay on the floor of the terminal to get some sleep. Five minutes later Ryan kicked me awake. He had driven for 10 hours over night and was fairly dazed and confused. I was amazed at the timing as we raced across the salt flats ay 100mph in our Crown Victoria. Our plan was to get to Reno, return the rental car and rent a UHAUL to live in the ski area parking lot. At least we were smart enough to keep the car while we tried to secure our ‘RV’.

The UHAUL rental guy seemed skeptical as we tried to fudge through made up mile plans for our fake move to Sacramento or some place. They wanted half the mileage money up front and since we were planning on driving only a little ways, our plan was foiled.

We kept the car and drove to Truckee. Ryan was useless at this point having over dosed on Red Bull the night before and having flu like symptoms. It was getting dark and I kept calling the phone number a girl I had just met back in Anchorage. She was on the university ski team and the team happened to be staying in a hotel in Donner Pass. I finally got a hold of her and lucky for us, she let us stay with the team in their hotel for the week! We skied the some spring snow, hit the Donner Pass Road Gap and had a good time in general.

The following January we decided to pull off another trip but make it even more serendipitous. Ryan was in Maine and Abe was in Bellingham. The plan was for Ryan to fly and meet Abe where they would get a rental car and drive to Vancouver to pick me up at the airport. We would then all go to Whistler.

We had no lodging planned in Whistler. I was practicing living off the universe and I knew that everything would work out. The day before my flight I was in the ski shop talking to someone about my trip when a guy who was trying on boots in the other room over heard me. He said that he had a place to stay in Whistler that was just sitting there not being used because he was on parole or something and could not leave the country.

I got the condo info from my new friend and went home to pack for my flight that was leaving in 12 hours. I arrived in the baggage claim in Vancouver looking for a repeat of the impeccable time in SLC. Two hours later, no Abe and Ryan. The last charter bus to Whistler left at 8pm and I had to get to Whistler one way or another.

I arrived in Whistler and had some trouble finding the condo. I finally found it and walked in the door at 10:45pm just as the phone was ringing. I picked it up and could here Abe’s almost panicked voice asking “Where are you?!” He had been wandering through the village for several hours hauling around his huge ski bag. After some land mark descriptions Abe finally found the place and we were relieved.

As it turns out, the condo was more of a townhouse and it came with ten free lift passes as well! Oh yeah, where is Ryan?

Abe had to ride the bus from Seattle because Ryan never showed up. We found out a couple of days later what happened. While in Maine Ryan was doing some skiing with an old friend on the day before he was to fly and meet us. They skied at Mt Katahdin all day. At the end of the day they decided to ski off the backside of the mountain to a roads that would wrap back around to the car. Sounds like a classic setup for disaster. According to Ryan it was some of the best powder skiing he ever skied as they cruised through steep gladed trees all the way to the valley floor and … no road.

Ryan was optimistic. He relayed the story to me with pride. They both had fallen through a creek and were wet up to the waist as they kept slogging through knee-deep snow.

His friend was falling apart. Utter desperation had taken over and no amount of positive cajoling from Ryan could keep his friend in line emotionally and soon physically. They had to stop for the night and could not make a fire. They stayed crouched under a log all night as Ryan did sit ups and push ups to stay warm if not alive. His friend became colder and colder and was hypothermic and frostbitten by morning. They kind of figured out where they were in the light of a new day and kept moving. Around 10 am they intercepted the fire road. Ryan was unfazed by the night out under the stars and as his friend limped to the road, Ryan hiked up the road to make some more turns back to the car.

(The friend ended up getting addicted to morphine as painkiller for the frozen nerve endings in his hand and toes)

[carpathian]

Valdez to Whittier

If we were not in the mountains then we were on the water. It was even better if we could somehow combine the ocean and mountains in the experience. That was the objective behind our sea kayak trip from Valdez to Whittier across the Prince William Sound.

The plan was to kayak day to day and find suitable camping with promising ski runs in the alpine that falls all the way to sea level. The daylight hours were getting longer so the only limiting factor would be our energy levels, or so we thought. We were in a group of nine people with Ryan and myself included. I was a rookie in the world of sea kayaking, though I had a fair amount of experience on the ocean in motorboats.

No one really told me how ‘tippy’ kayaks could be. When I first squeezed into my yellow rental boat in the Valdez harbor, I could only think “Holy shit! This thing is tippy!” I found that I had to relax when my body wanted to tense up. Either way I had to figure it out quick. We loaded up our flotilla with Ryan and I being the only ones who brought ski gear. It all took up a bit of spare room but we knew it would be worth it. My boots bindings and poles all fit inside the storage compartment but the skis had to be strapped on the outside deck of the kayak in front of the cockpit.

We were ready to go! The first day was clear and calm and warm. We made our way out of the harbor with goal of Sawmill Bay for our first nights camp, about five miles out the narrows. It was a beautiful day! We paddled to work on our tans and break in new muscles. I got some paddle techniques from the veterans of the group and life was good.

Sawmill Bay was sheltered and surrounded by huge alpine peaks falling to sea level. We were tired though. These new activities had worn us out and we opted to rest in camp.

The next day dawned blustery and cold. A steady breeze had picked up and the sky was grey. My arms were sore and my neck and back muscles were tight. It suddenly occurred to me that this could be serious business. We pulled out of the smooth waters of the sheltered bay into the exposed water of the narrows. There is a substantial distance for the wind to pick the water up into waves and waves there were. Wave size is all relative to the size of boat you are in. These waves were only 2-3 feet but in the tiny kayak I felt like a rubber duck on the high seas. The mountains fall vertically into the cold water that can be a thousand feet deep just meters from shore.

I had to fight panicky feelings as I struggled to brace and stroke through each wave. I constantly scanned the craggy cliffs for potential safe spots in case of capsize. The waves were getting bigger but luckily we were moving with the wind and water southward to the open Sound.

The skis! My ski setup was almost the end of me. In the following seas the hull will plunge through the water and the seas will come up on your spray skirt. That is bad enough by itself, but with the skis lashed to the bow, I had some trouble. As the bow went under the water both skis would shift outward and act like downriggers, slowing the boats buoyant return to the surface. It was worse when only one ski would shift because the boat would rise and tip towards the submerged ski.

I basically cursed and held my breath for 3-4 hours as we struggled on, hoping for a safe haven sooner or later. We eventually pulled around the corner into the sheltered waters of Emerald Bay. We made camp and I passed out from a day of tense exhaustion.

The next day we were all sore. I was especially concerned about future crossing of open water with this deadly setup I was stuck with. We had an easier day and jumped over to Glacier Island. With a stunning view of the huge Columbia Glacier and the towering Chugach Mountains, we made camp and poured over the maps to assess the next move.

The other problem with the skis… there was no snow down low only 1000ft of bush leading to warm spring snow. Not to inspiring. We debated over our route choice. We could push north around the leeward side of Glacier Island to avoid potential large waves on the southern side or take the risk on the southern side and go right by a huge seas lion rookery. I opted for the northern route but after minimal recon we soon found out that the northern route was choked with ice from the adjacent ice field. So that leaves the southern route and a 15 mile stretch of water open directly to the full brunt of the north pacific.

I was still weary from the constant near capsizing the day before, so I made a drastic decision. I would sacrifice my skis for the wellbeing and safe passage of the group. I found a rocky outcropping in view of the beautiful mountains in which the skis had so faithfully served me. I duct taped a rock to the skis and said a brief mariners prayer in juxtaposition with my mountain offering as I cast them into the deep, like a good sailor who died at sea.

I felt no remorse and knew I had done the right thing.

The next day dawned eerily calm. A thin veil of clouds softened the sun, though my paddle would still cast a shadow on the glass surface of the sea. The atmosphere took on a warm yellow hue as if gold particles had been dispersed on high, filtering some things from our perception. We paddled around the south tip of the island into an environment of unparalleled tranquility. Being in a place that can swing from completely inhospitable to this- this peace was truly amazing.

We paddled on with the rookery coming up on our right. I was slightly concerned to be paddling near giant seas mammals the size of a grizzly bear. A few brave paddlers stayed in close to shore while I stayed a bit further out. Then all at once, like the guardian sea lion had made a call, the entire rookery poured off of their rocky ledge and came out to investigate the intruders.

There was silence for a few moments as the army of seas lions advanced under the sea. I swear that I saw a wave of displacement roll across the glassy surface… all of the sudden a huge snarling head of teeth, whiskers and rolling eyes burst from the water not two feet away. We had to stay calm. Even though these animals could capsize and devour us in an instant, they had no ill intentions. I silently requested safe passage from these gatekeepers and we paddled on.

We paddled for another six days under platinum skies on top of a graphite oily surface. The paddle strokes became like footsteps as we cruised the endless shoreline in and around tiny islets. For the most part we were in sheltered water as if there was any wind or waves to be concerned about. We continued west to Esther Passage. We rode the tide and doubled our speed to the next camp, at the intersection with College Fiord, our last large crossing. We sat with the fire down in the low tide zone and waited for the in coming tide to rise and snuff the flames.

The morning came and somehow the sea was even calmer then it had been before. As if our minds were further placating our surroundings. The huge fiord is surrounded by
10-13,000ft peaks and there are many tumbling glaciers falling into the ocean. We were inside a bell jar, a vacuum where no inconsistencies could be found. The six-mile crossing was complete by noon as we rolled into Harrison Bay Lagoon to stay in the forest service cabin.

I think the actual highlight of the trip was when Ryan and I walked out to the waters edge at an exceptional low tide. Ryan stayed on the sand as I waded in knee-deep water from rock to rock. As I was taking my time navigating through the mini archipelago, the tide continued to fall as new steps kept emerging through the plate glass surface. In between the rocks it was getting to thigh deep and I had to roll my pants high to not get them wet. At the very end of the journey I was some 200 meters form shore standing on a rock a half inch under the water, surrounded my an immaculate calm ocean and mountain scenery.

Every hue of grey was perceived in my view, except for the dot of yellow that was Ryan’s rain jacket back on shore. I kept looking forward to see if another rock would emerge but three feet out I could see an under water shelf fall away into the abysmal depths carved out by the receded glaciers, now ten miles to my north. I had a sudden vision some huge lurking sea monster being roused from deep slumber as I also noticed the tides subtle turn to flow. In a min rush of fear I clambered back towards land, sure that some long tentacle would reach up and over the edge to suck me into the depths of my imagination.

[carpathian]

A Winter Season

For skiers in Alaska, the winter season begins long before the snow flies. It may take several months to forget the pleasant memories of the previous season. Sometime in late July or August you start watching the mountains looking for signs of ‘termination dust’. The term refers to the earliest dusting of new snow on the mountains above town and that indicates the end of summer.

Usually sometime in mid to late September there will be enough new snow on the old summer snow to allow you to hike and make some extreme early season turns. Jewel Mountain, at the back of Girdwood Valley is an early season favorite. We would climb up into the most horrendous storm conditions. There is a small window when there are two feet of new snow from 3500 feet and up and only a dusting down low. The route up to Jewel through Crow Pass is a notorious avalanche area later in the season, so the early season is the only time you can ski up there.

When we got bored of Jewel sometime in mid to late October, we would make the drive north to Hatchers Pass. The idea is to climb longer and harder day after day as the snow gets better and better while days get noticeably shorter and shorter. I did most of my skiing with Fred in the early season as he was not a fan of the resort. We would check off the regulars as if they were on a list. Hatcher Peak, Marmot Peak, Nip in the Air, Lane Glacier… After a couple of weeks the snow pack will catch up again back south in Turnagain Pass so we would start ticking off mountains on the list; Tincan, Sunburst, Pastoral, Grand Daddy…

Alyeska Resort usually opens around November 24. After 3 months of grueling vertical under dark, stormy skies, the magic of the chairlift was welcome. Every year it would surprise me that no matter how much backcountry skiing I had done, the sheer speed and consistency on the ski hill would ‘blow my quads’ for the first few days. On the first weekend they will open the lower mountain then the next weekend, depending on snow, they will open the upper mountain with 2000 feet of powder skiing.

Hopefully by December, Chair 6 will open. It always seems like every day is a powder day. With 8”, 12”, 14”, 8” 20”of new snow day to day to day. On chair 6 you can ski about 6 laps an hour on the high-speed quad with all of your friends nearby.

After a couple of weeks on Chair 6 your legs will be getting strong and it is dark most of the time. The sun does not crest Max’s Mountain for a couple of months. That is all right because you can get to the ski hill at 8pm and still get in 4-5 Tram laps under huge night lights. Right about the time we are getting bored of Chair 6 laps, the patrol will open the North Face.

Sometimes just the Tram Pocket or maybe to Chuck’s Line all the way to the bottom, it depends on the coverage. Once the North Face is opened, Alyeska is transformed with 2000 feet of steep spines with avalanches and insane high speed skiing. It is always a race at Alyeska. Race up the Tram stairs, tuck to Chair 6. Getting first on Chair 6 is always fun.

After the initial race it becomes a timing thing as you watch for signs of activity at the North Face gate. People line up and wait until the mad rush through the gate onto the steep slopes of powder. Once again there is a race to the bottom of the tram where you run up the stairs and ski North Face again and again… You repeat this general schedule every day through December, January into February.

By mid February the resort starts to feel pretty small. The days are longer and the steeps are all filled in and sloughed to perfection in the backcountry. Time to break out the climbing skins and get out into new territory. The sky is the limit. In Girdwood Valley you have Max’s, Big League, North Star, Ragged Top, Goat…All huge amazing runs right in town.

There is the Petersen Headwall, Seattle Creek, Summit Pass, Hope, Skookum, Whittier, Seward etc. As the days get longer and the weather stabilizes, you can exponentially expand your horizon to the next level, the next ridge beyond.

Everyone one in town talks about the weather and snow conditions. What is sliding where? Sun crust? Cold snow?

Towards the end of march you can start to get creative with the sled or boat access. You can even venture to other parts of Alaska. In Valdez the mountains are steeper and meaner and even more accessible.

[carpathian]

Big Chief and Microdot Slides

When you are skiing in the backcountry every day, you are bound to come across some instability in the snow pack. We had been pushing hard for the last month skiing and filming on all aspects around the Girdwood region. Big Chief was calling so one day we went for it. We ended up with a bigger group of five people and that later proved to be potentially fatal.

Big Chief is towards the back end of Seattle creek drainage, one ridge west of Turnagain Pass. On the ascent we climbed the broad east shoulder of the peak with plans to ski the shadowed north face. On the way up it was difficult to see if not assess the route down so we would have to improvise. At the top the sun was bright and warm causing snowballs and crust to form on the south side while the north was still cold.

I was going to film the run from the smaller adjacent peak to the north, so I dropped in first. The pitch turned out to be somewhat steeper then first anticipated. I quickly rolled out of view from the top as I cautiously traversed across rime ice trying to find a line through the huge cliff bands down below. The cliffs were completely covered in rime so they looked white, but were pretty damn near vertical.

Half way down the run I was thinking, “Holy shit, this thing is steep and exposed!” I was able to make some turns down a nice chute that hour-glassed on to the large run out slope below. Just then I realized that the whole face I was on had slabbed loose and I had to straight line off to safe snow on the side where I kept making turns along side the slide that billowed down in a dust cloud.

“Holy smokes!” I thought as I zipped across the broad bowl and side stepped up on to a nice perch to set up the camera. We did not have any radios so I could not properly relay info on the run to the remaining skiers on the summit. I had no way to tell them about the huge cliff band and the sketchy snow. I could see from the slide I kicked off that a similar layer was shellacked across the whole mountain and it was waiting to slide.

Aaron dropped in first and skied direct fall line off the summit. After 50-60 turns he was slowed down and became stuck in the middle of the 400-foot cliff section. I trusted in his ability and figured he would find his way though safely. Just as he was negotiating the crux of the steeps I heard a tiny scream from the top of the run. Apparently Abe’s girlfriend, on Ryan’s word, had dropped in because they though Aaron was out of the way for some reason. She made ten turns or so before releasing a fair sized slab from the very top.

As the dust cloud was rolling down the face it blasted right past Aaron who was on a precarious perch over extreme steep terrain. He could see the rushing torrent to his right and tried to desperately side step up and out of the steep walled mini gully he was in. It was like watching rising flood waters quickly covering the gully and pulling at Aaron's skis as he stepped, stepped and then WHOOSH! He was sucked in and pulled off the remaining 200 feet of cliff and another 1000 feet of run out.

I watched in somewhat disbelief as the whole heap of snow piled up to a stop. In a flash I zipped over the freight train sized pile of debris, digging for my beacon as I went. Just as I skied up to the debris Aaron popped up from the snow and stood there all covered in white. He looked like he aged 30 years in 30 seconds. “Are you all right?” I asked as I was already skiing away in search for Joni.

I was performing a haste search where you have your beacon out as you look for clues like a ski pole or glove that might give away a person buried location. The debris was now narrow and deep like an actual freight train had pushed itself across the fresh snow under its slowed inertia. Then I saw her. She was sitting on the snow at the very front tip of the pile like a stunned moose in a cowcatcher. Her feet were actually in the fresh snow and she sat on the debris like a bench looking quite bewildered.

She complained about a lost ski and a hurt elbow but was otherwise all right considering her 2000 foot fall with 500 feet of vertical free fall thrown in for good measure. Aaron had also lost a ski so we rigged Joni with both skis and Aaron had to walk as we made the four hour slog back to the parking lot.

In the end Joni had a broken pinky and Aaron was more psychologically scarred then anything.

The Big Chief slide was actually the second close call the Indestructible Few had experienced in under a week. The result was a similar outcome with different lessons to be learned. Fred and I went skiing up in Hatchers Pass on a beautiful sunny day in mid March. At the parking lot we randomly met up with a couple of other small groups and we all decided to go ski “Microdot” together.

I think there were seven of us altogether and everyone was quite experienced at mountain travel. We skinned up the southwest flank of the peak under a warming sun. It had been snowing nonstop for the previous week and this was the first warm day in a while. It was a recipe for disaster, but we were communicating and assessing the snow all along.

Fred broke trail right to the summit and I setup the camera on a nice little perch just below him on a safe spot. He and his dog, Kenny, dropped in and skied beautiful knee deep powder all the way to the valley, 1500 feet down. The next guy dropped in and also made nice turns all the way. The third guy skied, followed soon by the forth, who also skied safely.

The fifth skier dropped in with his dog right on the tracks of the other skiers. He paused on top of a mini rock out crop and then jumped. On impact he tumbled and crashed. A moment late the huge slab that he triggered started to move after it propagated 100yards across the face and five feet thick. It sucked him into a boiling cloud of fury. I could see the four previous skiers at the bottom racing away from the onslaught, bearing down on them.

The skier next to me pulled out his beacon and skied a safe route down to start a haste search. I was told to go to the parking lot a for a cell phone to call a helicopter. He was dug out quickly with a broken scapula. The dog was uninjured.

[carpathian]

Commercial Fishing


On June 1 we cast off from the Whittier Harbor and set sail for Montague Island, 12 hours away. We were a crew of four; the Captain, Durney, the Captains nephew Tim and Me. Our boat was a 54 foot Seiner and we were out to catch salmon. I was eager to test myself on the high seas and this boat proved more then worthy. Ryan had been fishing for the last two seasons and thought it was the best job in the world. I had always worked regular jobs and this would be a welcome change.

The boat Ryan was on was called The Pagan. He would recount stories about bringing fish in all day and then kicking back in the evening with a beer and barbeque and really living it up. Maybe go for some wake boarding behind the skiff or a hike up to a waterfall for sunset. Sounded fun so I got a job on his sister boat, The Halberd.

Even though the two captains were friends and they had sister boats, whatever that means, the jobs turned out to be way different. As it turned out my captain was the most hardcore captain in the whole Prince William Sound fleet. He was a zealot for finding fish and slightly eccentric but that would mean a bigger paycheck in the end.

We made it out to Montague in the evening under the midnight sun. The opener was in the morning and we were ready to go. Right as we pulled into our anchorage the captain checked the water in the hold to make sure it was cold. He started cursing. I didn’t really know what to think. I guess he normally would have checked the water back in Whittier but did not for some reason or other. He climbed around in the engine room for a while and back to the hold and to the engine room again, cursing louder and louder.

Apparently the refrigeration system was not working. We need that system to work because if the ‘reefer’ is not working we cannot keep the fish cold long enough to get them to the tender. With cold water you can hold fish for about 24 hours, maybe 36. The seawater is too warm to help the fish keep. We would have to head back to port. It was a let down because if we are not fishing, we are not making any money.

We steamed back over night as a hundred other boats were heading in the opposite direction. Early the next morning, back in Whittier, the Captain set out to find the local reefer guy. I should point out that Whittier is a very small, very weird town. It was built in the middle of WW11 as a secret fuel station. The town is connected to the outside world by the world’s longest car tunnel that goes under a mountain for two miles before popping out on the Seward Highway 20 miles south of Girdwood.

The entire town of 1500 lives in one giant apartment building at the center of town, which is a mess of railroad tracks. The only other building is the old apartment complex that the town used to live in. It is abandoned now and looms ominously like some Soviet relic.

The Captain soon tracked down the Reefer guy and to be honest, he appeared to be slightly retarded. I suspect he might have been an expert with home appliances but had never worked on a commercial fishing boat reefer system. I only say that because a week later we were still in port and the Captain was having a serious meltdown.

The Reefer guy kept testing the system by pressurizing it and checking these gauges. He was trying to get the system pressure to go up and kept repeating the procedure. At first I was not really paying attention. I would walk around town to kill time or read. I was not being paid to fix the reefer unit. I figured I would leave it to the experts.

After several days of reading pressure gauges as they fell to zero the Captain started to lose it. He would pace or just sit there and stare at nothing, the frustration seething just below the surface. I started to get nervous. I started paying attention to the process just out of curiosity. Later just by accident I was sitting out by the hold and I heard a very faint noise. I stuck my head in the hold and heard a very quiet hisssss. I called the Captain over. The system was under pressure in yet another test and I by luck had found the leak in the back hold in one of the cooling units.

We ordered a new unit and it showed up the next day. It was tubular shaped and about 8 feet long. Inside were rows and rows of copper tubes that freon flowed through and cooled the water. The new unit showed up and we had to install it. It was super heavy. Durney and I had to get in the hold and lower this thing down in on top of our selves. The hold was only 4 feet deep and the hole 2 feet around so it was awkward. The tube was in this crate and as we tipped down to our selves, it shifted on the inside and crushed both of our fingers that were gripping on the inside of the crate. It was so heavy though, that we could not just let go, or we would be crushed. We were both howling in pain as we had to negotiate the heavy piece of shit all the way to the ground.

As soon as we could, we hopped out of the hold and paced down the dock holding our poor crushed fingers. Durney crushed two and I got off easy with only one black fingertip.
We made it back to Montague only a week behind schedule.

Things were going good now. We got some fish in the hold and spirits raised a bit. A day later we were pumping water in the new reefer unit and a pipe became dislodged and started spraying warm water in the hold. The Captain flew into a fury and stripped completely naked except for a white t-shirt. He had a sledge hammer in his hand as he jumped down into the waist deep, blood red fish water and started banging the pipes back together and cursing. I was kind of shocked at the spectacle but kept my cool.

The Captain always drove around in the crow’s nest. No matter the weather he would be up there with his special fish sighting sunglasses. He would point and exclaim “Jumper!” and we would race over and drop the net, trying to capture the school of fish.

We would work from about 4:30am to 11pm all day every day. Around 9pm Ryan would cruise by sitting on a law chair and hold a beer up. We were not aloud beer on our boat because the Captain had troubles with drunks in the past.

That was all right because I was treating the whole ordeal like a monastery at this point anyway. I was in a constant state of either waking or trying to sleep or boredom or dreaming or fishing. I remember lying on my back on the fish rot filth of the fishing nets while rain fell on my face and I did not care. I was becoming part fish.

The Captain liked to yell. Or rather, he would communicate loudly and with excitement and expect an instantaneous response. I realized that he was very similar to my dad in many regards. I slipped into a world where The Captain was my dad and his nephew Tim was me when I was Tim’s age, 17. I was 23 now and felt like I knew how everything worked in the world. I would watch Tim get yelled at all day, every day and I could see the Captains frustration with Tim because Tim was not listening. He would stand there and be staring into space as the Captain was saying “Tim, TIM! TIIMMM!”

What does it all mean? I found myself thinking of the exact same things during the exact same chore during the day. While I was stacking corks I was thinking about so and so or when I was pulling net I was thinking about some mountain or when I was drinking coffee I would think of the cute coffee girl back in town. I was going crazy.

The straw on my back was when I was promoted to ‘reefer guy’. My job would be to go into the engine room at 4am with earplugs and a flashlight. I would squeeze in between the huge twin Izuzu diesel engines and stare in a confusion at the vast array of pipes and levers. There was the ‘sea chest’, the main hold, the Sunday hold and flush function. Each hold required a combo of these two levers over here and this one lever over there. Or this one lever pulled half way and these two different ones go this way or this lever goes… The engines were so loud I could not think. I would pull two or three and run out on the deck in my boxers and look to see what the water was doing. Sure enough the Captain was already yelling from the crows nest by the time I got up the ladder and on the deck. I would dive back in and try the other two levers on the other side.

It was not worth the raise from 8% to 10% to take the promotion or even keep the job. On the way into port for the first time in 7 weeks I told the Captain that I would not be staying on the boat for the second half of the season. I had signed a contract at the beginning of the season that said if I did not finish the whole season then I would only get half the check I had earned. I was willing to take my $4500 and take the summer off. I was just getting into ‘living off the universe’ sort of thinking and I knew that I would only need the $4500 to get by, living in my truck and biking.

As we pulled into port the Captain called me upstairs and told me that since I was such a good worker I could take my full cut anyway. I was elated and now twice as rich as before!

When I got back to town I had an insight to my own upbringing. While out on the boat the Captain had his wife and two boys fly out for his birthday. He turned from the raging, screaming lunatic I came to know and became the softest, caring father I could imagine. I realized that he was only yelling at Tim and I because he wanted the best for us but more importantly the best for his boat and ultimately his kids. I pieced the puzzle together after a day in town. That evening I was sitting with my brother, sister, mom and dad. I made an announcement and officially thanked my dad for being a good father. I told him that I under stood why he yelled all the time and I did not take offense. He laughed and my mom started crying.

[carpathian]

Kicked off the Mountain

After spending half of the summer on the fishing boat, I was excited to get back to the mountains. Back in the early months of the year I developed a love affair by force more then by choice. On February 22, 2003 I got caught going out of bounds and was kicked off Alyeska for two years. It was really very stupid that I got caught or that I was poaching in the first place.

I had been sponsored by Atomic Ski Company for a few years and had very recently got signed on to the Snowboard team. My new snowboard showed up in the mail the day I got trouble on it. Maybe it was the punk snowboard attitude coming out but… I don’t know. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

We were night riding on the hill and having a grand old time and then my friend came up to me on the tram and told me he was riding the best snow of the night. He was coy and giggly when he told me he was hiking out of bounds and riding the North Face and cutting back to the lit area down low. I was feeling frisky, I guess, so I followed.

It was quite amazing and surreal. We were going under the tram tower and the knee deep snow was a deep red color from the red light on the tower. We shredded one run and then jumped on the tram. For some reason we thought we could go back and do it again, so we did and it was even better. Again we got on the tram, higher then ever on our exploits. We had even recruited another guy with us. On our third lap out of bounds the shit hit the fan. There were three patrollers laying in wait down in the shadows on our exit trail. They were not impressed and we were told to get off the mountain for the night. I promised a case of beer for their silence and I thought we had bought our way free.

The next night I was at work at the resort hotel in the restaurant. I got a phone call and it was Jim Kennedy, the head of Snow Safety for the ski patrol. He had seen the tracks and with minimal arm-twisting found out they from Me and my friends. Since this was my third offense and I was an ex-ski patrol and a current employee, they threw the book at me. It was a two year ban from riding the mountain and I was fired from my job at the restaurant.

It really was a worse case scenario considering my addiction to the mountain and my need to make money. I was effectively ostracized from my beloved community. The resort really is the only place to work in Girdwood and the resort is the only place to ski when it is dark and stormy out.

I resolved to remain optimistic. I would only go I the backcountry and I could feign distain for resort riding in the first place. It was a dark time in my psyche. Sure enough it just kept snowing for the next two months. The backcountry was mostly off limits and so I had limited options for maintaining may sanity.

[carpathian]

This is when I fell in love with down hill biking. My friend John had two bikes but no car. I had a car and no job and lots of time on my hands so we embarked on winter of exploratory down hill biking.

The stretch of highway between Bird Creek and Anchorage is the local banana belt of the area. On the darkest, rainiest days in Girdwood 90% of the time you can drive around Bird Point and the weather with change for the better. We would half joke that we were going to find ‘blue bird’ skies even though it was an absolute deluge in Girdwood. Sure enough, we would go out to McHugh or Falls Creek and there would be a scrap of blue for one minute and we would cheer.

Our bike scene was unique. We would push our 50 lb bikes up hill for 1-6 hours and ride across the open tundra as if we were on skis. Or sometimes we would just ride straight down through the dense forest without trail and let gravity pull us through anything.

So I maintained my composure and became addicted to the DH bike. When I got off the fishing boat my plan was to live in the back of my truck and hit every trail and mountain that I could between Palmer and the Kenai Peninsula.

I named my bike Sluggo and I have come to love my downhill bike because of the emotions I have experienced while astride her broad saddle. The exhilaration of being perched in mid-air while the choppiest of terrain is swallowed by her deep travel. I feel like I am doing nothing, the bike is designed to do this. I am supposed to be bending time and space around my senses in order to experience the timeless moment beyond. Steering and controlling the gyroscopic forces generated by the wheel while sticking to the earth like my tires are made of Velcro. It is not all fun and games with Sluggo, though. We have developed a love hate relationship because in order to experience the freedom and ecstatic release of a downhill run, I must first PUSH her to the top of my run. I must endure the pain before I can experience the pleasure.

John, Tim and I were pushing up Pioneer Peak, a 7000ft mountain that rises from Matanuska Valley down at sea level. Pioneer Peak is the first of successive peaks that stretch south, from Palmer, Alaska, into the heart of the western Chugach Mountains of south-central Alaska. It is similar in size and dimensions to Mt. Curry in Pemberton.

Our intended route was to push up through 3000ft of dry, birch forest along a roller-coaster single track littered with gnarly root clusters and steep greasy sections. Once above the trees we would be on high alpine terrain for another 3000ft as we wrapped around to the Eastern Saddle that leads to the summit ridge of the peak. We wanted to bike off the peak.

We had been pushing for 5 hours now and I had just sat to down to rest and scope my line, which I was just able to see. The trail traced a broad grassy ridge that seemed to forever roll into another high point in the distance. The air was a least moving up here, the forest had been hot and buggy. This would be a good spot to film from.

I could see Tim coming up quick with his Santa Cruz Bullit and John in the distance, pushing his Karpiel Disco Volante. I reflected on the performance vs. pain ratio that was inherent to this pursuit. Sluggo is a Santa Cruz Super 8 mounted on double-wide rims with Gazzalotti 3.0 tires. She is designed to carve big mountains and basically manage for the gnarliest terrain I could throw at her. But I had to first push all of her 50lbs to the top of the run I intended to ride.

John, Tim and I had been pushing just about every day for the previous 3 months and we were strong. We had been calling first descents all over south-central AK as we filmed the action. We were out to pioneer new lines on Pioneer Peak.

As it turns out there is a pretty good ratio for time spend pushing vs time going downhill. For every hour up you can look at about 1/2 hour ride down. This push was going to take us over 7 hours so we could look for a ride that would last about 2 hours. (Whereas in ski-mountaineering, a 7 hour climb might only yield a 20 minute run) My plan was to have a camera guy post up right where I was sitting so I could circle up and around the drainage and ride the most esthetic line I could see, it would yield a long profile shot as I descended into the drainage.

Pushing again, easy terrain up here. The steeps down in the forest were the crux. Slippery, root entangled gnarl. Up here it was wide-open tundra and talus and I was stoked to get in my line. Over the radio John said he was ready I affirmed and dropped in. The first 1000ft was a low-angle, rolly ridge that I was able to mob along at a good clip. Eventually the ridge began to tip over and narrow into a spine of clean tundra flanked by vertical cliffs on the right and left.

I was getting into the meat of it. I knew that I was straight across the drainage from John as I rolled onto a flat spot right above the steepest section. Pause… pause…
Standing there balanced on the bike for a moment. I eased into the pitch because I knew it was going to be a long one, about 700ft. I knew the exposure was there but I only saw the strip of earth, as wide as my desk here, that lay before my fat tire.

Even with the radical geometry of the Super-8 I was still sitting on the back wheel while pushing my arms down the fall line with all my might. I spent 6 hours in this position pushing up the hill in preparation for this. This run was becoming a thing of endurance as I neared the crux, a 3ft cliff. The pitch was so steep that even a little 3ft cliff could initiate the extra inertia that my skills could not bear. I’m through the cliff and my back wheel is starting to lock, sending boulders down the hill with me. I’m fucking driving now! Steady! (bucking wheel) Steady! (boulder whizzing by) Steady…!

OPEN IT UP! I zipped down into the lower angle valley bottom on open brakes. Run Sluggo, run! I had survived the ridge-line that felt more like a ski run then anything else. I carved my way down the drainage a ways but had to stop because I now had to push back up to where John was sitting with the camera. He would film Tim and then start pushing into his line while I climbed out of mine so I could be at the camera right when he is ready to go.

A half hour into it and I’m getting tired now. Staring at the earth, focusing on every step. Driving Sluggo up the steep tundra face one step at a time. I had ample time to reflect on my 2000ft run and give thanks to Sluggo for delivering me through such dangers. I turned around and watched Tim come down to the biker’s right. He chose a less steep run and was able to open it up most of the way down. Blazing over the natural hips and rolls! Another half hour and I was back to the ridge top and John was dropping in.

He went way biker’s left and railed GS turns down a broad face that eventually broke up into a cliff zone. He had to link up the tundra strips while dodging and weaving around the cliffs. I could see John through the viewfinder as he straight-lined out over a double and finished by stopping and lying down in exhaustion at the valley floor.

Holy smokes… I was wasted. I had now pushed Sluggo up about 6500 vertical feet over 7 hours. Sometime later Tim and John climbed out of the drainage and we exchanged high-fives in recognizing out feat. But that was now in the past as we geared up and prepared to descend the 5000ft back to the truck.

If I had a helicopter, this is where I would go riding. All three of us racing each other down the flanks of the mountain until we merged onto the trail right at treeline. Another hour of intense jungle maneuvers and we were spit out into the parking lot, rolling lazy circles around the truck. We could only sit dumbfounded and silent on the tailgate. All that could be heard were the birds in the trees and the occasional “Dude…that was crazy…”

[carpathian]

Baird to Byron, view from Portage Lake


AK Frogger

The mud flats of Turnagain Arm are notoriously dangerous. I remember hearing a story about a girl, a long time ago, who got stuck in the mud. The rescuers tried everything to get her out as the tide was rising fast. I guess the last ditch effort included a helicopter with a sling and as the story goes, the water was up to her neck and the helicopter pulled and she got pulled in half… I don’t know if the story is true, but either way it did little to deter our exploration of the ocean in front of Girdwood.

Turnagain Arm has the second highest tide interval in the world after the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. It is basically a fifty-mile long fiord feature that became filled in with glacial silt from hundreds of glacier fed watersheds. It has an interesting habit during the spring tide cycle, of producing a fair sized ‘bore tide.’ A bore tide form when the outgoing water runs into the incoming high tide and it builds into a wave that can reach ten feet or higher. Imagine a boiling wall of brown water sometimes churning with icebergs and froth.

Ryan and I were convinced that we wanted to ride the wave. The problem was that neither of us owned a surfboard. We remedied the situation by going to the local builders supply store and buying some of that 2 feet by 8 feet long stiff blue insulation foam. We cut the lengths in half and used duct tape to create a board that was 2 feet by 4 feet by 4 inches thick. Ingenious! Next, we went and bought some used wet suits and a couple of life jackets and we were ready to go!

This was my first time really venturing on to the mud flats. I had poked around the edges but had never committed to complete submersion in the brown icy water. It did feel somewhat counter instinctual as we strolled out across the broad mud bank adjacent to the busy Seward Highway. The consistency of the mud is interesting. You can step and keep walking just fine but if you stop and jiggle your feet for only two second, the mud quickly becomes liquid, sucking you in. When you stop moving, it solidifies again around your ankles, knees or whatever.

We quickly jogged along straight out into the river of water flowing out that was only knee deep. On the horizon you could see the wall of foam and water rising and moving in our direction. I was slightly nervous as we waited and even turned to run towards the wave. It finally built to about four feet as we turned our backs to it, flopped on our stomachs and started paddling against the river current. Sploosh! The wave rolled up on to use and I rode it for maybe two seconds before I got spit out behind it. Ryan carried on for maybe 100ft or so before he lost the sweet spot as well.

It was way easier walking out across the mud at low tide. Now I was several hundred yards from shore in the middle of the huge, brown, cold river. I had not really thought about this part. I paddled and paddle and even though I was going perpendicular to the flow I could see land marks moving by at an alarming speed. The real danger is when the tide current goes around the next point and then angles sway from the road, towards the other side of the arm.

My arms were becoming like jelly and Ryan was far from me, so I was on my own. After a while I was curious if I could touch bottom as I clung to my blue board. Yes! The water was only chest deep. I was now running on the bottom at 45-degree angle to the current with one hand on my floating board for balance. It seemed like forever then all of the sudden the shore seemed near.

At the same time the water became deeper so I had to hop back on my board. And then all of the sudden there was these waves coming at me from what seemed like nowhere. The waves got steeper and bigger as I kept paddling. At the crest of one of the waves I realized to my horror that I was paddling into the heart of a huge whirlpool and the waves were reaching out concentrically from the brown frothy hole in the middle. The whirlpool must have formed behind a small rock outcrop as a back eddy to the main current because I was quite close to shore now. At the crest of the biggest waves I got caught in the circular pull of the hole of death as it spun me around 180 degrees and plopped me right on shore.

I was completely exhausted and somewhat flabbergasted by it all but very happy. I struggled up the embankment to the highway and saw Ryan come to shore a couple hundred yards down steam from me. We walk the three quarter mile back to the car and called it a day.

Ryan was not deterred by the experience. He got a surfboard and rode the wave several times with no problems. He and Abe did have some troubles when they decided to ride the icebergs on one fine day in mid April. The snow in the backcountry had turned to mush so they were looking for action on the way home from the pass. The day was idyllic; calm with warm blue skies with the sun beating down on the alpine slopes that fall right to sea level.

They pulled the car over and easily stepped out onto a flat piece of ice about 20 feet across and a foot thick. They hopped and skipped from berg to berg with joyful abandon. Ryan was wearing ski pants, t-shirt, running shoes and a bandana pulled over his face in classic bandit style. Abe was still wearing his ski boots, which seemed dangerous for obvious reasons.

Soon enough they were on separate bergs and soon enough later, they drifted apart and away from shore as the out going tide took its last time. They became bored and Abe, inexplicably, kept losing articles of clothing until he was barefoot in long johns and a ‘wife beater’ tank top shirt.

By now the local authorities had been notified by a concerned citizen as they waited on shore to see what would happen. They have to do something soon before they go around Bird Point and the open water beyond. Ryan makes the first move. He sits on the edge of his icy ride and gingerly slides into the water, not sure how deep it is. He is lucky as it is only chest deep. It is cold though and he is still 150 yards form shore and has to do the same 45-degree cross current jog I came up with. After a while he runs up on to the beach unscathed. Now Abe has to do it. He slides in and the water is up to his neck. He still opts for the cross current jog maneuver, sure to keep his hands up over his head like some sort of dance for life and death. Soon the two yahoos reunite in typical fashion and celebrate with a ‘high ten’. The trooper were unimpressed but could not press charges because going out in the mud is not illegal.

[carpathian]

Dog Falling

I awoke this morning to find Vesna in the early stages of labor. She is walking around the property in a bathrobe and pausing with each contraction. We will wait until the contractions come at 3-minute intervals and last for 45 seconds before we head to the hospital.

I can see life changing, just around the corner and I look forward to the new responsibility of raising a little human. We have always had pets and would joke that they were ‘practice babies.’ To some extent that is true because you do have to feed and love your dog or cat and look out for their wellbeing because they can only do so much for themselves. It is up to you as the parent to keep them out of danger and make proper decisions when it comes to minimizing the hazards, like keeping butcher knifes in the drawer or building a little fence at the top of the stairs.

Long ago I had a girl friend that I lived with in Girdwood. Her name was Katy and we made the move to get a little Australian Shepard puppy and named her Maddie. I took it upon my self to take the dog wherever I could in the mountains. I trained her to climb with me up the steep craggy ridges in the summer and she loved to go skiing almost more then her human counterparts. We would climb to the top of the mountain and she would start into a barking frenzy as we prepared to ski.

Somewhere along the way I broke up with the girlfriend and the dog took the life a child with divorced parents. We each loved the dog and would take turns, swapping her back and forth for a day here or there.

One day in late April I was going skiing with a couple of friends that I had never really skied with before. I was on the side of the highway with Thad, Jared and Maddie preparing to hike and ski Indian House Mountain. Right as we were about to start hiking Katy was driving by and she pulled over to stop and ask where we were going. Maddie ran up and she got a scratch behind the ear before we parted ways and made our way up the mountain.

It was warm out and the route we were climbing was bare, so we hiked in shoes while carrying all the ski gear. We climbed the south face and planned on skiing the unknown north face. At the top of the run it was very steep. So steep in fact that to this day I can’t believe we were skiing the line, let alone bringing a dog along. I crept in and made three turns. Even though the day was warm, the snow was almost ice because the sun had just crept around the corner a half hour before. After my three turns I was thinking that “this is steep” and I should be careful. I saw that I was going to have to traverse to my left about 100 feet before I could ski fall line because I was over what appeared to be 500 foot cliffs.

I called Maddie to my side. She was reluctant to depart the safe ridge top but like a well trained, trusting dog, she slid on her rump and skidded to my feet. At this point the first alarm bells were going off. I was now thinking “oh shit, this is steep and icy.”

I knew we would be all right if we made it to the clean line to our left.
I turned and made a kick turn and started to scoot to my left. One second later I saw in my peripheral vision, Maddie skipping down the mountain all stiff legged. She was already reaching top speed before she disappeared over the edge of the cliffs below.

I made the number one error as the rescuer, which was putting myself at risk in the process of trying to save the dog. Without thinking I started skiing full speed down the icy slope in a futile attempt to save the dog. There were mandatory cliffs that I skied off and don’t remember. I saw Maddie rolling in a heap down the lower flanks of the slope and she ended up perched on a chunk of debris. She looked like she was looking at me as I skied up and in my heart I was hoping that she was not alive so I would not be in the position of having to put her out of her misery with a leatherman or something.

I skied up and paused nearby. She was dead and her tongue was hanging out nearly severed. I just sat there in a state of shock trying to realize what had happened because it happened so quickly. I tried to pick her up but she was like a bag of broken pieces. I sat there with tears on my cheeks and watched my two, stunned ski partner cautiously make there way down the mountain.

They made there way to me and only then understood what had happened.
After a few moments of silence I decided I had better try to carry her out of the mountains. I skied with her in my arms as far as I could. Just as my biceps were giving out, we hit the snow line and would have to walk for 2 hours back to the road. I had to leave her there. I tucked her in to what I thought was good spot and we departed.

On the highway I was walking like a zombie back towards the car when I saw Katy’s car zip past. She pulled a quick U-turn and stopped to get out. She came walking up the highway immediately asking where Maddie was. I could only say, “go back to the car.” She became more frantic when she started to understand that Maddie was no longer with us and she started sobbing on the side of the road. I took her to her car and she cried while I relayed the story. Thad and Jared took my jeep home and I rode with Katy to her mom’s house to break the bad news.

The next week I got a phone call. I guess I forgot to take Maddie’s collar off and some guy called to say that she was in the middle of the trail. Apparently where I left her the trail made a zig zag under the snow so when the snow melted she was not in a good spot. I power hiked up two hours with Fred. My heart was choked for the whole climb. I got to Maddie and she was sin the middle of the trail with tracks stepping right over her. As quickly as I could I carried her over into the thick bush and laid her to rest with a view of the beautiful Turnagain Arm below.

[carpathian]

Can Not Crash

I can remember the first day when I realized that I could not crash.

It was a Wednesday and it had snowed about 6 inches. In the morning it was cloudy but the sun was already trying to break through. There was not real rush and it was easy getting 1st on chair 6. On the first lap we hit Eagle Rock. You can come on on the corner of the drop and get about 10 feet. It is a good way to test the snow for the day with minimal risk. The next lap we hit Eagles again. There are several different stages you can play with; A ten foot drop in to a hanging pillow to another 10 footer to the left or maybe a 15 footer to the right.

The main drop is about 20 foot of vertical rock with a tranny that runs good and steep for another 40 or 50 foot before it transitions again to completely flat. After a couple of more laps it seemed like Eagles was the order for the day and we decided to just keep hitting it.

There is a rope and cliff sign across the top so you have to slow way down and side step up to the edge before taking the plunge. If there was a time lapse camera on South Face it would have looked like a type writer running through the alphabet as we started pin pointing bomb holes 6 inches over from each previous lap. A series of about 10 laps with 25 footers. Followed by another series of 10 laps with 30-35 footers. The landing proved to be very user friendly with the 6 inches of new on top of the 20” from yesterday and the 15” from the day before that and the 25” from the day before that... Alyeska will do that, average 20” a day for like 3 months.

Anyway it felt like we were just getting warmed up when we started pushing into the 40+ range. I remember sitting on the chair lift and feeling twitchy and slightly nauseous at times. I turned to Abe and remarked that it felt like I could not crash. Like I could not crash even if I tried. Abe agreed and we knew that it was on!

By now people on the chair started taking notice as we were getting random hoots in the lift line. Chair 6 rolls right up the main bowl so everyone can see everyone else's run assuming you are not over on North Face. From the lift we could see all of our perfect landings laid out in rows lower and lower down the tranny. As soon as the skis touched the snow at the top of the lift all apprehension melted away and, to sound cliche, it was like a computer game.

We started ducking the warning rope faster and faster and soon enough we were pushing the limits of the useable transition. By now we had hit the damn thing about 35 times as we were doing back to back 50 footers. I can clearly remember the highlight of the day. By now we were just ducking rope and not even slowing down and leaping blind. I remember as I ducked the rope I kind of turned my head sideways and as I did that I saw Abe as he was ducking the rope at the same time no more then 5 feet to my left. I watched as he dropped into the classic aerodynamic/semi-tucked position one uses when bombing big air. I noticed the flow of snow crystals flow behind him as he started to descend with the arc of trajectory.

I could see he was stoked because this was one of the biggest air yet and I watched as he slowly lowered the landing gear and prepared for touch down. I swear I could count 1-2-3 in the air as I kept watching while Abe stomped the shit out of the landing in an explosion of snow all around. He had landed at the absolute bottom of the tranny meaning we had soared over 60 feet through the air.

I was still about five feet away as we zipped across the flats and started laughing and was like “did you see that?” That was when I realized that I too had cleanly soared and stomped the big air without even looking as I was so transfixed by the beauty of Abe's flight. In the end we hit Eagles 48 times that day.
The next day we were excited. Ryan would be joining us and we had high expectations of what the day would bring. You know how when you have a super fun awesome time one day and when you want to try and recreate the awesomeness the next day it just does not want to happen?

The day dawned cold and blustery. The sky was slate grey and the snow quickly proved to be hard and unforgiving in general. We even went and checked out Eagles Rock but it was obvious that that shit was played. It felt contrived to even think of recreating the previous days events. We struggled to maintain enthusiasm. The wind was blowing.

We decided to go on a long traverse. We traversed down and across the mountain as far as we could trying to get a view of the ocean. We soon found our selves deep in thick trees. We started boot packing up through waist deep snow. It became wallowing but it was fun enough. We pushed on and upwards through the deep snow and thickening trees. We were on a part of the mountain that I had never specifically been to. I had been near this spot but never this spot exactly.

We were growing tired from the mindless wallowing and decided it was time to look for some real thrills. The trees were so thick that you could not really see beyond the mini grotto we found our selves in. It was fairly steep too. It was time to ski. Ryan went first and I followed. He kind of hopped sideways blindly through the branches of the ever greens. I followed and was slapped in the face by the branches.

As I popped though the branches I was surprised to see that Ryan, by sheer luck, had popped into another mini grotto, about one ski length long. He popped a turn and bounced through the next set of branches as I was literally on his tails, a micro second behind and Abe was a micro second behind me. As I burst through the next set of branches I was amazed to see Ryan shralping another miniscule turn and disappear again as I shralped my turn. I quickly thought, “No way! There cannot be another turn in these dense trees!” Sure enough, same thing, bounce turn through nothing and into nothing. I could feel my self about to loose it. Another branch in the face, another patch of snow no more then 4x4 foot.

I started to laugh now. We were inexplicable accelerating and still turning. The turns were fast giving way to flight as successive potential turns were becoming more and more implausible. 5, 6, 7, 8...

I was laughing hysterically now and had tears of snow running down my face. How was this fucking possible?! As I burst through each blind turn all I could see of Ryan was the tails of his skis and the arc of his turns so I knew there must be a way. I could not understand how Ryan could be improvising with the terrain so quickly. I was having trouble just following his tracks.

9, 10, 11... On the 12th turn I busted through the trees and found Ryan crumpled in the trees. The laws of physics had finally reverted back to those of Newton as cause and effect were once again aligned.

[carpathian]

Baird Peak in Summer

[carpathian]

Summit Pass Circus

Vesna is officially 8 months pregnant now. Our little cabin is beginning to feel small. I am scrambling to finish the main cabin before the baby comes and everything is going great. The driveway is mostly mud and there is a huge pond of melt-water and a winter worth of dog shit in the backyard that is kind of gross. I am about to Tyvek the outside of the building and then start with cedar siding.

I keep telling Vesna about how we can tell the baby stories about how things were before its life began. Assuming that things have stabilized somewhat, we will look back with nostalgia on some of our serious and not-so-serious misadventures.

I can clearly remember a day in the mountains that seemed to be cursed by one small thing after another but in the end everyone still had a good time.

We had six people with three snowmobiles. We were trying to sled in an area that was closed to motorized vehicles, so that is where our trouble began. As we were pulling Ryan’s sled off the truck, my pinky finger got pinched in between the ski and the tail gate and the skin got crushed off into a bleeding flap. I cursed with pain as I used duct tape and toilet paper to bandage the wound for the day. 50 yards up the trail, Ryan’s little sled got stuck and it was clear that it was not going to make it. Jared’s sled had trouble as well and only made it another 100 yards before getting stuck for good.

Adrian’s sled was the only one that could get anywhere. I was fortunate enough to get a ride as Abe, Aaron and Jared skinned. Ryan did not bring skins because he was planning on using his sled, so he had to boot pack.

Since my finger was throbbing, I opted out of skiing for the day and would man the camera. Abe, Aaron and Jared all made it up to the alpine bowl quickly and started to climb up a nice 1500ft coulior. I sat in the sun while Adrian took off up valley on his sled by himself. It took about an hour for the guys to get up towards the top of the run. Right about then Ryan labored up the final roll and joined me for the show.

At one point I looked up valley to my left in time to see Adrian dig him self out of a huge pile of avalanche debris in the bottom of a gulley. I wondered what he was doing but he was too far away to communicate so I focused on filming Jared as he dropped in.

Jared expertly ski cut a fair sized avalanche and scooted to the side as the slide rolled down their boot pack route. He negotiated through some rocks and triggered another slide but this time just straight lined and raced the snow all the way down.

In the meanwhile Adrian showed up and relayed what had happened. Apparently he high marked of the back of the bowl and jumped off with his skis at the high point and let his sled ghost ride down. He then boot packed up the rest of the face with his skis on his back. Right at the top of the run the whole slope slide with him battling to stay on the surface as he rode 1000 feet down to the bottom, where I saw him.

Now Abe is dropping in. He straight lined the entire run and almost exploded in the avy debris at the bottom. Aaron decided to take it easy and made 100 turns or so. All I wanted to do at this point was get the heck off the mountain and go home.

[carpathian]

World Freeski Championships

Over an eleven-year period from 1998 until 2009, I usually competed in a least one ‘extreme ski competition’ a season. The idea is to ski the hardest line possible for the judges. There are cliffs and jumps and super steep terrain. Usually a venue will be near a ski resort with ski lifts nearby but sometimes, in the more elite events, in will be held in the backcountry. In one event we used snowmobiles to access the venue. One of the most memorable events was held in Valdez in April, 2002 and was called the World Freeskiing Championship.

The event was the grand finale for the World Circuit and all of the competitors were pre qualified from previous events. These were the top 15 skiers in the world and I wanted in. I made a few phone calls and managed to talk to the main promoter and I weaseled a spot on the roster based on my solid finishes from the year before.

The promoter also put the word out that they would be holding a locals only qualifier on the roadside in Thompson Pass. When we showed up at the first meeting the only skiers trying to qualify were Abe, Ryan, Beau and someone else who I forget. The venue was right above the highway on heinous wind-blasted snow that proved very difficult to ski at all, let alone ‘show off’ for the judges. In the end Abe and Ryan made the cut and got to join me in the worlds most elite big mountain competition of the year. We would be using helicopters to access several huge venues in the mighty Chugach Mountains. After a day in the mountains, we feasted like kings and drank free beer and basically had a blast. It was super sweet.

I placed 8th on the first run, 2nd on the second run and 7th on the third run ending up 6th overall. After the second day of competing, I needed a ride into town so I jumped in the car with Guerlain Chicherit and his dad. Guerlain is a certified French bad ass and I was slightly honored to be competing with him and now here I was in his car!

We are in a big rental car that Guerlain seemed to be getting a kick out of driving really fast. I’m sitting in the back seat as He and his dad talk on and on in French. As we climbed up into Thompson Pass there is some ice on the road that Guerlain starts purposely fishtailing on as were doing like 60mph. I’m starting to get nervous as they laugh and keep talking in French. We made it through the pass and were beginning the descent down to Valdez, on the ocean. There is one looong switchback turn that had 3 well-marked frost heaves in the middle of the road. All the previous times I had driven the stretch of road the previous week, the driver would slow to 30mph to go over the heaves. Guerlain seriously turned to his dad and I and laughed will punching down the hill!

It was like one of those scenes out of an old cop TV show filmed in San Francisco.
We flew over 1…2… 3 Frost heaves! At the bottom of the hill he pulled over to piss on the side of the road. I hopped out and delicately tried to pee without the wind blowing it all over myself. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was still wearing a climbing harness as the piss reflected off the dangling piece of harness and showered my lower half in piss.

I did not notice until a few minutes later in the car, when I saw that my down coat was wet for some reason. As I am holding my arm up in disbelief of the scene, the dad turns around to say something and he is first confused as I tried to explain by pointing and nervously laughing. He turns to Guerlain and they point and laugh and start carrying on in French. We were at the hotel a couple minutes later where I thanked them for the ride and they drove off, quite amused.

The next day I was telling someone about the crazy drive (maybe not the pissing) and they mentioned that Guerlain is a professional European Rally Cross Race car driver in the summer months and his dad is the co-pilot/map reader guy.

The funniest part of all was on the last day of competition when Guerlain was late. He was in first place and was about to miss the heli ride to the venue. Then all the sudden he comes racing in the parking lot and jumps in the heli. Apparently he got pulled over doing 100mph in a 30 zone in Valdez! Serious speeding ticket… Either 3 days in jail or $5000 fine. Rumor has it that Guerlain actually had to start crying in order for the cop to let him go so he could go win the World Championships and collect the $5000 prize money so he could pay the fine. So he shows up, wins the comp and drives back to Valdez to pay up. That after noon they flew back to France.

[carpathian]

Bike in the Dark

After I had been kicked off the ski hill I turned to downhill mountain biking as a way of maintain my sanity. My 'plan A' had always been to be some sort of pro skier and things were going great until that fateful night when I decided to be a little too rebellious. Now I had to come up with a 'plan B' and biking seemed to fit the bill. I came to realize that it was not always about the skiing specifically but more of the going up a mountain to come down, that I enjoyed.

My skier friends never caught on. I would try and explain to them that the only difference comes down to whether you are hanging on to handle bars or ski poles. (as you say this you hold your hands in front and turn from horizontal bike grip to vertical ski pole grip). And to this day I can't take s skier seriously unless he hones his skills on a big bike in the 'off season.' I would call my Santa Cruz Super 8 my 'dirt ski' because that is all I had.

Believe it or not though, biking on snow can be fun and rewarding. John and I would push our bikes the hard packed snowmobile highways in Turnagain Pass and rip 3000 foot runs much to the bewilderment of the sled head locals. My favorite haunt was still Alyeska though. One of the best ways to get in some vert was to climb up the mountain in the dark of night. It was easy to dodge the groomers and the actual groomed trails offered some of the fastest, smoothest riding imaginable.

I remember one night in particular. We started pushing around 11:30pm. We knew there was a break between groomer shifts and we would have and hour or two with the mountain to ourselves. It would only take about an hour and a half to climb the 2000 feet to the top of Chair 6 where we would take a swig of water and prepare for the descent. A big part of Alyeska is contained in a big bowl shaped by a steep head wall all around. There are no trees and you can see everywhere from everywhere. We decided that we would rip down Silvertip. It is a low angle cruiser that rolls way skiers left out towards Max's Mountain.

Across the valley from where we would ride is the top lodge building. There is a huge flood light that shines across the bowl and illuminates the alpine scene in a blue artificial moon light. We were hauling ass through the blue light. At least it felt like we were hauling ass because in the dark your senses are altered to where you can't really see specific details of the route. You can feel the bike floating and bobbing underneath as it catches and rolls with the irregularities in the fine corduroy.

We quickly navigated the rolling swoops up high and pointed it across the flats before the pitch turns and rolls steep down into the belly of the bowl. John was about 150 feet in front of me and I could only detect him as a small black humanoid that didn't appear to actually be moving. But we were! We were pretty much running open brakes and going real fast now as the pitch is about 30 degrees. But since we had both skied the simple groomer perhaps a million times we both knew that it was clean and predictable.

What was not predictable was the line of demarcation between the world illuminated by the flood light up high and the dark shadow world down low in the bowl. The natural shadow cut across the steep pitch about 2/3 down. In other words, we were hauling ass on bikes on the snow and it was about to become pitch black, real fast! I could see the shadow up ahead and I could see the speck John still in the light. Then in 1,2,3 he vaporized before my eyes into the other side. 'Break on through, to the other side' never made so much sense until that insta-second when I was still in the light and the wall of black was fast approaching and I literally held my breath and I might as well have closed my eyes because when I dared to breath again there was NO SENSORY INPUT. I knew my eyes must be open because I could now feel tears of speed and exhilaration flowing on my cheeks. I kept trying to see anything but could not. There was no light to see therefore; no one was there to see it. It was like breaking the speed of light and seeing the nothing on the other side.

I stayed light on the saddle and pedals and willed the bike to find my way down the mountain like a good horse. She floated and bobbed over familiar rolls that I could now remember from daylight and ever so gradually orange light from the lower day lodge reflected up the hill. I could see John stopped down by the first trees and I knew his mind was blown, as was mine.

[carpathian]

Ester Island Bike Trip

Late in the summer John, Tim and I hatched a plan. Tim knew an older guy named Paul who had a boat and he had a lot of free time and wanted to take us out boating in Prince William Sound. He was open to doing whatever we wanted so we came up with a good idea.

The idea was to boat out to Esther Island and get after some first descents on our downhill bikes. The topography in PWS is interesting. Some land features like Culrosss Island were worn smooth looking as if the nearby glaciers had crushed and scraped the once rugged features into submissive bumps on the blue sea. Whereas other nearby land masses like Knight Island have huge craggly granite spires and crazy alpine chutes that roll right to the beach.

We were looking for something in between and Esther had what we were after. We would anchor right near the hatchery and make camp. There is 500 feet of sparse forest that leads quickly into sub alpine glades and then pure rock above 1500 feet. We wanted to push up to these exposed ridge lines and bike on the rock and basically kill it. That would prove more difficult than we thought.

We met at Paul's around 10am ready to go. We had been on 'the program' all summer and could expect a general efficiency from each other, when it came to getting going on something. Paul was on another program. He puttered around his garage for a while tinkering with the outboard and trailer lights and fishing gear etc. We helped and remained patient and were generally stoked to be preparing for such a great adventure. One thing leads to another and we don't leave the house until 4pm. Land of the midnight sun you know, as we were confident that we had still had plenty of light to get where we wanted to go.

Paul decided to stop at a local restaurant and order a burger to go. I can tell John is slightly losing it now in his head and Tim is acting like we there is no problem. I am really starting to crunch numbers in my head, be in Whittier by 5 at latest, hour boat ride out Passage Canal another 20 minutes across College Fiord and over to Esther by 7, make camp by 8, dark at... 8:30?

I was becoming concerned that we were now off track. We got the burger, raced to Whittier and hopped in the boat fairly smoothly. Paul wanted to go check his shrimp pots. This was an actual surprise to us and I knew then that the joke was on us. I guess I should mention now that Paul was getting along through the mid stages of Parkinson's Disease. This entire time of preparation and anticipation was coupled with the way that Paul moved and conducted himself. He actually reminded me of my dad in his general outdoors skill set. The difference was that he walked with a limp and had shakes and could barely lift the smallest object so John, Tim and I had to act on his directions. It was all stored upstairs but his body was clearly failing him.

The light was failing on all of us as I was pulling the fifth pot up some 500 feet from the icy depths. My fingers were numb and there were about 5 shrimp in the cooler so far, so we were losing interest in pulling the last two pots. He was excited for the last pot and sure enough there was about 20 shrimp kicking around and we would feast at our camp on ESTHER ISLAND! I could see her sitting out in the Sound proper, calling with her sirens cry. The light in the east was becoming pink, Esther looked dark but we were coming now.

In the 10 minutes it took for us to get from the last shrimp pot site to the point outside Blackstone Bay, a bank of low fog rolled in along the feet of our destined port. I could the see the granite ridge lines dancing above the clouds but our route by sea was becoming less safe by the moment. Soon we rolled around the last piece of land between us and the entire of northward stretch of College Fiord. Within a 50 foot distance the seas rose to maybe 3 and half feet. The 22 foot open hull aluminum skiff started to take on spray and our bikes did not seem to be protected under the trap. The spray was cold and salty and I was becoming alarmed. My first clue was when earlier in the trip Paul had to take a leak off the back of the boat and was having real difficulty getting everything all zipped up after the fact. We stood there watching long enough so that the idea of how I could help actually surfaced.

I asked Paul for the map quickly. We all unanimously decided that we had to abort the mission. The light was fading fast. I scoured the contour lines for what might be our last hope. It was interesting how throughout the entire day we were going to Esther up until that very moment when it was alarm bells, all at once.

I saw a little spot on the map that might be good in the first little bay as you curve north to College. We nosed in but then decided against it. There was nothing along the beach until we zipped into Pirate Cove, or maybe the next one. It was technically dark by the time we stepped on to solid ground. There was a small, not so flat spot right at tide line as indicated by debris from the morning flow. We would have to make due. We unloaded all of the entire camp as Paul sat on the ground under a tarp and directed us piece by piece on how to set up the camp. By 11pm we had a fire going and it was time to set up watch.

The tide for tonight was supposed to be a few inches higher and we were cutting it close. As we sat in silence watching the tide it started to rain. Paul's dog was acting all aggressive as it charged around the rear perimeter barking into the dark. We were in wilderness now. The tide actually crested the edge of the miniature plateau we were on and came within inches of soaking our bags but we stayed dry.

The next morning was socked in. We decided to call off the trip for good and Paul was excited to go fishing. We glumly trolled around in circles for the better part of the day and did not catch anything.

We returned to Whittier kind of bummer because we did not meet our objective. 7 days later the entire south central region of Alaska was still socked in under the first huge pacific storm to come in for the season, the one that rolled in while we were on route to Esther. We would have been stuck on the island for many days and were only spared many imagined hardships by a few shrimp.

[carpathian]

To Whistler

Living in Alaska was good and great but there comes a time when you just have to get out of there. The isolation, the long dark ours…they can wear on your psyche. So on January 2, 2004 Abe, Ryan and I embarked on a journey that would, in the end, shake the The Indestructible Few to the core.

Hans had disappeared the year before. I awoke one morning to find a pile of videotapes and a three page manifesto type letter explaining his haste departure and general take on the world. The short story is that Hans felt after three years of pushing his own mental and physical boundaries in the mountains of Alaska, he had reached a critical threshold. He did progress at an alarming rate from dumpster diving, new age bohemian to a lean, mean mountain slaying machine. And that was the problem. He figured it was a number game and the longer you played the game, sooner or later your number would come up. So he left Girdwood without goodbyes and relocated to Las Vegas to follow his other passion of rock climbing and later verified rumors of male exotic dancing. To each his own! I was hurt for a while but got over it.

Fred was also having some issues that pulled him away from the mountains. He had been diagnosed with a rare and serious form of brain cancer. He moved to Seattle to be near family and specialized medical treatment. I could only catch word of his activities 3rd hand and was sorry to see him go.

So now it was up to Me, Abe and Ryan to carry on the legacy we had created and endured. We drove for sixty hours nonstop, through –50C in my parents RV that we had rented for the two-month trip. We pulled into Whistler at 8:30am in the morning and went straight to pick up our season pass and get on with another season of skiing and filming.

We had successfully pulled off filming and editing a ski movie the previous season and had a movie showing in Girdwood three days before leaving town. I was still somewhat burnt out from the whole thing and we tried to ‘just ski’ for the first month we were there. You know, get back to the roots and away from the business aspect.

On one hand I wanted to build on the success and experience we had gone through. On the other hand I subconsciously yearned to see and do new things that might not include skiing and filming every single day.

Ryan and I did not have anything to special planned this morning. I was going to go up and ski a line on Citation that I had been checking out and he was going to film from under the Corner Pocket. Abe was out of commission because of his back.

On the way up Peak Chair we were drooling at the mainline that comes off Whistler Peak. It is a nice ribbon of snow suspended above exposure on the left and some shark teeth and rocks on the right. The ribbon of snow ends in a 5-6ft air to 10 x 10 patch of snow and then off a 20 footer to the clean run out. There was a groomer down low to watch for.

As I sat there, I realized I should just go ski that run while it was in perfect morning light! It was my last day on the hill for the year, so what did I have to lose? Abe and Ryan had been poaching into all sorts of crazy shit for the last month but I had been lagging. I was a bit gun-shy because the season before I had got caught poaching on my home hill of Alyeska. The result was that I could not ski at the hill from Feb 22 on. Right in the heart of winter and I was booted. I had spent a fair amount of time thinking about the decisions that led to my getting in trouble. Abe and Ryan were so pumped on the Grey Zone they were poaching that they convinced to me to go in a few times. The threat of getting caught weighed too heavily on my grey matter and I declined their tours of the area.

I suppose skiing the line was redemption of sorts. Prove to my buddies, if not myself that I could still be daring. An outlaw perhaps…

Ryan posted up right along the ridge so that he could see me on the peak and have the chairlift, full of Saturday skiers, in the foreground. We did not have any radios so we went by hand signal. I could hang out right under the weather station and watch as Ryan prepared the shot. I could see his arm in the air. I put my arm up in response and made my move for the rope. I ducked and started side-stepping as fast as I could while still looking cool. As I came over the rise, all I could see was the base of the Peak Chair some 1800ft below. Beyond was the Village and the mountains towards Pemberton.

I spotted the rock bump that was to be my entrance marker and started hanging skiers right as I eased over the edge and could see the entire lift line jammed with people. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was just moments away from skiing one of the most coveted lines on the mountain. Had an audience too. At this point I assumed Ryan saw me so I made the 100 foot traverse in/ski cut.

A delicate, satiny hoar frost layer some 10cm thick was my palette. By the time I had made the ski cut I could tell the snow was not wind affected so I dropped in with four fast turns while my slough was building under my left. On the fifth turn I turned them straight and skipped off the second patch and arced through the air into a parallel fall line with my now racing slough. There was a moment in the air where I heard one lone hoot come from the chair. Straightline! Racing slough on left while dodging rocks on right while keeping speed in check as groomer is coming up fast! Harrrrd right, hit the groomer… tuck down mountain to the Winnebago in the parking lot.

After hiding out on Blackcomb for the rest of the day on the ol snowboard we packed up the Winnebago and started driving home to Alaska, fleeing the scene of the crime.

Here is line at 1:55


Everything changed when I met Vesna on the chairlift three weeks into our trip. She was 30 and I was 24 so naturally I was taken by this woman… the first woman I had really encountered. I had spent time with girls but this woman was something different. Abe and Ryan sensed the shift in balance and I saw it too but there was nothing I could do. I wanted the new adventure that Vesna had to offer. There was some tension and words were said. In the end we did get some solid footage but I was more interested in my beautiful Canadian bride to be. It took some easy convincing for Vesna to come back to Alaska with me and that is when the whole thing really got dicey.

We got back to Girdwood in the end of March and moved into a little shit hole of a trailer on the same property where Ryan lived. It was a classic case of Yoko Ono and the boys. I wanted to go charge out into the mountains, but I did not want to. I wanted to keep doing what I had been doing for the previous ten years but I did not want to. Vesna and I were happy to just do nothing if not just be in love. Like I said, classic case.

We were searching for new things to share and new foundations to build our relationship on. My mom was more then happy to bring us to church with them on Sundays and we enjoyed it. We enjoyed it so much that on Easter Sunday the pastor was scanning the audience for people who might be moved to accept the lord right then and there and would you believe it?! We both raised our hands at the same time! Sooo we were born again Christians for three days while something was not sitting right. Over the years I had moved into a place of ‘post modern/ new age/ holistic/ shaman’ sort of thinking and here I was taking huge step backward for the individual but a leap forward for the group at large, namely the Christian republican group.

As I recall it was the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that catalyzed my first inkling of political thought. It was also precipitated by my living with a pseudo feminist/ neo liberal/ Canadian woman. I became confused.

Confused is light word. Over a one day period I swung across the political spectrum to that of a soon to be ex-patriot and imaginary draft dodger. Not that I was really a patriot in the first place as I was only loyal to the gods of snow and mountains up until three days prior. Girdwood, AK was the center of my universe and as far as I could tell, I was the master of the universe and now it was all falling down around me.

We drove around Anchorage with a video camera filming cop cars and military jets and huge American flags and it was all evidence Big Brother, nationalism run amok and George W Bush was evil incarnate. We had to escape America and unfortunately for Me and my previous set of conditioned values, Alaska is part of the USA so we must go. It took three days to pack, buy a camper, quit my job, seriously traumatize my parents and hit the road.

My soul would not rest until we crossed the Yukon border. Welcome to Canada.

[carpathian]

'Coho Fly' (test on aluminum)



'Spring in the Garden of Eden' (on wood)

[carpathian]

Part 2

Move to Canada, Life at the Lake House

So I had slight existential melt down?! What is the big deal? It felt I had slipped away to a new life in Smithers, BC. We kept the camera rolling as we interviewed anyone and everyone on the nature of politics and how they evolve into a universal understanding. Whatever it was it was a welcome change from the obsessive-compulsive reality I had shaped for my self in Alaska. For the first time I slowed down enough to smell the roses. I did not have to charge out into the mountains every single moment of every single day in order to satiate this bottomless hunger in my soul for more, more, MORE!

I was curious to see how people lived and spent their time not in the mountains. After a couple of months though I became bored. I eventually became bored of existential naval gazing and political argument. My politics had by the way, swung back 180 degrees to a delayed appreciation for my well off Christian republican upbringing. I felt slightly embarrassed that I basically had shat on everything that had molded me into who I was. And even though I could expect no sympathy from the liberal minded proud Canadian masses of BC, I came to appreciate people for whatever they thought. For my sanity I had to become neutral and as the mountains called I yielded to the sirens cry.

Smithers is different then Girdwood. I have the tendency to view and judge places on their proximity to mountains. Girdwood is surrounded by steep mountains on three sides with the ocean at the front door. Smithers is in the interior of BC and the mountains are way more spread out. Specifically Smithers is on the interior side of the Coast Range and that means less snow and colder temperatures in general. Hudson Bay Mountain is in Smithers and it is on the absolute edge of the Coast Range, so from there I can look west and see huge stand-alone peaks all the way to Terrace and the coast. The mountains become taller and the valleys become narrower and deeper the farther west you go. To the east are the huge interior plains that stretch to the Rockies, 500 miles away.

Hudson Bay Mountain is actually a huge stand-alone massif by itself, that is slightly removed from the Coast Range proper. From town, it rises 7000ft to the aesthetic summit. Its eastern flanks are broad and smooth while on the north, west and south it is very rugged and generally inhospitable. Inhospitable is a very good word to describe Hudson Bay Mountain. The top 200 feet is tall enough that it actually pokes up into the next layer up in the atmosphere, so for 9 days out of 10 there is a ‘storm cap’ cloud that obscures the peak from view. The lenticular cloud seems to be the boiling emotion or personality of the peak.

I actually tried to climb up into the storm cap once and was nearly blown clean off. Down on the lower flanks it was calm and sunny. I skinned by myself under the warm sun until I got right up to the threshold, where it is like walking into another room in a building. Only once did I venture into the cap. Over a one hundred-foot distance the wind picked up to about 90 mph, I would guess. I actually became afraid that I would lose a ski or backpack off the edge of the peak into oblivion. Retreat! Retreat! Ever since that trip the storm cap = do not enter.

On the rare day that is clear and calm to the summit, it is totally magnificent sight! You can walk right to the edge of the world and look into the huge Hudson Bay Glacier bowl that is ringed by chute after chute. Amazing skiing that I have not yet enjoyed. So for one mountain there is a lot to offer and the carrot is still on the stick for me at least.

The terrain on Hudson Bay Peak goes from fairly mellow to super gnarly with not a lot of medium terrain in between. It is like going into another world when the opportunity comes up to drop into Big Simpson Drainage. You climb up across the mellow east flank and come up to the edge of the world, right near the summit.

One day five of us decided to make the big move. Bill, Taylor, Devon and I were on skis and Greg was on a snowboard. When we got up to the summit drop in point, it became clear that that we had to descend was super steep, wind scoured and over rocky exposure. It was definitely a no fall zone for 2000 feet. We were unanimous in deciding that Greg should not drop in on his board. The one edge and no poles would make one slip on his part potentially fatal. He agreed and cruised back to the lift area to wait for us at the end of the day.

We dropped in one at a time. Any slip or tumble would have sent the unlucky skier cart-wheeling through a scoured field of rocks laid bare by the high winds that rip through on a regular basis. After ten tight turns you have to hang hard left to access the skiable snow. There is a definite rush of relief once you make it into the safer zone and the skiing becomes fun again! We cruised down the belly of the main drainage and then stopped to gear up for our next objective, Hudson Bay Middle Peak.

It is a pleasant climb. You can keep your skis on for a while then the pitch steepens and you have to boot pack up a narrow gulley. The sun feels good on your back as you efficiently gain elevation. Once we gained the high saddle, Devon and I pushed for the summit while Bill and Taylor opted for the up route as a down route.

While the sun had been cooking the slopes all day the snow became soft and enjoyable underfoot. However, as the sun made its way around the sky, as it seems to do, the previously sun cooked snow hardened into a glazed over ‘hockey rink’ type consistency. The lower half of our Middle Peak run was definitely on the hard side.

Our overall objective for the day, besides the two beautiful peaks we had already skied, was to ski out the bottom of the Big Simpson Drainage and try to tie back over to Little Simpson and mining access road back to the chairlift area. In essence we would be linking two major drainages by an easy traverse, hopefully. The terrain was objectively less steep and exposed but as we soon found out, the lower we skied down the harder the ice became. You see, the lower elevation had been cooked by the sun that much more, so when it finally did refreeze, it refroze much more solid. So solid in fact that is produced the hardest ice conditions I had ever encountered in 20 years of skiing.

The drainage rolls easily for awhile, then towards the bottom it pitches over a steep face for 1500 feet. Even on the low angle terrain, the ice proved treacherous as Bill crashed and cut his face. I crashed into a solid chunk of avalanche debris and kicked off a ski. By sheer luck the ski stopped a few feet away on another chunk nearby.

Earlier in the day we were talking about how legends over in Chamonix say that the large black birds that cruise in the mountain thermal currents are the reincarnated spirits of ski mountaineers who have perished in the mountains. Just as I gathered my wits and my ski I saw in the distance below me, two black birds turning in long lazy circles. They were watching us and I knew who they were.

I was thinking, “If we go skiers left the snow will be worse because it was even more sun affected… so we must go hard right, because the snow will be less affected.” We crept cautiously up to the edge of the face and tucked under the huge cliff bands that loomed overhead. The snow was just barely chalky enough in texture to hold an edge and I calmed down a bit, seeing that we were going to make it.

The snow was still quite hard, mind you. One slip would mean a long fall but the edges held. We all did a fast traverse across the open face as the birds wheeled about, reveling in our joy or perhaps hoping for more company in the heights. Another 1000 feet and we were safe down in the forest. We climbed the last hour back up and over to Little Simpson and then skied 3000 feet to town.

[carpathian]

Inner Visions of a Mountain Man

When we got to Canada on May 15, 2004 we kept the camera rolling and ended up filming a total of 65 hours of footage. By September I started the intense process of logging and capturing all of the footage into a coherent piece of work. In the end our movie was called “Escape from America?” We premiered it to a crowd of 137 people in the Roi Theater in Smithers. For the most part, people appreciated our effort. We pegged it as an evolution in thought and politics. If you could not keep up with the movie then you were obviously not up to speed with that evolution, a litmus test of sorts. We had to rationalize it like that for our own sake. In the Smithers show seven people got up and left the theater.

We did two shows in Prince George, BC and only a few people left early. A week later we did a show in Terrace, BC and ten people left out of the 100 or so that showed up.
Our most successful show was out on the Queen Charlotte Islands in the town of Masset. We played at the Green Church and the people loved it! The last half hour of the movie is filmed in the Charlottes and the small town people really enjoyed our take on their community.

Another week later we traveled down to Rossland, BC to show two movies at the Rossland Mountain Film Festival. The first was the last ski movie I had made in Alaska the year before. It was a hit and the ski crowd liked the classic Alaska powder ski footage. “Escape from America?” was the very last movie to show over the weekend of movie watching. Apparently The Grey Cup was on TV at the same time and, well, about 75% of the people left the theater, or about 75 people. It was tough as the ‘artiste’ to watch the people simply not ‘get it’ or not care to try and ‘get it’. All we could do was sit in the back and watch one after the other or entire groups all get up and leave.

At the end we were sitting there feeling slightly sheepish but also understanding. It is an hour and a half of talking, talking, talking. Politics, Iraq, religion blah, blah… Honestly I was pretty sick of the whole thing by then myself. Right as the lights came on I saw a little man sitting a few rows up from us. We were chit chatting with whatever entourage had accumulated around us and this little guy came over to us. He introduced himself and as it turns out he was our number one fan. He was dirty and wearing a little backpack and had some black garbage bag material attached as a patch or something.

When he started talking, I knew I had better film what he had to say. I ran the camera for two hours straight as he lectured on in the theater and then later outside in the parking lot. Months later I crammed though the whole interview and edited together a 13-minute clip that became a mini movie called “Inner Visions of a Mountain Man.” This guy was a mountain man in the truest sense. A year later we ended up touring around to the same venues with this short flick and a couple of other films we came up with. The following is the transcript from “Inner Visions” broken into three parts. I have to say that the imagery I edited to his words is quite compelling, but you will have to use your imagination for that.



Part 1:

My name is Gary Donald Commozi and I was born in Rossland, BC. My father was a Kootenee and my grandfather was a Kootenee. I’ve been here a long time. The message that we want to hear, I’m sure, is that we want to find that God within. I’m very glad for your movie. It was a great deal of that emphasis in that movie. And that was really the important thing, more then anything else.

Global changing, global warming and all that sort of thing, uh, is a very good possibility and that sort of stuff. And we see that the time is coming when we may see that global shift, again. Not just in human consciousness, but in the actual physical movements of the Earth. And I think at this point that then we should be really aware, as we always should, is that we are spiritual people. At first we are spirit and we should concentrate on that and perhaps if we all do daily spiritual practice, in what ever form that took, each one of us, that would make a great difference in the world.

For we do in fact control and affect and so on, the weather and everything else. And that is what I would kind of like to say as far as the summation of your film, my reaction to the film.

As far as the Freemason go, they sometimes trace themselves back to the Commozi Stonemasons which was an architectural school in Lake Como, which disbanded or so around 400 a.d., when Rome was conquered by the Barbarians. But it would seem if my family was related to that Como, which is a name all over Italy, in the north. So that is just kind of a personal thing.

I am a little wary about saying this… (looks over his shoulder) I went to Rainbow this year in California. I went to the original Rainbow and several others and that Shasta one 20 years ago. And it is Hopi prophecy that there would be a people that would come that would have long hair and beads and headbands and they would be the first non-Indian friends of the Indians and they would have a name something like Hopi. So their name for the white people was the Hopi, Hipi, Hippie. We were that prophecy.

And that is why we came to this time of galactic realignment or galactic alignment. When the sun goes across the plane of the ecliptic of the galaxy.

“December 21, 2012?” I chip in.

Yes, and that date can be moved by a few years forward or back by a number of factors. Such as, what is the true center of the sun electro magnetically, ultravioletly and the same with the galaxy? So, uh, one of the estimates from Jan Miess, U.S. Naval Observatory, was saying that May 1998 was when this happened, but this factor can be extended by a number of years both forward and backward even up to about 2240. Depending on these other factors that we are no fully aware of.

Never the less, the Mayans made the statement, and if anybody was obsessed by time, it was the Mayans. I think that when we look back, I’m a stone mason, we look at all the things that we have built and we don’t know how to build them here today. We don’t know who built of them and we don’t know how they were built. And if we knew why they were built. I quote Gerald Hawkins in “Heaven’s Mirror.” He says, right on the first page that “they were built for immortality and astronomical alignment.” That is the reason those monuments were built. So they are our reminder that there were great civilizations in the past. One was Atlantis and they sank and did whatever. They were destroyed by what ever forces. And maybe we got to look at some of those forces and maybe we are responsible for some of those forces and maybe something as a reminder in this really incredible time that we live in.

Part 2:

“Yeah, yeah, yeah” he mutters under his breath as we make our way out of the now empty theater. We go to the back parking lot where he wants to stand on solid ground before continuing his stories.

I thought about it… you stay there. I’m just gonna see if there is any Earth to stand on… this is really interesting. My parents bought the house so I could be born. It got hit the next day after I complained to city council about how much they were charging me to tear down my house. They were trying to tear down my house. And I guessed it was $33,000 or something in that range. And the house got hit the next day by a BC Tel truck that rolled down this hill and hit that house. And that is my parent’s house, it is a new house now. Here I am born and raised and here we are doing this outside! (laughs) You want to talk about Sasquatch, okay.

“Now Jake, you said something about Trout Lake?” he asked.
“Yeah” I answer.
“You said you are going to stay up there for a few days or something?”
“Uh, potentially we have land there.”
“You have land there! So Trout Lake is Kootenee.” He tells me.
“Is it?”

Well sure, Trout Lake is Kootenee. And as I said about Kootenee, I said it is the crown chakra of the world, the thousand-petal lotus, part of the original Garden of Eden. And I believe this from what I can see, from the evidence that I have experienced. Actually, I have said about 26 things the Kootenee that have come true. Including the Precambrian rock and stuff. But it is just like if you are in harmony with God, then God, however you conceive God, then you get these answers.

I had a theory years ago that the moon affected avalanches. It is now accepted by the avalanche community. Basically both new moon and full. That is the part that I missed. The new moon is even more stronger then the full. I got my national avalanche degree and in the next year, 1974 or so, I developed this theory that the moon affected avalanches. And it is based on astronomical principal. It is basically electromagnetism and gravitation. And yes, it will change that gravity, it will change that avalanche.

You can imagine a slope and you got this new moon or the full moon coming over the eastern horizon and you got a slope that is ready to go anyway, maybe. And you got that snow and that snow maybe on a molecular level, an atomic level or may even on a macroscopic level, the level of the snow crystal itself. Whatever. If you got layers in that snow and one of those layers is suddenly pulled away from another layer, then maybe, you know, an unwary skier or snowboarder could cause that whole slope to go.

[carpathian]

Part 3:

“Yeah, the Sasquatch is like the Freudian personification of the ‘Wild Man’, which is just the unknown aspect of existence in general, that is scary.”

So the Sasquatch. So you know my name is Gary Donald Commozi. I was born in Rossland, BC. I went out one time in Rossland, one night when I decided I would go sleep in the bush. It was a nice summer night in August or something like that. I didn’t want to sleep in town. As all I had to do was walk a couple of blocks and I was over there on Red Mountain and I could go camp somewhere in the trees. I just threw this old American Army sleeping bag over my shoulder. I had better ones, but this one I could just rough around in. I threw it over my shoulders and went for a walk about four in the morning. I went to this place I had never been before. I knew the mountain, it is full of mine shafts and stuff. I just kind of walked where I wanted to walk. Dark of the moon, couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t see the hand in front of my face and I got to this place. I said this is good. This is good. It was kind of a little copse in the trees. I could feel just this little copse in the trees. This is good here.

I took my shoes off and stood at the top of my sleeping bag. I uh, just wanted to let everything know that I was there so I would not be hassled. I wasn’t making a fire or anything or peeing around camp to let the bears know I was there. Just to let everybody know I was there and sleeping for the night I said

“Don’t know body fucking disturb me!”

And I laid down. And I was there about five minutes when all of the sudden,

WaaaaaAAAAAHHHHH!

This is where I decided to end the edited version for the movie. When he screamed in the camera, I felt like I had literally caught a fastball thrown by some major league pitcher. He screamed with such animal ferocity, I was blown away. He was imitating the apparent Sasquatch that had come to yell back at him. As his story continued, the creature proceeded to circle him and scream at him from all four directions from about three feet away in the black night. And then it was silent, except for the stench of the creature’s breath lingering in the air.

[carpathian]

Ski Town

I finished building the first ski fence in town the other day. It only took about a month before I collected enough pairs of brightly colored, 70’s era skis. It only took an hour to drill holes and screw them onto the fence that faces the street. We already have the tallest fence on the block but now it is accented by the symmetric curves of the tips of skis as they arch between two mountain ash trees.

I am a skier at heart and this is going to be my first winter as a ski bum while owning a house in a ski town. This will be the first winter I have owned a fence to display my ode to mountain sport. Some people are completely blown away at the concept; A fence with skis, how cute.

For years I had been pulling off ski bum living in a camper, a Winnebago and even a tar paper shack. This year we were going in style with a wood stove getting installed next week to finish off the ‘urban cabin’ look we had been aiming for. Town has been hopping the lately. Seems like there are more strangers in town. Who is showing up in this neck of the woods? Amenity migration. Like flies to honey, skiers and connoisseurs of mountain living have been rolling into town. Investment banker from Montreal? Model from Vancouver?! Who are these city people moving to my town? I like things the way they are. My town is not going to change.

An influx of money brings an influx of energy and ideas. The money is coming from the real estate company that is selling lots for $150K like hotcakes because they are going to out up the money to create a mountain community. The hotels, condos and restaurants are only coming as a result of massive expansion of the local mom and pop ski hill. 300 acres to 3000, 5000 in the next 2 years! 6000 vertical feet to town! What?! For 30 years people have been talking about running a lift to town. A fantasy, a pipe dream.

We have only been in town for a year and a half. We lived in a camper until 2 months ago when the deal was being sealed and the word was out, “Buy now, before it is too late!” The alarm bells went off. There was one house in town that we could afford. First time home buyer? Yes! RRSP? Yes! You’re in the club. Ski bums to land barons as if in a dream.

People were skeptical. I guess a couple of years back the place was going to sell but then the people had their hopes dashed when the deal fell through. I remained optimistic. I had to because I found myself in the most absurd conversations with local folks who called themselves skiers, as they tried to give me reasons why the hill would never sell.

“Too cold, too windy, too far north… They are going to have to make snow and I don’t like icy groomers.” Oh boo-hoo! Do they miss the point? Yes, you are supposed to enjoy the icy groomer at the end of the day as you descent from the alpine chairs of choice. You enjoy dodging tourists because you have not seen any all day because they don’t leave the fucking groomers. Making snow is part of the game when you are dealing with 6000ft, people.

Apparently real estate prices have gone up almost 20% in the last 2 months. That was the easiest money I ever made. Easier then washing dishes or brown-nosing for the corporate sponsorship.

One guy was telling me how the ‘corporation’ researches into how people are psychologically programmed into buying certain things during certain phases of their mountain experience. Well, no shit. They are trying to make money off the people who are there because of the lift that they built that you are making 5000ft laps on all day. No one is putting a gun to your head and making you buy the lip gloss next to the register at Starbucks. Go skiing and be thankful that there are some aspects of the system that are conducive to your experiencing freedom and bliss. Watch for sunburn!

I can only talk as a taxpayer who loves to schralp who happened to get in on the ground floor this time. This place reminds me of Whistler 30 years ago, maybe Jackson Hole. There is a smaller town about 10 minutes east of here that I can see moving to in about 10 years when the shit is too crazy here in ‘town.’

And so the story goes. The skier’s lust for powder and the sellers lust to sale. They say there are 2 leisure class’ in western society, the extremely rich and the extremely poor. Complementary opposites as they deviate from the middle class norm.

Is it richness of lifestyle? Yes. How do you sustain that richness? How do you eat? I don’t want to be bussing tables when I am 60. I can honestly say that I have proven to myself that I am passionate for the mountains. I failed out of college because I was skiing, dude. But I am tired of being poor. I’m tired of poor. Let’s go manic and gap that middle class and slide right into the other leisure class.

All that I have to do is ski powder. All that I have to do is ski powder. And give it to my wife in front of the wood stove in our new 80 year old house, behind our new 1970’s ski fence at the foot of a giant, ancient mountain that one day will be criss-crossed by a mosaic of groomers underneath 8 passenger gondolas with satellite internet and window that open so you can cool off.

I want to have a run named after me. I want to grow as a skier as this mountain community blossoms into it’s true self. I live in a ski town that does not know it yet. I can already see people walking down Main Street with skis on their shoulder as they race to jump on the shuttle that is pulling away en route to the Base area, 3 minutes away. I want to hear ski boots clunking through the liquor store. A stoked vibe injected like a drug into the arms of the consumers of pleasure.

I am a skier. I know how to ski for free so if the prices go up, so what? I don’t drink coffee and I don’t like arguing with people who don’t seem to know what is for their own good. Maybe they don’t ski? God forbid, than what are they living for?

This winter will be nice. Nothing is really going to happen on the hill until next summer so we have one more season to soak up things the way they are because they will not remain for long. This is our chance to absorb this mountain so we can tell out kids colorful “I remember when…” stories about the lifts and the town. For now, I am going to keep my mouth shut. Perhaps put a little effort in slowing the transformation. But alas! In the future I see a renewable resource all snugly in a turtle-neck and sipping a mocha while wearing extremely tight ski pants.

The farmers almanac says that if there are lots of bees, hornets and wasps in the summer, then it is going to be a good winter. I never got stung but I know lots of people who did. Either way, I can only offer my support by collecting more skis so I can build a second tier on my lovely fence.

[carpathian]

The Passion of the Crust


The story begins around 9:30 pm on a Tuesday night in Smithers BC. Vesna and I were hanging out in our camper parked behind our office, Interesting Productions Studio, when Breeann came banging at the door. I stick my head out and she starts telling me about how Shames just got plastered with 100cm of snow in the last 24hrs and that we should start driving to Terrace right then so that we could go skiing in the morning.

Vesna and I had to take some real convincing from Breeann and her boyfriend Trevor before we were sold on the idea. We had been wrapped up in pulling a David vs Goliath maneuver in the independent film industry concerning our spoof documentary, ‘Escape from America?’ and had been immersed in an imaginary world of numbers and ideas. Breeann and Trevor, in unison, had to keep repeating “100cm, 100cm, 100cm…” until Vesna and I relented, “Let’s go!”

We were on the beat. First, Vesna had to call her yoga students and tell them that she would not be teaching class at 7:30am on Thursday, because she was going to ski 100cm. All the students seemed to understand. I had to jump on the computer to close a few deals and check the weather from around the continent.

“Alyeska Resort up north? 0 inches. Alta Resort down south? Trace. Kicking Horse out east? 6cm. Shames Mountain? 95cm and snowing!” I considered that market research and decided to blast an email to the guys at Powder Magazine, to let them know that I was on the story. I had never really thought of writing an article for a magazine until right then. It sounded like potential for some high drama in the mountains so I gave it a shot.

Vesna and I had been looking for a good ski story to film. I had done a few ski movies while in Alaska and together, we worked on a political documentary. We were looking for a combo of some sort. Tell a story around the sport of skiing. So while we are emailing, packing and laughing, we start filming our movie right then. This story is kind of behind the scenes look at what it takes to get the perfect shot, if not the perfect run. An hour later the truck is purring along in a torrential rainstorm as Vesna and I scheme on ways to get up mountains and down.

Terrace was warm. Ominous. It was past 1am now, and we were waxing skis out in the shed of Trevor and Breeann. It was made even more ominous because their house is right next door to an abandoned morgue that supposedly is the home to a bunch of stray cats. I am looking at the sky, smelling the warm air and a seed of doubt is planted, but I don’t say anything as I close the door to the shed to be enveloped by the crooning of Bob Marley.

I got some good footage of waxing skis. I had never done that before. Seemed kind of ritualistic, the melting of the wax and smoothing the surface for efficiency. We feel asleep around 3am listening as the camper was battered by wind with mixed rain and snow.

“Shames is up there, should be cold,” we rationalized in to dreams.
7am came quickly.
“Tim Horton’s is on the way! Coffee, donuts? Check!” Four of us in a Ford Econoline van chugging up the hill with the tunes rolling. From the gravel access road I could see Shames through the viewfinder. I could see snow in the trees and it was lightly snowing.

“She’s holding!” I could relay to the passengers in the back of the van. “It is warm out though,” I thought to myself.
In the parking lot it was quite. I heard some tunes coming from a car off somewhere, but the atmosphere was subdued. On the chairlift no one wanted to talk about the intricate patterns the rain had left on the surface of the snow.
“We’re down low, maybe we’ll get above it?”

Optimism seemed to have failed the group of people standing at the top of the lift. Absent was the mad rush for first tracks to be followed by the hoots and hollers from the trees.

“The bars don’t open until 11,” I heard someone say as I skied past the group, loaded with camera gear.
Down at the T-bar line-up, Brad and I were the first in line as we waited for avalanche clearance from patrol.
“I don’t know, that snow seems pretty hard,” Brad speculates. Brad was a fellow American who was sleeping on the couch of Trevor and Breeann.

As I was theorizing on the thickness of this crust, a local guy skis up from the back of the line and says, “You know, we were thinking about it back there and we decided that we don’t want the Americans in front of the line.” My immediate response was that of shock then dismay as Brad looks silent and I offer my place in line. Politics are great fun and all but I had not expected such remarks from the backwoods of northern BC. The guy laughed and said he was joking but it caught my attention.

The T-bar fired up and most people were heading straight for ‘Hangover.’ Everyone skied over to the top of the run in disbelief. All of the cultivated positive thinking went out the window as soon as your ski fell beneath the 2 inch crust. The crust was the chastity belt that sheathed the surface of the mountain. Underneath the crust was bottomless, cold powder. Mostly, I remember my face and head grinding through the crust as I crashed for the first time in ages. I came up, hatless and laughing as I could see the same wise-guy from the T-bar straight-line the entire run to the bottom.

I could hear people laughing all around as everyone’s idea of how to turn a ski was redefined. I filmed and asked people what they thought of the snow. People did not know what to think of it. It seemed like everyone had to adopt a certain humility in order to get down the hill. Except for the solo straight-line, people took their time and stood around. I can honestly say that it was the most difficult skiing I had ever experienced. You can talk all day about extreme this and that but that is all moot if the intermediate run under the lift is nearly unskiable.

Down at the bottom of the lift, I overheard, “What am I going to do all day? I skipped work for this!” I got on the lift and went for another run because at that point everyone had kind of agreed to all ski the same run so that the crust would get broken apart. Once the crust was gone the snow was of a glorious quality. White smoke type of snow, only this variety was laced with shards of ice that felt like glass. If your skis were below the crust your kneecaps and shins were being ripped and torn as you powered through a turn. The only way to keep your tips above the crust was to take the posture of being in the extreme backseat. Hanging out in the backseat is about the surest way to destroy your knees so many people opted out for the day and hit the bar.
Vesna met us on the deck with camera and drink in hand. She was getting good footage of people telling their stories of the crust. “It was like putting your head through a windshield!” People were beginning to come to understand the affect the crust had had on them. In experiencing the humility, people began to see the humor, and were liberated by what had transpired. After all, Shames still was the epicenter of Ullr’s attention and we were his worthy recipients. We had braved Crust Day and would be rewarded. The forecast said it was supposed to cool off a hair and turn clear by Sunday. That means we had 3 days to celebrate and ski snow, regardless of its consistency.

Towards the afternoon, Trevor and I found some crust that was not so breakable and we were able to scrape some turns out in ‘Deliverance.’ Back at the bar, no one believed us, “Get out of here! It’s Snownami Wednesday!”
“No way! We’re believers,” we responded. (It is interesting to note the comparison of the greatest natural disaster in recent history to a skier’s perception of a natural disaster.)

After giving praise to Ullr for such a battering, we hobbled to the van and drove down the hill in heavy snowfall, extending our optimism into the week ahead. In Terrace, Vesna and I got the camper stocked for the week and chugged back up to the Shames lower lot.

By 8am about 10cm of snow had fallen but our fires were slow to stoke. The new snow once combined with the original crust, created crud. There was no one complaining though, because compared to the day before it was beautiful skiing. After lunch I put the skis away and busted out the snowboard. I know some of you out there might actually put the magazine down and walk away at this point and I tell you it is your loss. On the board you could shralp trackless crud lines all day without breaking a sweat. It was great. In the afternoon, we drank beer and once again, gave thanks to Ullr.