On Futility and addiction

It’s been another long busy week in Park City.  I had intended to get some obs from last weekends course up but work and life stepped in and changed my plans.

I have really struggled with the death of Big Wally in Jackson Hole earlier this week, I can’t say I knew him, met him a handful of times during various visits to Teton Village and he left an impression. But his death brought back the flood of emotion from all the people I did know well that have died in the mountains.   Julie Culberson, Brian Roust, Jeff Brewer, Kathryn Miller, the list goes on and there are so many more I didn’t know as well.

The futility and outright silliness of what we do as ski patrollers and avalanche workers can’t be more painfully illustrated that in Wally’s passing.  He was out there, challenging mother nature to a duel without much more than a few 2lb hand charges, a pack, a partner and a pair of skis on his feet.  99% of the time we win the duel, or at least call it a draw.  We push the envelope to extremes at times and laugh off close calls with the guys in the bar after work.  To go outside in the pre-dawn hours of the day with a pack loaded with explosives and a mission to ‘control’ avalanches so that people can recreate seems mighty silly at its most basic levels.  We get constant reminders every day of man’s futile attempts to control nature or hold it back.  In the end, we almost always lose on some level – nature always hits us with something bigger, faster, and stronger than anything we’ve ever seen before.  Our period of written history for reference is so short in the grand scheme of things.

So why?  Why do I go out there to throw bombs in the snow in conditions and places that are never entirely safe?  Is it my sense of duty to the resort to open terrain so they can make money?  I can’t say entirely no to this – I like my job and this is a big part of what makes me good at it.  I have learned when to push it and when to pull back and play nice with the snow, this has come the hardway with way too many close calls that could have easily resulted in injury or death. It really is better to be lucky than good sometimes.  I think in the end it’s an addiction.  I guess what I do is no different than the reason’s people surf big waves knowing one tiny wrong move will almost certainly alter or end their life. The entire situation lends itself to a massive adrenaline surge that can last for hours.  From the drive up the hill in less than stellar road conditions, to the morning meeting where the plan for the day and the previous 12 hours weather conditions are discussed, the lift ride in the dark starting to formulate the forecast for what you may see on your route, and then finally marching out into the snow.  Sometimes you get treated to the most beautiful sunrise shows on earth, other days its snowing so hard to can’t breathe.  You make your assessments and start bombing your way in. Every shot bringing the potential for something far bigger and less manageable than you predicted.

90 seconds from ignition to detonation – can seem an eternity some times.  Most the shots do little more than leave a black crater in their wake, some pull out the small manageable slides you expect. One in every 100 or so brings out something truly spectacular. To see a big avalanche in motion is like poetry in motion.  From the initial slab break up to the powder clouds and rumble.  To see mature timber twisted and broken and tossed aside like twigs is awesome.  I will never describe it well if I do this 1000 years.

So what happens when it doesn’t slide?  You keep heading down, ski cuts and bombs, with each loss of elevation you are getting yourself deeper and deeper into the point of no return.  A ski patrolman’s biggest fears were realized in Wally’s slide – a low shot taking out the slope above you that you already shot.   There is little chance for escape in this situation and all you can do is try and get out and have faith in your partner’s rescue skills, which in Wally’s case,were Hercuelaen!  The times I read from accident to arrival in the clinic are amazing, those guys did everything right and incredibly fast.

The final two fixes in this game are the powder and the camaraderie.  When the snow falls straight down without wind and the slides aren’t running, you are often rewarded with a few turns for your efforts.  But the most important are the tight bonds you build with this group of vagabonds from all walks of life.  I think it’s all summed by two quotes, the first from Belmore Browne and the second from Elizabeth Knowlton -

“Looking back on these wild days in the open, I realized that my happiest memories are of the sun tanned faces of my old companions.”

“To those men who are born for the mountains, the struggle can never end, until their lives end.  To them it holds the very quintessence of living – The firey core, after the lesser parts have been burned away.”

JMH

This entry was posted on January 15, 2010 at 11:17 and is filed under Random Thoughts, Skiing, Snow and Avalanche Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.