Rekindling the Stoke

At college, I have little to no time to think. Yes, I have classes that challenge me mentally and push my intellectual capacities. I write for and edit the independent school newspaper, juggling a talented team of staff writers and a crazy one of editors and designers. And don't forget, I have friends.

But it's hard to label those aspect of my life as one of thinking, though. To me, it's more along the lines of an act of doing exerting on me both a mental and physical strain. Most often, too, the individual strains are not so much self-inflicted, but rather requirements of my academic life, jobs, and other commitments. Don't misunderstand, this is not me complaining, for I asked for more fruits to juggle. It comes with a price, though.

With so much doing, I did little thinking and ignored many of the signs from my body and mind that demanded allotted time to detox. Heck, I wrote one blog post this entire semester. I returned to Connecticut from Colorado, still shaking off the drips of exhaustion coating my skin my not reaching those diluting my blood. One more day, I would think, one more day before I will break.

That day of destruction never came, but it was close. I was nursed back to health by a pair of carpet adhesives and a bootpack in the snows of Revelstoke Mountain and Rogers Pass in British Columbia. I had anxiously twiddled my thumbs for months in anticipation for this trip, but little did I know back in October that I would find more than just steep lines on this trek.

After five hours of delays at Denver International Airport and another five hour drive from Calgary to Revelstoke, our guide Amos, my dad, and I settled into our home in the lower level of a family's home. I had slept almost all day, but had not even the energy to brush my teeth before nuzzling into my temporary bed.

The first day was mostly logistics. After scooping up with the last of my english muffin the remains of a ham and mushroom eggs benedict at a local café, we set off towards Roger's Pass. For about an hour, we 'played' in the beacon park, rescuing imaginary avalanche victims in preparation for the upcoming week. It was still just doing, though, and I couldn't escape such an institutionalized mentality during our short skin and ski through the trees across the street.

Later that night, the husband who owned the house we were staying in, Andrew, brought down to our cove two six packs of local beers from Mt. Bigby Brewery. He spoke with the mountains in his eyes about the newly published Roger's Pass Guide Book, the chutes down which we could not leave Revelstoke without skiing, and the avalanche paths he avoided while unofficially guiding despite the fervor to film on the part of his group of professional skiers. After three weeks in Connecticut watching the snow flakes flash on the weather reports in the Rockies, Andrew unknowingly invited me back into the world in which I thrive.

The next day, I walked to the car and my imagination was confined to the layer of clouds resting only 1,000 feet above where I stood. I'll be fighting the fog, I thought, preparing my rusty knees for the surprise spread eagles as I combatted flat light. On the chair lift, I sunk into my jacket like a turtle in its shell so as to hide from the thick air laden with more oxygen than I usually breathe.

I managed to survive the suffocating mass of cloud mid way up the Stoke lift, and, boy, could I not have asked for a better way to wake up from the haze. The clouds were now the water in which the last two thousand feet of mountain tops floated. Only the most impressive, jagged and startling sections of these ice caps were visible, leaving me with views of row after row 50+ degree couloirs with mandatory 30 foot drops. These peaks meandered up towards Roger's Pass and led my eyes to the one I would seek that day: Mt. MacKenzie.

I zipped my skis across the red Marmmot label on my pack and stepped quickly in line with my guide, Amos. With my eyes tracing each of his steps,  I didn't miss a beat up the ridge. My body did little to reject the air on which I was sucking, in part because of the plentiful oxygen, in part because of the passion-laden CO2 people like Andrew and Amos expelled. Soon, I was at the emergency radio station and even sooner, I was nearly tossing my skis down the Door Four couloir.

Amos roped my dad and I both in, and lowered us down the first ten feet. In this situation, I had to think. I had to listen to the rocking of my body, ensuring that all 130 pounds did not shift into my heals. I had to convince my upper body that facing downhill, down where all the rocks are, is the only way in which I can avoid those rocks and drift in and out of turns. But thinking was still a bit foreign to me. I listened but did not act. I told but did not demand. After half the turns, I was on my ass, cursing at myself for my lack of finesse.

This was no longer racing down corduroy and straight-lining down ice as I had mindlessly done from October to December nor was it just a physical act. I needed to be sharp, and I was still dull despite the initial strikes against the blade. I'd have to work, or else I'd crumble.

The next day, back on the resort mountain, it was time to celebrate my birthday. Well, maybe not my birthday, but we were skiing up to the Birthday Chutes on the other side of Mt. MacKenzie as we were on the previous day. Again, I mimicked every one of Amos's tracks, even grabbing the same branch on the shrubs at the turn of the switchback. As we reached the entrance to the skinny couloir, I checked the boxes in my head. Weight forward, shoulders downhill, parallel the skis during the turn.

I sunk into the turn with a wink of grounded confidence that lasted for all of five turns. On the fifth, my skis were not in sync as they rotated in the air. One landed on the other, propelling me head first through a six foot wide opening enclosed by rock. At first, I was calm, wriggling my hips in an attempt to put my feet below me a slow my fall. The attempt was futile, though, and I let out a sharp yelp as the rocks below obstructed my safe path.

"I thought I was going to have to tackle you," my guide said as the snow below me halted and I lifted myself up. The rock band was in sight but far enough that I was safe. I crouched in the snow, not out of fear, but of frustration. I didn't want a flash of greatness followed by a thunder of failure; I wanted  a traceable track and a driven mind only distracted by the beckon of a high-five. I wanted to listen when Amos said, "Just keep in mind and appreciate the place you're in," but it was more deeply seeded than one suffered line.

The backcountry would be a whole knew field to play on, I told myself the next day as we drove to the parking lot leading to the Asulkan Glacier and Hut about 20 minutes from Roger's pass. I had a full day of skinning towards the Asulkan Hut for me to think about those lines, the unusual disappearance of my confidence, and what I was going to do about it. In the words of John Steinbeck, it's not just about breaking through and understanding the bigger picture, but rather being able to break through and do something purposeful with what you discovered.

I had broken through the minute my chair on the Stoke lift had lifted out of the clouds, but I had not properly translated the thoughts I had logged into action. After nearly 11 hours of sleep in a hut filled with eight snoring, farting, middle-aged men, I was ready to test not only whether I could now think clearly again, but rather whether I could simultaneously think and act. With every step up the steep, two hour skin from the Asulkan Hut to the top of Young's Peak, I breathed in yet another piece of this goal and of the confidence necessary for achieving it. I exhaled the negativity that I had unknowingly thrust upon myself all semester and maybe even the latter half of the summer.

My lungs were full but light, lifting me mentally up over 2,000 feet without pardoning me from the physical strain of each step. We skinned as high as we could, booted about 500 feet, then skinned again with ski crampons holding us to the solid chalk to the top. The wind whipped my jacket with strength but the kind that drills into you even more determination. I ripped off my skins, clipped on my helmut, and picked my line down the open face on Young's. Finally, I was left to prosper.

I slept that night back in our cove in town. It was the fastest I had fallen asleep the entire trip, for between my hands and the sheets I curled over my shoulder were the few, but crucial pieces I had lost but now recollected. Although I had fully emerged quite late in this trip, I still had plenty more ahead, including heliskiing the next day.

This story could have been anywhere in world in which my Scarpas left a print and my polarized Smiths filtered the flat light hiding below. For me, it will always be in Revelstoke beside the friendliest locals of any ski town, a close friend and ski mentor, the raddest dad in the world, and myself.