Then, miraculously, I dropped below the swirling ground blizzard. The air above seemed to open up a bit, exposing raw blue islands amongst the splitting clouds. I could lapse into the dreamlike state this run can induce. There are few choices, but also few skiers who venture up here. I strayed off to the left, over a little moraine-like rise at the base of the headwall, and fell into a pure wind fluffed path of soft and foamy powder. Around me, the summer’s rocks and scree were almost fully covered; as long as I stayed in the gully-like hollows, I found both feather snow and no rocks. I was off the beaten path, away from the advisory route down signed by those nagging orange disks. Ahead, I crossed the suggested route, and tweaked into a little pass over into Never Land.
Down here, still far above the rest of Snowmass, still above the mangy trees at timberline, I found an endless seam of untracked snow, undulating through the alleys of the mountain’s shoulder. Totally quiet, out of the wind now, and almost warm as I churned left and right, making perfect linked “S” shaped turns, proud of the years I’d spent perfecting them in so many other powder runs. On these gentle slopes, interspersed with occasional steep 2 or 3 turn drops, I could turn off my mind, and give myself over to the pure sensation that only comes at terminal speed in bottomless snow.
Or at least snow with no hard surface underneath, which is the whole point of skiing in fresh stuff. Most folks find this a bit scary, as the snow enveloping the skis and boots offers a strange resistance, a sensation that you are not quite in control. And that is the whole point. Once you reach terminal speed – once the snow slows you down enough to equally compensate for the relentless pull of gravity, then nature takes over, and you can just enjoy the ride, offering rhythmic twitches to each side, small flicks of weight change, to keep the speed consistent.
Once snow has been skied through, its consistency changes. At the edges of a skier’s track, the snow is piled up, stiffened a bit like a gently packed snowball. And in the middle of the track, the harder, compacted base is exposed. The shift from soft to firm is erratic, and through the skier’s weight forward and back, side to side, making it harder to compensate with counter shifts to keep stable and upright. But untracked powder, once you learn it’s on your side, not against you, is the easiest stuff to ski in on the whole mountain.
And when it’s done in the starkly barren upper reaches of the mountain, looking down on all of creation, it truly is, to me, heaven on earth.
I stop at the edge of the tree line, pause to catch breath and pick my angle into the glades in front of me, and say “Thank you, Lord. Thanks for giving this to us.”
At this point, I have dropped almost 1000 vertical feet, taken me to an elevation near the top of the other parts of the ski area. I am tucked into the cirque valley, between the Big Burn and Alpine Springs. Those runs are hidden from me by the cliffs marking the walls of the cirque. I feel I have skied a lot already, but, in fact, I still have the whole mountain below me.
Now I drop into the Cirque Dikes area. Up here, at the top, the way is still gentle, but my path is altered every few turns by the burgeoning tree glades. The snow is deep enough, the air is thin enough, and the trees are small enough that the spaces are wide and the way is clear. Later, I will enter the deeper, taller woods, and have to pick my way through not only branches and fallen trunks, but also the steeper pitches which drop onto the rising shelves, accounting for the “Dikes” moniker. Then, after another 1000 vertical feet, I’ll hit the out track between KT Gully and Upper Green Cabin. This area is usually not skied much, as most folks are plenty tired, and end up spilling into the throughway of Green Cabin, or the bumpy narrows below the Gully.
I stick with the trees all the way, of course, and then make it into “Pinball Alley”, an almost flat gully where kids’ ski school classes swoop and holler, pretending to be like the ‘boarders in video games. FInally, after a short stint by the aspens at the very left of Green Cabin, my run takes me back into the final little playground, the beginnings of a stream-bed now covered with snow, and filled with brush. I play slalom racer, hitting the branches with my forearms as I wiggle through, ending up under the Sheer Bliss lift, hoping to impress with y final powder turns, now nearly 3000’ feet below the maelstrom at the top of the Cirque. This is My Run.
Last year, in May, I went to my parents’ gravesite in Snowmass so it got me thinking – I’m nearly 60, and my family doesn’t know what to do with me should I die. So I thought about it, and decided, for now, what I want is cremation, and then my children and any other family members willing and able to to carry my ashes to a special spot.
I had to think about that, there are so many great spots in the world, where I have felt wonderful, where it’s gorgeous, where its meaningful to me. But I decided, not just because I’m here in Snowmass, that I want my kids to hike up to the CIrque in August or so, when there’s still just a little patch of snow up there on the headwall, and put me there.
For one thing, I think the thing I do best in the world is ski – at least it feels that way to me when I get it right. Up there above the timberline, Winter or Summer (there is no Spring or Fall here), the view is expansive. And just below the headwall there are little groves of stunted trees amongst gullies which flow down towards timberline, and on into the bigger KT gully and on and on down the hill. While some spots skiing have made me feel better, I’ve never felt more consistently happy while skiing than right there.
Moreover, when the snow melts, it starts to flow down the mountain along a tumultuous ski run off track through the trees, down the gully, into the bumps, and then down to Brush Creek. Going all through the valley down to the Roaring Fork River, thru Basalt to Glenwood into the Colorado. Past Grand Junction into the Utah desert, skirting Moab into Canyonlands. Along the edge of the Navajo nation, through the Grand Canyon, and out to the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), where the whales play in winter and Cheryl and I went Scuba diving. From there into the Pacific, and who knows, I might get to Kona, or even into a monsoon rain falling through India up to the Himalayas? Or veer north along the current to the Washington Coast.
Anyway, that’s what I would want, at least until I say different.