Hit the Slopes!

Boarding on a higher plane

The final day was a perfect one for lizard lines, as we dubbed our turnless tracks. It was the only blue-sky day of the trip; Mount Robsin, with its slanted, Citicorp buildingstyle summit, towered over its fang-topped neighbors. We pledged allegiance to two credos, first Don's —"To turn is to admit defeat!" — then Ken's — "I will go straight until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death!" And straight-run we proceeded to do, flying down the glaciers, buzzing by jumbled serac fields, flashing past translucent blue ice floes, winging aside striated cliff bands. The skiers couldn't understand. "What a waste of powder," they said, run after run. What they didn't comprehend was that we had stripped snow-sliding to its bare essentials, to its beautiful and wondrous core. It was like reading Hemingway: I realized exactly how less can be more.

The trip ended on a long, open face called Raymond's Glacier. I pointed my board straight down it and felt the wind hum through my hair, felt my eyes water, felt the tears stream up my forehead. I was flying; fear and joy tussled in my head. More than 120,000 vertical feet of powder had passed beneath my board in the last few days, and instead of prolonging the inevitable I rode the final thousand the way it should be ridden: fast and free, skimming through the powder, hands hugging the wind, ebullient all the way back down to the waiting helicopter.

Back to Introduction: Riding High in the Canadian Rockies