Initiation

 There I was at the top of the snow-covered gully — a maw of gravitational doom flanked by jaws of orange stone.

As I stood in my skis looking downwards, I also looked inwards and I looked with extreme skepticism.

It had been over a year since I had last skied How sharp were my skills now? Keen enough to negotiate the quick series of switchbacks needed to avoid splattering myself on one of those walls?

Was I balanced enough that I wouldn’t cartwheel ass over broken teakettle down the abyss. Also, could I ignore the preservation instinct and all the whiny equivocations in my head, the doubts preventing me from just pointing the damn skis down the mountain already? 

Or was I just going to wet my snow pants and stand there shaking?

Andrew launched himself down the slope in a series of graceful turns, then looked a hundred feet up to yours truly.

“This shouldn’t be too hard,” he let me know.

I knew he wanted to kill me, I just wished he could have been more straightforward about it. Maybe he could have slipped poison in my water bottle, put an ice axe in my brain. But making me do it to myself? That was taking things to a whole new diabolical level.

Of course there was a possibility, albeit a doubtful one, that I could actually do this. It's all a head game I reminded myself.

I looked inwards to summon up some Jedi courage. And then it came: somewhere within myself, there was an ancient master, sitting in the lotus position by some subterranean pond. His was the voice of bravery and strength.

 “The only limitation is yourself,” he said. “First you must unshackle yourself from fear. When you trust yourself, what you can do with body and mind, the limitations will vanish.”

The words soaked into my brain, seeped down into my muscles and replaced uncertainty with confidence. I overflowed with gratitude to the old master.

“Well said, you old fart,” I told him.

He winked back.

“You can do this bro!”

Then he raised his emaciated arm into the arm with the thumbs-up.

I swiveled my skis and pushed forward.

The perilous suck of gravity grabbed hold, threatening to throw me down the canyon like the world’s unluckiest pinball.

Instead, I swung the skis hard to the right, started a new line toward the other wall then skidded to a stop 10 feet down.

I breathed, pointed my skis downhill once more, drove myself to the left. I wouldn’t stop this time. There were no limits, I was driving left again, and was in harmony with all the elements.

Except for that part where my right ski hit a bump and went wonky. Not so harmonious. Now I was going wonky, falling actually.

“Son of a ….”

I hit the snow.

The blue sky filled my field of vision, than I flipped and it was snow again, sky, snow, sky, snow. I dug in elbows and knees and stopped.

Luckily the surface was powdery stuff and the fall hadn’t injured anything.

I stood up, grabbed a ski out of the hill, clipped in and pointed down once more. I fell a bunch more times, but made it to the bottom feeling fine.

I skied and fell a series of runs for the rest of the day, including Baldy, where we walked out on a ridge to get to the edge of another steep canyon that made my stomach flop,

“Try not to hit any of the rocks there,” Andrew told me as I sidestepped my way down to the next death drop.

I tried my best to accommodate. If they had to pull the skis and boots off my mangled body, it would only be courteous of me to return them in good condition.

The lifts closed in the afternoon, but we werent’ done yet.

We drove up the road past Alta to a popular backcountry area. Andrew had recently grabbed some backcountry skis from a friend and I got the honor of taking on the hill in his back country skis with skins stuck to the bottom for climbing. It was somewhat like being on cross-country skis but without the easy grace. Andrew went up on his snowshoes.

As we set up the mountain, I offered to take his heavy pack.

He said he was good, and I carried on. Soon, I was sucking wind and my heart was racing. I let Andrew keep the pack.

By the time we reached the top of the ridge the sun was low enough in the sky to set the snowy Wasatch peaks aflame for miles, casting an orange glow up to our mountain perch.

Then the sun dropped behind the mountains and the temperature dropped with it. Andrew and I (mostly Andrew) fumbled with the backcountry skis to get the heels locked in place, and dug snow out of the moving parts with car keys until our fingers numbed.

Finally, we started the decent through the darkening pines.

What had once been soft, pliable snow had gone old, cold, crusty and mean.

I found that my skis would stay pointed downhill, and skitter helpless. I was just along for the ride.  I plunged my arms into the slope for balance. Sometimes I fell over anyway. Even Andrew took a couple falls.

The fading light knocked out many details from my vision, details like the bumps in the snow and how steep it was. Finally, we plunged into the gully. I tried to work with the crappy visibility and get down safely. The trouble was that when I went left or right to slow down, I went higher on the gully walls and sped up down the gully walls. It wouldn’t be a problem, if I, you know, knew what the hell I was doing. There were plenty of “oh shit!” moments that I could savor before I made it out of the thing. Finally, I saw the lights from some condos near Alta.

The gully spat me out onto an embankment of crusty snow near the parking lot, where I finally came to a stop, legs trembling.