As I drove to school I was thinking "am I really gonna do this?" I park the car and walk into school bookless and bagless. I found my friend who asked "what do you need a beacon for?"
"20 inch rule," I grin and add, "I'll be in hatchers incase you have to get a body recovery search going"
I walk strait out the door and don't look back. Parking at Nicholai's I dial a number "CHS Attendence"
"Hi this is mike please excuse my son patrick from school today."
"Alright its taken care of." Calling in sick for school is easy when you sound like your dad on the phone. I help Nicholai load his stuff in my car and we drive through the dark. After a quick stop at McDodonalds we are on our way up the narrow road to the A frame. We test our beacons I put on snow shoes Nicholai skins and we begin.
An hour later we were headed up our target. A groovy looking peak that looked like we could bag. Continueous probes and jumping on the snowpack shown it to be very stable. We zig and zag busting out a skin track untill its to steep to skin at all. We begin the post hole slogging to a ridge that was nothing but a cliff in the summer we climb. We try a route that looked fast and it turns out it had lots of exposure so we go back to swimming. We climb to a ridge high above the cliff and decide this is where we'd ski from.
A few pictures were taken, hands were shook with "Nice knowing you man" (we had figured we were gonna die since we parked), and bindings were clicked. I dropped in first. A ski cut confirmed my therory on the stability of the pack and revealed that there would be sluff to controll this run. I was scared shitless, this was steeper then anything I'd ever skied before, and I'd never skied anything like this in deep snow. Finally after composing myself I turn slowly as I can and went at least 100 verticle feet. Another turn and wait watch my sluff go. then I open up and start going fast. Faceshots, sluff speed, floating, perfect. I get out of the way of potential Avelanches and turn to watch Nicholai, and I let out a yell having nailed the line. A mighty scream echoed through the mountains, not one of fear, and not one of pain, but of glory and adrenilin. Nicholai dropped in turned then fell, Got back up fell again. He fell at least 3 more times before reaching me, but thats what you get for telemarking ;) .
More to come
