Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Heaven's Gate

There could have been a lot of other names for this post. But in the end, I had to go with the most important aspect of the day.

I was standing at the edge of a cliff in the blinding, biting, wind-whipped snow with goggles strapped to my face, layers of clothes bundled around my skin, gloves wet and frigid on my fingers and the smooth, sharp board strapped to my feet. Below me my friends carved through the whiteness, shrinking as they descended. I couldn't believe they had cajoled me to this precipice, and now the only way out was down. Fast. I hopped forward and dropped, adrenaline coursing through my veins and arteries and heart and brain.

Fortune favors the bold. You only live once. Fear is the enemy. The only way out is down.

But the very fact that I was up there was enough to make me proud. Even if I had scooted down the whole damn mountain on my ass that time the truth was I was shocked I was even on a snowboard again. Five years ago I busted myself up on another mountain on a much less steep run. That time, back in March of 2000 I was at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire and it was the second day of a weekend trip up north with friends. It was my last run on Sunday and I was feeling really good. I'd had a great weekend riding. I was improving, getting faster and tighter and better every day. And I decided it was time to try and do a few jumps. As a skateboarder of many years, I felt I had the balance and the informal training to let me catch a few feet of air and then ride away down the mountain as happy as can be. But I was wrong. I wasn't that good, really, and the layers of ice below the thin crust of snow was far stronger than the breakable bones within my wrists.

I saw the jump approaching, I crouched ready and was tossed into the air off the lip. It wasn't that much air. Three feet at the most, but momentum and weight and gravity conspired for destruction. The board went straight back the second I went airborne. My body went horizontal even as it arced through the air. My hands shot out in front of me, and even as I saw them there I thought to myself no, no, no not like that. But it was too late. Gloved hands met ice as hard as cement and the snap of the bones in my left wrist was audible and profound.

I landed in a heap and then crawled out of the way, shuddering. I yanked off the watch I was wearing even as the mangled wrist swelled with trauma and blood. Portions of my arm between my palm and my forearm were at forty-five degree angles to each other. That shit was broken, bad. I packed it in snow and then hollered for help. A ten year old kid pulled a mute frontside off the jump I'd just crushed myself on and then skidded to a stop nearby.

"You okay man?" he asked me.

"I broke my friggin arm. Could you get ski patrol for me?" I asked him, my voice ragged with the adrenaline of shock and fear.

"Yeah man, no problem," he replied and then spun off in a puff of snow.

Ski patrol arrived shortly thereafter. I took the Sled of Shame down the mountain. Before they could set the left wrist he had to draw out the blood with a large-gauge needle. Then he squeezed that wrist correct over my shouts. On the way out I mentioned that my right arm hurt a bit too and minutes later I was being x-rayed again and again I was informed of fracture. The right wrist wasn't as bad as the left, but both were fucked up pretty good. Lefty was totally unusable and quite painful. Righty was sore, and I couldn't really move it. The ride home to Boston was brutal, and the surgery a week later left me in agony for days. I had an external fixator attached to my left arm that held the bones in place. Four pins were drilled into the bones on either side of the break, and a graphite framework of rods lay parallel to my arm, holding it in place. My right hand was in a cast for a few weeks, then a splint. For almost ten weeks I was a fragile, broken creature. I wasn't sure if I would be able to drive again, and the thought of ever riding a mountain again filled me with dread. However, that feeling of dread, it made me as pissed off as all hell.

Physical therapy got me driving again, once the splint came off my right hand and the pins and rods were removed from my left. But it was the repetitions of living that finally returned the strength and mobility to my busted limbs. Aside from a few scars where the pins entered my skin, my left wrist is perfect. I don't even get sore when it's wet out or if it's going to rain. They fixed me up damn good. But repairing the soul is much more difficult.

I took percosets for the pain while casted and pinned and then advil for the days when physical therapy left me aching. But the only thing I could take for the fear in my soul was time. For four of the last six years I didn't have health insurance, so even considering snowboarding wasn't an option. Just walking around the city made me nervous some days.

In 2003 I moved to San Francisco where Tahoe loomed nearby, a beacon of winter fun. But I was a waiter, still without insurance, so the tales of powder and blue skies and endless snow were but myths to me. And really, I was not going snowboarding again. I told myself that over and over again when I heard of friends going up and then coming back all blissed out, snowblinded and windburned, grins as wide as the sky. Then it became that I wasn't going snowboarding because I didn't have health insurance. Then I got health insurance and I didn't have any excuses left. So I went. Bought wristguards, wore a helmet and didn't try any stupid jumps. Spent one day on the mountain last year and I really enjoyed it. I couldn't help but think about breaking my wrists, but I tried not to let it stop me. I was extra careful, and I made certain not to leave my comfort-zone. That I even remembered how to snowboard made me very happy and I was certain at the end of the day that I would be coming back again.

Now here I was, back, and in way over my head. Or really, for that matter, my head was way above where I should be, which was much further down the mountain, on slopes thirty percent less steep, with at least seventy percent more visibility. How the fuck did I get to this point!!?

The day started out as rain and I wasn't at all convinced that it would be a good day to ride Alpine Meadow. We dithered for a few hours at the house making breakfast and checking the weather until Brad and Christa and Dan decided that staying home was just foolish. I was eager to go and at the last minute decided to trust their judgment. After all, they are the ones who rent the ski house and hit the slopes every chance they get. They knew what they were doing, I figured and all of us were right.

The day started tough. Hard, sharp snow fell from the clouds above, and the wind prevented the Summit Six chair's operation. We rode the Alpine Bowl and I did some nice carves down a few wide Blue Squares. Each time down a few of us would stick together while the more experienced crew would find diamonds to ride or telemark or ski. At the bottom we'd meet, ride up again together through the searing snow and wind. One time, heading up the lift, Brad saw what we had to do.

"The Summit chair's not open," he said to us at the top after we disembarked the Roundhouse chairlift. "But we can go over there and ski that run. No one's been up there and it looks pretty good."

"It's not that long of a hike," Christa added, already convinced, and others agreed to go along.

I wasn't sure, though. Hiking, chairs not open, trails no one had been on. I had a feeling I had seen the area he was thinking about, and I was certain that shit was waaaay beyond my skills. They marched off, boards behind their backs and skis over their shoulders. The howling wind tore at their clothes as they disappeared into the blinding summit snow that swirled and raged about, alive. The rest of us strapped in and rode down, coursing between the trees we'd seen before and taking the turns just like last time.

At the bottom the adventurous crew found us and their eyes were bright with delight.

"Powder!"

"It was awesome!"

"Bones, you have to come with us this time. You'll be totally fine! It's incredible! You gotta do it," Christa said to me, her eyes alight.

"Dude. It's sick," Dan agreed. "No one has been up there. Freshy pow pow man. You gotta do it."

"You gotta do it," Brad agreed.

"You do," Kevin chimed in as we got closer to the front of the chairlift line. "Seriously Bones, it's sweet. You really gotta."

I looked at Leah, we shrugged at one another and then got on the lift. All the way up I fretted at what I was getting myself into. The sensation of my snapped wrist flooded me. The feeling of those pins in my skins pricked at my soul, deflating the confidence and security I'd built up on the slopes that morning and the year before. Then we crested a portion of the mountain, and I saw where they had been. Six tracks lay in swooping curves across the blank white face of the mountain's flank, just below the summit.

"Wow," I said out loud.

"Yeah," Christa agreed. "That was us. You gotta go Bones, you gotta go! I know you can do it so you gotta go."

"I'm doing it I'm doing it!" I replied to her with fake exasperation. I was going to do it, but I wasn't at all sure I really should be doing it.

Trust your friends, do what they tell you. Be true, be brave, stand, all the rest is darkness. Fear is the enemy. Fortune favors the bold.

We got off the lift. I took off my snowboard. We trudged through the blowing, biting snow. We approached a rope and there was a man there. He was ski patrol.

"Are you opening Heaven's Gate?" Brad asked him.

"Yup," the guy replied. "Summit lift is open now, too," he continued and then he took down the rope we were just about to scurry under. Now that it was open there would be others along very soon. This was our last chance to ride the untouched snow completely on our own. Behind the ski patrol guy, the Summit Six chair began to move.

They had opened Heaven's Gate just for us, it seemed. This was our run, our fun. Fear mixed with anticipation and I pushed on, upward, towards the mountain's snowy edge. We found a spot. Below us was pure white snow, untouched. Their previous tracks lay to the right. Without a look back, a few of them were gone, arcing down the slope in graceful curves, moving fast and then faster. Their speed caught in my throat.

"You can do it Bones!" Christa said to me again and then with a grin she was over the edge and into motion. The only way out was down. I looked at Leah who stood next to me and the expression on her face matched the emotion I was feeling, exactly. Supreme edginess. Precipicital anticipatory fearcitement. Confidently uncertain.

I was strapped in. I was cold inside and out. I was far above my skill level and in way over my head. I was terrified and thrilled. The only way out was down, so I went, hard. I pushed over the edge and my board landed in a frictionless cloud. I was moving so I shifted, instinctively putting my front edge to use and as though gripped by gravity alone, I swooped in a tight, curving turn. Shifting over the board I pushed my back edge into the fluff and the thrust sprayed powder out before me as I arched left, my back to the mountain. Shift, shift, shift, edge to edge to edge I carved through the powder. The sensation was profound. I was moving faster than I ever had and the snow held me in an angel's infinite grip. Gravitons caressed the board's sharp edges, pulling them down the mountain as the fine-grained matter of the talcum snow held me up and finessed me along.

When I came to a stop a the bottom of Heaven's Gate, my friends were cheering for me. When I looked back up the mountain, panting, I could see the tracks of my travel laid out in the vast ivory canvas. For the rest of that day and the next, whenever I rode up the Summit Chair, I could see the ghostly trails we had laid in the snow. I wanted that again, and in wanting that, I knew my eyes were bright with the powdery addiction I'd seen in my friends' glowing faces.

The only problem was, after that incredible ride on Heaven's Gate, I mistakenly slipped into a double black diamond I could only ride down on my ass. For a moment as I slipped over the forty foot icy edge, I really thought I was in serious trouble. But I kept it together, slid aways down slow until I found less treacherous ground, and then I got up, rode down and got right back in line with my friends, ready to step through Heaven's powdery Gate once again.

Fortuned favored the bold. The only way out was down. My friends are full of good advice. And then a new one for me, after that peak, snowy ride: Find the powder. Find the powder. Find the powder and ride it all the way down the mountain.