It brings a lark to your hand

It’s a good week. Good things will keep happening, though I’m not quite sure which ones.

Good things happen more often to those who earn them.

NFNWR

I went. I went in from the North, which is the right thing to do. The lines weren’t really there. Or, to put it differently, I wasn’t really there to ski them. Look at the photo above long enough, and you’ll plainly see that it’s skiable with two carries and no hucks. If you’re willing to huck, there’s any number of ways to ski it. The trouble is the exposure. I’m not ready for it yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe tomorrow. Not now. That’s ok.

The real story from this weekend was the place. It’s special, like I imagine every north face of every stratovolcano in Washington is. Klickitat’s north side is big, open, and wild. Despite the good weather, I was the only person I saw in two days once I left the road behind. The nearest town of any size is 35 road miles away at the moment, thanks to a bridge washout. Otherwise it’d be 25, and on the other side of the mountain. For a skier, there’s no easy route. Perhaps the easiest ski line, from a slope perspective, is down the heavily crevassed Adams Glacier. Otherwise, the easiest line from the top at the moment is the one above.

I’ve never felt quite this way about a line. The left of center line, the vaunted North Face Northwest Ridge, doesn’t really pull me in at all. I don’t want to ski things because they’re there, because they’re scary, or because they’re famous. I want to ski them because they draw me in. The top of the NW ridge does that for me, not in a huge way like a few other lines do, but it’s the clean and aesthetic way to avoid the difficulties of the face. It also has the biggest integrated fall potential.

A bit more about the place: It was beautiful, and lonely. It almost felt as though the mountain were alone. I felt some need to share the place with someone, but not the usual sense I get with sunsets. I felt unsettled, yet still felt the upwelling of peace that comes with time alone in the alpine. I don’t know what to make of it.

That’s what started this post, but it Rabi-flopped again into something else. Glaciers continue to piss me off, work’s got me hacked off, and the weather’s damn good. Things are as right as they’re going to be to ski the Fuhrer Finger this week, but it doesn’t feel right.

Twight wrote: “The near fatal climb on the Charmoz interrupted my plans and sent me scurrying for the States, which was for the best because most 22 year olds don’t survive their learning curves if they play the game full-time.” It’s been running through my head all afternoon. I don’t know I can do it, I think maybe I can. They’re different.

[Edit: What I'd intended to go in the two previous sentences was something like this: I'm not 22, but I'm in a similar part of the learning curve. At first blush, at least, there's little lost in stepping back off my personal best for a little while to let experience marinate for a bit. At second blush, however, there might be. I wrote everything else as stream-of-consciousness, and on rereading, it seemed appropriate to leave it as my brain desired.]

Rainier’s also a different mountain – the bureaucracy makes it unfortunately so. My modus operandi for personally challenging routes is to solo them without fanfare at the time of my choosing. I leave a note with a trusted friend, saddle up, and head out. I feel safer when my ego’s not at work. I turn back when I want to. I push hard when I want to. I listen to myself, and to the mountains. I “fail” more often than I “succeed”. I always, always win. Soloing on Rainier, if I choose to play by the rules, requires getting nebulous approval for a solo permit. They’re putting rules where they shouldn’t be. There’s no rule that says anyone requires rescue. There’s no rule that says that anyone doesn’t.

Right now, the Fuhrer Finger is an unknown for me – there’s potentially tricky skiing, and there’s the prospect of the unavoidable crevasse, one that you must stop above, click out, ‘pons on, and downclimb. To fall above such a thing is to tempt fate. It’s not time yet. That’s sad.

Lava Ridge on Adams is also calling my name. I’m thinking about approaching it from above – something you’re not supposed to do. To ski up the South side, down the North side, spend the night, head back up the North side and down the chutes would be excellent. The North side approach is simpler, and allows the sensible pre-ski climb.

A friend is asking, again, to ski Adams’ SW chutes with me. It’s a great line, but it’s not everything I want out of the weekend. There’s a feeling of been-there-done-that at work. If there were a similar, but taller line out there, I’d jump at it. I can ski the chutes in twenty minutes. I want to do it for an hour. There’s not. Not without skiing glaciers. Even then, things don’t get much bigger. Adams last week was the biggest descent I’ve ever done – 12.2-4.6=7.6. In Washington, should you ski one of the biggest lines available (Liberty Cap to below the tongue of the Carbon), you only get ~12. St. Elias to the sea, rumored to be the biggest possible continuous descent known, only gets you 18 (and nobody’s been able to do it, despite great human cost). I’ve got to find something else to do.

I’ve already started expanding my options – on Adams, before the long descent, I skied another 800′ of good snow just to spend more time skiing corn. Had I not skied the Wy’east face the day before, I’d have skied ~2.5k instead. I know I can; I want to ski something bigger. If I could ski 7k twice in a day, perhaps that would sate me. The trick is the timing – how can I get soft snow? Typing this has sparked that genesis. Thanks.

I’ve also barely begun to ski with newer backcountry skiers – I should do more of that. I’ve felt fated to ski a Southern route on Adams with a friend since the first day I skied with her. I’m not sure that there’s more there than that, but I feel compelled to be there to watch the smile spread across her face when she makes her first swooping turn far, far above the world. If I could bottle that feeling and sell it…. who am I kidding? I’d just stay home and get drunk on the stuff.

I can’t ski south routes on Adams forever. That’s barely different from lift skiing. But with that thought comes the requirement that I be willing to risk siting my death in a cold, claustrophobic, wedged-in, lightless, and icy tomb, out of the reach of a companion’s grasp. It may well beat the shit out of a car accident. I don’t want to die in a car accident. What a waste.

As for my time in the service of man: the mountains are making me headstrong and impulsive. I’m discovering more and more for myself what’s important and what’s not. I hope I can find a third way through difficulties at work before I say something that’s snippy and counterproductive. I want my experiment to work. I want it to be the first step into a new realm of parameter space, and I want, very, very much, to ski while I work on it. Furthering an undermanned project at the same time is not what I want, even though I think the thing’s worthwhile and may well wind up working on it in the future. It just doesn’t speak my name in sultry whispers at bedtime the way the mountains and my experiment do.

Dreams.

I sometimes feel it, and it’s scary.

The forecast says that it’s time to hunt.

This is what you want

This is what you get.