For Ed Cox
"The Bucklemeister"
Thank You for the Western Trip In your
Volkswagen Bus to the Mountains of Colorado, Utah,
and Wyoming. I never really came back.
The Last Sweep
Albert Bianchine
Tom Dillon skied up to the Plateau and rested his weight on his poles. He glanced out across the Teton Village, Jackson Lake, the National Elk Refuge, and the Hog Backs. Kicking down hard on the edge of his skis, he stepped out of his bindings. He flexed forward in his boots and felt the familiar ease of pressure on his shins. Standing erect, he reached up and loosened the straps of his backpack. He tossed it into the freshly fallen powder. The crystals whooshed in a billowy cloud as it hit the ground. Tom reached down and scooped up a large armful between his gloved hands and parka. He blew strongly on the crystals and watched them dissipate into the dry, crisp, Wyoming air.
“Yi Ha!” he yelled heartily, his smile as big as the Grand Tetons themselves.
How many fresh powder turns had he taken? How many deep, waist deep, chest deep, turns had he taken? How many endless, agonizing, thigh burning powder turns, until his life had become one long powder turn? The American Mountains didn’t hold much allure to him anymore. He thought he might try Europe next. There were no more frontiers.
Tom thrived on the challenge of conquering nature. The chance of ultimate defeat, like jumping into Corbet’s Couloir. He had traded away security for the thrill of the moment his entire life. The greatest moments were the ones that no one else but he knew about, like the thrill of the high traverse across Alta, Utah. The heavy morning fog hanging low and the snow blowing freezing your eyelids shut. The smell of ozone in the air, the hair on your neck standing with static electricity and fear of lightning with nowhere to hide, your right leg clamped securely clutching the track, your breath coming in short gasps knowing full well that to catch your left tip in the crud would send you careening downhill into the rocks and certain death below. The urgent need to be off the top, traversing, endlessly traversing, toward Eagle’s Nest, desperately searching just barely able to make out the small wooden sign, “Expert’s Only! No Easy Out!” Traversing and waiting, waiting for the fog to burn off, and the heavy snow to dissipate, catching your breath at the first glimpse of the blue, blue skies and deep powder and steep, ever so steep sides of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Staring out across the sharp jaggedness of the Grand Tetons, he took a deep fresh breath of mountain air. He was glad that he hadn’t traded away one moment of his youth spent on mountains. His nostrils flared as the breeze sent mounds of snow sloughing from the boughs, instinctively, he jerked his head upright at the hooting and hollering as his friends came crashing through the evergreens.
Touloose, The Captain, and Fast Eddy, the Bucklemeister, skied up to the plateau.
“Hey! Touloose, what took you so long?”
“It was the Captain, Tom, ya know em he got too close to an evergreen and got sucked into a well.”
“Got in pretty deep?”
“Up to his ears, right up to his ears,” he cackled. He reached up and pulled his Sherpa hat from his head.
“Aaayuh!, Aaayuh!, Aaayuh! Life’s a beautiful thing here in the mountains,” the Captain’s irrepressible smile greeted Tom. “Life’s a beautiful thing.”
He pulled his glasses free from his face, reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. He began wiping them dry. Walking up close to Tom, he stuck his face right up to Tom’s.
“I can’t see ya without me eyes. Let me tell ya something sonny,” his voice lowered to a whisper. “It’s a reaaal funny thing about them snow snakes ya get a little too close to those pits and they reach up and grab the tips of your skis. They suck ya right down into the pit.” He grabbed Tom and wrestled him to the ground laughing and rolling in the snow.
“Great Run!, Great Run!” Eddy said breathlessly.
“Let’s start the fire.”
They all walked out on the plateau and began picking up rocks, and driftwood.
Tom bent down over his backpack and pulled out several pre-wrapped steaks, onions and potatoes.
“Touloose, start the fire,” Tom said.
He walked across the snow, his mountaineering boots leaving deep impressions in the snow. He bent down over his pack, reached in and extracted a small vial of clear liquid. Walking over to the fire pit, he unscrewed the top and poured it on the wood. Extracting a slim red metal container from the pocket of his bibs, he opened it. Scratching the striker across the flint, he stepped back as the sparks hit the kindling. A small flame flickered on the damp wood. A wry smile spread across his face. A loud wumph, followed immediately by roaring flames drove him back from the circle of stones. The long fingers of flames, orange and glowing brightly reached up and snapped at the crisp Wyoming sky.
“Works every time,” he smiled smugly, “a little aviation fuel out of the silver streak, my BMW motorcycle.”
The men instinctively moved closer to the fire, pulling off their gloves and warming their hands over the flames. They all chuckled.
“Did ya hear about Tuckerman’s Ravine last year Tom?” Eddie asked.
“No, I didn’t, how was the headwall?”
Eddie laughed.
“Pure disaster,” he said.
He reached over and placed a collapsible metal screen wrapped with foil over the fire and set the food on it to cook.
“Bad trip in? Bad trip up? It’s been years since I’ve been to the ravine, but I still love it. It reminds me of Mt. Baldy at Alta, that is the steepness, I mean. People out West don’t think there’s any radical terrain in the East. Sometimes I think powder is for pussies, it takes a real man to ski Tuckerman’s covered in blue ice,” Tom expounded.
Eddy adjusted his glasses and bent down close to the fire.
“A little bit of both, a little bit of both.”
He looked over at the Captain and he smiled sheepishly.
“Well to start with,” he began, “ We were packing for the trip and we bought frozen dried foods, to keep our packs light. That is all of us cept the Captain, it seems that the Captain had to have large cans of stew, soup, and those little white potatoes.”
“Jesus,” Tom said, “ How much did his pack weigh, that’s a very long hike in.”
“It was heavy, believe me,” said the Captain, “damn heavy.”
Tom burst out laughing.
“Well anyway,” Eddie continued, “it seems we started into the Ravine, and we're hiking for a while, when the Captain here starts to sit down. He starts complaining like an old woman, moaning and complaining, just like an old woman, tossing out cans of stew, soup, and potatoes, huffing, puffing, and complaining about the cans that we would have to split and pack out! He complained all the way into the ravine about the weight of his pack.”
“That true Captain, what he’s saying?”
“It be true”
“It’s just the beginning, Tom,” Eddy continued.
“Once we got into the lean-to, we met some Canadian climber’s, and started partying with them. They had brought Ouzo and we got pretty smashed. I started feeling dizzy, so I went inside and slipped into my mummy bag and zipped it up tight. Started to doze off, when all of a sudden I got the chills and began getting sick.”
He paused and reached up and turned the steaks, the fire crackling and sizzling with the dripping grease.
“Anyway like I said, I started getting real sick, and I was pretty hammered. But my zipper was broken, I was clawing and scratching like hell, but damn if I could get that bag unzipped. Here I am, I got the chills, I’m plastered drunk on Ouzo, I’m zipped to my throat in my mummy bag, and I’m getting sicker and I can't get the bag unzipped. I’m like a cat trying to claw my way out of a sack.”
“What happened?”
“Well nature took care of it, I just rolled down over and out of the lean-to, and puked my guts out!”
They all burst into laughter.
“Sounds like a real bad one. How was the skiing?”
“Awesome Tom, Awesome, you know the wall.”
“Foods ready,” Touloose yelled. “Hey, Tom.”
“Yeah.”
“Did the Captain tell ya how he came to be married?”
“No, No,” Tom replied.
“Look, don't start this,” the Captain said.
“Yeah come on tell me, I want to hear this.”
“Yeah tell us,” Eddie chimed in.
“Well the other day out of the blue, the Captain says, Touloose , don't ever get married. So I ask him why? If you hate it so much, why did you do it?”
“She made me do it,” he whined.
They all sat down around the fire chuckling. They looked out across the piney rock ledges of the Tetons, across the fenced ranch lands, the silver sagebrush, to the blue, deep dark shimmering blue of Jackson Lake, under the marine blue of the pristine Wyoming sky with the Hogbacks darkening purple in the waning sun. In the town of Jackson, the sun flashed and glinted off the windshield of an old pickup truck. The cold began to settle into the trees. The ivory crystals started hardening. Far up, very far up on the hill just above timberline, above the lichen encrusted rock ledges, just below the little red tram with Jackson Hole lettered in white on its side. The Ski Patrol began descending among the evergreens. The eerie silence was split momentarily by the solitary cry, “Laaaaaaaast Sweeeeeeeep!!! Laaaaaaaast Sweeeeeep!!!"
The Sounds of Silence, Simon and Garfunkel
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