The Lure of the Mountain King
Albert Bianchine
The red Mercedes slid to a halt on the loose gravel of the roadside. The young hitchhiker stepped to the door, loosened his backpack and removed it. He slid into the passenger seat.
“Thanks,” the young man said.
“No problem,” the driver replied, as the Mercedes moved forward.
The young man eyed the older warily. His tanned skin was weather checked, like that of a sailor who has seen the salt of the seas.
“Where ya headin?” asked the old man.
“Arapahoe Basin, my name is Tom, Tom Dillon, ” he smiled a warm ivory smile. He liked the weathered sailor.
“ Hi Tom, I’m Joe, Are you a native or just passing through?”
“Just passing through, I was on my way to Big Sky, Montana, but met three young ladies I’m living with from my home, I’m from New York originally, upstate New York. You tell people out West you’re from New York and right away they think of the city. I’m from Albany actually.”
“Oh yeah!” he brightened, “I was in Troy once.”
“Troy,” the young man chuckled. “If the world ever needed an enema, Troy would be it.”
The old man exploded laughing accentuating the deep wrinkles around his eyes.
“Let’s just hope they don’t stick it in Colorado.”
The young man grinned. He took off his brown Stetson, looked at the rattle snake skin rimming it, and ran his fingers through his long black hair.
“So you want to ski the Basin, eh?” the driver asked.
“Yeah, every day if I can, the hell with Daniel Webster, I’d sell my soul to the devil himself for another powder run.”
“I know what you mean,” the old man said. “Did you ski much back East?”
“I skied the Adirondacks and Green Mountains. I even climbed Tuckerman’s Ravine on the backside of Mount Washington, it just wasn’t enough,” he confessed.
“I’ve heard the headwall at Tuckerman’s pretty steep.”
“Yeah it’s righteous, but it’s nothing like Mount Baldy at Alta. The Baldy chutes are intense, real gut suckers. Once you’re up there, there’s only one way down.”
“So you’ve skied Utah!” he looked at the younger man with a new respect. “How about Snowbird, Alta, Brighton, and Solitude?”
“All of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. I’ve climbed all day to ski powder where there are no names for the trails. They’re just called things like the big rock trail. Places where if you miss a turn you will die!”
“Let me tell you something son,” he looked directly at the young man. “I’ve skied all over the world, and I’ve never found better powder than a good March in Utah.”
“I know steep and deep.”
They both laughed.
“Blackcomb and Whistler in British Columbia have some of the finest leg burning verticals I’ve ever skied. Blackcomb is a mile of vertical, and Whistler has some incredible glacier skiing. It’s just that the Pacific Northwest snow is usually wet and heavy. I fell a thousand feet in Saudan’s Couloir and dislocated my shoulder severely. The only thing that saved me is I had my skis cranked and was able to spin and carefully grab and edge. I thought I was dead,” the young man wiped his brow grinning.
“Isn’t that named after Sylvain Saudan, the father of extreme skiing,” said the sailor, his eyes shining brightly.
“Yeah, I spent a few years following in his footsteps.”
“Couldn’t think of a better role model, he created a whole ski industry outside, out of bounds.”
“There are only 2% of skiers that venture that far out. I get real quiet in those places,” the young man said reverently.
“I know it certainly is God’s Kingdom in the wild.”
“I think the Grand Tetons of Wyoming are just about the greatest mountain ranges I’ve ever seen. I love Jackson Hole. It’s one big- rock,” the younger man said.
“Jackson! Jackson is special! Corbet's Couloir is pretty gnarly!”
How much like himself he thought this young man was. He had loved every mountain also, that is until he skied A-Basin, the Legend. He was about the same age. What was the lure? What drew men to mountains? Because they were there, that just wasn’t good enough. He was indeed the King of the Mountains. He looked over at the young man. The young man staring out the window, the awe radiating from his face. What would drive his dreams for the rest of his life? His grip on the wheel tightened baring the big white knuckles of his calloused hands. These had been his golden years. This was his last golden year. He had been a young man with a dream, the grandfather of all dreams. When you are the King there is always someone after your crown. He had always known they would come, the multinational corporations. Christ, he had hoped they wouldn’t. Looking at the young man again, he knew he would spend the rest of his life coming back. Once you have been on top, you simply know of no other place to be. There is a fine line of tempting fate in the mountains. It will always be there. Some men live and thrive on that challenge. Some men never know it. If you accept it and step over it, you have got to conquer it, or it will forever conquer you.
“Ever skied New Zealand or Australia?”
“What are they like? I didn’t even know they had mountains down under.”
“It’s a lot like the Alps, Mt Aspiring in New Zealand is often referred to as the Matterhorn of the South. They’re jagged and mean like the Rockies, the Alps of the South. I’m thinking of retiring on a ranch there someday soon. Their winter is our summer, I know some ski patrol man that live in perpetual winter.” He guided the Mercedes into the parking lot of A-Basin. The car stopped in front of the large A-frame lodge. The two men got out.
“Thanks for the lift,” the young man reached out with his hand.
“My pleasure,” said the older man. He shook his hand, smiled and walked away.
“The highest lift operated mountain in North America,” the young man said.
Steep runs and open snow filled bowls were common in the Rocky Mountains. They could be found anywhere. It was Arapahoe Basin’s claim to fame, being the highest, that separated her from the rest. The Continental Divide was a few hundred feet up the road.
He was at the Top of the World. The silver grey peaks spiraled up all around him. The soaring rock spires rose up to touch the sky and there formed a giant dazzling bowl, filled with precious white powder gold. He thought that high atop its thirteen thousand foot summit he would be able to reach up and like chalk, with his fingernails, scrape the blue from the sky. He was and enigma to a modern day society. He knew every inch of every trail and every mountain peak in America. This was the crown jewel. He would ski here every day this winter.
Wheeling about, he faced the lodge. Its blue tin roof dotted by a double row of skylights. A white pole topped with a large brass eagle flew the red white and blue colors of the American Flag. It was flapping lazily in the pristine morning breeze. Starting across the lot briskly, he reached the third step when he stopped abruptly. His big hand was shaking unsteadily, he grasped the rail, he had not yet acclimated to the thinness of the air. He breathed deeply. There it was his friend. The first faint trace of the dampness of winter in the air, he had maniacally waited for that smell. Methodically, he had brought out his equipment and readied himself to leave, to who knows where.
“Ker, ker, ker,”
The flutter of wings startled him. Two rock ptarmigans were hovering above the lodge. The male already winter white. The female partially turned speckled autumn blending brown. Something deep inside him told him that this was his last winter on the circuit. The season hadn’t even begun and already there was talk of Targhee next year. Grand Targhee, Wyoming, first and last with the snow. Breathing a deep breath, he ascended the remaining stairs.
A picnic table with six men sitting at it was on the deck. They were playing a game with three little pink pigs. One of the men rattled the pigs in a small brown cup and threw them onto the table. One pig was mounted on the other.
“Makin bacon mate, I win,” a man said with an Australian accent.
“Hello,” he said to the nearest man.
“What can we do for ya?”
“Where do I go to fill out an application for a winter job?”
“See that building with the lift ticket sign,” he pointed across an open courtyard with empty ski racks. “Go in there and talk to Joe, I just saw him pull in before.”
The young man stood bolt upright.
“Do you mean the man who just drove up in the red Mercedes?”
“That would be the one.”
“Thanks.”
“Looking for me,” Joe said, standing with his hands resting on his hips.
“As a matter of fact, I am”
“What can we do for you?”
“I’d like to fill out a work app, I’m pretty handy with mechanical things.”
“ I’m afraid there’s no more jobs available. We filled them all. But, if you repair some of the things in the restaurant and the lodge rooms, I’ll give you a season’s pass.”
“Repairs for a pass, you got it. When do I start?”
“Be here first thing Monday Morning,” Joe said as he turned and walked away.
“The young man walked across the parking lot and up into an adjacent meadow. He had a season’s pass to the highest lift serviced mountain in North America. He was not impressed by fame, or by claims to fame. Having searched out and conquered each and every claim, only to become disillusioned and bored by them. He was America’s greatest ski bum, or so he thought. He smiled to himself smugly. It was the self -assured cocky smile inherent in a young man accustomed to challenging and conquering nature in the mountains. If he had only known this snow capped earthen rock mound, where a century earlier the melting spring snows would come cascading, crashing off a slope now called the Professor, and her seven cornices, like her seven saintly sisters, unimpeded by the tarmac of Route Six. A place where the Uncompaghre Utes, dwellers of the turquoise skies, lived in harmony with the elements, in a land they called (Nah-Oon-Kara) the Valley of the Blue. If he had any inkling, this earthen rock mound, would alter the very core of his existence forever. He wouldn’t have smiled so smugly.
