07/11/2024
On his nightstand was the book We Die Alone.
My father, my Superman, has fallen.
I mentioned that book because it is an absolute must read 📚.
I've read it a few times when I was going to college in the mountains ⛰️ of Colorado.
That book 📖 is about true adversity, challenges, impossible odds, and what true human passion is for life.
Reading it is a lesson in endurance for the struggle that we call life.
The title of the book even became a mantra for me when I faced the wildest and wickedness of weather in the mountains and someone else would mention how brutal it was outside.
"We die alone..."
Some thought me as morbid, but others, they'd spark up and almost immediately ask "Did you read it too?"
Ah, a fellow traveler who was well read.
The conversation typically would be about how utterly ridiculous and cruel the experience was for the protagonist of the book.
I remember once almost screaming back and forth with a friend who was standing on the top of Crested Butte Mountain ⛰️.
It helped us smile while we were pelted by horizontal ice carried by a solid 30mph wind on the side of the mountain.
Doing 'Sweeps' were a tradition and standard of the ski industry.
It entails closing the trails on the mountain for the day.
I lost count in my life of how many days I skied off of that mountain knowing that I was the literal last man off the mountain.
Only a very select or persistent individuals were assigned the duty of being a sweeper.
These were top to bottom ski decents of the mountain starting in the double black diamonds of Mount Crested Butte.
Sweeping meant by in large that we were looking for stragglers or injured skiers.
If you were extremely lucky as much as a ma*****st you'd volunteer for doing the Teocali Bowl side of the mountain.
Doing that section of the mountain required not only decents into some of the steeper and remote areas of Crested Butte Mountain, but a mandatory 15 minute hike up and out of it.
The hike is tougher in many respects than that of the physicality of skiing the Wolf's Lair to get to the beginning of the grueling march ahead.
One winters day I got to be one of the Teocali Bowl sweepers.
The weather was reminiscent of Fargo North Dakota in the heart of another blizzard.
It definitely qualified for a Blizzard in North Dakota, just whipping the peak and slopes of Mount Crested Butte in the heart of Colorado.
If you're from around here, you'll think of those days were your body is sandblasted by snow.
The kind that hurts your face and removing at least one layer of skin.
For most people, they'd had been seeking shelter in the hotels or other friendly refuges of respite.
But for me, it was clicking into my skis, straighting my goggles and gloves, and then herringboning up to the High Lift.
The lift attendant would see us approaching and give us a knowing look.
One of us would grab the rope to close off the access to the general public and ending access that section of the mountain for the day.
We'd then sally forth to grab a T-Bar on the High Lift to drag us higher on the mountain.
Some of our teammates would be dropping off for Paradise Cliffs, Big Chute, and then the Headwall.
The rest of us would hold on till the end of the line.
It was custom to gather long enough to verify the last of us were off the lift before pushing off to get the the access point to drop in above Coffee Grounds, as series of cliffs and rock bands.
You had to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the terrain or you could unexpectedly be launching a 60 foot drop into another 20 foot drop or variation of it.
This was especially true when the weather was foul and visibility was greatly diminishing.
For those days we ventured from landmark to landmark until you might find a pocket of clear air.
The powder snow would be drifted up between the pine trees hiding moguls and trees roots you'd typically have to avoid.
In those powder pockets would be uncut surfaces without any other skiers tracks.
That snow was more like surfing than skiing.
Sometimes as dry as Cold Smoke, the snow would whirlwind like a v***r trail marking your passage.
Just yourself and the elements of nature playing out your dance on the fluff of new snow.
Ultimately the bottom of the run would have to arrive.
Breathing heavily after the long drop, we'd wait and gather our fellow sweepers.
Once everybody is there, a call goes out, and the 15 minutes of mandatory ascension began.
Some would have the endurance to climb using kick steps, others, the mutants, would herringbone up the entire path.
At altitude with the thin oxygen of 9000' above sea level, the uninitiated would consider the hike lung bursting and impossible.
The steps up sliding down because of the softness of the new snow, doubling the efforts required, up we went.
Silhouette of humans fading in and out of view ahead of you because of the spindrift of the snow.
Up and up, step after step.
Burning the last of your reserve and feeling the lactic acid burning and building in your muscles, the top comes slowly 🐌 closer.
Sweating takes on an entirely different meaning in the bluster and blast of the arctic type winds inside the high alpine torture chamber sometimes known as "The White Room".
Any facial hair or other exposed hair would have icicles on it in clumps.
Trying to remove the ice would involve loosing the hair it was on if you didn't wait for it to melt.
The top of the trail approached signaling the end of a chapter in the story of that day's sweep.
At the top we gather again and click back in to our bindings.
Standing in the whipping wind on the saddle of the ridge we appreciate the view of obscured peaks white with snow temporarily peeking between the rolling clouds.
"Nice weather today" someone would say sarcastically.
"We Die Alone!" I would shoot back.
And with that we'd slide back into the void.
Today's the day my father was taken by the void.
Into the ethereal mystery of what hides on the other side of veil of death.
It was something that helped me be as comfortable as I could while sitting with my father in his last moments.
Seeing that he had read or had been reading it meant that he had been poaching books from my bookshelf in my old room at his house.
In his last days, he was reading a book that he had found in my old stuff from mountaineering and skiing in the past days of my favorite adventures.
I hope that book helped him appreciate the opportunity to life that he had.
I wish that we could have discussed the story and share the particular things that we were learning about from it.
I'm glad that we were able to have the family together solely so he definitely didn't die alone.
Another Raven will take flight toda,y and tomorrow it will be teasing the winds aloft over the mountains.
If you're facing a struggle with the world, pick up a copy of the book "We Die Alone".
Love you dad!
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