Trick or treat? Or powder skiing? Winter has arrived early in Tahoe and I got to make my first turns of the season even before Halloween, thanks to a three-foot storm that arrived this week. Needless to say, I am happy to be living back in the mountains.
Photo of Chris Rudolph, by Ian Coble
When an avalanche on the backside of Washington’s Stevens Pass ski area killed three of my friends and ski partners last February, I was shocked wordless. I couldn’t even begin to describe how I felt, a hybrid of sorrow, paranoia, guilt, sadness and utter terror. The men who died that day were good, honest people and I couldn’t fathom that something this horrific could happen to them. And nearly to me and my husband, Dan, as well. I spent many months trying to come to terms with the reality, struggling to figure out how this could have happened to a group of expert skiers, all of us trained in avalanche education and smart enough to identify the risks. I honestly never planned to write about that day; I wasn’t sure the words would ever come to me. But eventually, the words began to form, and as I’ve learned, sometimes it’s the hardest stories to write that are the ones we most need to tell.
I’ve written a feature story called “Tunnel Vision" in the Nov. 2012 issue of Outside Magazine, which is on stands now.
And you can can read my story, “The Lives They Lived,” on ESPN.com, which is part of a new, six-part series on avalanche education.
I’m a huge fan of sifting through vintage collections, yard sales and flea markets and finding buried treasures, things you can repaint or fix up and give it a second chance at life. Which is why when my sister recently invited me to a furniture restoration class, I was all about it. I brought in a small side table that was sitting on the street with a free sign and sanded it and gave it a new coat of bronze and blue paint. Check out these photos from the class, courtesy of Erin Thiem from the Outside Inn.
Taken at the C.R. Johnson Healing Center in Truckee, where I visited recently working on a story about the High Fives Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to help people in the snowsports community who’ve suffered from a life-altering injury. Check them out!
My story on a new small grocery startup in Seattle, called Stockbox Grocers, just came out in the new issue of Seattle Met Magazine. Stockbox was started by two recent grads from Bainbridge Graduate Institute and their first shop opens this month in Seattle. During a business marketing class two years ago, they set out to create a concept business to bring good, healthy food into urban neighborhoods that don’t have easy access to a grocery store. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 23.5 million Americans live more than a mile from a supermarket and don’t have access to a vehicle or easy public transportation. These hard-to-shop urban neighborhoods are called food deserts and they’re a growing problem in the U.S. Check out the story in the Writing section of my website.
With so many stories out there, it’s hard to sift through them to find the good ones. I loved reading these three recent pieces — so maybe you will too. Here’s my recommended magazine reading list. Enjoy.
The Vanishing, by Bob Friel, in Outside Magazine (July 2012): This gripping story investigates the disappearance of over a dozen women along Highway 16 in British Columbia, known as “The Highway of Tears.”
My Dad, My Boy, by Mary Louise Parker, in Esquire Magazine (June 2012): A great read for Father’s Day, plus if you think Mary Louise Parker is just an actress, you’ll quickly realize otherwise (she’s a great writer, too).
The Wrestler, by Benjamin Percy, in Time Magazine (May 2012): I am a huge fan of John Irving, and I’m pleased to see he’s got a new book coming out (In One Person, out now). In this story, the writer spends a weekend with Irving. You need a subscription to read this story online (I read it in the dentist’s office recently…)
Taken on a morning skiing with Crystal Mountain ski patroller Kim Kircher this spring.
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
A photo I took of Jim Jack skinning in the North Cascades in the spring of 2011.
When I interviewed Heidi Biber — a family friend of mine — about her experience as a survivor of a major Class 3 avalanche that killed seven people in British Columbia in 2003, I had no idea that someday I’d be in the same horrific situation as Heidi. I interviewed Heidi for a story for Backcountry magazine — you can read it by clicking the "Life Affected" link here — and hearing her story was profoundly moving for me. But it wasn’t until Feb. 19, the day an avalanche in the backcountry near Stevens Pass, Washington, took the lives of three incredible people, that I truly understood Heidi’s words. I was there that day at Stevens Pass and there are simply no words I could use here to describe the sorrow and the sadness. So, instead, I’m going to use some of Heidi’s words, from the story I wrote. Because in many ways, they are the same things I would say.
"I went into this surreal, this-isn’t-happening mode. It was as if I were looking through this weird lens and a movie was rolling."
"There were a couple of miracles that day. But not many."
"I don’t use that old cliché, ‘At least they were on the mountain when they died.’ It was a disaster."
“I felt tons of survivors’ guilt. Why not me? It took a long time to get beyond that.”
"The chemistry in your body and brain can change after an episode like that. Now, when I sense danger, my fight or flight endorphins start surging more rapidly than they did before."
"I think about the experience more frequently than you can imagine. It’s random. Sometimes it’s when I’m out skiing, but not always. The tapes go through my head, but they’re not as emotionally charged as they used to be."
“I still backcountry ski. I love it. It’s a huge passion.”
It’s been a pretty tough month for me and there are a lot of things I could write here about it, but I’m just not ready yet. So, instead, I’m going to share a poem that a friend of mine sent me recently. I think it sums up the way I’m feeling now pretty well. Enjoy.
"To Risk"
by William Arthur Ward
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,/
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental./
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,/
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self./
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss./
To love is to risk not being loved in return,/
To live is to risk dying,/
To hope is to risk despair,/
To try is to risk failure./
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing./
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing./
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,/
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live./
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom./
Only a person who risks is free.
She Jumps is a non-profit started by pro skier Lynsey Dyer and writer/skier/pilot Vanessa Pierce. The organization does a ton of inspiring stuff to encourage girls to get outside, help them build a community, and push them to accomplish their goals. This past weekend, She Jumps organized a “Get the Girls Out” campaign to rally female skiers and snowboarders at resorts all over the country. My friend Ainsley and I tried to organize a group at Crystal Mountain and although we didn’t have the best turnout (OK, fine, nobody showed up), we still had fun skiing all day in florescent jackets (mine is my mom’s reversible, flowered jacket from the 70s). Here are a few pictures from the day.
It’s not every day that it dumps snow in the city of Seattle. My neighbors Ainsely and Cam decided to knock off a first ski descent of 15th Avenue. Here are some images I took along the way.
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I’m not sure why, but I often feel compelled to write something on this rarely-updated blog of mine when something bad happens. Maybe the best way I deal with tragedy is by putting words to paper or maybe it just doesn’t feel right to keep quiet. This week, pro skier Sarah Burke crashed in the halfpipe in Utah, doing a normal thing she does every day — nothing extreme or unusual, for her anyway. Despite what other journalists are saying about her crash, no, I don’t believe it’s an indication that action sports have gotten “too extreme.” I think it was just the world’s worst kind of bad luck. Sarah was seriously injured in the crash, which I’ve been covering for ESPN. She’s currently in critical condition at a hospital in Utah with what doctors are describing as a traumatic brain injury.
No brain injury is the same and I am by no means an expert, but I have had some experience with a traumatic brain injury, not my own, but my brother’s. It was 2005 and we were skiing together when the accident happened. Much like Sarah, my brother was airlifted to a trauma center, underwent surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain, and then placed in an induced medical coma. Sitting by his bed in the intensive care unit was one of the most difficult things I’ve done. My brother is 100 percent recovered today. It was not a quick or easy recovery and it took months and years of family support, rehabilitation, surgical operations and sleepless nights. Mountain Magazine just recently published an essay I wrote about my experience with my brother’s head injury. You can find it here, in the article titled Guilt.
I wish Sarah and her family the best during this tough time.
Seattle is all about its ferries. And since I moved here last year, I’ve taken every opportunity I can to hop aboard one of these floating vessels across the Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula. Here are a couple photos I took this weekend on a trip over to Bremerton.
