Gaps Between The Trees

Years ago when I was learning to ski, a friend gave me this tip. Don’t look at the trees; look at the gaps between the trees. That dear folks is the answer to a lot of things. If you look at the trees too long, you think too long about what it would be like to hit them.

Soon you actually hit them. Your feet follow your eyes. Even if you manage to hit the gap, you don’t notice an obstacle in the snow in the gap because you were looking at the tree you were trying to miss. Your feet follow your eyes on lots of stuff. People who drive down the highway staring at the concrete abutments sometimes find themselves wrapped around them. Nations that dread war often start them. A good climber spends most of his/her  time climbing looking and thinking about where he or she is headed as a way of avoiding heading where nobody wants to go. Canoe through the gap between the rocks and on and on.

Northeast bowl, Mount Jumbo, Juneau, AK

Backcountry skiing is my new love. My wife is jealous. My guitar yearns for affection but I can’t stay away. What’s not to love? You climb mountains in skis.  Often you can climb mountains that are extremely tough to access in summer and you can ski down most any slope with snow on it. Bushes, stumps, and Devil’s Club lie peacefully beneath the snow so it’s not so much work to go off trail.  A set of backcountry gear increases the amount of skiable terrain from the number of mountains that have ski lifts to a number that approximates the number of mountains in existence.

Near the top of the Ptarmigan Lift, Eaglecrest Ski Resort, Juneau

I am thinking today about a short film I recently saw called 55 Hours in Mexico. It’s a nine minute film about three guys from Denver that flew to Vera Cruz, drove fourteen thousand feet up a mountain, got stuck in the mud on the way, pushed their rental car for miles, climbed the third tallest mountain in North America, skied down, and made it home in one weekend. I made a comment to a friend that what I liked about the film is that it was about regular people doing some quite irregular things. She commented that they were doing insane things and I countered that this isn't any different than what they might see in Colorado. 

Now that I have had time to think about it my friend was right about it not being like Colorado. At first I said that indeed it was black diamond skiing and every ski resort has black diamonds runs. I should say here that she doesn’t ski so it’s quite remarkable that she nailed the most important part of why Pico de Orizaba is not like the Rockies. Those guys didn’t leave Colorado and go to Mexico because the skiing is better down there. I was right that what they did wasn’t insane.

I think my friend said it was insane because she was looking at the trees and not the gaps between the trees. Watch the nine minute video HERE.

Pico de Orizaba is not like the Rockies because it’s 18,500 tall, four thousand feet taller than any peak in the Rockies. Indeed the slope is about 35 degrees and you find that at most any ski resort but it isn’t a ski resort.  If you have watched the video that I linked above, you will see they are not in a range of mountains. If you have not watched the video, quit reading and go watch it.  The base for their climb was an alpine hut at 14,000 feet.  Monkeys frolic in the jungle below Pico de Orizaba. There are no ski lifts and no maps differentiating black diamond from blue square. Because there are no peaks of comparable height in the area, the summit view had nothing in sight but clouds. 

Pico de Orizaba, from summitpost.org

These guys weren’t professionals. They put this trip together by adding up several steps and focusing on the gap between the trees and not the trees themselves in each step.

Step one: drive a car to a mountain hut and hope not to get stuck.

Step two: climb a peak with 4,500 foot gain. Try not vomit.

Step three: ski down. That’s almost always the easy part.

Most of the things you would expect to go wrong actually went wrong. They lost their luggage. They got stuck in the mud. They got altitude sickness and vomited all over the snow. The film didn’t say if they had to pay the rental car company any cash for the mess they made of the car. Regardless, the only real tragedy is they brought Sierra Nevada when they could have had Mexican beer. What’s wrong with Mexican beer?  Yet, they made it.  Had they added up all the steps and focused too much what could have gone wrong, they would have never left home.  None of this story would have happened if they had gone skiing in Colorado for the weekend. That’s something to think about.  Skiers ski in the trees because it's fun to ski through trees so you don't want to ignore them entirely.

Of course we all think about trees, rocks, concrete abutments, deadlines, debt, sickness, death, and a host of obstacles. Those are obstacles and like it or not the obstacles make life interesting. You don't climb a mountain because it's easy.

Would it be possible to go to Sitka, sea kayak to Mount Edgecumbe, climb it, and ski down in one weekend? 

55 Hours in Sitka.

Mt Edgecumbe. Sitka, Alaska.