onesself : User Page : SummitPost

onesself

Offline

Gender/Age	Male, 44 years old
Location	Vancouver, Washington, United States
Power	0
Vote Weight	1%
Occupation	Delta Air Lines

44,202 Hits

Member Since: Dec 22, 2003

Last Active: Jun 28, 2014

Send onesself a Private Message (PM)

Suggested mountains/ routes for onesself

People who climb the same things as onesself

A Little About Me

Shinning beauty. I started making a sandwich at 3:30 am, early; a big day is about to unfold. On this November morning, I jumped in the car and zoomed for the arrival at my friend’s house. Adam was pleased to see me, tuning his skis for the day. We left the house around 4:00 am and set out for a long grueling drive. Arriving at seven for the day of clear and known paths but oh so dangerous. Packed our skis on our backs and headed up the mountain. 1600m to 2100m felt comfortable, 2100m to 3300 meters unstoppable, 3300+ then came the anguish. Amazing how a single footstep got us so far, because we multiplied our foots single efforts. Something so simple as one step could of led to possible disaster(ironically huge disaster did happen on the same mountain). Moments and meters from a victorious summit an icefall came down requiring a dig in and hold of our positions. Shards of ice bounced down the mountain like a basketball down a 50-degree embankment. To me this felt like a super tanker sinking… …beep beep, I’m hit I’m hit, mayday, I’m going down. Those were my thoughts when Adam felt the brute force of ice hitting him in the wrong spot. A parterre went up in my mind, civilized human achievement, or single desires and accomplishments. I thought retreat and live another day or place your flag of accomplishment with a hand about to meet its demise. I’m living aren’t I. Desendance 100 meters from tragedy. Extremely late lunch break borderline dinner. We had a date with a ticket off the mountain, anticipated like a man who is about to meet his future wife. We ate with the impressive views meters away from the victorious skies. Klink, Klink, and our skis were on, we were heading down. Down was a relative term. (When an avalanche falls it creates an ice sheet behind it usually the ice is near bulletproof) Our skis hit an avalanche field and we began to slide. Finally (After all the stupid things I have done this one meant something.) a water slide that didn’t bore me. During the slide blood curdling screams for, “Adam.” Also thinking I was going to meet my maker… … Please keep me strong because this is it for me; all though the landing wasn’t into a nice soft pool of h2o. The landing was on a tuff of snow boarding the rim of the crater, 3/4 meter from going in. Adam made the same slide scenarios I did. We didn’t look but the sun was about to set and us still above 3400m. This is where the beauty of the day meet my eye. A chunk of rectangular ice orange from the sunset and blue from the sky reflecting back into my vision. Indulging, distinct, animative, profound colors. Colors almost identifying what you only see in the museums of fine European paintings. Prism like colors that would move you or shake you like a turbulent ship. Colors that would run my life. For now they are in my heart. Got up, chiseled my way out of the near crater incident, Adam following right behind. Skied into dusk and into the night, following a loosely sketched path to my car. Arriving moments after the first star.