Then it was quiet again. My attorney had stopped to take a layer off and have a piss. "What are you yelling about?" he muttered, shaking himself and staring up at the sky with his eyes closed behind wraparound sunglasses. "Never mind," I said. "It’s your turn to break trail." No point mentioning this rotten snowpack, I thought. The poor bastard will find out soon enough.

It was almost noon, and we still had two thousand vertical feet to go. It would be tough vertical. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely hypoglycemic. But there was no turning back and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out.

* * *

It started the day before, at the Mountain Equipment Co-op in Calgary. I had food, peach juice crystals and all the necessary gear. Except an insulated water bottle holder—and for some reason that seemed important at the time. Indeed. On a trip like this one must be careful about fluid temperature. When everything was in order I drove west.

Later that night I rendezvoused with my attorney at a Canmore pub. We were a couple of hours into our meeting and both fairly twisted when he spotted a young skier dude he knew. "Let's have a chat with this boy," he said, and before I could mount any argument he was luring him into our scheme. The kid had a big grin on his face, "Hot damn! I never went on a backcountry trip before!"

"Is that right?" I said. "Well I guess this is your lucky day."

"We’re your friends," said my attorney. "We’re not like others."

O Christ, I thought, he’s gone completely wack. "No more of that talk," I said sharply. "Or you’ll be wearing the duckbills tomorrow." He grinned, seeming to understand.

The waitress came by right about then. My attorney continued raving and jabbering but I was distracted by the young woman’s exposed midriff and low slung jeans. I ordered another round and contemplated the physics of her attire. Nice vulva.

Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did she hear me? I glanced over at my attorney, but he seemed oblivious—now gazing at the TV hovering overhead—curling or some other obscure Canadian winter sport.

I thought, perhaps I’d better have a talk with this kid. Clarify things. Absolutely. I leaned over and gave him a fine big smile.

"Allow me to introduce myself," I said. "My name is Armand Tuke, Doctor of Ski Mountaineering Journalism."

"Ski mountaineering journalism?"

"That’s right," I said. "And there’s something else you should understand."

He stared at me, wide-eyed. "Can you hear me?" I yelled.

He nodded.

"That’s good, because I want you to know that we’re on our way to Kananaskis in search of big mountain adventure." I smiled. "That’s why we’ve got a Pathfinder out there loaded to the nuts with gear. It’s the only way to do it. Can you grasp that?"

He nodded again. His eyes were darting from side to side.

"I want you to have all the background," I said. "Because this is a very ominous assignment—with overtones of extreme risk and danger. Do you have a snow saw?"

He shook his head.

"How about an insulated water bottle holder?"

"What?"

"Never mind," I said. "Let’s get right to the heart of this thing. About twenty-four hours ago I was sitting in the lounge of the Palliser Hotel and a uniformed dwarf came up to me with a pink telephone and said, ‘This must be the call you’ve been waiting for, sir’"

I laughed. "You know? I’d been expecting that call, I needed to know when the conditions would be right. Do you follow me?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

I blundered on: "I want you to understand that this man is my attorney! He’s not just some dingbat I found on Banff Avenue. Shit, listen to him! He doesn’t talk like you or me, right? That’s because he’s from Quebec. But it doesn’t matter does it? Are you prejudiced?"

"Oh, hell no!" he blurted.

"I didn’t think so," I said. "Because in spite of his heritage, this man is very valuable to me." I glanced over at my attorney, but his mind was elsewhere. I whacked the back of his chair with my fist. "This is important, goddamnit!"

My attorney leapt to his feet. "Hurry! Hurry hard!" he screamed.

The crazy son of a bitch was in a curling-induced frenzy brought on by the sight of women in short tartan skirts. His outburst was attracting unwanted attention so I bounced a coaster off his head to settle him down.

I composed myself and turned to continue my discourse with the skier—but he was gone.

My attorney said nothing for a moment, then he suddenly sat up in his chair. "You’re going to need plenty of technical advice before this thing is over," he said. "And as your attorney I advise you to show me the map—and get more beer."

* * *

Now here we were, about to venture into open terrain. The objective was in sight. A dangerous and beautiful line on the side of a peak that was named after a battleship, or a dead British monarch, I couldn’t remember which. This was no time for minutiae.

What the fuck are we doing here on this rockpile, I thought, when we both have bad hearts? But every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up your pack with gear and head for the hills. To relax, as it were, in a savage mountain wilderness.


PART TWO

I stood at the edge of a huge alpine bowl which fed into a massive slide path through the forest below. The runout was littered with the bent, pathetic carcasses of small trees; some still clinging to life, but looking extremely menaced.

My attorney came up the track behind me. He silently gazed down the slide path—then up—then down again. "As your attorney I advise you to dig a pit," he said. "Check the layers."

"Yeah... sure... check the layers," I said. "Why don’t you pick a spot just out there and start digging. I’ll wait here. It’s best if we’re not both exposed at the same time."

Amazingly, he agreed. Good thing. My head was pounding and all I wanted was peach juice and some Tylenol 3. Besides, he was a self-proclaimed snow scientist. I didn’t want to get into a debate about crystal structures and lingering deep instabilities with the picky bastard.

After about ten minutes of poking, prodding and some sort of antiquated shovel shear test it looked like he had reached a verdict.

"Well, we’re fucked now!" he said.

"What?"

"I don’t know why I keep coming out here with you! Every time it’s the same shitty snowpack. I should have stayed in Fernie!"

"Fernie?! It’s goddamn raining in Fernie!" I yelled. "What we have here is a simple case of spatial variability. You obviously dug your pit in a severely unrepresentative micro-feature. We didn’t need a stinking snowpit. I could have told you that in two seconds with my ski pole. It’s all about terrain management, dude!"

"You are so full of shit!" he shouted back.

The situation was not good, and deteriorating rapidly. "Just come back over here," I said. "We’ll have lunch and discuss the matter."

EDITOR’S NOTE:
At this point in the chronology, the original manuscript becomes incomprehensible (likely due to the highly-charged emotional nature of the situation). Fortunately, Dr. Tuke was carrying a Sony video camera for the purpose of documenting the ski descent. The device had inadvertently been left in the 'REC' position since the previous night when it had been used to film a physical encounter between Tuke’s attorney and a young woman who appears to be an employee of a local drinking establishment.

Thanks to advances in digital storage media and exemplary Japanese engineering, the camera was still operating perfectly. Despite the lack of a picture, as the camera was stowed in Tuke’s pack, the audio track was recovered in its entirety. In the interests of journalistic purity we are publishing the following section just as it came off the tape.

Att’y: What'd you bring?

Tuke: A bagel and stuff... you?

Att’y: Yeah, a bagel... deli roast beef… thinly sliced.

[Pause.]

Att’y: Mmmm... horseradish.

Tuke: Horseradish? Where’d you get the horseradish?

Att’y: I had it with me.

Tuke: What?!

Att’y: Yeah, there’s a whole jar of it back at the condo.

Tuke: Why didn’t you tell me you had horseradish?

Att’y: How was I supposed to know you wanted horseradish?

[Pause.]

Tuke: Extra Hot?

Att’y: Uh huh.

Tuke: You bastard...

Att’y: OK, when we get back you can have some of my horseradish.

Tuke: A lot of good that does me now!

[Sound of a helicopter in the distance.—Ed.]

Att’y: Ever try any of that stuff on the other side of the valley?

Tuke: No— it’s always wind-blasted over there. Look how scoured off it is up high.

Att’y: I dunno, looks like some sweet lines to me.

Tuke: Well, why don’t you stick around for a few days. We’ll check it out.

Att’y: Some people gotta work, man. And I want to get home—I’ve got a new woman.

Tuke: Oh yeah?... skier?

Att’y: Yeah... she rips. Big thighs, big butt, you know, low centre of gravity.

Tuke: Nice. Where’d you find her?

Att’y: A hut trip, last winter. First time we met we’re talking about skiing and stuff, and she goes: ‘When I get back from a good day, two beers, and I’m just getting started’.

Tuke: Right on. Sounds like a keeper.

[Pause.]

Att’y: Damn—that’s good horseradish.

EDITOR’S NOTE (cont.):
Tape cassettes for the next sequence were impossible to transcribe due to contamination from peach juice which had leaked onto the apparatus and partially dried. There is a certain consistency to the garbled sounds however, indicating that Dr. Tuke and his attorney agreed to cautiously venture forth on their endeavour.

* * *

I suggested to my attorney that it would be prudent to do a transceiver check before proceeding. As I was switching mine onto "RECEIVE", he glanced over.

"You’ve still got that crappy old Ortovox ®?!" he said. "You gotta go digital, man. Check out my Tracker ®. I can find someone in half the time it would take you with that piece of shit."

He was probably right and I wasn’t sure if he saw the irony in what he had just said so I didn’t argue the point. The more pressing matter at hand was to get across this bowl.

I’d been skiing in this valley all winter. The time was right for this trip. The light was good, making the subtleties of the terrain and the safest line obvious. So why was I hesitant? That big settlement back in the trees didn’t help. Maybe I should have had a look at my attorney’s pit. I felt tired. How long had I been waiting for this shot? Now it was right there, but this was some serious shit... dire uncertainty... sonofabitch!

"I’ll take a pretty steep line to the bench," I said. "Then a couple of switchbacks and I should be able to gain the ridge at that notch. After that, we’re home free…but let’s really space it out crossing this thing."

My attorney could sense indecision. "Don’t worry man," he said. "I’m gonna be waaaay back! If this goes it’ll go big. You’ll be doing Mach when you hit those trees... they’ll rip your arms off."

Jesus, I thought. That’s no way to talk to a man plagued with doubt. He was a cruel bastard, typical of his race. (His sensitive side was under-developed from a childhood spent fighting for table scraps with a dozen or more ruthless French-Canadian siblings—perfect formative years for a mountaineer).

This was now the moment of truth. I recognized the feeling; the tension was part of the high. The possibility of bailing on the whole thing was very real now... but that was out of the question; unacceptable. I set out across the slope.

Within a short time the view in my periphery included nothing but white. The horrible reality began to dawn on me. I knew what it would be like. A sudden web of shooting cracks, a momentary calm—just enough time to say: "shit"—then chaos, followed by death. What was in that last bulletin? Likely?... Probable?... Possible? Is this the same aspect as that slide we saw on the way in? Get off this convex roll! Harsh paranoia.

I glanced back at my attorney. He was indeed keeping his distance. A hundred and fifty metres, maybe more. Verbal communication was not possible but I could tell from his body language that he was thinking the same thing I was: Were we headed for trouble? Had we pushed our luck a bit too far?

Out here was not the place to be debating the wisdom of this move; it was already done, our only hope was to get to the other side—onto the ridge. I composed my thoughts. The snowpack felt solid under foot. Probing with the poles indicated no cause for concern. The way ahead looked skinable with a short section of bootpacking. A reasonable approach to a big descent—standard procedure for connoisseurs of such fare.

Indeed. Conditions in the alpine were noticeably better then the mank at the lower elevations. We were moving well now; in an uptrack trance, yet acutely aware of the surroundings. The mountain had its hold on us.

* * *

Then we were on the ridge. Relief. Just a long, easy stroll to the entrance of our line. Buy the ticket, take the ride... and if occasionally it gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, chalk it up to forced character enhancement. We bought into this for the freedom, the freedom that comes from stepping beyond the ordinary world.

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose— Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’—but it’s free.

At the top of the couloir my attorney and I enjoyed a leisurely pre-descent ritual—contemplating what lay ahead. The entrance was straight-forward and the entire line looked big and fat.

I was first to drop in with a quick ski cut across the top. Notable sluff—but nothing more. My attorney signalled his approval.

It was going to happen. Visualize the first few turns. Vast amounts of space between here and the valley below. The next move would be to commit, fully and completely.

My heart was filled with joy... and just enough fear to be totally confident.

THE END


EDITOR’S NOTE:
It has been recently discovered that the manuscript submitted to us by Armand Tuke, is in fact a blatant rip-off of an obscure literary masterpiece from the latter part of the 20th century. The author of the original work, a man who was known by the name of Thompson, may in fact have been the legendary Raoul Duke, an esteemed Doctor of Journalism from that era.

At this point in time our lawyers are making every effort to secure a meeting with Mr. Tuke in order to fully investigate the matter. He and his accomplice are believed to be travelling throughout the mountains of Western Canada. The last confirmed sighting of the pair was near the town of Golden, British Columbia. They were spotted on the Trans Canada Highway, piloting a late model Nissan Pathfinder (property of Budget Car and Truck Rental Inc.)—heading west at a high rate of speed.

In tribute to Hunter S. Thompson.
With permission.

Tim