Words: Carolyn Highland 2018-12-10 15:47:02
Dread gripped my chest as Joe pointed across the basin to our second line. Our first, Lost Couloir, was behind us. I’d spent the morning re-kicking each step up it, totally gripped until I clicked into my bindings. A thousand feet of glorious turns later, I found myself at the bottom, ready for a beer on flat ground. But there we were, looking at objective number two. I was worked, physically and mentally, but I was in Alaska. What choice did I have? Off we went, across the basin, up a steep face, through harrowing kick turns on rotten snow, across a bony, narrow ridge. I fought the feeling that I should never have come up here in the first place, that I wasn’t in the right mental space. It happened quickly and slowly at the same time. A sketchy kick turn, my ski out from under me, sliding, sliding, bare fingers digging into rock and snow, and finally, stopping. I was frozen, face to the ground, clutching, trying to get a full breath. I could feel the airy nothingness below waiting to swallow me whole, if I slid even thirty feet more. Why hadn’t I said something? This was not what I’d come out here to do. The fall had been a direct product of my silence. I’d gone on when I wasn’t feeling it. Two years later, on a bluebird September day in Colorado’s Indian Peaks Wilderness, I lugged my skis on my back five miles up a bone-dry trail to ski Queen’s Way Couloir and Isabelle Glacier. With me were my main ski partner, Lindsay, and her co-worker Gabby. I broke trail, setting the boot pack up the base of the couloir. Halfway up, there was an icy rock band. We pulled out our ice axes and discussed the safest way to continue. We each ascended to a little bench above the ice and checked in with Gabby. She hadn’t ever taken on any low angle trees in the backcountry, let alone skied a couloir. She decided to descend from there. We watched her make hesitant turns to safety before we continued up. I led, Lindsay following, discussing our line of ascent, axe placement, how our footing felt. The snow became icier as we went, making it difficult to kick good steps. Lindsay decided to call it. “I don’t feel solid about this without crampons, actually. Can we transition right up there instead?” She pointed at a hollowed out spot beneath the rock wall to our right. If I’d learned anything in Alaska, it was that if you weren’t feeling it, chances were high it wasn’t feeling you, either. “For sure,” I said. The descent was uncomplicated. We took our turns soaring, down hundreds of feet of vertical, first the couloir and then the sprawling glacier below. My chest opened up—exhilarated, free. The three of us convened at the bottom, feeling lucky to be out in the wilderness, skiing. Gabby asked us how it had been after she’d gone down, and we recounted the rest of the line. “You guys were talking literally the whole time,” she said. It was true. Silence had gotten me in over my head in Alaska, but words had allowed everyone to have a powerful and safe day. I smiled, taking in the massive rock walls, the blue sky, the snow, reveling in it all. “That’s kinda what we came out here to do,” I said. Photo Caption: Micah Evangelista and Sophia Rouches on a dawn patrol ski tour at Mt. Baker, WA. Photo: Grant Gunderson
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