Overwhelmed, I wondered if I would make it. Two days earlier I had felt a tickle that had grown into a sore throat, cough and headache. A simple cold that would barely be noticed during a routine workweek, but, heading into four full days of skiing and winter camping, a problem that could grow into an energy-sapping, fever-inducing menace. My body would have to work extra hard to fight the virus and keep up with the physical demands of the trip. Luckily, Nordic skiing had introduced me to long days mov-ing through the mountains and how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. If anyone understood that it was Lani, a skier I had grown up racing against and training with for over a decade on the Nordic racing circuit. We were both drawn to the sport for the day-in-day-out challenge of pushing our limits. We thrived while digging deep into our endurance wells and were accustomed to the unpleasantries of exhaustion. In recent years, Lani had been working toward becoming a backcountry ski guide, while I had been pursuing a professional ski career. That shared strength in suffering had shifted, but never waned. It’s what made us an ideal backcountry team, and as our skill sets grew away from the Nordic track and into the high alpine, she had become my go-to backcountry partner. With Lani in town and our weather window shortening, I chose to dull my senses and ignore my symptoms, pushing through my poorly timed cold. Our hair whipped in the wind and snow sprayed behind us as Twin Peaks’ scoured East Face opened into a soft powder apron. Our concerns were whisked away by the joy of sliding downhill. One peak down—we were on our way. While the next morning treated us with soft pink light as we climbed back up to the ridge, the weather quickly turned gloomy and gray. And as we continued to march, the wind grew stronger, the clouds grew darker and it started to grau-pel. With visibility disappearing and the skin track turning to ice, we hunched against the gusts, quietly shuffling onward. Today would be a short day as we moved through the popular and easily accessible top of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Usually busy with multiple backcountry groups, it was empty, leaving us to scrape down the refrozen Emma Ridge and trudge up Grizzly Gulch—alone. Having spent my formative years skiing at Alta, I was intimately familiar with the top of the canyon. Patsy Marley had become my go-to zone for solo skis before heading into work at the Alta Clinic, and branching from Alta’s adjacent backcountry had become a norm for lapping powder on both bluebird and storm days. But today, the area felt foreign. What was usually an easy skin turned slow and arduous. Each hill felt steeper, every switchback longer and the view, usually invigo-rating even during a storm, fell upon unappreciative eyes. The afternoon dragged on as we took long snack breaks, with Lani redressing her blisters and my cough worsening. Heads down and buffs up, we marched robotically toward camp. Forward. 062 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 14, Issue 3: Page 62
