Larry skied on brown skis, plain brown skis. He liked steep runs near rocks, as steep as staircases and steeper - chutes. We skied all variety of chutes, zig-zagging, swizzling, hopscotching chutes. Larry was my guide. My femurs turned molten. I swear they were bending. I finally refused above a sliver of snow narrow as dental floss that plunged into a crack no wider than a turnstile.
"No way," I said.
"It's been skied," he nodded.
That meant he had skied it. I asked myself, Who is this guide?
Everyone knew him. Locals eagerly hopped on the KT-22 quad with us, but they all went the opposite way at the top. Nobody wanted to ski where Larry was taking me.
I kept thinking, Who is this guide?
It got more intense in the afternoon. We clambered over rocks, dirt and weeds-skis on. A patrolman hollered from a cliff above us, "Do you guys need a trail map? There's no access down there." Larry, pointed across a face of pummeled granite and dwarf shrubs, and hollered back, "This is the access." I grumbled as the edges of my skis sparked on the stones. "You should see my bases," he said. "I don't have any." (Later he showed me the yellow bottoms of his brown skis, stripped like sticks of string cheese.)
Near the end of the day I followed Larry down a tongue of snow into a chicane of rock until I locked in a skidding side-slip in a short shaft that funneled as it dropped. It shrank to a stone hall exactly 187 centimeters wide. My skis were 186s. The only way out was to leap, let the skis dive and hang on. Extreme skiers call this technique straight-lining. I'm not an extreme skier. I don't straight-line.
As I gained velocity, rocks nearly brushing my shoulders, my thoughts screamed: Who in God's name is this guide?
On the chair, one of Larry's buddies congratulated him. Another said, "Yeah. Way to go in Crested Butte." That was a hint. Finally I asked him, "What did you win?" Larry was, Larry Segal the 2005 Masters U.S. Extreme Freeskiing Champion. (He finished second in 2006.) Now, at least I knew who my guide was and why there wasn't a chance in hell I'd keep up.
He was mid-40s, my age - still obviously a ski bum, like me. I looked around at the immensity of Squaw Valley. I loved it - gullets and shafts, crowned ridges over deep cleaves, fluted drops into gutters that poured between the abrupt walls of the Olympic Valley. Above it all, snow-filled bowls. "Why wasn't I here when I was 20?" I asked Larry, wistfully.
"If you had been, you'd be a whole different person now," he said.
I knew what he meant. It was a statement of place. He meant the mountain had shaped him - and not just as a skier. As a skier and a person, a chunk of his being came from the shadows that fell over the banner peaks at closing time and in the jaunty morning sparkle of the opening slopes. Years of leg-wrestling the soggy, muscular, Sierra snow molded him. I believed what he meant because I'd only been there a day and already I was a different skier, and a different person, forever.
Larry and Squaw reminded me what three decades of skiing had given me: lots of guides, and guidance.
He had rules and was quick to loyalty. At one point in the afternoon, I begged him to go on without me. I couldn't stand the idea of slowing him down. "Nope," he said. "You can't quit. KT-22 rules: you ski 'til 4:00." We skated into the lift line for one more at 3:58.
I remember that loyalty. When I was a rookie ski bum, I was taken in by a group of guys who taught me their rules. There were three: Rule #1: Don't get excited. Rule #2: Always get your paycheck. Rule # 3: Try not to look like a hooked trout. I still live by them
When we were done, Larry insisted on buying me a beer, which seemed backwards, but I realized exactly what was going on. All those chutes - he knew the name of every one of them - they were slivers of his life, representing a lifetime of discovery. After a climb, he'd pointed a ski pole down a mind boggling rock crevasse. He'd waited seven years for exactly the right conditions and exactly the right day to do it - and hadn't done it since.
He knew the names of everyone else who had been down that chute, ever. It was short list, a brotherhood. In essence, he was telling me who his guides had been, and how the mountain itself had been his guide.
At the bar he introduced me to the guy who held the record for the most runs in one day on KT-22. The guy was a legend in Larry's eyes. His heroes were friends like that, guys (and gals) for whom the mountain was the biggest hero of all. It made them a band. I liked that.
I may not be the person I would have been if I'd skied KT-22 since I was 20, but the mountains I did ski and a band of friends shaped me. Skiing, I met the people I love. Some of the most important moved on after a season or two. Some never came back. Those who stayed became who they are, here, with me.
It's easy to say we're just ski bums and we just ski, but it's an authentic life. By that I mean it's as valid when it's hard as when it's easy, and it's never as easy as it looks. It's real life. And, like any real life, all you need to live it well is what any life needs, loyalty and a little guidance now and then.
Wayne Sheldrake is the author of Instant Karma: The Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum.