Weights & Wind

It was a bluebird day, the kind where the Mountains look to be standing even taller, summits reflecting and shining in the alpine morning Sun, almost as if the whole range had gotten together for one of those posed group photos the Instagrammers love. Everybody living their best life for the 13 seconds it takes to snap the shot. We were in the midst of an unusually active avalanche season and the air held a nervous energy. Standing outside the shack in town with a cup of steaming Sumatran, I could almost make out the snow fields that’d give next, the peaceful white blankets of snow pregnant with a slippery, suffocating danger lurking under the uneven, seemingly stable shelves of pristine powder scattering the San Juan range. County Search and Rescue said they wouldn’t be blasting till the following morning.

Sure, maybe my life was a mess in certain fundamental ways, a worthless bachelor’s degree left me riddled with financial debts no honest man could repay, I’d been having some strange new pains in my mouth and my job as a backcountry ski guide offered no kind of health insurance. Weighing most heavily those days was my recent split with Sam. She had wanted more and in hindsight I can’t blame her. I was a lazy partner and a lackadaisical lover. Those are her words but I agree with them. She wanted the picket fence with the two and a half kids. I wasn’t ready to turn into my insurance-selling father and I wasn’t at all sure about how to go about having the half a kid. My darker sense of humor and its inappropriate timing was not something she found endearing. But when the San Juan’s are shining and the powder is fresh it’s hard to get caught up with all that negative thinking for too long. It looked to be one of those days where the Universe smiled upon my shoulder. The crew we were taking up that day were all experienced and for the most part a pleasure to ski with.

Sun and I were checking the gear bags, putting together mobile snack kits and then rechecking the gear bags. She was the most calmly meticulous guide; working with Sun you knew things would always be in the place they were supposed to be. The helicopter wasn’t due up from Gunnison for another hour or so but the clients would be making their way to the landing zone shortly, a brightly clad bunch of overpaid and underworked tourists, nervous energy mingling effortlessly with their privileged impatience.

“Mr. Butler, out here by your lonesome this morning,” I had asked knowing full well the itinerary didn’t include his boy-toy wife or either of their bratty, obsessively-gum-chewing teen-aged daughters.

“Yep, the girls are gonna make a day of it in town.”

Butler was a regular, and a nice enough guy. Always the brightest clad client with his never-ending rotation of the latest outdoor gear, a slower than some skier who meticulously picked his way down the sheer mountainsides. His tracks always held the same serpentine rhythm and he never fell far behind. Generally speaking, in the time it would take me to stop, get my water bottle out and take a good pull, there he’d go, sliding by in a rush of North Face Yellow and Patagonia Purple. A curt Alpiner’s greeting: gloved hand raising pole, finger pointing to the recipient. I’m still not 100% sure how Butler made his bucks but no doubt he made plenty. These helicopter trips weren’t cheap, a once-in-a-lifetime special treat for most clients. Butler went up a couple times a week when the family was in town, about half the month in Season. He parked a silver Cessna out at Buckhorn with all the other private air shuttles. His trucks had Texas plates and his drawl confirmed about as much, probably some oil big-wig. Seems like most the Lone-star-staters up here had some sort of crude on their hands. At least the ones with helicopter skiing money did anyway. He left average tips and didn’t say much.

The Green and Yellow 212 came roaring up the valley, rotors straining in the thinning air and announcing its presence a few moments before any of the group had eyes on her. They always came up the same route, strutting that valley line and following the highway between Gunni and Crested Butte, yet it never seemed to amaze when the choppers pulled into view, shiny and majestic as the North Star on a moonless night. It always felt like a scene from some iconic 1980s movie, I was just never sure what role I was supposed to be playing. We weren’t doing anything special that day, just a mid-morning run up to a ledge we all knew well. Then take our time gliding back down to our rendezvous, we’d point out all the breathtaking views and bring snacks.

Gaine was a good guy, rancher’s kid whose family had land southeast of Gunnison, worked a couple thousand head when markets were up. He got into the helicopter pilot game the way most do: with some sort of military training. Two stints in the sand and he felt pretty good about his civic duty, came back and settled in working the ranch with his dad and uncle, freelance flying when time allowed. Always glancing at his little black notebook, calculating weights and wind, mileage and fuel, Gaine was as measured and calm as any pilot you’d find on the West Slope. More than once he had called an intended drop into question and made valid points. Hell, I think he might’ve even changed my mind a time or three. He always climbed the mountain like a skier going backwards, dancing back and forth in loping arcs, all the pilots do, the clients love it. I remember he was a touch above where I thought we had talked about drop, I went for the switch to say as much but before I could flip it, he offered a strangely steady “I think we lost her.” Of course, now I know he was talking about the engine.

His movements seemed fluid and undistracted to me, gracefully spinning into an autorotation so we didn’t slam into the rock and splatter like half a dozen eggs, I felt weightless for a moment, like the second before the plunge on the Freefall carnival ride, stomach a little higher up than usual, waiting on the inevitable drop. For just a moment or two I thought about what a great story it’d all be, how surviving a helicopter crash wasn’t all that bad really. Then BAM, a crunching impact like I’d never felt, my hands flew up in the air like on a roller coaster. My phone spurted out of my hand and slammed my lip back into my teeth. Everything was white and bright, then suddenly dark. I remember fidgeting with the belt for a bit but it’s hazy; apparently I didn’t fiddle very well because they had to cut the belts off everybody. Gaine and I both ended up at the big hospital in Grand Junction hooked to machines and tubes. Mr. Butler was the only one in back to live, they kept him in Gunnison for a couple days then private lifted him back to Dallas. It’s strange, but no matter how hard I try to remember specifics of the just-after, I can’t recall any sounds from the back. I wonder if they were all quiet the whole way down. I get why it was quiet after we hit, but why couldn’t I hear anything on the way down. Anyway, they airlifted us out on choppers so its better I was still unconscious. The paperwork from the crash scene had my only visible marking as the cut on my lip and a small abrasion on my forehead. All my damage was in the back and neck, and I suppose in my head too. Those scars nobody sees don’t figure much into the story people see when they look at you.

We had a nice service for Sun. The whole town came out, somber and dressed darkly. A lot of the clients’ family members were there too. There wasn’t ever any ill will or guilt tossed around. I think everybody involved knew the risks, signed a lengthy document laying out those risks. We all just felt a touch numb to the happenings with death certificates, insurance checks and medical bills. Hard to see much meaning in that kind of thing when you’ve thought for one short instance, this is it, this is how I go. But you do, you put one foot in front of the other because that’s what all the people say you have to do. I got back to skiing just a couple years after the accident, started with the green runs and pretty quickly worked my way back up to the blacks and bowls. It was never anything about skiing that shook me. It was in part the mountain, but I already had plenty of respect for the mountains, I had seen what they can do when you’re not prepared and scarier yet what they can do when you are prepared. But all be damned with helicopters, I don’t want a thing to do with them anymore. The panic attacks still come and go a bit, but I’m nowhere near as bad I was those first couple years. The sound of rotors was enough to send my mind into a convoluted fury, all unexplainable anger and unspeakable fear. Guess what an old Maytag dryer sounds like when it gets a hare off balance? I’d even get set off by the pounding of my own heart when physical therapy got going. I always wondered about the pilots. Would they be able to get the Heli down safely if they had to? How would they feel when they finally got a boot on solid ground? Do they weigh the risks every time they go up and come back down? Does their family have any say in whether or not they keep tempting the fates? Nowadays I can fake it pretty good when I see a chopper. If you didn’t already know me you might think I was looking away for some other reason.

The twenty thousand dollar check came by mail in an unsuspecting manila envelope, courtesy of the Greater Plains Insurance Co out of Omaha, NE. It was the most money I’ve ever held at one time and I suspect that will always be the case. That was after medical expenses, still didn’t go very far. Bought me almost a year of living meagerly with roommates. It’s all gone now and has been for some time. Didn’t really buy much when you think of what I paid to get it. Butler still offers to send up checks now and again, mainly to ease some sort of survivor’s guilt. I’ve taken him up a few times but he’s not really a well I want to keep going back to. Time to move on and all that. He gives motivational speeches now to people who pay money to hear about overcoming fear. They sit comfortably in hotel conference rooms drinking watered down coffee from Styrofoam cups, nodding their heads at the resilience of the human spirit. I know better. He’s up to 9 Xanax a day, not to mention the rainbow of brightly colored muscle relaxers and pain killers keeping him floating down those hotel hallways. What a racket. Maybe I’ll write a book.