The thump of the chopper’s rotors is deep, felt more than heard. I look out the window and see swirls of snow flying away from the chopper’s side, down the 11,000 feet of mountain slope hanging beneath us. In the distance, the Grand Tetons reach up toward the sky. Next to me are my brothers, Cameron and Graylan, and my dad; like me, they’re helmeted, goggled and gloved, boots buckled tight against their feet, jackets zipped to the top. We look like the Tenth Mountain Division, but we’re not soldiers. We’re skiers.
Our pilot gives us a thumbs-up, and in a flash we are jumping feet-first down onto the mountain peak. Our guide Dave sprints—as fast as one can sprint in snow four feet deep—to the carrying basket on the chopper’s side, and pulls out our skis and poles. He then sprints back around the chopper, throws himself next to us and waves the pilot off. The rotors engage, and the thumping heartbeat escalates to a heart attack as the chopper rises above us in an explosion of snow and sound. It darts off, the steady beat of its rotors slowly fading. Then there is silence.
Surrounding us is beautiful, lightly sprinkled snow that sparkles in the daylight, a layer of soft white powder on the surface of the earth. This stuff is radically different from the hardpacked snow of New England, which feels more like brittle pavement. Skiing in powder, by comparison, is like floating on clouds.
I grin at my dad and brothers, who grin right back. Dave shouts, “Let’s do it!” and takes off down the mountain, sashaying around trees and rocks. We follow with reckless abandon, around boulders, through trees spaced just four feet apart. We fly over streams and bear tracks, down steep dives and chutes. We carve long curving lines down giant bowls and fields. The Wyoming Rockies stretch high above us.
The thrill of powder skiing rests in exploration, in going where you’ve never gone before, the charting of unknown territory. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his Essays that every man contains within him the spirits of history’s greats, and if that’s true, I’m one of the pioneers of the West, a Buffalo Bill Cody, a Columbus or Magellan. Against the backdrop of the Rockies, you can’t help but feel like you’re on a grand mission to map out the world.
I thrive on being on the brink of discovery. I’m at my best, my sharpest and most engaged, when I’m meeting new people or traveling to a new country. I don’t think I’m alone in that. We are all at our best when we face the unknown with a smile on our face, be it a first date with a cute girl or a jump out of a helicopter. Adrenaline in your veins and sweat on your brow, you take a deep breath and dig into that reservoir of the finest human quality, the very same that propelled Columbus and Magellan across the face of the world: courage.
I come careening through the last few trees of the glades and burst out into a wide bowl of snow. This is avalanche territory and we’ve already had one close call; my brother caused a small crush of snow to tumble down the slope an hour before. I grab the homing beacon on my chest for a moment, let its quiet beeping reassure me and navigate down to the bottom where I join Dave and my family. We stomp out a landing zone for the chopper, packing down the snow so it’s hard enough to stand on without sinking. Then we wait. Slowly a distant sound develops, and soon the noise is louder and closer, echoing across the mountain range. The chopper appears over a distant ridge and flies towards us, its rotors thumping methodically.
Dave looks at the chopper, then up at the mountains flanking us. The Grand Tetons stand behind him like sentinels, watching our every move. Dave points in their direction as if challenging them to a duel. I’m exhausted. My legs feel the way climbers on their way down from Everest look: stiff, frozen, dazed. I’m about to slump down in the snow when I remember an old Teddy Roosevelt line: “The glory of life is in the trying, in refusing to yield.” I look around. The sun is high, the skies clear and the snow fresh. The wind whips and the peaks whisper, never stop exploring.
Dave’s still stabbing the air with a finger. “Another run?” he asks us.
I look at my dad and brothers. I grin again.
“Another run.”
