Peak Experiences

By John Minier

The Illusion of Control

Iwas 23 when I first lost a friend to the mountains. His name was Paul. He was a school teacher in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, loved telemark skiing, his wife, Jess, and their dog, Mica. He wore a Hawaiian shirt to his wedding shortly before dying in an avalanche in the Tetons on March 10th, 2007, just before his 25th birthday.

I’d had little experience with death up until that point in my life. I spent that night in the back of my truck in Driggs, Idaho, curled up with my pain. I was scared. I cried and hurt like I never had before. I wanted nothing more than to stop the hurt. Nobody needs to hurt the way I did that night.

Over the years, backcountry skiing and avalanche education became my life. Eventually, I started a company teaching backcountry skiers and riders how to stay safe in avalanche terrain. Beneath the entrepreneurial pragmatism was a young man, perhaps even a boy, whose heart still ached for his friend. And maybe, just maybe, it was possible to teach an avalanche course so well that none of my students would die in an avalanche, and no one would have to feel the pain of that loss ever again.

It was foolish, but it had a purpose; I’m grateful for that. There’s no cheating death. I have lost many more friends to the mountains in the years since, some of them recently. I write these words just hours after hearing of yet another. Most have been fellow guides, all of them highly experienced and respected. What are we supposed to think or feel when the mountains take even the most skilled of us? There’s a cold randomness to it all that we have to accept. We live in a time, a society, a culture in which we expect there to be a tomorrow, but tomorrow is never guaranteed. Today is a gift, this very second, right now. What are you going to do with it? Maybe start with gratitude for those who offered you presence in the moment. His name was Paul.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki