From the Top

One last look up at the top and I click out of my skis on the ridge, toss them over my shoulder, tips forward, hooking the front binding over my back for leverage. Plucking the poles from the snow, I take a hurried pace to catch up with they guy already marching twenty meters ahead.

It is blindingly white up here. The whole ridge is snow without tree cover. At the top of Squaw Valley in North Tahoe, the California summer sun is doing a number on my face -- the only part not covered by ski gear or a helmet. That is the second reminder I still bear. The first is the alchemical conversion of fear to exhilaration, starting with a look to the top of Squaw.

The very top of the very top lift at the very top of the mountain is not the very, very top. Most people take the Funitel, essentially a big gondola on 2 cables, from the base to mid mountain at Squaw - roughly 1500 feet. Then they get off and ride another 800 feet on the high speed summit chair. From that chair, I'd watched all morning with wonder the cliffs of the real summit, up another 200 feet to the left. Around 10am, I started to see little silhouettes starting to make their way up, lending the crags a startling scale.

The snow up there looks perfect, though there isn't much of it. From below, the cliffs looks nearly sheer. The face is about 100 across, with three narrow chutes and two cliffs that I come to learn offer 10-20 feet of vacuous space before 350 feet of white wall. I am eyeing the "widest" chute to the far left. It is maybe twice the length of my skis and it is the longest hike.

I catch up to the hiker before me. Like most locals, he's really friendly and not a native. This is his sixth time down the face today. I'll settle for one. The snow ends, and the rocks start. We are climbing up the back side of the face, essentially on the other side of the mountain. Here, sharp winds from the west, today blowing at 40 MPH, have, on better days still, stripped most of the snow away. It's not that it isn't cold enough -- a few six inch shrubs show clear signs of frost at midday.

Skis aloft, my boots are digging into the dirt and scaling broken rocks. I teeter backwards briefly as I attempt to stand a little more erect. Head down, leaning forward, with a bit of pounding in my chest, I continue up.

It takes fifteen minutes to hike the 200 feet at a steady clip. At the top is a bare mesa with what I guess is a Doppler radar. I check it's sight-lines and stop dead. The view is 360 degrees to forever. Peaks roll away in all directions. To the southeast, about 7 miles as if it were nothing is the lake. To the north and west, wilderness for at least an hour's drive. I've never felt the sense of power at a summit before. Five feet below, it is just a mountain, but from here, the earth seems to foist you up on its shoulders to have a look around and to show you off.

I look to the east at my way down. The snow starts like the big water slide, two feet of water, frozen in this case, and then a sheer drop. Not a lot of space to put on your equipment. I step down backwards onto the snow to put on my skis. Something is caught in my boots; neither is settling properly into the bindings. I am not willing to lose equipment on my down this face. I saw two tumbles this morning. They look like the footage you watch at the end of the day in the lodge. I didn't want someone else recounting to their friends over a cup of cocoa my run as a puff of white and thirty seconds of quiet as everyone below watches the pile roll end over end inevitably until the mountain flattens out a bit. So the skis come off. Boots cleaned. Back on. Back off. Back on. Settled most of the way in, I decide that it's going to have to be good enough lest I tire myself out just on this.

I take a huge breath to relax and peak over the edge. That is, I see what I can see from here. A small bump at this grade eliminates any view below. I plan my first 2 turns and rely on skill for the rest. Dripping already, I begin the massive hops it takes to change direction. The snow is as advertised. Nearly a foot of fresh powder thanks to the shade of the northeast facing cliffs. Six turns, maybe seven, and I am back in the merely steep. 300 feet later, I carve to a halt in the flats and catch my breath.

Two runs later, I see from the chairlift that a guy is readying to jump from the cliff just to the left of the chute I skied. There is no snow there. He is standing on rock, tips jutting over. Two minutes pass. He leans forward and with a tap of the knees drops 15 feet, tips pointed down the mountain. He completes one and a half turns to my dozen. He must hit 40mph before he stops below my rising chair. He isn't even carrying poles. I guess I really am an amateur at this, but his jacket bears the white cross of ski patrol, so all I can say think is, "Clearly, you really can reach me anywhere."