Learning to tele, like really learning, took a lot of patience, repetition, and rain gear. I crashed fell over at slow speed so many times that first full winter, and I learned really quick that the best way for me to stay at least sort of dry was a rain jacket, good Gore-tex bibs, and insulated leather gloves from Hardware Sales in the Iowa district. You know the ones. They don't need publicity anymore, having Henry Winklered the shit out of that water skiing stunt years ago.
Anyway, the gloves were easy to remove, with a cuff wide enough to hold onto my jacket sleeves, which both kept some snow out and allowed me to easily yank the glove off to shake the snow that inevitably did end up inside back onto the snowpack where it belonged. They also dried easily on the rack above the propane stove in the shack at the bottom of 5. I'd tumble, again, maybe the third or forth time in a run, grumble a little, get up, whip the snow out of my sleeves and gloves, and keep going. I was 19 at the time, and determined that this, this fall right here, would be my last ever. It would take years to accept that, different from the cheesy sticker that was all over gear and cars at the turn of this century, to free the heel is to free the body to fall. I don't think my mind really followed, either, come to think of it.
Below the top of what is now the Northway Chair* at Crystal is a nice southeasterly pitch. Not super long, not crazy steep, just good open turns. It's a lot bumpier now that that merger-era Unistar drive sits atop it. At the turn of the century, it was smooth and creamy in the warm March sun. Good terrain, then, to find a rhythm.
I didn't learn to tele from the bottom up like the PSIA says you should. I was dropping the knee on what Colorado folk think are black runs by the third day on freeheels. (A little more than two years later I'd straightline the moguls here, skiers' left side of Green Valley, and have what is to this day my scariest crash. Could've been so much worse than the broken nose and ganked neck and disapperated glasses I went home with.) I tried a drill that day, one I came up with myself. I sat all the way onto my trailing heel to feel what the foot and knee and hip and quad needed to feel like, to understand the shapes I'd need and how the turn progressed without needing to know how to actually do it. I told myself it was only that run, and then I needed to be able to do it correctly. It took a few moderate tweaks over the years, but by the bottom of the Valley I was what John Becker and Sam Lobet of P-A, WA called, with seeming affection, a telewhacker.
The next day out, maybe a week later, I made some turns with a handful of fellow freeheelers, and it really clicked. That wide open ramp under Northway Peak was quiet, and I watched three or four go, and then just made the shapes with my legs and torso that they made with theirs. I found a rhythm, one I never really lost until my arthritis and tendinopathy took it away. Looking up, I couldn't distinguish our tracks from some unevenness or poor turn shape I might have made, only that one set ended at my skis. Somebody casually mentioned that I looked pretty experienced, and I had to hide my smirk when I said it was my fourth day.
For a long time, I skied in Atlas gloves whenever I could. They aren't super practical if it's cold or wet, but when it's sunny and the bumps on Upper Nash get suitably big, they breathe well enough and are dextrous and waterproof in the palm and fingers and they smell a certain way in the sun and, I don't know, the smell still reminds of that one time in the ticket office at White Salmon when I was getting a buddy pass and I'd just plumb blowed up the thumb ligament in my right hand and couldn't really grasp the old sticky wicket tickets well on account of the thumb brace I had wrapped over the Atlas glove and this really nice, utterly intimidating lady walked over and said "here, let me do that for you," and I was smitten for at least 5 minutes. I was 18 and I never got her name and certainly don't even remember her, really, just that brief moment.
I will admit to certain conceits with regard to skiing, especially to tele. I tried to ski in Carharrts or Dickies as often as possible, along with the Atlas, and later, other types of work gloves. I had a couple thrift store button-down shirts to wear when I wasn't feeling my usual flannel. I think I wanted to project a casual disregard for the possibility of actually falling, and to distinguish myself from the bougier elements in our little world with my grease-stained duck workpants and emotional distance. To belie the existence of any fear or misgiving. I'd worked so hard to overcome that first year of non-stop tumbles. I wanted folks who knew to really know. (There's that guy. Y'know, Two-turn Eino. He never falls.) Also, I found it comfortable and thought myself stylish. I still really like Atlas gloves.
About the third time the heel cable on my old Pitbull 2 broke, I caved. Some idiot volleyball patroller on Nose Dive who stopped the heavily used Black Diamond touring ski with the nice mountainy topsheet and de rigueur Canadian flag sticker it was on told me I'd never lose my ski if I used G3 bindings like he did, despite his not recognising that I'd kicked the ski and not fallen out of the binding. He'd put me off of upgrading the part of telemark skiing that both ties the room together and necessarily needs to be in the background for too long. It took a minute, but a month or so later a pro patroller named Andrew was selling some Igneous skis with a G3 Targa on it and I bit. It was the first ski I bought for the binding, the first in a loooooong and still continuous line. I'd told myself I wanted the ski, but at 197, made of like two full-height maples, and with a less-than-okay top sheet--a pic of Anna Nicole Smith, with a blatant heroin reference as a "pro model"--the ski and I never really jived. The binding and I did, and I skied it probly another 300 days before I and the Cascadian humidity wore the retention springs out.
The cable wasn't the only thing I broke, just the most annoying. I broke both ankle straps on my first bumblebee T1 in two winters at Baker, and my humerus on a particularly funky morning, far skiers' left of Gabl's. It'd rained about halfway up 5 the day before, and then cooled fairly quickly and continued on with the precip for a while before clearing off completely for an absolute North Cascades stunner of a day. The top of Gabl's was fluff on butter, just real creamy and fast, but right about the Chute 4 bench it locked down under the confectioner's sugar. I was hittin it full steam, and got knocked off line by the frozen whatevers sitting four or five inches under the surface. My left ski caught something and stopped hard, and I went down on my left arm. I lay on the ground for a minute, then couldn't get myself situated to stand up because the arm was completely dead. It took a while for it to shake out. When I got to the bottom of 5 to bump chairs, Paul the mechanic asked if it was snowing still, despite all that blue sky and dry air. I still haven't forgiven that fu
Anyway, that Sunday night after work I drove to Enumclaw, 170 miles away. If you haven't driven a manual with a dead left arm, I don't recommend it. Not as bad as if your right arm was broken, but still. No fun. I got in to see Luther, the family doc, and after an x-ray and some poking slash prodding, he told me to take it easy. I took that to mean borrow my brother's alpine skis, and otherwise go about my business. Turns out I tore about two inches of deltoid and chipped a piece off the humeral head. I still feel the muscle, over twenty years later. Coincidentally, it's right about where the nurse jabs you with the tetanus goop.
When I called home to chat a few weeks later, Ma said Luther asked her to scold me for shoveling snow and trying to hide when he came through my line at the bottom of 5. 170 miles from home and it's still a small town.
In addition to the shoulder destruction and the countless slow-speed tumbles, there were a few truly hard crashes in the learning process.
My EMT instructor, whose name escapes my just now, said that some folks see "tracers" when they have a mild head injury. I had no idea what he was talking about, and assumed it was just a folk tale. I mean, in all the old comic strips, folks who'd just got a concussion had birds flying about their heads. The second time I hit something hard enough my skis stopped, after a nice somersault I could never accomplish on purpose, I sat and watched the thousand points of light race each other in very messy circles, their light trailing behind, playing havoc with my sanity. I described what I was seeing to Stina and she just said "tracers."
The twisting lights slowly faded as I sat, motionless and concerned about all the trauma I was certain I'd inflicted, but aside from seeing these same stars a little bit easier now in my forties, nothing really ever came of it. I can still remember well the entire run, the hike to the top of the King, breaking trail for Stina and her buddy Mary and them giving me first tracks down the Appliances Chute as a thank you, the straightline and subsequent wallop, the tracers, and the much mellower run to the bottom of DFF, turning and turning and turning, wondering if I'd ever feel normal again. I'm 43 now, and I still wonder. I still see not only the tracers that show up here and there, but the blood in the snow and all of each tomohawk way back in '001 at the bottom of the Valley and, later, on the frontside of the Queen this time, how the the world looked when I realised I'd stopped, tails tucked into the snow, as though I was poured onto a chair made just for me, without any understanding of why I wasn't still skiing. That pivotal moment alone is just missing.
There are things I miss about making that turn. Real and quantifiable, or ethereal and mearly mystical. I was almost a cliché, making hay while the sun shone brightly, knowing that--without knowing when--the ride would end. My legs aren't as strong and I'm not as fond of steeps these days. Skiing is still paramount for me, but I haven't stepped into a tele binding in a long time. In point of fact, I just handed my last binding over to my brother when he bopped on through BoyCee in November. The last real day of making the freeheels was the day my former employee who became my boss took the photos on this page in the Spring of '016. These photographs hurt a little, just looking. Things gained and then lost, skills developed and then forgotten.
So many turns, steeps or flats, crashing hard or pinning it top to bottom, solid, fast, controlled. I could turn both ways and stop, in damn near any condition, on damn near any pitch. I'd step into those bindings, and every time the feelings would flood my arteries. Memories of people and places and times gone by. Playing a show for 400 college kids in Tacoma or hiking alone at Chinook Pass.
The day I first stepped into those tele boots was the day my maternal grandfather passed away in February of 2000. The phone rang early in the morning, 6 or so. I heard Ma cry out and go quiet, and I knew. Grandpa Kelly had been languishing; a stroke had laid him low and there wasn't much to be done. He was 85 and a quiet fighter, a man who could outlast the hard times. He could fall asleep when all of us grandkids were running around screaming, 41 of us by the time the youngest came along.
Noël had wanted to ski with me again, or more acurately wanted me to follow her on the hill and chat while riding the chair. There wasn't much for me to do at the funeral home, nor much room for all of us, so Ma said to keep my plans. I rented gear, and that was that. For the next sixteen years I felt like I belonged to something, that I wasn't just sliding along like all the other folks. Sixteen years of feeling a connection to my paternal grandfather who passed away in '62, nineteen years before I came along. He was a freeheeler back in the day, leather boots and leather strap bindings, Sámi muscles kicking around far northern Sverige's beautiful and low-slung mountains before moving to the states and meeting my grandmother in the UP, up around Calumet somewhere. I think of him every time I see a raven on the wind, or hear one calling in the deep Doug fir in the rain.
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Title from Jonatha Brooke's Landmine, which she released on her first fully-solo record, 1997's 10¢ Wings. Rock may have sucked in the late 90s, mainstream country as well, but there were some really good artists doing other things who went largely unnoticed because, well, there wasn't a a funky beat you could bug out to or catchy, yet misogynistic rap lyrics written by white dudes who should probly have been cleaning toilets instead. I listened to that album over and over and over again in my little '81 Tercel driving back and forth to Crystal and GRCC in '000.
*Bonus points if you can spot me.