We Go by the Grace of God
Editorial by Tom Burlingame
I’m not a stranger to avalanche death in the Tetons. Four of those killed since 1995 were friends of mine.
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Photo: Wade McKoy |
I knew Kevin Marriot, who perished in the spring of 1995. We both worked at Targhee. I also worked with Joel Roof at Teton Pines for a few summers. He was killed on December 1, 2000. My wife’s childhood friend, Sarah Campbell, was killed less than a month later on Christmas Day while her parents were visiting from Nebraska.
The fourth incident, however, hit closest to home—because last winter when Steve Haas died, I was there. I trusted him with my life, and if he had survived, I still would.
Several years ago when we lost Joel and Sarah right out of the gate, my wife asked me to leave O.B. (out-of-bounds) alone. Giving it up wasn’t that hard, since I got a ridiculous amount of freshies as a lead guide with Grand Targhee Snowcats. So I spent my days off skiing in-bounds at the village with my friends Rob, Ernie, Rutter, George, Linda, Kevin, Kirk, Steve, and Rusty (thanks for all the lower faces, guys). I stopped chasing Steve Haas south into Rock Springs and beyond, and north into Granite Canyon, finishing the season without skiing a single Air Force Couloir. I was disappointed. Alive, but disappointed.
The next year, however, I returned to my old familiar ways. Steve and I skied north so many times that I lost track. We railed line after line, peeled out of blower chute after blower chute, skiing the snow as it fell and before it got pummeled by others.
I loved that year. I remember knowing we were pushing it, knowing that I had already forgotten the lesson from Kevin, Joel, and Sara. But the skiing was just too good for me to listen to those voices.
However, the proverbial writing was already on the wall. When we skied the Hourglass that year a snow slab released, slid about two feet, and stopped. Yeah—released and stopped. After that run I told Steve I wasn’t skiing the Hourglass anymore. What a freaky foreshadowing.
I still don’t know why I went with Steve that fateful day one year later. I’ve run it through my head too many times to count. I’d said “No, Steve,” every time since that near miss the previous year, and every time he responded in his typical, soulful way. He’d look at me, say nothing, and cruise quietly under the rope, disappearing into the fog—the perfect embodiment of the JH Air Force motto, “Swift, Silent, Deep.” Steve Haas will, in my opinion, forever be “The Man.”
Maybe I thought I owed him, ma ybe I thought I had let him go solo too many times. Maybe I had a feeling that my wing man was going to die and I didn’t want to walk away when he needed someone. Ask me in ten years, and I still won’t know.
But I do know what Steve was thinking that day. He assumed—incorrectly—that we would be skiing the few inches of fresh snow that had blown into the chute since the patrol ran their control routes. To him it was a standard Hourglass poach day.
What he didn’t know was that the patrol hadn’t bombed it that day. They’d had too much avalanche activity on their in-bounds routes to do the Hourglass (it’s in a permanently closed, out-of-bounds area, and, as the unpredictable Teton weather unfolded that day, the ski patrol modified its plans for snow control—standard protocol). If he’d known that the patrol hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have skied into what almost certainly would’ve been, and in fact was, a three-foot slab of death.
It wasn’t a bad call, as this whole town of “experts” will tell you. It was a misinformed call. If you play the game long enough, in-bounds or O.B., you might get some misinformation, even from your well-crafted, snow-study pit. If you can’t understand that, if you think your “expertise” has allowed you to ski unscathed, don’t go big in the Tetons.
We go only by the grace of God, not the grace of LIFE-LINK, Ortovox, or the ski patrol. The proof lies in the fact that Steve had a head wound and was buried four-feet deep, while I, standing a mere 30 feet from him when it ripped, didn’t get buried and had no injuries—except sore ribs that got hammered by my avy-beacon. Sometimes we’re good, sometimes we’re just lucky with well-timed blessings, and sometimes we pay the highest price for skiing radical terrain.
All of which is irrelevant in the eyes of the Jackson Hole Ski Corporation. We were in a permanently closed area, and they won’t condone our actions—a stance that hardly surprises me, nor would it surprise Steve. Neither of us cared. We just skied it, not out of disrespect for rules and regulations, but from a true desire to ski those lines.
It was our fault, no doubt. We shouldn’t have been in there. I’m sorry we created bad press for the Jackson Hole Ski Corporation, but that’s grossly overshadowed by the fact that my mentor and ski hero had to get pulled off the mountain by his best friends, dead.
The day Steve Haas was killed right in front of me, we both had lost our healthy fear of untamed mountains. I wish we hadn’t made that mistake. We’d still be ripping lines. But we did, and you could too.
Each year more and more talented skiers move to Jackson Hole and ski an ever increasing array of radical lines. I love it. They keep this place real. I just hope they get all the information before ripping those lines. And that they realize even with all their skill, courage, talent—and all that info—some days they’ll show up to that coveted line and find a nightmare-in-waiting.
And I hope none of you ever have to see what I saw, or live what Steve’s friends and family are now living. Skiing good snow is what makes a lot of us tick. It’s also what can make us stop ticking.
So please remember Steve if you knew him. If you didn’t, remember your Mom and Dad, and everybody else who’ll miss you terribly if you make the wrong call in these mountains.
The Jackson Hole Skier is a free visitors’ guide published annually and distributed at hundreds of locations throughout Jackson Hole, Cody, and other regional communities. To receive a copy in the mail, send $5 to Jackson Hole SKier, P.O. Box 1930, Jackson, Wyoming 83001.
Copyright 2004 by FPI (Focus Productions, Inc)., P.O. Box 1930, Jackson, Wyoming 83001. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publishers.
Publishers: Bob Woodall & Wade McKoy, dba Focus Productions, Inc. (FPI)
Editors: Mike Calabrese, Wade McKoy, Bob Woodall
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