ENDLESS FREEDOM by DAVID HUEBNER
(Unpublished version of the feature article published in Backcountry Magazine, 2001)

RIGHT NOW I SIT HUNCHED over a Mountain People's catalog trying to gauge the necessary order--another order for another long trip--listening to Charlie Parker wondering how many years it¹s going to be, how many times will I disappear on epic journeys, often one right after the other--only working six months of the year, I must be doing something right, but am I just a bum who'll waste away or worse yet, die young? Could I be here to change things, maybe stepping abit on the toes of fashion and ego in the mountains­of glory and fame--just living on the humble duct tape fringe­held together by crazy circumstance, blown into form by pure creative wisdom? No answer lies in the asphalt byways, the concrete pathways, or the weekend warrior reaching the utmost remote on a three day bolt from the trailhead; this world gone unnatural, our psychology lost in materialism, my mind rambles on--I look back to the catalog and continue writing.

TODD CALFEE AND HOLLY PEARSON, two perfectly strange individuals who enjoy moving slow and heavy in the backcountry--disdainful of short, lightning trips--were the catalyst behind the planning of our 35 day ski tour. Todd is the classic itinerant backcountry rat--unable to actually function in the real world, he plans these trips as a matter of survival, of living--I don¹t think he can really breath properly when he¹s not on a trip­and he's most definitely crazy. Holly is a fresh face, somehow managing to get herself wrongly involved with us through a chance meeting with a friend of ours at a hot spring in Long Valley--who's eternal good nature is thoroughly impressive when we smell up the tent and make rude jokes all around her--not to mention our defiant atheist attacks upon her religion. Yes, many of the Eastern Sierra females were taking up bets on just how well Holly would fare on this upcoming journey.

WHAT A FEELING TO SKI into the wilderness on Day One of 35--knowing how long you'll be out, and how much incredible skiing you'll get, how completely free you are, absolutely on the empty high plain of existence--it shakes me pretty good sometimes--I start to need, to crave these long trips--an absolute exit point from this false world so many are caught up in, into one of real life and time, unfathomable, boundless--I feel by leaving I can once again grab hold of my clear sight, and touch base with my true vision, returning fully enlightened and eager to continue my path.

DAYS 1-3 - Toe Lake,
TO THE LATE DAY ORANGE GLOW we glide into a cold camp in mid-winter snow at over 11,000 feet, surrounded by amazing looking open bowls. In the morning, after letting things warm up from the below zero overnight low, we skin up and head out for our first laps of the trip. Zen is all that is capable of describing it, as words words words just fail endlessly as they pour joyously from our mouths, leaving all three of us with simple sentences like "Perfect powder!", and "Amazing skiing!"-no tracks for miles around, no slides on any aspect, stable open powder that flies up around your ankles and knees, and then unexpectedly upon carving deeper and smooth and sweet, washes over your face, your shoulders, subsiding just in time for your next turn. Euphoria. After four laps of insanely aesthetic open powder skiing, we call it a day, and retire to camp, jazzed, cooking up dinner and sipping tea with these wonderful 1,000 foot lines towering above us. I ask Todd to say something for my video camera about why he was motivated to plan this huge ski tour, "It¹s an easy way to escape work..." Holly adds, "It was a good match with my recent unemployment status." The following day we ski into another canyon, ringed by nameless peaks, and find even bigger lines of perfect powder. It is a long ways up, climbing till we're tucked in beneath granite cliffs, adding a couple more switchbacks up into a nice little chute, the snow is perfect and we carve down one at a time, each of us pretending to be the best unpublished photographer in existence while the other two try to be the best unknown backcountry powder skiers--we're really just laughing and having a hell of a time. In the evening we climb back to camp under intense skies of purple, pink, orange and blue, surrounded by endless peaks, bowls, canyons, walls-- "The light is amazing!" Holly bubbles with energy--looking around, we see enough terrain for a lifetime or three--with the light fading we top out and begin the last descent down to Lake Italy and then back to camp--once again in flawless powder.

DAYS 6-9 -Royce Lakes,
THE FUN AND GAMES OF POWDER paradise end a few days later at Royce Lakes when we ski into a wind storm of epic proportions that is being following quickly by a snow storm of epic proportions and we're struggling to dig a hole deep enough to sink our three person tent into. "The Hole" as we start calling it, becomes our private nightmare, as the wind continues thrashing against our tent, and snow starts falling moderately out of a grey sky. We lie there all day, occasionally reaching out and supporting the side of the tent with an arm or body weight, during particularly heavy gusts. In the morning we awake to half of our tent being part of a snow drift, complete white out conditions, and a healthy layer of snow lying on the tent body blown in underneath the fly. The weather is so awful, with gusts easily reaching 50 mph, that none of us even wants to go outside, let alone bare skin to relieve ourselves. Nope--Todd, Holly and I decide--it's time for reabsorption. Todd describes it well when he says "Well, I had to shit a while ago, but my body is just realizing that's not gonna happen today...I mean, you could die." Every few hours one of us goes outside to dig out the vestibule, which is a tortuous job of blasting snow crystals, cold and wet, carried by the horrible gusts of wind. This is life right on a pass on the Sierra Crest during a serious winter storm. Visibility is a few feet. By the next morning it feels a bit too much like a sick routine as I pull my bag up and out of the way of the "drip cycle" as all the spindrift from the previous night's dumpage melts on the tent body and rains inside the tent. Todd rolls over and looks up at me, realizing the true depression of the situation, the toe of his bag already wet from the morning's dripping, there is nothing he can do but go back to sleep...or try anyway. Holly has the DryLoft bag and so fairs substantially better, but by this, the third day, with a pool of water beginning to develop under our sleeping pads nothing is safe from moisture, and no one safe from growing impatience. During the day, the weather finally breaks, and we pull things out to dry, revealing a floor nearly covered with a pool of water from too much of the drip and dry cycle that never quite dried anything. We look around at the peaks we haven't seen in days, and then begin inspecting the tent, which by now is looking about as sorry as a forlorn dog abandoned in East L.A. ghettos. We find several tears and rips requiring a sew job, passing corners of the fly into the tent for Holly, the expert seamstress to repair. The stake/guyline straps failed on the vestibule, a gigantic tear opened up in the fly on top of the tent, one of the poles got tweaked, and there were many small tears to be found in the fly and tent. If we had been in a three season tent, I¹m confident we would have had to pack up and move to some place lower, in the middle of the three day white out, or we would have died. "The Hole" is still spindrifting when we leave the next morning under clear breezy skies. A gigantic hole in the snowpack is the only remaining evidence of our three day struggle to keep from getting buried.

IONIAN BASIN - Days 12-18,
HOLLY COMES WHISTLING BY headed for Davis Lake, and I watch as she hits the slightest roll in the snowpack and goes cart wheeling forward into an exploding pile. With a full pack on, I know it is possibly going to be serious and shoot over to her. As I come to a stop she asks, "Where am I bleeding?" There's blood in the snow, and streaming down her hand and face. I look at the side of her face where a disgusting deep gash cuts across her cheek, and, "HOLY SHIT", goes through my mind, but "Oh uh yeah, let's see, we need some fabric," comes out of my mouth, trying to keep Holly from being worried I guess, and partly a natural reaction. I get her patched up and back on her skis, Holly's just laughing, as we joke about the explosion, the track in the snow drawing a bead on one ski to a good sized crater and then the blood spots. Those insuppressible good spirits--she doesn¹t care that there's a giant gash deep in her cheek and that she may have an ugly scar for life because of it, she just thinks it's so funny that she got hurt, she never gets hurt.

A COUPLE DAYS LATER SHE'S ripping turns for the video camera off the south summit of Mt. Goddard, down the northwest slope with a brilliant background of peaks, and clouds and blue sky--simplicity and beauty pouring from her wild soul, yelling and human happiness screaming through the empty air. Two days later we're on the north summit of Mt. Goddard, preparing to ski the classic east slope. The next day we summit Scylla. All day in the warm sun, we go skiing--such a simple act, a simple life. Holly's smile is never ending, laughter rings loud and far from our group wherever we travel. "I definitely don't take this for granted!" Holly says repeatedly, and Todd and I feel the same way, and we are also thinking, "This is how life should be." Endless emptiness, endless freedom of the kind not tied to language or scripture or politics, a species of freedom alive and breathing in the rocks of this mountain range, in the bleeding heart of this mother earth. At our next camp we're looking up at the Black Giant as six skiers come down the classic open face to Black Giant Col and Helen Lake in late afternoon radiant mango light. Fortunately there is another classic descent on the Black Giant they didn¹t know about. With perfect timing the next morning, we drop into the south couloir in velvet corn snow, effortless as anything I've ever skied. The surface is softened up just two inches, and remains perfect all the way down the couloir, slicing tele turns back and forth with utmost ease, fluidity, grace, and style--it is heavenly. We head south of the Black Giant into another basin and after a few more runs, I realize I left my jacket at a snack spot and have to return to get it, which puts me on the pass between Mt. Ithaca and the Black Giant at sunset--alone, watching the clouds burn up the sky, and the peaks, just standing, reaching fingers of the innermost self trying to grasp it all for just one moment­I let it go. The trip lights up pink in my eyes, several classic lines today, and the oh so many other great days before and what to come after? Such truth in this life of long trips spent living as we all should, playing harmony with the melody of nature. I focus on the raging sunset--the fire burning down the mountains, sending flames soaring through the heavens, my human form a standing stone, quiet on the pass.

DAYS 19-30 - Sierra Crest,
CROSSING OVER TO THE SIERRA CREST, we set up camp beneath Echo Col, and pick up our second resupply. From there we traverse the crest, linking basins on our way to Saddlerock Lake beneath Bishop Pass, where we spend a day doing laps in nice slush and extreme heat. The slush factor, at first fun, becomes threatening as we begin to notice above freezing overnight lows, hot afternoon highs (in the 50s and possibly 60s at 11,000 feet and higher) and start worrying about wet afternoon surface conditions leading to bigger, deeper large scale avalanches. We're cautious, and fortunately nothing comes of it as we move into Dusy Basin. From the top of another giant mellow bowl, Holly and I drop effortlessly fast as sparrows, two specks on the mid-morning horizon line of the Sierra, scrawling lines of individual expression, and Todd reads happily in the tent. While modern humanity around the world is bringing the end of primitive human nature, our trio steps lightly, and touches unconsciously the depth of spirit, the answer-less question of life, the divine knowledge of beginning-less existence. That night we lie in the tent and happen to tune in Pink Floyd, live in 1971, being broadcast by a Central Valley radio station. Surreal, an answer, a message, the energy seems to drip from the small AM/FM radio, the trip feeling golden and blessed in the full moon brightness of a snowy high basin.

OUR TRIP ENDS AS SUDDENLY as the snow conditions. We ski down off Cirque Pass on the south side of the Palisades, and run out of snow for a several hundred foot walk to the melting out floor of Palisade Lakes basin. At 10,600' we're put in the position to reevaluate heading toward hotter-than-Hades Cedar Grove--with no car waiting, shoe-less, penny-less, and the necessary hitch-hike around the Sierra back home. We decide that it is too much to risk walking over passes, down ski descents that may be melted out, or skiing conditions that may be sloppy beyond enjoyable, simply to put ourselves hundreds of miles from home. In other words: we chicken out and head for the fat food cache with nothing left to do but eat and ski. The remaining days are too warm for skiing, with afternoon thunderstorms, so we lie around idyllically at a lake on the south fork of Big Pine Creek, eating when we're hungry and sleeping when we're sleepy--reading inbetween--watching lake ice break up into fresh water and flow down the drainage to the thirsty Owens Valley far below. So quickly the trip is over. For Todd, Holly and I it feels like a weekender. For everyone else it sounds like eternity's rainbow--the underlying answer being to stay longer and longer, eventually, hopefully, growing into the rocks, living among the seeds, and skiing ghostly pure and trackless powder all winter long--the hermit, the freak, the absolutely crazy, insane spirit, clinging fiercely to the tender belly of nature herself. Purified, emptied, cleansed, we walk like buddhas into the land of selfness--once again swallowed whole by the reeling, unfurling shroud of the asphalt byway--the bane of all modern peoples.

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©Copyright David Huebner 2001