Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve I skied up Dry Canyon.  The girls were busy with church, and we weren't due at Grandma and Grandpa's until the morning.  I'd hiked up a little earlier to see how the light would be, but returned too late in the day.  It was only 3p, but the sun was gone down low and the only action in the canyon came from a couple of guys with semi-automatic rifles.  I figured I would ski longer than they could shoot, and I was right.  They were gone by 3:45p, but I slogged upward through 18 inches of sugary snow with a crust on top.

I chased the sun for about ninety minutes.  At every curve of the canyon I thought I might break out into its brilliance, but it was setting faster than I could ski.  I finally gave up and scrambled up the canyon wall.  Unfortunately, the thing that makes for a good ski boot makes for poor contact with the rough side of 5.4 off-width crack.  So, I stuck mostly to the brush filled gullies and wallowed up until I had, at least, a view of the setting sun.  I sat there and let the sweat dry and munched a few dry crackers.  I tried the camera, but knew that it would struggle with the division between dark and light.  It was time to give up and go down.

I glissaded off the ridge on a field of loose scree, my camera and tripod flopping.  I skidded down into the darkness of the canyon bottom and onto my skis.  It was around 5p—still, silent, and cold.  This is when time stands still—or I wish it would—alone, on skis, in the mountains, in the growing dusk.  I fell once, hard, when my skis hit a rock and I tried to save the camera.  Where the shooters had been there was now a small herd of deer and they watched as I stopped to look at the casings—a .22 and a .223.  In the dark, I put my skis in the car and drove home.