DROPPING: Getting Lucky in the Chugach

How do you characterize the best run of your life? And what if it occurs in Alaska, with a helicopter as your mode of transport, on a 3,000-foot couloir filled with the immaculate powder, with good friends, under beautiful blue skies, surrounded by peaks that should exist only your dreams?

The first word that comes to mind—after awesome, crazy, insane, sick, unbelievable—requires some explanation.

The world is a crazy-ass place sometimes. Just look at the front page of the newspaper to remind yourself of how dark and dangerous and tragic it can be.

I try to make myself aware of these things, and when I ski I’m often bursting with gratitude that my path in life wound itself up in the web of going down mountains on snow—that I’m simply able to go downhill on two planks and sort of know what I’m doing. When so many others are stuck in battle, either for their jobs, their families or their lives, I get to go skiing. I don’t know how it happened that way. It just did.

So when my friends and I, led by Chugach Powder Guides’ Dave Marchi, skied top to bottom of Dirty Leprechaun—a beautiful line that required a belay entrance—I damn near wept with joy.

And what word would I choose to describe it? For me, it would have to be luck. Lucky to be able to be given the chance.

Then I thanked our guide.

“Don’t thank me,” Marchi said, a huge smile on his face as the helicopter descended on us for another pick up. “Thank the Chugach for creating something like that.”