October 13/24 The Forever Pursuit

There are moments in time, and then there are experiences that happened inside a moment. Some of these moments pass by unnoticed, here and gone and never though about again. Others contain experiences of such importance they stay with us forever, frozen in crystal clarity

At only eighteen, I took a 10-day vacation to go skiing with a group of friends. The day of our

arrival was beautiful and sunny, and we immediately hit the slopes. Enjoying a leisurely gondola ride up the mountain soon changed to planning a huge jump from a cliff face.

"If we get snow" was my line to my friends as I was the daredevil of the group. It snowed for

eight days straight dumping almost 7ft of fresh powder and of course the last day was a beauty and time to put my money where my mouth was.

I was by definition an extreme skier that tore up hills in the Rockies and wore the latest North

Face gear Steep Tech just like Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Plake. This face, however, was much higher than anything I had ever jumped before.

Poaching a closed run due to the amount of snow and then jumping the fence to go out of bounds takes commitment and has a potential penalty of $10,000 for just being out of bounds.

After working my way through the heavy eastern powder, nothing like the champagne in the

west, I was exhausted standing atop the cliff with my tips hanging over the lip. At roughly eight stories up I could see a small crowd start to gather, waiting to witness my wipe out. A wipe out was very possible. I could hit the gondola cars with my pole. My friends took off and left me alone on the cliff top; they didn't want to know me in the event I didn't land it didn’t survive.

I began to second guess my decision, so much so I was prepared to take off my skis and hike

back up to the fence, which would have taken a couple hours in all that snow and cost me a lot of pride. Suddenly the silence was broken with "HEY YOU!!!!!". That was all the motivation I needed (not too mention didn't have 10K to donate to the red coat and white cross mafia.)

I pushed off and had perfect form throughout my descent, I sand into the snow drift at the base of the cliff and reappeared almost twenty feet further down, still on both feet and speeding towards the base of the mountain. A quick look over my shoulder just to say to myself "Holy fuck I

landed it"; found me staring at the same two ski patrols following my tracks right off the top the cliff. Seriously?

The adrenaline coursing through my veins on the way down and nailing that landing was

unbelievable, but now I it amped up past 11; that rush, that intensity, that electricity,.....that

feeling changed my entire life. The forever pursuit.

P.S. I got away

https://youtu.be/r1P0zz7dgeI?si=HSg8tfFKBFzod0Je Here is me reading this entry with additional context.