David Trumble
Stories (1/0)
Idiots
Idiots Sacrifice Chapter 1 After the last low was pushed through, by a fast moving freight train of a high, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees and the wind blew out of the northwest with ice in its’ teeth. In Sacramento skiers following the weather forecasts were making plans for the next weekend and the ski areas of the Sierra Mountains were readying themselves for the weekend onslaught. On this day all of us around Lake Tahoe and along the Truckee River, all of us that lived along interstate eighty. Even those who lived west of Donner Summit climbed out of their warm beds and stared out of the frosted windows at a glorious morning of ice and snow. Outside, the freezing air attached itself to us and invaded our nostrils, eyes and ears. It numbed our feet and hands while it turned our breath into a vapor that flew off with the wind. The cold had been evaporating the moisture in the top layer of snow and by dawn it was light and fluffy, the kind of snow that, when groomed, squeaked under the skis. The local nucleus of skiers collected their gear and then converged on the numerous ski areas in and out of the basin. We were an ego rich group of hard- core skiers jumping further and higher, skiing steeper and faster. We lived anyway we could, some of us never knew where we would be sleeping but we knew where we would be skiing. The mid-week passes were our badges and symbolized our commitment to the sport. We were bums. Ski bums. For some it wasn’t a sport, it was a way of living. It was their life and they lived for days like this. The small mass of skiers were starving as they converged, hungry beyond words for light, cold powder. The sky was crystal clear and a brilliant blue that was a little darker than usual. The wind was a strong consistency that flapped the trailing ends of pack straps around our chests like small pennants. We wore tightly woven stocking caps that did little to protect our ears, and around our foreheads, like miners lanterns, we had fixed our goggles. Glove liners and gloves could not protect our hands and our feet froze in their tight, plastic ski boots. There was only one way to stay warm, constant motion; pole plants unweighting, carving, skating, bouncing down steep unpacked faces. Bounding and leaping off of projections covered in snow like logs, stumps, boulders and cornices helped pump the blood through our freezing bodies. On this cold winter day in January three friends met at their ski area of choice, Alpine Meadows. They skied south along the summit ridge, the highest point at Alpine, until they were above Round House. The bull wheel for Roundhouse was housed in a barn-like structure that rose eighty feet to the flat roof. The face of the ski run fell away from the eighty feet like a cliff. Above it, looking over the cornices, the four of them stood in silence, suffering the freezing wind and lost in their own thoughts as they gazed on the winding Alpine Meadows road as it worked its’ tortuous way to Highway eighty-nine and the Truckee River. While there, on the ridge, it was suggested that we should race down to the roof of Roundhouse, ski out the flat top of the roof and jump off. “I’ll do it,” said Mike, “but I won’t be first.”
By David Trumble3 years ago in Humans