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Be A Bum
By Shane Kelbley
by David Huebner
One day a few years I ago I said "I quit." Ten years down the drain, medals, trophies, thousands of dollars worth of prize monies, all for nothing. I wasn't going to be a professional, I wasn't going to be a success. I was going to be a bum.
I didn't know how I was going to get around to being a bum, but I knew that was what I wanted. Everyone that I knew, or nearly, was telling me it was the biggest mistake of my life and I would regret it when I was older. That I was giving up a talent held by so few that it should be worth that on its own to continue playing. I was a cellist, spending 5 hours a week at least in orchestra rehearsals, a couple hours a day practicing, a cello lesson every week, and the time in between reading, writing, playing pool, trying to surf, and above all, skiing, or mostly, thinking about skiing. I was going to high school, eleventh grade, and doing homework was pretty low on the list of priorities. On an average year I would get in about 25 ski days.
And what a beautiful 25 days it would be, maxing 'em out from 9:00 to 4:30 a lot of the time at Kirkwood on family vacations. Pushing myself to catch air, ski powder, jump turn tight chutes and carve the hell outa groomers. I was judging my skiing against anyone and everyone else on the mountain...people who were getting in 60-80-over a 100 days a year. I didn't give myself the handicapp of living in L.A. I just went out and skied as hard as I could and eventually was able to keep up somewhat with the pace of the expert skiers on the mountain.
Those 25 days got me thinking. About "what if?" What if I just quit cello, moved to the mountains and skied a 100 days, then how good would I be? I figured then, that it was too much to leave behind, too much to store on the back shelf of memory. So, the summer of 1997 I got on a Greyhound bus from downtown L.A. with my skis, an ice axe, some clothes and a little stereo headed for the Promised Land.
It was June and the skiing was basically done in Rock Creek Canyon, but I headed out anyway for peaks and bowls I didn't even know, with no map and no idea except that "that bowl looks like a good ski..." After June, while working at Rock Creek Lodge, I started climbing, hiking, and wandering around. I started living in the mountains like no one can who's visiting from the city. My heart slowed a bit, my blood thickened to the altitude, and my ideas soared far beyond the constricted fantasy of simply being a ski bum. I was now a mountain bum. I took incredible joy in the fact that I owned crampons along with my ice axe and had actually used them and needed them several times. Some of the things I did that summer still amaze me, I just flew by the seat of my torn Banana Republic Chinos-my climbing pants, and the encouragement of fellow worker Todd Calfee. "Oh sure, you can climb that. If not just turn around."
Todd was a resident bum of the Lodge scene already, and had done more climbing and hiking in the Sierra than I'd ever even thought about. He'd grown up minutes away from me, and had even been beaten up by a gang not a half mile from my house. I showed up in Rock Creek Canyon, and he was the next door neighbor I'd never knew.
His words of encouragement carried me up three class four routes solo, one of them involving a 45 degree snow climb, as well as numerous other technically easier peaks. One afternoon, about 2:30, I ran off to the summit of the highest peak in the canyon, Mt. Morgan South at 13,748', summiting in just under 4 hours and running back in about two and a half. Round trip distance was over ten miles. with 4,300 feet of gain.
Too soon the summer ended and my last year of high school rose up to bring me down from my mountain high. So I spent one more winter watching storms rage in my rear view mirror, or out the kitchen window, or from the parking lot at school staring at Mt. Baldy. I studied even less, hardly touched the cello, and skied some 30 plus days. I hauled my heavy alpine gear to the summit of Mt. Baldy once, ditched school to ski a foot of desert powder at Snow Summit, and stood outside in rainstorms trying to find that soul of the mountains again. Trying to feel the rhythm-beat. Once school ended, I was gone. I sat through the "keep quiet or you'll be kicked out" graduation ceremony, then bowled crazily all night at the pat-down-search-secured Grad Nite before hopping in the car with my bro at eight a.m. and heading back to Rock Creek Canyon, and back to the mountain life for good.
This time El Nino had been good to us in California and my ski season stretched until July 8th, making a rare if not first descent of a 55 degree face six miles back in the canyon. After that I finished climbing all the major peaks in the canyon, several of them more than once, and plans were made to move to Telluride, Colorado for the winter.
That winter, first ski town winter of my life, brought me enlightenment, and flow. It was the year I abandoned my alpine gear and started tele-skiing. A pair of T2's, Riva II's, and some Karhu Outbounds, and I was finding flow in the bumps in the trees on a mountain so completely different from Kirkwood or any other place I'd ever skied. Everything was tight, the bumps were fast and sometimes pretty big, and always steep. The town was expensive, full of cool people, and happening like I'd never experienced before.
Thursday's at The Roma, or sitting around an afternoon pitcher at The Buck watching early season flakes blow down main street, or poaching The Peaks spa. I felt like I was actually living The Life I'd originally moved to the mountains to live. I had friends who were pro mogul skiers, competitors at the U.S. Extremes, and some rippin' telemark skiers.
One thing I didn't have all winter was money. $1,400 a month for a two bedroom, one bath pad half underground under a house two blocks from main street sucked half my monthly earnings. Even with three of us living there. We had cable but it never left the Weather Channel, and the sound was hardly ever on. The classic scene was us sitting around with the stereo on watching The Weekly Planner muted.
I worked as a driver for Telluride Sports, picking up skis that needed tuning from all their shops, driving them to the central tune shop, and then dropping them all back off freshly tuned in the morning before the lifts turned. I didn't have any scheduled days off, but I was free from 9-4:30 every day. I tuned skis at night a lot of the time as well to round out a solid 40+ hours a week.
Later in the season I picked up a part time second job stocking shelves at the Village Market, heart warmingly referred to as the Village Markup. Two nights a week I was up until at least 2 a.m. stocking shelves, then getting up at 6:30 to drop off skis, then skiing all day and tuning skis at night. It was tiring to say the least, but I skied 50 days straight to start the season, and left Telluride with 900 bucks, 103 ski days, and a solid start to my life as a bum.
Before I left, I saw a couple of great shows, which is another part of Telluride that goes off incredibly. Buddy Miles came through town, and so did the Original P-Funk, or Parliament Funkadelic. Seeing the sweat drip off a screaming Buddy Miles from twenty feet away, in a small underground bar(The Moon), will live on as one of the coolest moments of my life. "You all remember Jimi Hendrix?!?!!!", as the band starts into a jamming, long, soulful rendition of All Along The Watchtower. It was a scene that seemed to hearken back to the days of Kerouac, listening to Bird Parker in a small club or bar in New York, or some such jazz bop incarnation, where the music is the people, is the sound, is the rhythm of life, yes, the beat. And Telluride definitely has beat.
Todd and I left Telluride headed back to the Promised Land of the Eastern Sierra and Rock Creek Lodge once spring rolled around. We got there and it started dumping. 18 days straight we skied backcountry powder. Lines I'd looked at in the summer, or not even really seen were now ski runs and I was hooked. Skinning from my doorstep to lap up 5% always-untracked powder seemed truly magical. We'd saved this money all winter, this great fortune of 900 bucks each or so, to take the entire summer off and go on a 90 day exploration of the wild Sierra backcountry, staying off trails as much as possible, climbing peaks, and just plain hanging out.
I skied my last day the end of May humping a load in for the local guiding agency, and it was my 122 ski day of the season.
As it turned out, our big summer trip couldn't go off as Todd got a strange virus and had to head down south to L.A. to get tests and such for months before they figured it out. So I was on my own. We had all our food ready so I wasn't short on supply, just means of transportation, as I have no car to this day. Pretty much I spent the whole summer parasiting off the Lodge, helping out for food, once-a-week showers, and a place to sleep that was the size of a not-so-rich person's closet, and going places with workers(who had cars) on their days off.
A new guy Nate Einbinder, fresh escapee from San Diego looking for a place to climb mountains, as well as year round employee Ted Pauly, who'd ditched the Palo Alto grocery store produce-guy life a year ago for the mountain style, and another new guy Greg Forrest, a good climber from the Southeast, and I, did a lot of scrambling and camping and general bumming all summer. Greg and I would go climbing in the Owens Gorge or at Iris Slab; or ponder an alpine route to do like Bear Creek Spire's North Arete(III, 5.8). Ted, Nate and I would go searching for the dharma on a nearly 12,000 foot peak within a couple hours hike from the lodge, or go on dozens of other wild adventures.
End of June I spent 7 days illegally camped in Yosemite Valley, hiking and bouldering, before hitch-hiking home through Tuolumne, where I spent a couple nights and hiked up a couple peaks. Several times Ted and I, or Nate and I, or the three of us, camped at Mono Lake, eating at the gourmet Mobile Station(by far the greatest gas station on Earth). A couple times we hiked Dana and traversed to the Dana Plateau via an awesome short third class ridge. I spent 15 days solo in Dusy Basin in August, and Nate visited for a jaunt up Mt. Aggasiz.
One afternoon Nate and I went out for a short scramble up a nearby peak after he was off from work. We got to the base and stared up at the little headwall of rock that sits south from the summit off a ridgeline. I'd climbed some fun, interesting lines up the headwall in the past and was eager to try a new one that might be a bit harder, so we headed for the more vertical cleaner side of the headwall and followed a ledge/ramp system that started third class and progressed to fourth class with a brief spot of fifth as we traversed with nothing but air and eternal rest one slip away.
We had no idea whether the line would go as we traversed toward the edge of the headwall, and down climbing was a horrible thought. We rounded the exposed corner and were astounded with what we saw. A perfect fifth class dihedral for forty feet to the summit ridge. Bomber holds, stems, hand jams, all 500 feet above Ruby Lake, shining between our feet, and the line went. Not only did it go but it was perfect, beautiful climbing; the best unroped line I'd ever climbed. Nate's first fifth class free solo ever.
Towards the end of the summer, Ted, Greg and I got an idea to do two fourteeners in two different mountain ranges in two days. Ted had never tied into a rope or worn rocks shoes, but we decided to do the Swiss Arete(III, 5.7) on Mt. Sill (14,162'), and then hike the road to the top of White Mountain(14,242') the next day.
With loaded packs, and no stove, just some bagels, cheese and a couple massive salami sticks we hiked into the Palisades all the way to Gayley camp, starting in the mid afternoon. The next day we cruised up the Swiss with Greg and I switching leads in our mountaineering boots, and Ted flying right along with us. Ted soloed with ease the lower fourth class sections of the arete and led us down the fourth class down climb descending the north couloir route. As Greg and I looked over the edge of the down climb, staring at snow covered icy ledges and rocks, we very seriously considered rappelling. Ted just started on down and yelled up, "Really it's not bad." Greg looked at me, "Ted's doin' some crazy shit."
We had run the arete out in three pitches. We hurried back to camp in a slight thundersnow storm, ate some more salami and bagels, packed up, and jammed out, getting to the cars about 9:30 pm. We ate at Denny's and decided to stay a night in Bishop at the cheapest dive in town, The Sierra Gateway, where for 40 bucks we scored a room with three queen sized beds lined up side by side. We felt like we were pretty much swingers, "You're so money baby!", and also very ready for "Fear and Loathing in Bishop". All in all the room was ok, except that the showerhead was putting out water similar in force to a sandblaster.
The next day, after Big Bubba's Breakfast, and returning rented gear to Wilson's Eastside Sports, we headed for White Mountain. It's a road to the top, but gated seven miles from the summit. My feet were still sore from hiking so much distance in my mountaineering boots the previous day, that I decided to hike in sandals. We summited 49 hours after the adventure began in the Palisades, and the summit view is the best I have ever seen. The three of us just layed out on the roof of the building on the summit and soaked in some rays with a couple hundred miles of the Sierra Nevada on one side, the Eureka Valley Sand Dunes behind us, and wild western Nevada on the otherside, with the White's continuing on in front of us.
After that, summer was pretty much over for me except for a few portering gigs and a terrible guiding experience on the Mt. Whitney trail which I won't even go into as it is far too hilarious and detailed to fit into this piece. I spent some time in L.A., then flew to New York on the last buck I had for a couple weeks to visit my brother and a good friend I hadn't seen in years. Manhatten is a busy place; wild, crazy and expensive. My friend Jimmy lives large with a pad in mid-town while my brother Eric commutes from "North of Harlem" on the A train. I didn't get much sleep while I was there...it seemed I was always getting back from a loud club or bar about four a.m. thoroughly pleased with the great music I'd seen and heard, and then waking about nine a.m. and doing it again.
I was eating at the fanciest restaurants with Jimmy, and seeing the sights, sounds, and people of midtown and downtown Manhatten. Cafe Wha? was a regular occurence for us. We went up on the World Trade Center. Ate at Jekyl and Hyde's, Mars, Carnegie Deli, played laser tag in Time's Square, all glitzy and yuppie, seemingly different from Kerouac beat days.
My wallet would enjoy some respite hanging with my successful struggling-artist-ripping-pianist-occasional-skiing brother, and we would see the slightly cheaper side of life in Manhatten.
Walking in the park near his pad on the tip of Manhatten, or enjoying a round of drinks with him and a bunch of his Julliard School friends before partying back at the pad. Both he and his girlfriend Bridgette have big nice apartments, and we enjoyed a few quiet nights at home. One night though, Eric, Bridgette, and I headed down to the East Village and saw this wild African polyrhythmic drummer Milford Graves do a solo show in a cramped bar.
Somehow the massive lines outside fit into this small live music joint, and standing tightly, we watched Graves play a different rhythm with each hand, employing quite an array of instruments, his entire body covered with bells and hollering in what sounded like an indigenous language, which was simply as he explained, his own creative outburst. The sound felt like waves washing over our heads, overwhelming in its intensity, as we all tried to find a beat in the sound and only occaisionally could we latch on to what Graves was himself hearing within it all. After Graves walked out, splitting the sea of us onlookers like Moses, we headed to a favorite Saki bar that was down below street level, and had low ceilings and low lighting and drank a bottle of 32 dollar Saki ("Mu" it was called) between the three of us, and then made the long ride home on the A train.
The trip to New York was fast forward readjustment to the big city for me. It'd been over a year since I'd been in a city with over 4,000 people. My mom had to buy me a couple sets of "city" clothes before I even left L.A., because I didn't have anything except mountain bum polypro and dirty t-shirts to wear. Two weeks in the Big Apple was enough at that point, as the crush and grind of it all, as well as my empty, completely wasted wallet had me gearing to return home, sort slides, and sleep.
I spent the rest of my time in L.A. giving some family and friends slide shows of the summer, and then headed back to Rock Creek Lodge for the winter.
This time winter was late, and purely backcountry. About mid January I got my first turns, and by the end of the month I had my first face shot day "Across The Road" as we call it, on the steep Grandfather Gully and the M Gully. By the first week of February, I started a tradition of Dawn Patrols, which I later found was an idea/term Alex Lowe had coined in the Wasatch working for Black Diamond. Two mornings in a row at 11,000 feet, I skied perfect soft powder in north facing treed gullies pitched about 35 degrees.
We call it "The Shoulder" and it possess some of the best powder skiing terrain I've ever seen. My second dawn patrol up there I headed above The Shoulder to the dividing ridge which looks over into the rest of the canyon. The sun was just rising, and standing on this incredible ridgeline at about 11,300 feet, with a thousand feet of perfect powder waiting beneath my ski tips, I realized once again that this place, the back of beyond, the backcountry, this lifestyle, everything, is the only way to live. I was in awe to say the least.
Before that morning, thoughts had run through my head about going somewhere else the next winter to grab some serious powder days, but I realized that right before me was better powder and terrain than most ever get. The only track on the slope was mine hogging the main gully from the morning before. I dropped into the little open bowl at my feet, swinging twenty or so perfect turns in beautiful shin deep powder to the top of a new gully, flew down it in tight fast tele turns, caught a sweet seven foot air mid run, stuck it clean, and flowed through perfect turns to the bench below and back to the lodge. The clock, when I got back, read 8:15 a.m. I walked around waiting tables in the restaurant with a fresh powder smile on my face as everyone else was just getting up.
The next dawn patrol was the most adventurous. I summited a nearby nearly 12,000 foot peak and skied wind buffed powder for 2,000 vertical feet off its north side. I got back to the lodge about 9:15 a.m.
We skied "The Shoulder" several times during the season, most often before breakfast, and always in knee to waist to even face shot deep powder. We always got first tracks.
One particular dawn patrol, Todd and I headed up Across the Road, and then down canyon to try to find a gully we'd been thinking about skiing. It was grey, somewhat stormy, and the snow on the sunny exposures was crusty and firm. We reached our desired gully with its prominent cornice and north aspect, and snowflakes were blowing heavily out of the southwest. After poking around the cornice for a while, and with beacon on, I dropped in.
The line was stable and as I got further into it the snow got deeper and deeper till it was waist deep and I was flying. I pulled up and out of the way but still within view of Todd and watched him get plastered with waist deep powder. We were in ecstasy. We finished the run out to the road, and skinned back to the lodge as the storm intensified. By mid day it was insane dumpage. Some six inches of new were on the ground at the lodge and it was snowing like crazy.
Nate was visiting as part of his continual road tripping around California and it was his first day on tele gear. We broke trail up "Across the Road" and the snow was easily a foot deep and dry to the bone. We couldn't believe it. What had been crust hours earlier was now deep powder. Up beyond the top of the slope we continued to a run called "Marilyn's" for its short wide open slope, good for somewhat beginners like Nate. Still not really anticipating what was to come, Todd dropped in to show Nate what to do. Just alpine turns and Todd was waist deep in powder. We started to freak out.
I pushed off and it was insane. Nate made it down and was lovin' life. We came to the top of Across the Road and each picked a line. Absolute powder hogging insanity followed as we went choking our way down the run in overhead fluff. We got to the skin track and it was snowing a couple inches an hour. Another run and more of the same. Another, and Another. No one else for miles.
The next day on the radio we heard that Mammoth Mountain received six inches. The lodge received 12, and "Across the Road" picked up over a foot and a half. The storm lasted about ten hours.
"Man, your lifestyle is so much different from anyone else's. It's like you live in a different world up here." Nate told me the next day. No rent, no grocery bills, no lift lines. Just us bums in our shacks, skiing backcountry powder all winter.
In the spring I got to ski with a local legend Marty Hornick and a friend of his, Adrian. Marty skis on an old pair of Karhu Extremes, old Asolo three pin bindings, and new Alico two buckle leather boots with a bit of plastic in the cuff. We climbed up from the lodge to ski a line on the Wheeler Crest that Marty calls "The Silver Saddle". An obvious line from Bishop, it starts high on the southern end of the crest and runs down to the Pine Creek road. We skied it at the beginning of April and got 4,500 feet of skiing in perfect corn.
"We were kind of hoping you'd be a hard core right wing republican so we could mess with you all day." Marty says as we're starting out. "Yeah this lawyer friend we ski with, he's that way and we fuck with him all the time," Adrian says, "what really gets him is when we tell him about the time Marty slept with a man." That gets laughs all around, good ol' ski bums, still liberal and dirty after all these years.
We climbed up a drainage that's seen one track all year and it was just layed down the previous week by a local die hard named Will. We kicked steps steeply out of the drainage to a col on the crest. Traversing from the col we got to the top of a south facing slope that leads to a massive saddle which sends the line more northerly and down into a broad gully. The saddle is truly silver in beauty and aesthetic appeal, and the views are tremendous.
Perfect corn turns with Bishop far below to the left, Mt. Tom straight ahead, and the High Sierra Crest running far as the eye could see to the right. In simpler terms: Nirvana. Marty was flying down the line nearly too fast for my trigger finger. I was laying down massive carving tele turns, just sleeping at the wheel and riding the arc of my skis. Adrian was popping humorous jokes at every stop in his dry serious way.
I was saying at one point how much I like taking photos and such, and Adrian chimed in with, "I prefer sketching, actually," with a serious tone, "I mean, sometimes it takes a while and you know, people have to be kind of patient, but I feel it's really the best." The guy is a crack up. He also suggested filming an extreme saucer descent of the line for the Best of Banff Mountain Films. "Yeah, put that in the Best of Banff , that's the kind of shit we want to see!"
A thousand foot hike out and cold beers finished the day. A classic line. No one else for miles.
Later in the month I headed into a nearby drainage looking for a cool chute I'd seen on an earlier ski tour, and found it, climbed it to the summit of the peak, signed the register which dated back to the first ascent of the peak in the '40s, and noticed no one had signed in during any ski season. This reminded me of a line I'd read in a magazine not too long before, that most of the great routes in America had been skied already. Yeah, right. I skied right from the summit, down a steep face, and into the rock walled, 25 foot wide, 40-50 degree chute that banked back and forth for a thousand feet and out into a wide open slush bowl. The "Porch Couloir" as I've named it, is a beauty, but of course, now that it's been skied, all the great chutes are done so you might as well stay at home, prop your feet up with a Budweiser, and watch football.
After that I headed off to carry heavy loads for the local guiding agency on a six day ski tour starting at North Lake, going through the back of beyond, and skiing off the summits of Mt. Goddard, Scylla, and Mt. Solomons before coming out at Lake Sabrina through a terrible 1,200 foot bushwack down a creek. It was six days spent skiing some of the most dramatic terrain in the world.
I sit here now, mid-May, drinking a beer in my shack in the woods at Rock Creek, after playing hacky sack to Led Zeppelin, and covering a section of the creek from dry rock to dry rock right down the middle, and I think "how could this be the biggest mistake of my life?" I decide it can't.
I think there are too many sad, stressed, depressed people out there crankin' through the traffic on the 405, or the Bay Bridge, or running to catch the A train into mid town in time; checking their watches every five minutes and it's always five minutes later and they're going to be another five minutes late if they don't hurry things up...etc...
For me, that lifestyle is hell. Pure hell. My hair would fall out, my stomach would ulcer, and I'd be on prozac seeing a therapist once a week. Well...I guess that actually is Life for some people? I gave up a great talent, a great ability for playing the cello. But now, instead of suffering through city life, I can do exactly what I want, when I want, and play my cello for fun, not money, not recitals. Now I can live for me. Now I can ski, every single day of the winter; climb and hike every single day of the summer.
It seems nearly everything in the stereotypical society that most of the population lives in is simply controlled by, or a product of, the pursuit of money. This article in fact falls under that description. But why can't the world operate simply out of people's passion? A tree is worth so much that we can't simply let it live for its beauty? Is beauty not itself worth something? It seems the world buys, the world builds, and the world reproduces more because it can, rather than because it should or wants to.
The bum life, the pure way, can also be very easily thrown into a stereotypical graveyard in which we all write the same words, preach the same sermon, and try to attain the same ideal. Of course, once you live in the mountains, you realize the bum can never be summarized, can never be grasped. It Is The Life, it Is The Dream, but each bum does things differently, each lives as a bum for a different reason, each will choose differently how their future unfolds. People are the same in the city, but made completely different by one simple factor: Money. Bums don't do a damn thing in the pursuit of money. Everything we do is our passion.
As Kerouac so wonderfully stated, "--Art is short, Life is long--". Be a bum, be free, be wild, crazy.
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by David HuebnerOne day a few years I ago I said "I quit." Ten years down the drain, medals, trophies, thousands of dollars worth of prize monies, all for nothing. I wasn't going to be a professional, I wasn't going to be a success. I was going to be a bum.
I didn't know how I was going to get around to being a bum, but I knew that was what I wanted. Everyone that I knew, or nearly, was telling me it was the biggest mistake of my life and I would regret it when I was older. That I was giving up a talent held by so few that it should be worth that on its own to continue playing. I was a cellist, spending 5 hours a week at least in orchestra rehearsals, a couple hours a day practicing, a cello lesson every week, and the time in between reading, writing, playing pool, trying to surf, and above all, skiing, or mostly, thinking about skiing. I was going to high school, eleventh grade, and doing homework was pretty low on the list of priorities. On an average year I would get in about 25 ski days.
And what a beautiful 25 days it would be, maxing 'em out from 9:00 to 4:30 a lot of the time at Kirkwood on family vacations. Pushing myself to catch air, ski powder, jump turn tight chutes and carve the hell outa groomers. I was judging my skiing against anyone and everyone else on the mountain...people who were getting in 60-80-over a 100 days a year. I didn't give myself the handicapp of living in L.A. I just went out and skied as hard as I could and eventually was able to keep up somewhat with the pace of the expert skiers on the mountain.
Those 25 days got me thinking. About "what if?" What if I just quit cello, moved to the mountains and skied a 100 days, then how good would I be? I figured then, that it was too much to leave behind, too much to store on the back shelf of memory. So, the summer of 1997 I got on a Greyhound bus from downtown L.A. with my skis, an ice axe, some clothes and a little stereo headed for the Promised Land.
It was June and the skiing was basically done in Rock Creek Canyon, but I headed out anyway for peaks and bowls I didn't even know, with no map and no idea except that "that bowl looks like a good ski..." After June, while working at Rock Creek Lodge, I started climbing, hiking, and wandering around. I started living in the mountains like no one can who's visiting from the city. My heart slowed a bit, my blood thickened to the altitude, and my ideas soared far beyond the constricted fantasy of simply being a ski bum. I was now a mountain bum. I took incredible joy in the fact that I owned crampons along with my ice axe and had actually used them and needed them several times. Some of the things I did that summer still amaze me, I just flew by the seat of my torn Banana Republic Chinos-my climbing pants, and the encouragement of fellow worker Todd Calfee. "Oh sure, you can climb that. If not just turn around."
Todd was a resident bum of the Lodge scene already, and had done more climbing and hiking in the Sierra than I'd ever even thought about. He'd grown up minutes away from me, and had even been beaten up by a gang not a half mile from my house. I showed up in Rock Creek Canyon, and he was the next door neighbor I'd never knew.
His words of encouragement carried me up three class four routes solo, one of them involving a 45 degree snow climb, as well as numerous other technically easier peaks. One afternoon, about 2:30, I ran off to the summit of the highest peak in the canyon, Mt. Morgan South at 13,748', summiting in just under 4 hours and running back in about two and a half. Round trip distance was over ten miles. with 4,300 feet of gain.
Too soon the summer ended and my last year of high school rose up to bring me down from my mountain high. So I spent one more winter watching storms rage in my rear view mirror, or out the kitchen window, or from the parking lot at school staring at Mt. Baldy. I studied even less, hardly touched the cello, and skied some 30 plus days. I hauled my heavy alpine gear to the summit of Mt. Baldy once, ditched school to ski a foot of desert powder at Snow Summit, and stood outside in rainstorms trying to find that soul of the mountains again. Trying to feel the rhythm-beat. Once school ended, I was gone. I sat through the "keep quiet or you'll be kicked out" graduation ceremony, then bowled crazily all night at the pat-down-search-secured Grad Nite before hopping in the car with my bro at eight a.m. and heading back to Rock Creek Canyon, and back to the mountain life for good.
This time El Nino had been good to us in California and my ski season stretched until July 8th, making a rare if not first descent of a 55 degree face six miles back in the canyon. After that I finished climbing all the major peaks in the canyon, several of them more than once, and plans were made to move to Telluride, Colorado for the winter.
That winter, first ski town winter of my life, brought me enlightenment, and flow. It was the year I abandoned my alpine gear and started tele-skiing. A pair of T2's, Riva II's, and some Karhu Outbounds, and I was finding flow in the bumps in the trees on a mountain so completely different from Kirkwood or any other place I'd ever skied. Everything was tight, the bumps were fast and sometimes pretty big, and always steep. The town was expensive, full of cool people, and happening like I'd never experienced before.
Thursday's at The Roma, or sitting around an afternoon pitcher at The Buck watching early season flakes blow down main street, or poaching The Peaks spa. I felt like I was actually living The Life I'd originally moved to the mountains to live. I had friends who were pro mogul skiers, competitors at the U.S. Extremes, and some rippin' telemark skiers.
One thing I didn't have all winter was money. $1,400 a month for a two bedroom, one bath pad half underground under a house two blocks from main street sucked half my monthly earnings. Even with three of us living there. We had cable but it never left the Weather Channel, and the sound was hardly ever on. The classic scene was us sitting around with the stereo on watching The Weekly Planner muted.
I worked as a driver for Telluride Sports, picking up skis that needed tuning from all their shops, driving them to the central tune shop, and then dropping them all back off freshly tuned in the morning before the lifts turned. I didn't have any scheduled days off, but I was free from 9-4:30 every day. I tuned skis at night a lot of the time as well to round out a solid 40+ hours a week.
Later in the season I picked up a part time second job stocking shelves at the Village Market, heart warmingly referred to as the Village Markup. Two nights a week I was up until at least 2 a.m. stocking shelves, then getting up at 6:30 to drop off skis, then skiing all day and tuning skis at night. It was tiring to say the least, but I skied 50 days straight to start the season, and left Telluride with 900 bucks, 103 ski days, and a solid start to my life as a bum.
Before I left, I saw a couple of great shows, which is another part of Telluride that goes off incredibly. Buddy Miles came through town, and so did the Original P-Funk, or Parliament Funkadelic. Seeing the sweat drip off a screaming Buddy Miles from twenty feet away, in a small underground bar(The Moon), will live on as one of the coolest moments of my life. "You all remember Jimi Hendrix?!?!!!", as the band starts into a jamming, long, soulful rendition of All Along The Watchtower. It was a scene that seemed to hearken back to the days of Kerouac, listening to Bird Parker in a small club or bar in New York, or some such jazz bop incarnation, where the music is the people, is the sound, is the rhythm of life, yes, the beat. And Telluride definitely has beat.
Todd and I left Telluride headed back to the Promised Land of the Eastern Sierra and Rock Creek Lodge once spring rolled around. We got there and it started dumping. 18 days straight we skied backcountry powder. Lines I'd looked at in the summer, or not even really seen were now ski runs and I was hooked. Skinning from my doorstep to lap up 5% always-untracked powder seemed truly magical. We'd saved this money all winter, this great fortune of 900 bucks each or so, to take the entire summer off and go on a 90 day exploration of the wild Sierra backcountry, staying off trails as much as possible, climbing peaks, and just plain hanging out.
I skied my last day the end of May humping a load in for the local guiding agency, and it was my 122 ski day of the season.
As it turned out, our big summer trip couldn't go off as Todd got a strange virus and had to head down south to L.A. to get tests and such for months before they figured it out. So I was on my own. We had all our food ready so I wasn't short on supply, just means of transportation, as I have no car to this day. Pretty much I spent the whole summer parasiting off the Lodge, helping out for food, once-a-week showers, and a place to sleep that was the size of a not-so-rich person's closet, and going places with workers(who had cars) on their days off.
A new guy Nate Einbinder, fresh escapee from San Diego looking for a place to climb mountains, as well as year round employee Ted Pauly, who'd ditched the Palo Alto grocery store produce-guy life a year ago for the mountain style, and another new guy Greg Forrest, a good climber from the Southeast, and I, did a lot of scrambling and camping and general bumming all summer. Greg and I would go climbing in the Owens Gorge or at Iris Slab; or ponder an alpine route to do like Bear Creek Spire's North Arete(III, 5.8). Ted, Nate and I would go searching for the dharma on a nearly 12,000 foot peak within a couple hours hike from the lodge, or go on dozens of other wild adventures.
End of June I spent 7 days illegally camped in Yosemite Valley, hiking and bouldering, before hitch-hiking home through Tuolumne, where I spent a couple nights and hiked up a couple peaks. Several times Ted and I, or Nate and I, or the three of us, camped at Mono Lake, eating at the gourmet Mobile Station(by far the greatest gas station on Earth). A couple times we hiked Dana and traversed to the Dana Plateau via an awesome short third class ridge. I spent 15 days solo in Dusy Basin in August, and Nate visited for a jaunt up Mt. Aggasiz.
One afternoon Nate and I went out for a short scramble up a nearby peak after he was off from work. We got to the base and stared up at the little headwall of rock that sits south from the summit off a ridgeline. I'd climbed some fun, interesting lines up the headwall in the past and was eager to try a new one that might be a bit harder, so we headed for the more vertical cleaner side of the headwall and followed a ledge/ramp system that started third class and progressed to fourth class with a brief spot of fifth as we traversed with nothing but air and eternal rest one slip away.
We had no idea whether the line would go as we traversed toward the edge of the headwall, and down climbing was a horrible thought. We rounded the exposed corner and were astounded with what we saw. A perfect fifth class dihedral for forty feet to the summit ridge. Bomber holds, stems, hand jams, all 500 feet above Ruby Lake, shining between our feet, and the line went. Not only did it go but it was perfect, beautiful climbing; the best unroped line I'd ever climbed. Nate's first fifth class free solo ever.
Towards the end of the summer, Ted, Greg and I got an idea to do two fourteeners in two different mountain ranges in two days. Ted had never tied into a rope or worn rocks shoes, but we decided to do the Swiss Arete(III, 5.7) on Mt. Sill (14,162'), and then hike the road to the top of White Mountain(14,242') the next day.
With loaded packs, and no stove, just some bagels, cheese and a couple massive salami sticks we hiked into the Palisades all the way to Gayley camp, starting in the mid afternoon. The next day we cruised up the Swiss with Greg and I switching leads in our mountaineering boots, and Ted flying right along with us. Ted soloed with ease the lower fourth class sections of the arete and led us down the fourth class down climb descending the north couloir route. As Greg and I looked over the edge of the down climb, staring at snow covered icy ledges and rocks, we very seriously considered rappelling. Ted just started on down and yelled up, "Really it's not bad." Greg looked at me, "Ted's doin' some crazy shit."
We had run the arete out in three pitches. We hurried back to camp in a slight thundersnow storm, ate some more salami and bagels, packed up, and jammed out, getting to the cars about 9:30 pm. We ate at Denny's and decided to stay a night in Bishop at the cheapest dive in town, The Sierra Gateway, where for 40 bucks we scored a room with three queen sized beds lined up side by side. We felt like we were pretty much swingers, "You're so money baby!", and also very ready for "Fear and Loathing in Bishop". All in all the room was ok, except that the showerhead was putting out water similar in force to a sandblaster.
The next day, after Big Bubba's Breakfast, and returning rented gear to Wilson's Eastside Sports, we headed for White Mountain. It's a road to the top, but gated seven miles from the summit. My feet were still sore from hiking so much distance in my mountaineering boots the previous day, that I decided to hike in sandals. We summited 49 hours after the adventure began in the Palisades, and the summit view is the best I have ever seen. The three of us just layed out on the roof of the building on the summit and soaked in some rays with a couple hundred miles of the Sierra Nevada on one side, the Eureka Valley Sand Dunes behind us, and wild western Nevada on the otherside, with the White's continuing on in front of us.
After that, summer was pretty much over for me except for a few portering gigs and a terrible guiding experience on the Mt. Whitney trail which I won't even go into as it is far too hilarious and detailed to fit into this piece. I spent some time in L.A., then flew to New York on the last buck I had for a couple weeks to visit my brother and a good friend I hadn't seen in years. Manhatten is a busy place; wild, crazy and expensive. My friend Jimmy lives large with a pad in mid-town while my brother Eric commutes from "North of Harlem" on the A train. I didn't get much sleep while I was there...it seemed I was always getting back from a loud club or bar about four a.m. thoroughly pleased with the great music I'd seen and heard, and then waking about nine a.m. and doing it again.
I was eating at the fanciest restaurants with Jimmy, and seeing the sights, sounds, and people of midtown and downtown Manhatten. Cafe Wha? was a regular occurence for us. We went up on the World Trade Center. Ate at Jekyl and Hyde's, Mars, Carnegie Deli, played laser tag in Time's Square, all glitzy and yuppie, seemingly different from Kerouac beat days.
My wallet would enjoy some respite hanging with my successful struggling-artist-ripping-pianist-occasional-skiing brother, and we would see the slightly cheaper side of life in Manhatten.
Walking in the park near his pad on the tip of Manhatten, or enjoying a round of drinks with him and a bunch of his Julliard School friends before partying back at the pad. Both he and his girlfriend Bridgette have big nice apartments, and we enjoyed a few quiet nights at home. One night though, Eric, Bridgette, and I headed down to the East Village and saw this wild African polyrhythmic drummer Milford Graves do a solo show in a cramped bar.
Somehow the massive lines outside fit into this small live music joint, and standing tightly, we watched Graves play a different rhythm with each hand, employing quite an array of instruments, his entire body covered with bells and hollering in what sounded like an indigenous language, which was simply as he explained, his own creative outburst. The sound felt like waves washing over our heads, overwhelming in its intensity, as we all tried to find a beat in the sound and only occaisionally could we latch on to what Graves was himself hearing within it all. After Graves walked out, splitting the sea of us onlookers like Moses, we headed to a favorite Saki bar that was down below street level, and had low ceilings and low lighting and drank a bottle of 32 dollar Saki ("Mu" it was called) between the three of us, and then made the long ride home on the A train.
The trip to New York was fast forward readjustment to the big city for me. It'd been over a year since I'd been in a city with over 4,000 people. My mom had to buy me a couple sets of "city" clothes before I even left L.A., because I didn't have anything except mountain bum polypro and dirty t-shirts to wear. Two weeks in the Big Apple was enough at that point, as the crush and grind of it all, as well as my empty, completely wasted wallet had me gearing to return home, sort slides, and sleep.
I spent the rest of my time in L.A. giving some family and friends slide shows of the summer, and then headed back to Rock Creek Lodge for the winter.
This time winter was late, and purely backcountry. About mid January I got my first turns, and by the end of the month I had my first face shot day "Across The Road" as we call it, on the steep Grandfather Gully and the M Gully. By the first week of February, I started a tradition of Dawn Patrols, which I later found was an idea/term Alex Lowe had coined in the Wasatch working for Black Diamond. Two mornings in a row at 11,000 feet, I skied perfect soft powder in north facing treed gullies pitched about 35 degrees.
We call it "The Shoulder" and it possess some of the best powder skiing terrain I've ever seen. My second dawn patrol up there I headed above The Shoulder to the dividing ridge which looks over into the rest of the canyon. The sun was just rising, and standing on this incredible ridgeline at about 11,300 feet, with a thousand feet of perfect powder waiting beneath my ski tips, I realized once again that this place, the back of beyond, the backcountry, this lifestyle, everything, is the only way to live. I was in awe to say the least.
Before that morning, thoughts had run through my head about going somewhere else the next winter to grab some serious powder days, but I realized that right before me was better powder and terrain than most ever get. The only track on the slope was mine hogging the main gully from the morning before. I dropped into the little open bowl at my feet, swinging twenty or so perfect turns in beautiful shin deep powder to the top of a new gully, flew down it in tight fast tele turns, caught a sweet seven foot air mid run, stuck it clean, and flowed through perfect turns to the bench below and back to the lodge. The clock, when I got back, read 8:15 a.m. I walked around waiting tables in the restaurant with a fresh powder smile on my face as everyone else was just getting up.
The next dawn patrol was the most adventurous. I summited a nearby nearly 12,000 foot peak and skied wind buffed powder for 2,000 vertical feet off its north side. I got back to the lodge about 9:15 a.m.
We skied "The Shoulder" several times during the season, most often before breakfast, and always in knee to waist to even face shot deep powder. We always got first tracks.
One particular dawn patrol, Todd and I headed up Across the Road, and then down canyon to try to find a gully we'd been thinking about skiing. It was grey, somewhat stormy, and the snow on the sunny exposures was crusty and firm. We reached our desired gully with its prominent cornice and north aspect, and snowflakes were blowing heavily out of the southwest. After poking around the cornice for a while, and with beacon on, I dropped in.
The line was stable and as I got further into it the snow got deeper and deeper till it was waist deep and I was flying. I pulled up and out of the way but still within view of Todd and watched him get plastered with waist deep powder. We were in ecstasy. We finished the run out to the road, and skinned back to the lodge as the storm intensified. By mid day it was insane dumpage. Some six inches of new were on the ground at the lodge and it was snowing like crazy.
Nate was visiting as part of his continual road tripping around California and it was his first day on tele gear. We broke trail up "Across the Road" and the snow was easily a foot deep and dry to the bone. We couldn't believe it. What had been crust hours earlier was now deep powder. Up beyond the top of the slope we continued to a run called "Marilyn's" for its short wide open slope, good for somewhat beginners like Nate. Still not really anticipating what was to come, Todd dropped in to show Nate what to do. Just alpine turns and Todd was waist deep in powder. We started to freak out.
I pushed off and it was insane. Nate made it down and was lovin' life. We came to the top of Across the Road and each picked a line. Absolute powder hogging insanity followed as we went choking our way down the run in overhead fluff. We got to the skin track and it was snowing a couple inches an hour. Another run and more of the same. Another, and Another. No one else for miles.
The next day on the radio we heard that Mammoth Mountain received six inches. The lodge received 12, and "Across the Road" picked up over a foot and a half. The storm lasted about ten hours.
"Man, your lifestyle is so much different from anyone else's. It's like you live in a different world up here." Nate told me the next day. No rent, no grocery bills, no lift lines. Just us bums in our shacks, skiing backcountry powder all winter.
In the spring I got to ski with a local legend Marty Hornick and a friend of his, Adrian. Marty skis on an old pair of Karhu Extremes, old Asolo three pin bindings, and new Alico two buckle leather boots with a bit of plastic in the cuff. We climbed up from the lodge to ski a line on the Wheeler Crest that Marty calls "The Silver Saddle". An obvious line from Bishop, it starts high on the southern end of the crest and runs down to the Pine Creek road. We skied it at the beginning of April and got 4,500 feet of skiing in perfect corn.
"We were kind of hoping you'd be a hard core right wing republican so we could mess with you all day." Marty says as we're starting out. "Yeah this lawyer friend we ski with, he's that way and we fuck with him all the time," Adrian says, "what really gets him is when we tell him about the time Marty slept with a man." That gets laughs all around, good ol' ski bums, still liberal and dirty after all these years.
We climbed up a drainage that's seen one track all year and it was just layed down the previous week by a local die hard named Will. We kicked steps steeply out of the drainage to a col on the crest. Traversing from the col we got to the top of a south facing slope that leads to a massive saddle which sends the line more northerly and down into a broad gully. The saddle is truly silver in beauty and aesthetic appeal, and the views are tremendous.
Perfect corn turns with Bishop far below to the left, Mt. Tom straight ahead, and the High Sierra Crest running far as the eye could see to the right. In simpler terms: Nirvana. Marty was flying down the line nearly too fast for my trigger finger. I was laying down massive carving tele turns, just sleeping at the wheel and riding the arc of my skis. Adrian was popping humorous jokes at every stop in his dry serious way.
I was saying at one point how much I like taking photos and such, and Adrian chimed in with, "I prefer sketching, actually," with a serious tone, "I mean, sometimes it takes a while and you know, people have to be kind of patient, but I feel it's really the best." The guy is a crack up. He also suggested filming an extreme saucer descent of the line for the Best of Banff Mountain Films. "Yeah, put that in the Best of Banff , that's the kind of shit we want to see!"
A thousand foot hike out and cold beers finished the day. A classic line. No one else for miles.
Later in the month I headed into a nearby drainage looking for a cool chute I'd seen on an earlier ski tour, and found it, climbed it to the summit of the peak, signed the register which dated back to the first ascent of the peak in the '40s, and noticed no one had signed in during any ski season. This reminded me of a line I'd read in a magazine not too long before, that most of the great routes in America had been skied already. Yeah, right. I skied right from the summit, down a steep face, and into the rock walled, 25 foot wide, 40-50 degree chute that banked back and forth for a thousand feet and out into a wide open slush bowl. The "Porch Couloir" as I've named it, is a beauty, but of course, now that it's been skied, all the great chutes are done so you might as well stay at home, prop your feet up with a Budweiser, and watch football.
After that I headed off to carry heavy loads for the local guiding agency on a six day ski tour starting at North Lake, going through the back of beyond, and skiing off the summits of Mt. Goddard, Scylla, and Mt. Solomons before coming out at Lake Sabrina through a terrible 1,200 foot bushwack down a creek. It was six days spent skiing some of the most dramatic terrain in the world.
I sit here now, mid-May, drinking a beer in my shack in the woods at Rock Creek, after playing hacky sack to Led Zeppelin, and covering a section of the creek from dry rock to dry rock right down the middle, and I think "how could this be the biggest mistake of my life?" I decide it can't.
I think there are too many sad, stressed, depressed people out there crankin' through the traffic on the 405, or the Bay Bridge, or running to catch the A train into mid town in time; checking their watches every five minutes and it's always five minutes later and they're going to be another five minutes late if they don't hurry things up...etc...
For me, that lifestyle is hell. Pure hell. My hair would fall out, my stomach would ulcer, and I'd be on prozac seeing a therapist once a week. Well...I guess that actually is Life for some people? I gave up a great talent, a great ability for playing the cello. But now, instead of suffering through city life, I can do exactly what I want, when I want, and play my cello for fun, not money, not recitals. Now I can live for me. Now I can ski, every single day of the winter; climb and hike every single day of the summer.
It seems nearly everything in the stereotypical society that most of the population lives in is simply controlled by, or a product of, the pursuit of money. This article in fact falls under that description. But why can't the world operate simply out of people's passion? A tree is worth so much that we can't simply let it live for its beauty? Is beauty not itself worth something? It seems the world buys, the world builds, and the world reproduces more because it can, rather than because it should or wants to.
The bum life, the pure way, can also be very easily thrown into a stereotypical graveyard in which we all write the same words, preach the same sermon, and try to attain the same ideal. Of course, once you live in the mountains, you realize the bum can never be summarized, can never be grasped. It Is The Life, it Is The Dream, but each bum does things differently, each lives as a bum for a different reason, each will choose differently how their future unfolds. People are the same in the city, but made completely different by one simple factor: Money. Bums don't do a damn thing in the pursuit of money. Everything we do is our passion.
As Kerouac so wonderfully stated, "--Art is short, Life is long--". Be a bum, be free, be wild, crazy.
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