Breaking Trail

By Goo.

I’ve never had so much trouble climbing a hill.

The thought flashed across my cranium and I regarded it as truth without even the slightest examination. Immediately following that thought, another one came:

I must be doing something wrong.

That one lingered for a while. I must be doing something wrong. All summer long I climb hills and mountainboard back down them without the aid of a lift, and here I am, exhausted on this comparatively short hike. I was breathing as if I had just run a marathon, but it hadn’t been more than a couple hundred feet. Breathing... that’s it! I’m simply not used to this type of strenuous exercise at this high of an elevation! Well, onward then.

Five minutes later, and nothing was better. What else is inhibiting my ascent? Then I subconsciously settle upon what the problem was: the snow. With every step, I would sink in well past the knee and have to unbury that leg a step later. “Well,” I reasoned, “that’s why I’m hiking this slope, isn’t it: it’s covered in virtually untouched, deep powder!” But what I wouldn’t give for a pair of touring bindings and skins. Onward it was.

Should I turn back?

I was immediately repulsed by this preposterous thought. Turn back? Me? I hike up hills and go back down them at high speeds. That’s what I love to do! Now, I’ve decided to hike up this hill and destroy the powder on my way back down so that’s what I’m going to do.

Eventually I reached the top, and after a short break to enjoy the view, made all of the toil very much worth-while.

When I reached the bottom, I realized that I understood several concepts that relate to big-mountain skiing that I never before had the ability to grasp:

The term "bottomless powder." Not that I have already experienced it, but soon... sometime soon.

Why some people spend hours skinning up a mountain for 1 run down.

But the one thing that I had always wondered about and now understood best of all: The term “Breaking Trail.”

Me, after reaching the top.	My tracks, going along the top of the hill.
Looking down the hill.	Looking down the hill.
My gear at the top of the hill after the hike up.	A stump at the top.

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