Top Of The World With Tom

I know that there are those who where lucky enough to go into the backcountry with Tom, as his alpine (non AT set up) friend and someone who listened to his stories every week, it was something I always dreamed of. I even switched over to Tele's last year after Tom moved to Homer, just so that I could one day be good enough to "live the dream" of knee dippen in the backcountry with my favorite tree hugger "smile"....He always wanted me to make the switch from the dark side, said that he thought I would be a natural. Little did he know, I spent 90% of my time face planting in the powder last year..I figured I could make all my mistakes without him around and that this season I would just be able to meet him on "the pass" and rip it Tele' style out in the backcountry. Honestly, I know Tom and I know he would have been great and supportive if I did head out with him and trigger every avalanche by flipping over my ski tips, but there is something about ripping down a mountain right next to him that I lived for.
My favorite memory of this happened at the resort (before my Tele' converstion). The resort had opened the top face above "High Travers" (sorry Alyeskers, the name escapes me) basically allowing you to ski from the tippy top of the mountain, a 30 rythemic turned, scary pitch that powder fever skiers droll over all season.. The only way up, a boot packing, single lined, ski/snowboad toaten feista. The killer, twas only going to be opened for a few hours and only this one day. Roomers had started the night before but they were told by way too buzzed bar flies at the Sitz (apre ski bar at the base of chair 3). I was hanging out at Challenge, talking with Tom when the word came in, the roomers were true. At that very moment, the powers that be had just opened up a space in time to allow Tom to take a few runs..he looked at me with a smile and said "Let's hit it".. As we rode the chair you could see the line of snow thirsty ants making their way to the top in the fasion of what looked to us like the "Chilkoot Trail", a few min, and a sketch travers later, Tom and I were apart of this almost verticle march to the top. He, being Mr. Backcountry, made it to the top in enough time ahead of me to take in the view, laugh with some friends who were also up there, and be rearing to go (honestly it was only about 3 min) "smile". -that was Tom. Rubber legged but definetly ontop of the world (both physically and emotionally-I was in an amazing place with an amazing friend). I wanted to stay up there forever (wanted the moment to last) but we didn't climb it to make it our new home and I could see Tom was itchen to surf the verticle sea of white that hed been drooling over while waiting for me...I looked down and felt something between my heart skipping a beat in excitement and my stomach tightning in fear, I looked up at Tom and he had the biggest smile on his face..one of those "This is AWESOME,Let's do it!" smiles. At that moment I knew that even with my girgling stomach and rubbery legs, it was "all good" It was evident in a fash of a smile that moments like these are what make life worth living. I put my goggles down and we both jumped in together...screaming, giggling (maybe the giggling was just me), and making turns in waist deep powder side by side.. It wasn't the backcountry but it is what I had with him..Skiing with Tom down that face will be forever one of my life's "BESTS". It was such a monumetal event, I wouldn't be surprised that with every turn, we made a child smile in Africa or disrupted/corrupted the ever present E=MC2. "smile"

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