“Mountains Speak, Wise Men Listen” John Muir

This is one of my favorite quotes that perfectly sums up approaching the mountains. You can take all the avalanche courses in the world but if you do not read the signs it does not matter. Often times there is no room for error in the backcountry and one bad call reading the conditions can erase a lifetime of good calls. Because of this I like to keep on the top of my brain sayings like, “just say no” and “live to ride another day.” When approaching a line I always go in with the mind set of, “I am going to look at the line,” not “I am going to ride the line.” The mountains are one big feel out. Having a preset agenda is dangerous. I never know if I am going to hit a line until the moment I drop in because my mind and gut are observing the constantly changing conditions and I am always open to turning back at any point.

This can be tricky when you are filming or leading a group because so many people have worked so hard to get into position and you may feel like you are letting them down by backing down. The further up a line you get, or the closer you get to dropping in the harder it is to say no to a line. Saying no takes practice. If I have not backed off a line for a long time then I start to question myself and will make an effort to back off a line in the near future just to practice saying no. This is the one area of my ridng that I have gotten much better at over the years.   My past record means nothing though. No one is above the law in the mountains.



I waited for two weeks on this face.  This is a shot I took from the top of a smaller face with the same aspect and similar elevation that we spent the day riding in hopes to step up to this face the next day.  The snow and stability was perfect  when I took this photo and we went to bed fired up to finally hit this face. That night the wind picked up and loaded these faces. We ended up having to turn back and never got to ride the face.

This was another face I waited on for awhile but was turned back from for fear of a small wind slab popping out and sending me for a ride down the face.

I turned back from this 3 days in a row.  Each day I figured out how to get past each hazard that kept turning me back.  On the forth day I solved the puzzles and rode the wall.  I called it Touch and Go Wall because so many times on the way up I thought I might have to turn around.

This was a face in Europe I made three attempts on.  On the final attempt we woke up at 3, got to with in an hour of the top but decided to turn around because one of the people I was with was not feeling it.  Two of us felt good about it but there was no way we were leaving the third behind and we were not going to ride a line that one of the members in the group was not feeling.  You need to get as educated as possible about reading snow conditions but at the end of the day one of the most important tools is listening to your gut.  As much as I would have liked to ride all of these lines, not for a second did I ever second guess myself or the people I was with for backing down. If by chance the stars align again I may get to ride one of the faces and if I do the feeling will be that much sweeter.