Patrick Dennis Sweeney, my brother and youngest sibling took the wrong path at almost every divergence in the trail until right before the end of his life when he asked Mother, if she’d take Kobe, if and when he died and I being Mother’s caregiver, meant unbeknownst to me that I had inherited his dog.

Two months later, after mother had told me about Pat’s wishes I was driving home after a good morning of skiing at Mt Lassen when my sister Cathleen calls me and tells me Pat died last night and that she wasn’t comfortable waking and telling Mom.

The drive from Mt Lassen is an hour and a half and I find myself practicing the words I’d use to tell Mother her youngest had died.

I stop for a cup of coffee to go in Los Molinos and then rally down Highway 99 determined to wake Mother, tell her Pat was dead and then drive to Sacramento and get Kobe. I was sad, but didn’t cry and my heart welled inside of me like every time I thought of Pat while I was living a life of dreams and he was doing nasty drugs and in and out of prisons.

I am in no way a perfect man and neither is my family. I never blamed my parents for what Pat became and I feel like they tried. Mother raised his daughters and she did a pretty good job. Pat lived with her for years too. Nine years ago, I was the one who moved Pat out of her house, fixed it up and sold it. I moved her to Chico to be closer to family. He did fine on his own and Mother had only me to deal with.

I thought if I got Kobe right away it would take the steam out of Pat dying for my mother even though I never saw her cry, but I’m sure she did.

I wake Mother, make her a cup of coffee and deliver the news. The pain and suffering for Pat is over. Mother will carry the pain until she dies. I leave for Sacramento to get Kobe twenty minutes to a half hour after telling mom.

My two nieces and their children are mourning hard and I am a little ruthless collecting my inheritance and my excuse is that Kobe will distract Mother from the pain of losing her youngest child.

Kobe loads up in the van no problem and then pukes a few miles down the road. He growls at me a couple of times and sheds a vacuum cleaner full of hair. He seems happy to see Mother and takes over the corner of the couch. Riley isn’t very happy to have another dog in the house and I have to keep him from attacking Kobe. I had let Pat have my bedroom when he visited, so Kobe has no problem taking over my bed and room and as I got into bed later that night he snarls and shows me his teeth when I make him move over. I take him for a walk in the morning and he has bad diarrhea. I tried rice and burger and that doesn’t help.

I go to Northern Star Mill and Pet Feed Store and ask them what to do about Kobe’s diarrhea. Pumpkin, they say and add, Firmup. It’s a pumpkin extract and will stop diarrhea.

I buy a package of Firmup, then go to the Raleys and buy three large cans of pumpkin. It takes two days and then the diarrhea is gone. It was told to me that Pat fed Kobe whatever he was eating and it was obvious because he was constantly begging, mooching and having stomach issues. I learned over time what Kobe could eat and carefully fed him.

Pat had a big memorial at Pioneer Park. It was amazing and any family would be happy to have their brother honored this way. It’s strange for me and I think Pat in many ways was nicer than me and I doubt there’ll be anything like that for me.

Now it’s been two and a half years since Pat died. Mother is 94 and Riley has moved to the big dog bed in the sky.

Kobe doesn’t growl at me much anymore. He begs full time. He sheds worse than any dog I’ve ever had. We walk and greet other dogs that he’s not interested in, but Kobe goes right to the owner’s pocket thinking that everyone walking a dog has treats.

Kobe, Kobes or Kobers has the markings of a Rottweiler but is short and round like a sausage. He’s handsome and smiles a lot. He licks his pecker loudly, but he never farts.

I tend to spend the evening in my bedroom being a writer or watching TV and Kobe doesn’t want to go to bed until any opportunities for food are exhausted. He comes back to my room every fifteen minutes or so barging open the door. He stands there for a minute staring at me and in a moment he’s gone, back to mooching from my mother.

Back in 1981, Pat was having trouble in high school and I told my Mother that he could come up and live with me in Ketchum, Idaho right next to Sun Valley Ski Resort. The local school had ski program on Bald Mountain and I got Pat a ski pass to Rotarun Ski Area right outside of Hailey. Pat had it good except for me being on his case. After a couple of months he convinced a local kid to help him steal a car from a woman I know and head for California. They ran out of gas in southern Idaho and the cops were at my door.

In 1997, on a climbing trip with Steve Garvey, I woke up at Lovers Leap Campground and decided I needed to visit Pat at Folsom Prison. Steve came along intending to get a haircut while I visiting Pat.

The guards didn’t know what to make of me and my photo album of climbing and skiing. Pat and I didn’t have to talk thru glass. We couldn’t hug or touch each other, but we sat at a table talking for fifteen minutes. I headed back to the truck and Garvey is burning bowls in the Folsom Prison Parking lot. I hurt all over when I thought about Pat being in prison while I was free. Garv and I drove back to Lovers Leap Campground and built a big fire and I drank beer until I could sleep.

Eight years ago, I drove my brother to University of San Francisco Medical Center where Medi-Cal had secured him a top lung surgeon who was going to replace his lungs. When we drove past Vacaville, he spoke of his time in the prison there. The hospital was on the ocean side of San Francisco and after his two hour appointment he suggested we take a northern route around the bay. We crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge, the sun was brilliant and I could see the Pacific Ocean, the Marin Headlands and the other direction, Alcatraz Island and the famous (now defunct) prison. A few miles later, the grey walls of San Quentin pass by on the right. I never knew Pat spent time there too.

Pat watched me train my Mother’s dogs, Riley and Chris-Alice. They chased cars and wouldn’t come. Pat and Mother had no control. Riley was fifty pounds overweight and both dogs tried to attack me as I was laying down the law. I had to whip the dogs into shape before Mother moved to Chico and I did and Pat saw the dogs listen to me. I walked Kobe and Riley when he visited us before he died. I like most dogs. I thought it was fantastic that Pat loved Kobe enough to force him on me without me knowing and because of Kobe I think about Pat all of the time.

Kobe is my constant companion except for in the mountains. He’s more of a city dog and walks about four miles a day with me. As I write this at my desk he’s lying four feet away from me on the bed with Inky the cat. Kobe might be thinking of Pat, but for sure I am and I think he was a pretty good guy.

The dream is of a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning in the desert waiting for the sun to come up. The dream is of a trail through a mountain meadow brimming with flowers on its way to the high country. The dream is of sublime granite with gold and silver flakes. The dream is of perfect snow with no other tracks. The dream is of drinking cold beer with…

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Mother is sprawled on her bed, fully clothed with her shoes on and her arms splayed out like a dead gunfighter. I only know she’s alive because she’s snoring. We’re having king salmon for dinner and I head back to the kitchen to prepare.

My Mother’s and my diet has changed dramatically since her UTI. I grew a bushel of tomatoes this summer and hardly ate any.

My jalapeños are hotter than hades again this year and my mother can’t eat them and I have a bumper crop. A couple of these puppies will smoke a big stew. I like hot peppers but the last two years have been almost too hot.

Autumn arrived early this year and we haven’t used the air conditioner for three weeks. The tomato and cucumber plants have ceased to produced and we only have 10 jars of pickles on the shelf. Mother has been eating pickles faster than I can make them.

My yellow squash plant is still kicking out the best squash I’ve ever grown and all varieties of peppers are plentiful and I have many jars of pepper pickle relish.

I’ve spent the whole summer taking care of mom and I have not taken a break from her in six months. I didn’t go swimming hardly at all and I haven’t rock climbed since March. I'm itching to get out, camp somewhere quiet, feel some stone and hike in the mountains. I’m hoping to get a break from my duties with Mother for the second half of October. We’ll see.

Mother comes out from her bedroom with Inky riding on the seat of her walker. The chickpea noodles are done and I pour them into a strainer and douse them with cold water.

I’ve been buying king salmon scraps from The Butcher Shop for 14.99 a pound. That’s half price. The meat has no skins, fins or bones and it’s almost all belly meat. The king is as good as any I’ve ever had in AK. I use a tiny amount of curry paste, toasted sesame oil, dried herbs and butter and cook the scraps less than a minute on each side before pushing the salmon to the side and adding the noodles. I make the salad while the noodles are heating and tell Mother, put your apron on.

I spoon a little pesto onto the chickpea noodles and mix it all together. I serve Mother and she gives Inky a noodle before feeding herself. Kobe is right there mooching too.

I serve myself and sit on the couch while Mother sits between me and her giant TV and I watch her feed Inky and Kobe king salmon and chickpea noodles. It looks like Inky likes the noodles more than the king.

My heart pounds. My leg shoots pain to my head. My teeth chatter, my body shivers. Black dreams and Irish Catholic guilt fill the spaces. If I don’t do something, I’m going to die. I have to light my stove and warm myself up, but I can’t do anything. I can’t even lift my arm. I don’t know anything except my MSR stove is the only thing that’s going to keep me alive.

My girlfriend Robin cares, but she’s down in Homer lying in bed watching Seinfeld with her dog and cat. She doesn’t think I could get hurt. I’ve kept her in the dark about how dangerous my climbing is. After Seinfeld, she lets her dog Gypsy out. She looks out over the twilight on the bay. The sky and the water are the same dark blue. The mountains and glaciers beyond are pink. Robin is very spiritual, so she wraps me in a white protective light. She calls for the dog, puts another log in the wood stove and goes to bed.

I can’t move. I can’t lift my arm. I have to push the snow off of me and light my stove but the black dream is a tunnel of darkness and a canyon of flames. Everything I’ve ever done wrong chases me. I don’t know what I did but what I did is the worst thing I’ve ever done.

Move your arm and light the stove! I tell myself, Move your arm and light the stove! I can’t make the connection.

My mother lives three thousand miles away down in Nevada City, California. She cares about me, but I have seven brothers and sisters. Right after I was born, my mother got sick and then she got pregnant. She always felt bad but she’s not worried about me because I have a little brother Pat, who is a junkie.

I don’t know how long it takes before I move my arm. I lift my arm and pass out between each effort. The snow is sliding off of me, but there is only pain, cold and black dreams. I have to get my hands on the stove.

Before Dave left he told me the stove is right in front of me. He thinks I might need to make water. I’ve had a white gas stove like this for twenty years. I know my stove.

I’m fading fast but I have my hands on the stove. I can’t work the control. I can’t pump the pump. I have to get up on my elbow and use both hands. When I do get up on my elbow, I’m only there for a second before I collapse and fall back into the darkness. Light the stove!! Is my mantra.

I don’t know how I do it, but I pump the stove. The pain and the cold are the same thing. The stove has its own lighter and it takes forever to twist. The stove flares up in my face. I smell burning hair and flesh when I push the stove away. I fade away into the black corridor and I’m chased by something I can’t see. When I come to, the stove is lying on its side sputtering a hazy yellow and blue flame. I struggle to pump it a few more times and then the flame burns blurry blue. I slide the stove into the sleeping bag next to me and crook my arm to keep the bag from touching the stove. I pull the sleeping bag over my head. It feels so good—- then I fall back into the black pit.

The wood stove at my house is stuffed with wood. My gal sleeps between her dog and cat. My mother has a wood stove too. She sleeps well. My partner Dave is at the Mountain House trying to get help to rescue me. It’s warm and stuffy there.

Shadowy figures chase me down murky hallways. I see a woman I admire—I'm flying towards a white pinhole and I’m sucked through the pinhole. When I wake up, my sleeping bag is on fire and full of smoke. It takes awhile—then I push out the stove. The sleeping bag still burns, but that’s okay, because it’s a good for nothing, wet Marmot Gore Tex down sleeping bag.

Taking care of my Mother doesn’t allow me much time to write or even think about the stories I want to write, so if I want to write, I have no choice, but to write about my adventures with mom.

Mother has been wanting a new pair of shoes, so we go shopping Saturday afternoon. We end up at Mountain Sports in downtown Chico on Third Street. She buys a sweet pair of Topo trail shoes and a long sleeved, black and white, horizontally striped, Patagonia top. The trails shoes are funny, because at 94 ,I doubt she’s hitting the trail anytime soon, but she’s looking fast and all I wear is trail shoes, so maybe she thinks I’m on to something.

Mother is doing as well as one can expect with her age (94) and condition, but the work for me keeps adding up. Her doctor has issued an order at the Enloe Lab for biweekly UTI urine tests and she was delighted with the two negative tests in a row. Now, Mother has a very faint UTI and her doctor is giving her another round of antibiotics and then another antibiotic-like medicine that I need to learn about.

I’ve installed a toilet seat bidet in mother’s bathroom, got the doctor to prescribe estrogen creme, bought an external catheter, added extracted oil from pumpkin seeds to her supplements and even cut out the decaf coffee on account the acid and it’s negative effects on the bladder. She’s now drinking Dandy Blend (roasted, barley, chicory, rye and dandelion extracts) as her morning beverage. Mother says, it tastes like coffee.

The external catheter is taking Mother some time to figure out how it works. I show Mother how it’s suppose to operate. She’s in her diaper and underwear and that would have been unthinkable two months ago because her modesty wouldn’t have allowed it. Everything would be easier if I was a woman and even if I was a woman the communication would still be an issue. It’s been two weeks and she hasn’t really used her external catheter.

I’ve taken over all the medical and health care duties for mom. Being her advocate is a full time job. I take her to all her doctor and physical therapy appointments. I do all the shopping, make all decisions on her diet, cook and make all of her meals.

It seems like everyday Mother is doing something that I should do for her. I tell her, let me do that. Ask me to go get it for you. You shouldn’t be doing that.

Horizon organic cultured buttermilk has become the main ingredient in her salad dressings. Sometimes, I add kefir, sour cream or cottage cheese and I use my homemade pickles, relish and fermented garlic to replace vinegar. I roast garlic and use dried spices to give the dressing a crunch. Olives, onions, cucumbers that are fermented and chick peas are in most of her salads and I add cabbage and broccoli regularly too. Tomatoes, more than likely are forever gone from her diet.

It’s been five months since I’ve had a break from my duties with mother. It’s the time to be serious about taking care of her, though I am looking forward to a climbing trip with David Stevenson sometime towards the end of October.

My garden and the chores (pickles, relish, compost, etc) associated with it, are becoming a bit much with all my responsibilities pertaining to mom. In fact, the whole upkeep of the house is difficult right now. The future scares me. I don’t want to get stuck with this house when things change with Mother, so recently I’ve hatched a plan to sell our home, rent an apartment in Chico and buy a house in Susanville.

It’s a pipe dream, because the housing market is fairly dead in Chico and I might not get enough for the house to make it worth selling anyway, but it’s good that I’m working on the house.

The temperature has been in the 60’s in the mornings and 75 in the afternoons and that’s very cool for Chico and strange being that it is the first week of September and it could be 98F or 105F and possibly smokey. My tomatoes and cucumber plants are not producing much anymore and I’d sure like to have more pickles. This is the earliest I’ve torn out my summer garden to make room for the winter crops, but I can’t control the weather or Mother’s and my age.

This is about all she wrote today and this piddly story has taken two weeks and I’m headed for a nap and before that, I'm going to toss this story onto Substack

.

The antibiotics were very effective on Mother. The Emergency Room and staff at Enloe Hospital were fantastic and mother was coming around two and half hours after I called 911 and later that night another doctor came in and said that the tests showed that she did have a Urinary Tract Infection and they had switched antibiotics.

My Mother does not have a Urologist and her general physician isn’t much help and will only refer her to an out of town female Urologist (90 miles away), because there is not one in Chico. So, we don’t really have anyone who can tell us about the infection. There is a real lack of doctors in this part of California and I spent this time trying to learn and understand the UTI my mother had. I’ve read hundreds of articles and I’ve read about every food and drink and their possible effect on an UTI.

Symptoms of an UTI

Pain or burning when you pee

Feel like you need to pee a lot

Pressure in your lower abdomen

Smelly and milky urine

Blood in pee

Tired, sick, shaky, confused, or weak

Fever

Not peeing

Women are 30 percent more likely to get a UTI, than a man.

Foods and drinks helpful for recovering and healing a UTI

12 glasses of water a day

Cranberries, cranberry juice, blueberries, and extracts from these two berries.

Whole milk organic plain yogurt, plain kefir, Acidolphilus, probiotic supplements, buttermilk

Leafy green vegetables, broccoli, summer squash, onions, garlic

Bananas, watermelon, cucumbers, apples

Sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, fermented foods are rich in probiotics

Salmon, organic chicken, antibiotic and hormone free meat

Foods and drinks that are bad for a UTI

Caffeine

Alcohol

Spicy foods

Tomatoes

Processed food

Sugar

Lemons

Un-organic meats with antibiotics and steroid

Vinegar, especially apple cider vinegar

Soda pop

All sugar free products

Vitamin C

UTI is the most common bacterial infection with more than 8 million office visits and 1 million emergency room visits each year in the United States, resulting in approximately 100 000 hospitalizations.

There is a fifty percent chance that an older women who’s experience’s a UTI will get another one and possibly another one and this is called recurring UTI’s. Most women just go to the doctor and take more antibiotics.

Mother and I have totally changed her diet. She now drinks decaf coffee. She has a glass of organic plain whole milk kefir with her coffee every morning and a glass of water with an inch of cranberry juice added. She eats a hard boiled egg or cottage cheese or both mixed together. We don’t use much salt. Mother takes three different supplements and we’ll come back to those later.

Mother and I have hit a few bumps in the road since the UTI. It seems that we weren’t serious enough about her diet and a couple slices of tomato, a small amount of wine and a little vinegar gave the UTI a small opening to attack mother’s urinary track. Two days later, she quit peeing. It wouldn’t come out.

I did find some help from the women who work in the supplements section of S&S Produce in Chico, California. They introduced to me to a product, UTI Vibrance made by Vibrant Health. It’s a mixture of cranberry and blueberry extract with Golden Seal and I was told it will make Mother pee and that it did.

Originally, Mother took Vibrance for a week after she had her catheter removed, but not a full dose. She hesitantly started sharing her urinating habits with me. She’s peeing like crazy. I took her off the Vibrance and switched her to Nature’s Way Urinary because it doesn’t have goldenseal which has side effects from prolonged use. Now, Vibrance is for short term emergency use when Mother can’t pee and Urinary from Nature’s Way is for general maintenance of her urinary tract and has no goldenseal. Twice, when Mother had the two setbacks and couldn’t pee, she took one dose of Vibrance and peed regularly. She also takes Garden Life Urinary Tract Probiotic and Now D-Mannose which gets high praise in the research world and is showing no negative effects. I feel like the UTI is sitting there waiting for a chance to strike Mother again.

Now, three and a half months later, she pees all of the time. Wakes up at night every one and half to two hours to urinate and she also has a wet diaper. The same happens during the day. I’ve taken Mother off her cranberry supplements and cut back on her cranberry juice and I want her to have urologist doctor and regular urine tests.

I’m still reading and researching about the UTI everyday. I’ve gone to the other health food stores in Chico and ask questions about the supplements and food. Neither store helped as much as the crew at S&S. The manager of supplements has been working at S&S for 15 years. She’s had a serious UTI and it got into her kidneys. She’s no nonsense about the UTI and she told me sternly, If you think your Mother has a UTI, go see a doctor or go to the emergency room immediately. Recently, I asked her a question about Mother’s over active bladder and she told me, The only way to know what is happening is to get a urine test. Really, the whole staff at S&S has been helpful and understand how frustrating it is with the lack of doctors who treat senior women and information about UTI’s.

David, a nurse friend says UTI’s pays the bills. He sees one at least everyday at Providence Hospital in Anchorage. He says, Uti’s come on like gang busters, can bring a woman down in a few hours and antibiotics are the only cure. One of my mother’s nurses, when she was in the hospital said there were three older ladies on her floor with UTI’s during his shift. UTI’s are the most common affliction in seniors. My bother-in-law is a pharmacist and he says he hands out antibiotics to older ladies everyday.

I’m focusing on mother’s food and drink. I control it completely. I shop for and cook almost every meal. After the two setbacks, Mother understands how hair trigger the infection is. All our food is organic, free range, antibiotic and hormone free.

She eats hard boiled eggs three or four days a week with olive oil and cottage cheese. She eats no strong cheese. No grain. Siete brand makes the healthiest wraps. When I think of yogurt, it’s always Nancy’s. I make a buttermilk yogurt sour cream fresh dill fermented garlic, onion and pickle salad dressing.

Costco has a very good deal on excellent Organic Sauerkraut. Cranberry juice is a problem. Organic Cranberry juice is 15 $, while the inorganic is 7 $. I’ve been adding cranberry juice to my water since my Mother’s UTI and my opinion is, it has changed my pissing for the better.

It’s been a aggravating three and a half months, but this is what I’ve learned since I called 911 for my mother. I love my Mother and this is what matters to me.

This was the most comprehensive study I’ve read.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4194886/

I am not a master gardener. In fact, you could say, that I am a hack that grows many vegetables.

I didn’t start seriously gardening until nine years ago when I started taking care of my mother and we moved from Grass Valley to Chico. The first thing in Chico that I did was take out my front lawn and replaced it with a bed of small rock, built planter boxes and raised beds. I planted three cactuses and bought many used large ceramic planters. I planted seeds, bought yards of organic soil, built bins for kitchen and yard waste and started composting. Of course, because I’m a hack I don’t have an automatic watering system and I water with a wand or sprinkler.

Chico is a gardening mecca and the only thing I really like about the city. I’m home pretty much all the time because of mother, so I have plenty of time for my garden.

I’m currently growing many different kinds of peppers and four different strains of cucumbers that kick out enough cucumbers for ten people a day.

Squash is the big game of veggie gardening and mother and I eat squash four or five times a week. I am growing four different varieties of summer squash.

My neighbors are in luck, mom can’t eat tomatoes anymore on account of her UTI and I have five different plants and give away at least ten tomatoes a day. I try to add in a cucumber and a squash when I deliver tomatoes to my family and neighbors.

My garden gets sun all day, I make excellent organic compost, the plants are massive and make tons of compost when the season is over.

I grow orageno, thyme, rosemary, basil, sage and four different strains of marijauna. Watering happens every other day and I use compost as fertilizer.

The best my garden has to offer is the garden next door. Ever since, Carolyn and Brian moved in I’ve had a partner who’s in her garden every morning and if you think a crazy man made my garden, you’d think a crazy woman grew Carolyn’s garden.

Carolyn is a beautiful older slender gal, with a lovely British accent. Her garden is also humungous, it’s certified, with a little sign, all local plants and Carolyn is a master gardener. She does grow some veggies, but not nearly as much as me and every year she gives me two or three tomato plants at the end of March. We trade the bounty from our gardens daily and she sprays water at the cats which love her wild plot and that’s the only time I ever see her using much water.

I have many pickling cucumbers. I could make two quart jars a day, if I was so inclined. I’m fermenting my pickles this year and I’m into the first jar. DEEElishes!

It seems, as if winter just ended, though its mid summer. I picked the last of my onions and garlic, planted summer crops, moved soil around and grew my pot plants from seed. I’ve had tomatoes since mid-May and I had one fantastic week where I could pick lettuce, tomatoes, onions and cucumbers at the same time, but that ended quickly as it got warm and my lettuce died.

The summer so far, has been not that hot. 95F is considered moderate in Chico, but today is suppose to be 101-103 and it’s oppressive outside.

I’ve been watering all day. I pick three or four green or yellow Italian squash daily and it’s important for quality to pick squash and cucumbers before they get too big, so I have to stay on the ball.

The plants in raised beds are the biggest because the depth of the soil, but I grow tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in the 12” deep stand up boxes so they don’t get so big and on hot days like today, can take two waterings. My green Italian squash plant takes up a 7 foot by 5 foot area and it guzzles water, but it’s my best squash plant ever.

The tallest plants in my backyard are bushy too. Soon they will be taller than Caroline’s and my fence. My buds will be visible from her dining room table. I bought some lightweight bamboo fencing to extend the height of my fence by a couple feet to hide my plants.

I have one eggplant, but it hasn’t produced any fruit yet. I have many jalapeño plants and a wide variety of hot peppers that I’m fermenting.

I find no correlation between gardening and writing except that both are a lot of work, but growing veggies is much more rewarding.

I got to go now. I need to water, harvest and weed may garden. Today is mother’s 94th birthday and my sisters and niece are coming over for dinner.

The tide is out. Jim Hopkins cruises the tidal pools on his four wheeled ATV looking for perfect bull kelp to use as fertilizer in his garden. A whale breaches the bay and lands with a big splash. Further down, a salmon is jumping crazy and making a ruckus. He turns right down a trail next to a cliff. It’s a cool day with a light breeze. An eagle perches in a dead tree. The trail opens up in a low area with coves on both sides and 200 feet later, Hopkins turns down a shaded trail through a spruce forest.

I hear Hopkins four wheeler coming to where I’m working. I run over, grab the posthole digger and stand there. He rolls up to the job site and I shove the digger into the dirt as he shuts off his four wheeler.

What are you doing, he asks?

I got tired of waiting on you and decided to start digging by hand.

He’s laughing too hard to respond, but he steps back to the cooler strapped to the back of his ATV. Hopkins opens it and shows me the bull kelp he scavenged off the beach like it was a king salmon. He also grabs a plastic bag and pulls a jar of pickled beets out of it and hands it to me. He’s in no hurry to jump in the backhoe and start digging.

I ate the whole jar you gave me yesterday in one sitting last night.

Why don’t you make some coffee and I’ll watch how far you get with that shovel while I drink it.

I’m always up for drinking coffee with Hopkins. Nyman’s lucky that I got him out here to work and the only reason he took the job was because he loves it out here at the end. Plus, Nyman has a sweet deck on Kasitsna Bay.

People have told me that Jim is a quiet working man. I can see how they would have that impression, but he wasn’t quiet with me. We talk the whole time we’re working and I know way more about Seldovia than anyone from outside Seldovia should know. We both grew up in Northern California, about eighty miles apart. We agree on many subjects, especially politics, which is amazing because there are not many liberal heavy equipment operators in Alaska.

Nyman’s dock points south. Kasitsna Bay is about a mile across. Beyond that, Broken Knife, a big long ridge of a mountain, guards the southern horizon. Hopkin’s asked Nyman, if he’d sell him, half of his property. He dreams about putting a greenhouse out here.

I end up making veggie burritos for lunch and it’s forty five minutes before we are on the job. Hopkins is a real pro and easy to work with. We bang out three sets of these posts in two hours and we switch to clearing a pad so Nyman has a spot for me to put his wall tent. He clears and flattens a twenty by twenty foot area in a little more than an hour and I put down a twelve foot joist for the platform, slap a level on it and the bubble sits right between the lines. We carry on a good conversation the whole time. He’s against drugs and booze and has a young guy working for him and worries for him. I can feel Hopkins love and compassion as he tells his story.

Jim went crabbing once and it wasn’t a good experience. He made it through the season but it wasn’t pretty and it sounds like his ex-wife’s brother in law kept him afloat. Jim’s a puker and he never fishes again after his crabbing experience. He speaks often of his wife, Linda and his garden. Linda came into his life after a poor first marriage and made his life better.

We’re taking another coffee break. Sera Baxter comes driving down the beach with her husband John in tow. They pull up right below where we’re sitting, Sarah says, now here is a leisurely crew. What are you gentlemen up to?

It’s obvious Hopkins is as big a fan of Sera’s as I am and Jim treats her with respect as she does him even though have radically opposing political views. I’ve been told that Jim runs the town of Seldovia. He operates the dump and is involved with the city water system. I understand that because up in Hope where I live, Willie Davidson was that guy. He plowed the roads, pulled cars and trucks out of the ditch and was involved in many of the town’s decisions. Jim Hopkins is who you call in Seldovia, if you have a problem.

Jim tells Sera, I didn’t come out here to work. I came out here to see you and take in the view.

Susie Paine comes around and wants Jim to do some work on her place. Same with Christy who lives down on martini row. Susie sees us taking coffee breaks from her property and later asks me how we get anything done.

I ask Hopkins about Chunk as a worker. Chunk is a good hand, he says. I’ve never met Chunk, but he’s a climber/skier and buddies with many of my friends. I’m interested in hiring him next summer when I build Nyman’s house.

Jim helps me roll out the framing for the twelve foot by twelve foot pad. He doesn’t leave me until he sees that I’m well on my way to getting it framed and sheeted. He putts off down the path back to Seldovia. Jim and I work six or seven part days together. Nyman’s property is looking good. We’re running low on coffee. I head for Anchorage and then back to California to take care of my mother.

Seven years later, last week, Chunk texts me that Jim Hopkins passed away Saturday. He was walking the dog with his wife, Linda. He died of a heart attack or stroke. He was 73. The Seldovia EMT’s worked on him for a long time.

I feel bad that I only visited with Jim once in the seven years since we worked together, but I was taking care of my mother in California. I truly enjoyed everything about Jim. I’ve worked with a lot of different people in my 70 years and it’s hard to think of someone more fun to work with than Jim Hopkins. It might’ve been that he was such a good guy.

Jim told me that he gave Nyman a good deal because he had so much fun working with me and I made him coffee and lunch each day.

I’ve been texting and calling Chunk for information about Jim and his memorial which was one week after he died. Hopkins was pivotal in Chunk development as a person and a young man.

In Chunk’s words: Jim showed me how to work like a man. He is the only person I’ll answer the phone for.

There’s big shoes to fill…but this town has him in us now. In a way, he had that style until the end.

I text Chunk during Jim Hopkins memorial at Outside Beach. I’m feeling lonely and like I’m missing something important. He texts, huge turnout as expected. Gas station closed. Dump closed. Store closed

He sends me a picture and one more quote from Jim on the day he died. The quote came from Evan, the young man he was turning into a heavy equipment operator. Right before Jim took his dog for his last walk he told Evan,

I had a really good day.

I call 911 moments after hearing choking sounds coming from my mother’s bedroom. She isn’t responsive to touch or sound, but she’s breathing. The ambulance comes quickly and I’m impatient with the head paramedic as he tries to ask questions of my stony faced mother. There are five of them, three firefighters, two paramedics. I say, she needs to get to the hospital now.

I follow the ambulance to Enloe Hospital. The ER is overflowing with people. It takes twenty minutes to a half hour before they let me into her room. I show my ID to anyone who will listen and say, “my father, James P. Sweeney built this hospital and was the administrator for thirty years. I’m James Jr. That is him on the plague in the hallway. My mother spent her first day in Chico with Mrs Enloe.

Mother’s hooked up to an IV and a vitals machine. I watch her chest to see her breath. I text my sisters. Mom is in the emergency room at Enloe Hospital and she has 103.9 temperature. She's breathing good.

Caregiving one’s parents and writing have similarities. Both are a lot of work, require much patience and if you’re looking for respect, you might have better luck as a realtor, stock broker or a massage therapist. To be fair, even with the steep decline of people reading, many more read than take care of their parents.

I sit in the room and worry about the hell that will come when my mother dies. I’ll have to sell the house. I’ll have to get rid of all the furniture. I’ll have to figure out what I’m doing with the rest of my life. I have nothing in Chico. I have been with my mother for nine years and I’m not sure what I’m going to do when things change.

I wasn’t writing much when I started helping my mother. After ten years, two books, many stories and a new hip, I wanted freedom from sitting, poking keys and staring at a screen. I hiked, I skied, I rock climbed, I stood on mountains and I was dismayed that my books didn’t go big or get a movie deal.

I didn’t see the rest of my family much while I was fixing up my mother’s house in Nevada City and helping her retire. She was 84. I really didn’t think past getting her to retire from teaching Spanish at Nevada Union High School or selling her home and moving her to a house more suitable for a senior.

After I moved mom to Chico, I thought I was free and went on a road trip. When I called my mother, she missed me and so did her critters. After two weeks and not much rock climbing, I returned to Chico. The two dogs and cat greeted me at the door and jumped for joy. My mother was happier than anytime during the eighteen months I worked on her house and encouraged her to retire.

I started a garden with the intent I have with most everything. Chico is a good place for gardening. I built raised beds and boxes. I grew summer and winter crops. I built a compost bin and because my mother made a salad every night, I focused on growing lettuces, tomatoes, onions and cucumbers.

If I look back, those first few years were easy. I went back home to Alaska for work and pleasure. I went rock climbing in Bishop and Joshua Tree. I skied Mt Lassen and I could leave mother alone, without much worry.

The nurse is back. My mother has a urinary tract infection. She hooks up another bag of solution and tells me it’s the antibiotics.

I was working on this story before the UTI. The story had no pizazz because it was about taking care of my mother. My reader, David says, There’s hope. But it’s hard to infuse the everyday with a kind of . . . what? Magic? I don’t know. It feels like it needs more.

My mother’s temperature drops to 102. She doesn’t know where she’s at. I text updates to my sisters. I think about what I’m going to write. I think about what David said. My mind is back to my everyday story about mom.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

My mother isn’t making her salads anymore, nor does she wash many dishes or do much housecleaning and she’s using a walker ninety percent of the time. It was me who made the changes after watching her get up one evening about six months ago and grope from the TV stand to the hutch and then to the fireplace. I yelled, stop! I went back to her room and grabbed her walker from the corner, brought it back out and said, time to start using your walker. Amazingly, she didn’t argue and even though most of the time doesn’t need it, she always uses it.

On April 12th, I will have been with my mother for nine years. In 2017, she asked me to come down from Alaska, fix her house up, sell it and make sure she retires. She was still teaching AP Spanish at 84 and she would’ve kept teaching, but her hearing and sight were going south and the writing was on the wall. I accomplished selling her house and getting her to retire. I moved her to Chico where most of her seven children live, but I have never been able to leave her and now I’m more of a caregiver.

My mother is awake. The antibiotics are working. She asks, am I at the hospital? She doesn’t remember being stretchered out of the house. She asks about her cat, Inky and Kobe, the dog we inherited from my brother, Pat. We wait for her doctor and for her to be moved to a room for the night.

Almost simultaneously with making my mother use her walker, I relieved her of almost all household duties. I’m making the salads. I’m doing all the dishes. I help her make her bed. I do the vacuuming and my sisters do whatever needs to be done. I’m trying to keep her off her feet except for exercise and necessary movements because of the pain she gets standing in the kitchen. Plus, the walker helps her stand straight and takes the pressure off her back.

My father had a bad back and my mother’s scoliosis is quite bad. Bending over grading papers for 33 years didn’t help her. I’ve had back issues my whole life and now, as long as I do my exercises and stretches, which I do, my back is great.

My garden is going strong, except we’ve had a very warm early spring and much of the lettuce has gone to seed, but I can always pick a salad and I haven’t bought a green in seven months. My onion crop is humongus and I make a salad every night like my mother did for more than 70 years. So, recently I planted two more six-packs of lettuce starts in the semi-shade and my hope is to have lettuce when I have ripe tomatoes and cucumbers.

Finally at 11:30, they move my mother to a room. It’s a nice single room and crowded with medical equipment. Her nurse has tattoos on her arms and neck and a competent air. Mother is alert and part-ways back to what she was before she went to the hospital.

The main reason I couldn’t leave my mother after moving her to Chico was because she had Riley and Chris Alice, both big dogs that I mastered during the seventeen months it took to fix her house and sell it. The critters missed me and how could I leave my eighty-five year old mother with her two big dogs and her cat, Inky. Both dogs have passed and it was awful both times.

My three sisters, Colleen, Cathleen and Jeneen have stepped up helping me with mom and all in different roles, though I am still here 99% of the time. They switch off bathing mom and she now has a chair in her shower.

Mom is asleep and I leave the hospital just before one. My sister, Cathleen came over and fed Inky and Kobe while I was at the hospital. The critter’s are waiting at the door when I get home. They join me in bed. I try to watch TV, but can’t focus. It’s lonely, someone else is watching my mother, I don’t sleep very well.

Almost a month ago, I heard a nasty cough coming from mom’s bedroom. I called my sister Jeneen, who is a retired nurse. She took mother to a prompt care and they discovered pneumonia in her right lung and put her on antibiotics. I’ve been getting hot and sour soup from The Happy Garden Chinese restaurant, but I cut her off after ten bowls.

My mother kicked the cough, but now she is dealing with the UTI—both in less than a month. I try everything I know to get her healthy.

I’m back at Enloe Hospital at 8:30. Mother is up and awake. She has another nurse. I tell her, my father built this hospital and my mother spent her first day in Chico with Mrs. Enloe.

My mother never says she loves me and I never say, I love you. I bet I haven’t told her that I love her, ten times in my life. We don’t hug and we joke when we see that a son has killed his mother in the news.

I fall asleep early and my mother stays up late; at least till one. I need to change my lifestyle and write at night so I’m up late. I worry mother might fall and I’ll be sound asleep. I’ve entertained the thought of giving a nursing student free room and board so someone could be up with mom at night.

I go downstairs in the hospital and get a mocha espresso from a machine. I tell the cashier who my father and mother are. I talk to everyone I cross paths with because that’s my nature.

I cook a fresh meal from scratch for mother every night. She’s is on a keto type diet. Protein, vegetables, no wheat, no starch, no corn, no sugar and she likes her meat. She wants fish at least once a week. I can usually find fresh rock fish filets for under seven dollars a pound. Premium pork is reasonably priced in rural Northern California and I cook it weekly for dinner. Shopping is my social life and I go to The Butcher Shop/S&S Produce every day. I also shop at the Chico State Farm Meat Lab, Trader Joe’s, New Earth, Raley’s and Safeway and I’m looking for a good deal or red tag. I make beef and chicken bone broth regularly.

The doctor comes in to my mother’s room and he tells us that the antibiotics aren’t working and they have to switch to another kind. This is common, he says. They will take a blood test in a few hours and see if the new medicine is working. I look out the window, we’re on fourth floor, I can see over the big trees and the foothills are green and beyond that patches of snow glisten in the sun.

The internist doctor visits mom’s room. He asks her if she wants to be revived if her heart quits beating or she quits breathing. Mother says, I want to be revived. He informs us about the new antibiotics. He tells mom to breathe deeply.

I haven’t pumped out a story in a while. I don’t know if I was tired from writing or if it’s from all the changes with mom. Write what you know is a commonly used phrase amongst writers and I know my mother. I try to instill magic in this story I started twenty five days ago.

My mother spends three nights at the hospital. When I get her home, I follow her and her walker around the house incase she falls. I give her medicine four times a day. I feed her blueberries, cranberries, Nancy’s Yogurt and Cottage Cheese, broccoli, acidophilus for UTI’s and soup. She’s sick of me doting over her.

Back when I started this story, my mother asked me what I was writing. I didn’t think she’d like me writing about her, so I lie and don’t tell her that I’m writing about her. She’s never read any of my stories and that is a good thing.

We talk more than ever. She trusts me and I’m always warning her about the dangers of falling. I try my hardest to keep her from doing any kitchen work and try to always make her coffee and tea and everything else. I need to get her some kind of alert button, incase she gets in trouble and I’m in bed.

It’s been a week since I called 911. Mother is improving. I wake her up at six each morning and give her the first of her four antibiotic pills she has to take today. She walked on the treadmill yesterday. Her ankles and feet are swollen. So when sitting, she uses her walker to prop her feet up and I make her drink cranberry juice.

Another similarity between caregiving and writing is that I’m up early writing and I have to stop accomplishing nothing and wake mother up to give her meds. Both require being there and waiting for something to happen and even if I created some magic with writing, I wouldn’t know that I did and I didn’t plan to be a writer, I haveto be writer. I have to write whatever I’m writing and I also didn’t plan to take care of my mother. Just like with writing, I have no choice. I have to take care of my mother.

I’ve always written these personal essays. That’s what I’m driven to do. I’m thankful and feel fortunate to have anyone who reads them. I guess it is a way to let you into my life. Otherwise, I’d be alone.

Mother is recovering quickly and we talk about the future and I explain that I don’t want this house and that I’m selling it as soon as things change. We talk about selling the house now because the market is crashing and we’d like to make as much money as possible when I sell. I end that pipe dream and speculation by assuring my mother, you and I will be here in this house until the end.

My ski bumming has reached its pinnacle. I’m living like a king, the exchange rate is so good in Canada and it snowed another 10 inches to a foot last night. I call Troy Jungen and Johnny Thrash on the phone in the room I paid for them last night at the Glacier Park Lodge.

Thrash answers the phone.

I twist my voice. It’s Fred Beckey. Wake up buttercup, daylight is burning.

Fuck you, Fred! The sun isn’t even up. He hangs up on me. I turn the TV on to the channel that shows the hallway. I want to see if those guys are moving. I think we’re the only ones who stayed at the hotel last night.

I take a bath. The bathtub is long and deep. The room only cost me twenty dollars US. That’s why I rented those guys a room instead of sharing my bed with Troy or even worse, Johnny. Even if I spend a bunch of money, it’s cheaper than I could ever imagine.

I put my long john’s on and head down to the cafeteria. It’s buffet style and not great, but it’s cheap. This is my eleventh day and I need the fuel. Johnny saunters into the room. He’s poor. He’s been running around premiering his movie, Ski Bums. Today he’s gonna bring his movie camera. I buy him breakfast.

Troy is on Indian time. He shows up a little later. He says, in his best Fred Beckey impersonation, She’s got a hell of a rack.

Troy is First Nation Beaver Clan from around Fort Nelson and part of the Danezaa people. He’s got a black ponytail, honey brown skin and his dad was Swiss. He lives in Golden, Alberta, right down the road. Johnny Thrash went to Fort Saskatchewan High School and lives in Whistler, BC. He has long hair, a scraggily beard and a sneer.

Fred was calling my room constantly last night. Tove, Troy’s girlfriend, warned us that he was looking for us. I answered the phone once and Fred was looking for Troy. I told him, Troy’s not here. He didn’t believe me. He wanted to come up to Rogers. I told him I’m going to bed. Fred wants to go ice climbing and he’s relentless. He called at least twenty times.

My first day skiing with Troy on this trip was at Kicking Horse Ski Resort in Golden. Tracy and I bought one ride lift tickets so we could access the backcountry. Of course, Troy thought we should take two lift rides and the ski patrol chased us down. Somehow, Troy got away with it and we had a great day skiing outside the area boundaries. Johnny showed up the next day and Tracy went back to Whistler with Crucial Mike who had been traveling with Johnny and played a starring role in Ski Bums. Tracy slept the whole way back to Whistler while Mike drove her truck and chuffed all her weed.

We’re moving slow. I’ve skied nine out of the last eleven days and ice climbed on one of the off days. Yesterday, Troy took us on a monster run above the station where the plows park and get worked on. We climbed for hours and broke trail the whole way. Halfway down the mountain, Johnny got tumbled in an avalanche. I told him he should stop above the rollovers and ski cut them.

Fuck that, Sweeney. I ain’t stopping for some little avalanche.

Then we got cliffed out and had to put our skins back on and hike back up. We didn’t see anyone all day and we didn’t get down to the road until way after dark and Troy’s car was parked a few miles away up the pass. No cars were on the highway and Troy started walking. It was snowing with a little wind. Finally, after forty-five minutes a car passes and looks like it’s not going to stop, but then way up the road the tail lights turn red. Johnny and I have to run in-place to stay warm. It seems like forever, then Troy pulls up in his Toyota Wagon. We get back to the Glacier Park Lodge late, but they keep the cafeteria open for me.

Surprisingly, the bartender has become my buddy. Most nights, I’m the only one staying here. I buy a round Caesars for the crew. That’s a Canadian version of a Bloody Mary, but with Clamato instead of tomato juice. We go out the front door to smoke weed. It’s still snowing. I buy a round of beers. I skied into a little creek today, iced ups my skis, then I was lugging a hundred pounds of snow on my boards. It happened right at the bottom of the run. I had to take my skis off twice and scrape the snow off.

I met Troy when he came to Alaska with Fred to go mountain climbing and they stayed at my place. Troy and my best friend, Dave Nyman, traveled and skied together in Europe ten years ago and Troy is well known for being the first to ski off the top of Mount Robson. I guess you could call us disciples of Fred for better understanding. The common element that ties us together is climbing, chicks, skiing, weed and beer. It has been said, You have to be high to hang with Fred. Fred does not smoke pot and hardly ever drinks alcohol.

We don’t get out the back door of the lodge until nine. We don’t sign in at the Discovery Avalanche Center. Johnny says, Those guys are cops. We don’t have to drive. We’re heading up Grizzly Shoulder. The up trail starts a third of a mile behind the hotel. Snow falls from the sky and there’s no wind. It’s been snowing for a week. Never too much, never too little. I break trail in a barely visible track. This is my fifth time up Grizzly shoulder on this trip. I’m a sucker for the closest good run. The snow is very deep. We leave a trench behind us.

Surprisingly, no one else is here today. Johnny has his camera out. I’m in full Fred Beckey mode.

You young guys just want to smoke dope and clip bolts. What’s the weather going to do? Do you think it’s going to snow? She’s got a hell of a rack. That tower, it’s unclimbed. I think we can land a plane there. I want to climb Lucky Streaks!

It’s a hump up Grizzly Shoulder because of the deep snow, but not that long of a hike compared to yesterday or other climbs at Roger Pass. Grizzly Shoulder has fantastic tree skiing. The old growth forest reminds me of the California forests except with good snow.

You spend too much time shooting videos and taking pictures. Troy, I hear you’re a cosmic couch surfer.

Troy channels his inner Fred. I’ll belay for food. What do say Jim, are we going climbing? I can’t tell you the exact location. I got a hand job in Utah last year. If we meet any chicks, all bets are off. I think she likes me.

Right near the top of Grizzly Shoulder, we hear some voices. They’re speaking French and coming up fast behind us. We get off the trail and sneak into the forest. I’m immediately up to my waist in snow. Troy breaks out a doobie. Three fireplugs, short and stout skin up the trail. Johnny says, split boarders. I ask, what’s worse—An American or a French Canadian?

Johnny says, both.

Troy says, I’ll have to think about that.

The three Frenchies pass us and we follow. We’re at the top of Grizzly Shoulder. The Frenchies keep going. Troy says, We’re skiing Puff Daddy and go right past the top of the Grizzly Shoulder run.

We spread out. The slope here is open—free of trees. We’re working to our left. Then we’re on the ridge. The clouds have lifted a bit. It’s fucking steep. There is a little opening in the clouds. We see the last snowboarder cut loose an avalanche. He doesn’t get caught and disappears into the trees.

Johnny has wide eyes. He’s not a punk anymore and neither am I. I point to a line of trees—not many but enough to sort of make it down to the thicker trees. Johnny agrees. Troy is not concerned, it avalanched already. Johnny and I pussyfoot it from tree to tree. From deep in the snowpack a groan speaks to us. Troy is out on the open slope and every time he turns, the snowpack yells at us. This deep weak layer has been an avalanche concern since my first day here with Tracy.

We’re skiing bed surface. It must avalanche up here, every storm. We get down to the thicker trees and regroup. I go first and I turn into the deepest snow I’ve ever skied. Every time it snowed this week my skiing developed as the snow got deeper. The temperature didn’t get above 10 F all week. My turns have never been better.

Johnny has his neck gator pulled up to his googles and his hood pulled tight. It’s steep as fuck and deep than hell. I disappear into the white room on every turn, my skis float me back up just enough to catch my breath.— I submerge again. We leapfrog our way down Puff Daddy. Johnny and Troy are just a pair googles and a hood sometimes and some spray follows them, but mostly they’re burrowing beneath the surface of the snow. It would be easy to loose someone in this deep of snow. After a thousand feet or so, I get cocky and take some long pulls before we stop and regroup. I’m shredding—stronger than I’ve ever been. I rip thru some trees and I’m in the air and hit a pillow of snow 15 feet down and I’m in the air again, big time—30 feet above a field of deep fluffy snowflakes. I lay her down sideways. I ain’t skiing out of this.

This is the big white room. I seem to be alive. I worry about Johnny or Troy landing on me. My skis are still on. My poles are right here. It takes awhile and then I get my boards underneath me.

Hey, Johnny, Troy. I’m alright. I yell.

It takes awhile before I’m moving again. I work my way to right. I’m less cocky now. I find my partners easy.

We’re working a Northeast aspect. It’s less steep down here. Trees are a little more spaced out. No cliffs. I’m cocky again, so are Johnny and Troy. It’s a powder party—A powder rodeo—A powder disco. The terrain is less steep. The snow is so light, it’s still fast and blowing up over our heads.

Then it’s over. We come out in the parking of the Glacier Park Lodge. There is nothing to be said. Words aren’t needed. Johnny and Troy’s neck gators are pulled down and they’re smiling. It’s still early, we’ve been hammering for days, we don’t need another run. I’m thinking about lying in the bed in my room with a Caesar in my hand.

That’s the best skiing I’ve ever had, I say.

o

Seth Kantner

Arctic Coast—It’s been stormy here in Kotzebue, for nearly all of February. Mostly I’ve been shoveling, and digging out my door, and dragging in firewood. I chop up spruce logs from the hills 25 miles across the sea ice and tundra. I burn every scrap of everything for heat. I especially like Pepsi pallets, for kindling.

Late in the evening I thaw caribou meat, and fat, then walk north to meet my girlfriend, Aakatchaq, coming my way. Sometimes she brings me Amazon cardboard, for firestarter. We squeeze in my shack, wedge the door shut with screwdrivers, sweep up the snow, laugh and make fun, and then drink a few drinks while I fry the meat.

Last week my neighbor gave me part of a case of half-rotten apples. Every day now before I go out to shovel, I make a quick pie in a tiny porcelain dish. I cook it on top my woodstove, under a stainless steel bowl. It cooks twenty minutes or so—until i come in to warm my hands. I use my blow torch to brown the crust and then eat the whole thing hot.

Making pies saved me, during my teenage years along the Kobuk River. Mostly cranberry, blueberry, and rhubarb. It always been great to have a few apples, enough for pie again.

Monday February 16, 2026. The usually two and half hour drive to Sugar Bowl takes ten hours. Highway 20 is closed and I have to turn around and take Highway 174 to Colfax where I drive Interstate 80 to Baxter Road and wait three hours until Caltrans opens the highway. In blowing snow and flat light at Soda Springs, I miss the exit to Sugar Bowl and in a whiteout cruise right past the turnoff to Boreal Ski Resort before I realise I missed the Soda Springs off ramp. I turn around at the Donner Lake turnoff and pull into the Clair Tappen parking lot around five.

Tuesday February 17, 2026. I sleep pretty good in the men’s bunk room despite the hard wind buffeted the old lodge. Around 6:30, I look through the window at thick horizontally falling snow and I doubt I will be skiing today.

I take my time drinking coffee and eating breakfast. The operations manager, Chris at the lodge says that its blowing ninety at the top of KT 22 over at the Palisades Ski Resort. He doesn’t think there will be any skiing today. The Sugar Bowl website reports a delayed opening, so I head down to the parking lot a little after eight and the landscape has drastically changed on account of the three feet of fresh snow. I break my twenty year old shovel on my first dig. It’s still usable but with just half a load. I also break my window scraper, so when I pull out of the parking lot forty five minutes later I head for Soda Springs to buy a new scraper at the store.

Donner Pass road is a whiteout. I see nothing. My side window tells me where where I am on the road. Occasionally, a car coming towards me will appear and it’s not a problem, because we are going so slow.

There isn’t much traffic so I figure Interstate 80 is closed. I buy a scraper at the store and pick up a hitchhiker, Raphael, a Peruvian working at Sugar Bowl on a J1 work visa. He likes Bad Bunny.

It takes more than twenty minutes to drive the four miles to the Sugar Bowl turn. The turnoff is confusing even though there is a truck parked there and plenty of signage. The website says the Gondola is on a wind hold, but the Disney chair is open. That makes no sense. The gondola is in the base, Disney is up on the mountain. The snow falls horizontally at an insane rate. We catch up to some stopped cars, or maybe they’re moving but at a very slow rate.

At the Sugar Bowl parking lot, I decide I’m not skiing today. Raphael hops out and heads for work. The parking lot bus appears. I walk over, its Chris. He opens his window and says, this is the worst visibility I’ve ever driven in. I have to stop completely when it gets bad. A Tesla driving too fast goes around us. He doesn’t believe that the Disney Chair is open either. He says, the Jerome chair is open. I tell him, I’m going back to the lodge.

It’s more slow driving back to the lodge. A truck is buried where it plugged in past the Sugar Bowl parking garage. Two other vehicles are off the road on the right. I miss the Clair Tappen parking lot and have to drive to Norden to turn around. Another Tesla passes driving too fast.

I find the parking lot and promptly plug my van into the pile of snow that has been shovelled into my former parking spot. The temperature is around fifteen degrees, it’s blowing 30 to 50 miles an hour with higher gusts. I hustle up to the Clair Tappen Lodge and close the door behind me.

The others staying at the lodge pepper me with questions. I admit, it was stupid to go out.

The lodge has a cold draft running through it. I put my down coat on and drink coffee. Ben returns from his drive forty-five minutes later. He went out to breakfast at the Old Forty Bar and Grill. He didn’t think there will be any skiing today and didn’t believe the Sugar Bowl website that says the Disney and Jerome Chairs are open. He gets stuck in the Donner Ski Ranch parking lot next to Donner Pass Road. Ben picks up five of the J1 visa holding Peruvian hitchhikers and gets stuck twice. While he’s shovelling a truck plugs into the snow bank across the road from him. It’s an old man who has had a heart attack. He doesn’t seem worried, it’s his third heart attack. A woman who is helping Ben calls for an ambulance and they wait with the man. Eventually the ambulance shows and Ben helps the Paramedics load the victim into the ambulance.

He’s happy to be in the lodge and stays inside for the rest of the day. He says, I regret going out. He thinks the wind is blowing 40 to 50 MPH with higher gusts.

Chris, the operations guy has built fires in the great room and the library. I’m reading news on my computer and Facebooking. Interstate 80 is closed for a hundred miles. Disney chair was open for a while and so was Jerome, but now the whole resort is closed. Boreal is closed. Palisades is closed. All roads to from Truckee are closed.

I’m a 55 year ski bum. I came up to Donner Pass to ski powder. I might be seventy but I still get out there. I love storm skiing and there are some slopes right behind the lodge that look pretty good but I am not going out in these conditions. The snow is probably too deep for skiing, unless it’s really steep. I’ve been out in weather like this in the Arctic many times, but I was not too far from a warm truck or building ever. I can’t remember recreating in the mountains in weather this severe, but I have done avalanche control at Alyeska Ski Resort and a rescue on Peak Three above Anchorage in similar conditions. I ended up shutting the rescue down because everything was a mess. Eleven people were out on the hill and half of them headed out alone. There were no lists, no trail marking and no organisation. It was blowing eighty MPH. Avalanches were coming down in the vicinity of the accident. I took a lot of shit for my decision to shut the rescue down but I have never regretted it. Ben is 34 and has been skiing since he was seven and he’s fired up to ski, but has no interest in skiing behind the Clair Tappen Lodge because of the weather.

We’re hanging out in the library. It’s sometime after noon. Reports of an avalanche show up on Facebook. It’s a large group on Castle Mountain. It’s not too far from here; five, six or at the most seven miles away as the crow flies. There’s four of us in the library. Everyone has an opinion. Why would anyone be out in these conditions? I have no interest in skiing today. What were they thinking?

I read more: it was a guided group of fifteen. Nine are missing. The guides are with Blackbird Mountain Guides. the website says, they’re the most trusted ARAIE (Avalanche Research and Education) Course provider in the US—two years running.

I read the Frog Lake Huts website. I look at the routes to it. I’ve skied Castle Mt, but have never been to the huts. The route I skied was fairly safe until near the top. Ben went to the huts last year. He took the same route as the party of fifteen. He says, They should’ve stayed at Frog lake.

https://www.truckeedonnerlandtrust.org/frog-winter-routes

It’s a miserable evening at the lodge. I can’t put my computer down. Forty-six people are involved in the rescue. I doubt anyone here would have gone out on a rescue. It’d be too dangerous with this weather. We worry for the rescuers as a group. The six survivors are huddled under a tarp beneath trees. The thermometer outside the lodge reads nine degrees Fahrenheit. The wind is still howling and snow falls at an exorbitant rate. There are many posts on Facebook: don’t comment until we have more info, the guides are negligent, why didn’t they stay at the Frog lake Huts, they should’ve had airbags…etc

Wednesday February 18. I don’t sleep well and look for updates on the rescue at regular intervals all night. Thankfully, the rescuers are all safe. In the morning it’s still snowing and blowing but at a lesser rate. I read this lying in bed.

An avid skier, Kurt Gensheimer was leaving the backcountry huts near Castle Peak, California on Sunday, likely just hours before a ski tour group and their guides visited the same spot.

Gensheimer was with another group staying in the Frog Lake huts from Thursday, Feb. 12, to Sunday, Feb. 15, the day the group led by Blackbird Mountain Guides arrived.

Gensheimer is an experienced backcountry skier and is familiar with the Tahoe area, but he is not a guide himself. He co-hosts a podcast called “Mind the Track” with Incline Village resident Tom Beckering, where they discuss outdoor mountain adventures, including skiing.

“I feel horrible for the families, the victims and for everybody who are involved in this rescue effort because it’s going to have a huge impact on the Tahoe community,” said Gensheimer, who lives in Verdi, just across the state line in Nevada.

But he called the incident a “100 percent preventable tragedy.”

After breakfast, I go down to the parking lot. I shovel for forty five minutes and Chris the operations guy from the lodge pulls me and and a few other cars from their parking spots with a strap hooked to his truck.

I get to Sugar Bowl around 9:30. Kevin picks me up in one of the buses that hauls skiers from the parking lot up to the lifts. He says yesterday was the hardest day of driving he’s ever had. He couldn’t see anything.

I ski most of the day. I don’t get one effortless powder turn and the wind is steady at 25 MPH and snow falls all day. The visibility goes from bad to horrible for all my skiing. Everyone I speak to is upset about the nine avalanche deaths. Most are pointing fingers at the guides. The Sierra Avalanche Center did a write up on the avalanche but has been taken it down.

People are driving way too fast in the parking lot. I didn’t realise it was ski week and all the kids were out of school.

Back at the lodge, I try to write something about the avalanche, but new information barrages me making it impossible for me to focus. The group included nine super moms, with connections or children in the Sugar Bowl Academy. Sounds like they were wealthy. The storm has intensified and the wind is crying. I give Su, the Peruvian Chef a twenty dollar tip.

Thursday February 19. I sleep poorly, get up early and try to write something. I’m consumed by the avalanche. I’m pissed off. I backcountry ski and I hate that no one skis, one a time, I hate that no one spreads out when they’re ascending, I hate that many are using radios to keep track of their partners. There is no etiquette in the backcountry and the guides on this avalanche teach the avalanche safety classes.

Sugar Bowl is closed today. No skiing. I have a crew I’m hanging with at the lodge. Ben, Wendy, Alan, and Chris and we have some camaraderie. I keep trying to write something. I can’t find the words. I end up posting on Facebook too much. More information comes out. Most people post different theories on how the group could’ve survived. Most comments say, they should’ve stay at the Frog Lake Huts.

It’s a long day at the Clair Tappen. I leave once to go down and shovel out my van and move it to a new location in the parking lot. A new guy, Josh shows up at the lodge. He’s a psychotherapist and a hoot. It’s sad night but we try to make the most of it.

There are articles on Facebook about criminal negligence charges against the Blackbird Mountain Guides. There is more info on the nine super moms. Some are definitely wealthy and high powered and all are experienced expert skiers. There are many theories being floated around about the pressure on the guides from the women and the need to get out from the Frog lake Huts.

Friday February 20. The sky is mostly clear on Friday morning. I don’t think I’m going to ski. When I get down to Donner Pass Road, I have to wait because the traffic is heavy. As I stand there waiting to cross the road to the parking lot, I decide not to ski. It’s too busy. I want to go home. I shovel my van out and Chris stops traffic so I can get onto the road. The traffic is backed up the three miles to I 80 and then down the off ramp towards Truckee.

I’m discouraged and I’m depressed when I hit Interstate 80. I spent six hundred dollars and didn’t get one good high quality powder turn.

I am tired and mad when I get home. I should stayed home this week and went up to Lassen today. I have three friends up there and they say the skiing mostly sucked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but the Lassen backcountry was good Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

People Magazine interview guide and avalanche instructor, Richard Bothwell. He says it would be pretty reasonable for backcountry skiers to go out on the day of the avalanche or in almost any conditions with the proper gear and training. He was one hundred miles away at Mt Lassen when the avalanche occurred.

A retired Canadian ski and alpine guide asked a few typical questions. He wasn’t following the news and didn’t know much about it. He asked, why did they leave Frog Lake? Why were they found in close proximity to each other? He also said, if they had to leave Frog Lake, they should’ve broke up the eleven clients into four groups: each with a guide and set. out from Frog Lake, twenty minutes apart.

It’s been a week since the avalanche. The snow lab near the Clair Tappen Lodge says it snowed 111 inches in five days, but really it was only four days. It’s an historic storm, one of the biggest ever in the Tahoe area. I’ve run through the whole range of emotions about the avalanche. I believe the group should’ve stayed at the Frog Lake Huts and that there was no way out without some kind of catastrophe. I believe the guides are ultimately responsible, but not criminally negligent. I imagine that the group dynamics were awful and I wouldn’t want to ski with that big of group. I can only wonder, how and who made the decision to leave Frog Lake with three feet of fresh snow and all of the wind.

The blue dot is where the avalanche occurred.

Castle Peak Trailhead (3.5 miles one way, 1,500 feet gain, 1,100 descent)

Alex has my attention. I see another picture of him. He’s standing with his mountain bike turned sideways on a wide trail in the forest. It’s 29r Surley Karate Monkey with a frame bag, two water bottles and clean free wheel. He sporting the same half smile, he looks kind, but serious. He’s wearing a shirt with Minneapolis printed across the front. Everything about him is tidy and organized.

The videos of ICE killing him are everywhere. Trump, Noem, Patel, Vance and Stephen Miller call him a domestic terrorist and say he attacked ICE with his pistol drawn. More videos and news emerges, he’s carrying a gun in a holster, he has permit. He never removes it from his holster. ICE only finds his gun after they’ve tackled him and you can see it happen in the video.

Alex Pretti is an intensive care nurse. He works in a veterans hospital. His patients and their families are speaking out. Alex was patient, he listened to them and he answered their questions. He’s a good man, everyone says. There is video of him reading a eulogy over a dead veteran.

I watch the videos of Alex before, during and after his shooting many times. They don’t show a domestic terrorist. He doesn’t have a gun in his hand, only a phone. The whole event is short. A woman gets pushed. Pretti goes over to her. You can see his lips move. Are you okay? He helps the woman up. Their arms are around each other’s backs supporting each other. Another woman is pushed to the ground. Pretti goes to help. An ICE thug sprays Alex in the face multiple times. Alex keeps trying to help the woman. Two members of ICE attack Pretti. He doesn’t fight back, but he’s not a push over. Two more ICE join the fray. They got him good but he still trying to get up. Now there are seven surrounding him. One is beating him with the butt of his gun. One of the ICE yells, gun!! He steps back ten feet. One second later a shot is fired.

People are screaming—total chaos. Multiple shots are fired. Quite a few. Ten they say, from two different guns. The agents move away. Alex Pretti lies limp on the ground. They killed him.

I see another picture of Alex, he’s somewhere in big snowy mountains. Looks like Colorado. Same half smile. He’s wearing a down coat.

Alex was a rock climber, he was a mountain biker, he was a boy scout and he loved dogs. As a nurse, he was committed to helping people.

The white house’s spokesperson is changing her tune as is Noem, Trump and Patel and Stephen Miller is saying, protocol might not have been followed. Now, no one says he has a gun in his hand. Five of Fox News reporters have watched the videos and are asking the hard questions. Even stanch Trump supporter, Fox’s Maria Bartiromo is calling BS on what is being said in the Maga world. Every gun rights organization is in support of Pretti’s right to carry. Republican and Maga Governor Abbott of Texas, calls Alex Pretti’s shooting “bad optics”. Republican Senator Tom Thillis is calling for Noem’s and Patel’s resignations. Joe Rogan, Peirs Morgan and even fucking Stephan A. Smith are staying Pretti wasn’t waving a gun and didn’t deserve to die. Alex Pretti is doing what no country or person has done in our ten plus year of Trump. He is getting the whole damn rotten bunch of them to back down.

I can’t avoid Alex Pretti. 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis is now a shrine and should always be one. Senator Raphael Warnock traveled to the spot and stayed for a while. Bicycle shops all over the country are planning Alex Pretti Memorial rides. I want to go to 26th and Nicollet. Alex is being hailed as a martyr and a hero. Almost overnight, and rightfully so, he becomes the most famous rock climber/mountain biker in the country.

Pretti has had one run-in with ICE. It happened a couple of weeks ago. They threw him to the ground. He broke a rib. He spoke with his father about it. Alex said he knew what he was doing. He was persistent before the shooting, but backed up every time ICE moved forward. He moves quick while filming what was going on. He went to help one woman and then another who is being thrown and pushed around by the ice thugs. He tried to help as he was being sprayed. It was his nature.

Bruce Springsteen has written and recorded a song: The streets of Minneapolis. He sings about Alex Pretti and Renee Good. It brings me to tears. Nurses are celebrating him across the country. Maga doesn’t read the news so they don’t know their leaders are backing down on Pretti’s actions before the shooting and are pushing the old mean and vile narrative on social media about Alex.

I wish I could meet Alex at the crag rock climbing or for a ride. I wish I could invite him to the bike shop for a beer. I wish I could tell him what a stud he is. He never fought back with ICE. He was focused on helping the two women. I wish I could hug him.

I can’t do anything except write about Alex Jeffry Pretti. I can put him in the book I’m writing about Dead Alaskans, even though he is not Alaskan. I can honor him as a hero and martyr and hope, that long after I’m gone and my words have faded that Alex is remembered, because Alex Pretti is one of us.

Chuck Sassara’s blood flows with wanderlust and a willingness to act decisively on impulses and desires. He was born Charles Jones Sassara on October 19, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan. Six months later, smack dab in the middle of the depression, the family moves to Los Angeles. His mother, Kathleen waits tables and makes pies at home to sell at the restaurant. Pappy, Chuck’s dad stays home and takes care of him and his newly born brother Dick. But his dad is restless.

In 1935, the family moves to Miami, Florida because Chuck’s father, an electrician thinks he can find work there. There is a an airport nearby and Chuck is fascinated by airplanes that he sees flying overhead. His first airplane ride is in some sort of Tandum two seater when he was six with his brother Dick, who was three and forever after Chuck is hooked.

Before Christmas, Chuck worries to his mother that Santa isn’t going to come because there was no snow in Miami and how was Rudolph going to land and get his presents to him. His mother, tells him to relax because Santa will fly an airplane into Miami and deliver presents.

Chuck’s second flight takes place in a Sikorsky flying boat to Havana, Cuba in 1940. From there, they take a ship to Panama, where his dad Pappy has secured a job. His mother Kathleen loves Panama and becomes one of the leading socialites of the Canal Zone.

Life in Panama is sweet for the young Chuck. He finds the wildlife and darkness of the jungle enchanting and loves that everyone carries a machete and shotgun. He also builds a small boat which he and his brother Dick sail in the canal and try their best to avoid the passing ships.

Chuck is with his father when they get the news that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. Pappy’s job is to keep the electrical grid up and running until they can get more troops to the canal in case of an attack.

Pappy enlists in the Navy and the family becomes military dependents and are shipped to New Orleans and spends the remainder of the war in Pittsburgh.

After the war, Pappy buys a 1948 Ford Sedan which they drive to Florida. From there, the drive back up to Pittsburgh, then to Seattle and down to Los Angeles where they buy a duplex. Chuck goes to University High School and plays on the football and swim teams.

After Pappy’s friend, Jack dies from electrocution while working with him, his father is depressed and wants to move back to Panama. They did, but Chuck stays in Los Angeles to finish high school.

In 1950, Chuck meets Ann Baackes, who is three years younger than him. She is the girl of his dreams and four years later they marry. Chuck, by then is a pilot in training and starts out in the difficult to fly, Luscombe. He logs nearly 150 hours in this little plane.

Ann works as a secretary at Century Fox Studios. As part of her job, she escorts movie stars and celebrities around the studios. She is a favorite of Earl Warren, then Governor of California and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and she is sent flowers by Clark Gable after showing him around the studios.

In 1954, Chuck buys a Volkswagen Van. He is studying at UCLA and working for the Rand Corporation. One of his fellow researchers has been to Alaska and tells Chuck about the glaciers, mountains, fish, moose, bears and the freedom and opportunity.

When Chuck graduates from UCLA, he quits his job with the Rand Corporation and Ann quits her job with Century Fox. They head north to Alaska in the Volkswagen Bus, following Pappy and Nona in a truck with a camper.

Anchorage, Alaska is 3400 miles from Los Angeles. The first 2000 miles were not bad but in Dawson Creek, British Columbia the newly built Alcan highway was a muddy, rocky, buggy 1400 mile adventure. They fix numerous flat tires and break an axle near Whitehorse and roll into Eagle River after the two week drive where they set up camp.

The next day they go into Anchorage and pass by Merrill Field where the sky and field are dotted with small aircraft. They go to Lake Hood and Anchorage International Airport where Chuck gets a job with Pacific Northern Airlines. He sees a sign that says, Aircraft have the Right Away on Roads. Chuck knows Alaska is where he wants to be.

Chuck shows up the next morning at six and writes tickets and checks in passengers for the Seattle flight. His job entailed everything but flying and turning wrenches on the Lockheed Constellations, one of the world’s most lovely airplanes.

During Chuck’s ten months of working at PNA, a pregnant Ann and him live in a house on Nugget Avenue behind where Chilkoot Charlie’s is now and his father works for the Civil Aeronautics Administration, while his mother is holding down the Big Lake Lodge they had just bought for 25,000 dollars, which includes a liquor license issued by the Territory of Alaska.

Charlie was born on July 20th 1956. He wasn’t a junior and he wasn’t a Chuck. Pappy and Cathleen were immediately telling Ann not to spoil them. Pappy wanted little Charlie to start boxing as soon as possible. Pappy and Nona constantly worry that Chuck and Ann will spoil their kids and make them soft.

He works 10 months at PNA. It is one of the few regular jobs he ever had. After PNA, he works for himself for the rest of his life, generally buying and selling. After about a year in Anchorage, Ann and Chuck move out to the newly named Yacht Club at Big Lake which was busy with airplanes on floats or skis depending on the season. Big Lake is twenty-five miles from Anchorage as the crow flies and the perfect place for a fledging pilot to fly to.

Chuck buys a Taylorcraft on floats. His first airplane turned the 80 mile drive from Big Lake to Anchorage into a twenty minute jaunt.

The Yacht Club bustles with small airplane traffic. Three runways are plowed on Big Lake so there are options for landing depending on the direction of the wind. Chuck generally runs out to the porch when he hears an airplane approaching and watches it land. There are many accidents and Chuck learns a lot from watching others mistakes.

In 1957, Chuck is selling Radio and TV commercials for KENI AM and TV. Ann is in California with baby Charlie. One day, after the long drive back from Anchorage in the Volkswagen Bus, his Mother tells him she had bought an airplane. Cathleen didn’t know what she had bought but it was pretty and big and Chuck didn’t sleep much that night and headed to Anchorage early the next morning. Much to his delight, his mother had bought a Aeronca 15AC Sedan. This was a four seater and mounted with skis and quite the upgrade from the Taylorcraft.

Charlie’s brother, Richard is born on January 18, 1959 on the same month and year as Alaska achieves statehood. After around six hundred hours of flying the Aeronca, he sells it to Fred Notti and buys a Bonanza 35, one of nearly 200 aircraft that Chuck owned and flew in his life.

Ann has gone from Hollywood glamour to Alaska backwoods survival and had her own custom made 30.06. She looked for a moose to shoot or chase a bear off the porch. As remarkable as it may seem, in one short year Ann went from lunching with the likes of Clark Gable in Hollywood to skinning an illegally shot moose at Red Shirt Lake.

Business was booming at the lodge, but Chuck hates the bar. He can’t stand drunks or slurred speech. The nearest trooper is 35 miles away in Palmer. There were lots of fights at the bar and Chuck weighs 235 pounds and punches out many a drunk, but the writing is on the wall. Ann and him has two young boys that need to go to school so they sell the lodge and buy a large log home on an acre and a quarter lot on Bannister Drive in Roger Park, a new subdivision in Anchorage.

Chuck needs a way to put food on the table. He leases land on Merrill Field right across the street from Peggy’s Cafe and puts up an office building and sticks poles in the ground where he hangs flags and banners announcing Airport Auto Sales. He sells cars, trucks and airplanes. The business was a success from the beginning.

Airport Auto Sales demanded airplanes and the airplanes were all in the lower 48. Chuck often had to drive down to the states and then ferry airplanes back to AK. He ended up driving the Alcan nearly fifty times in his life.

Pappy and Ann still had the same wanderlust they passed onto Chuck and they weren’t going to retire and grow old after they sold the lodge and they decide to take a long vacation in Europe. Chuck, Ann and the boys figure they should join them before they were tied down by the boys’ schooling.

They land in Paris and the first thing they do is eat lunch at the Eiffel Tower. Two friends live in Bern, Switzerland and they visit them. Chuck leaves the family there and takes the train to Munich where he buys a four door black Mercedes Benz Sedan.

The Sassaras have no travel plans and they roll across Germany, Austria, France willy nilly and down the boot of Italy where they take a ferry to Sicily to visit the birth place of his mother’s parents in Campo Felice where the whole village comes out to greet them.

After Sicily, they load the Mercedes on a freighter to Tunisia and travel across north Africa. Algeria was the crux because the US embassy won’t give them a visa to drive across Algeria because the Algerian Revolution is going on. The Mercedes rolls across Algeria dodging bullets, bandits and at one point a car full of rebels chase them, guns a-blazing all the way to the Moroccan border.

After Morrocco, the family ferries to southern Spain where Chuck hands the keys to his parents and the family flies back to Alaska where Charlie starts school.

Chuck’s first experience in politics was when Governor Egan appoints him to an advisory board for the SBA (Small Business Administration) and it helps Chuck as he positions himself to run for political office.

In October of 1962, a black sedan rolls into the Airport Auto Sales parking lot. Governor Bill Egan jumps out the car and runs into Chuck’s office. Chuck, grab Ann and your kids right away; there may be a war starting. The Russians are putting long range missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States. Get your family out of here. Find somewhere safe to ride it out.

Chuck has a Cessna 170B ready to go parked outside his office. Ann and him discuss what they would need to survive for six months. They know where to go. Polly Creek is on the west side of Cook Inlet. It has fresh water, sandy beaches and thirty foot tides that brings up the clams and flat fish. Firewood and straight trees to build with are plentiful.

The Russians back off, war was averted and the Sassaras miss an opportunity to go camping.

At 5:36 PM on March 27th 1964, the floor in Chuck’s office starts shaking, then rolling. Chuck moves to the doorway and holds onto the jam. Out the window, planes are bouncing up and down. The windows across the road at Peggy’s are bursting and breaking. The great Alaska Earthquake shakes the ground for five minutes and is the second most powerful earthquake ever recorded. 139 people die from the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis.

Chuck is sworn in to the Alaska Legislature in July of 1965 to a new Congress that includes commercial fishermen, lawyers, bush pilots, doctors, teachers, heavy-equipment operators, miners, a liquor salesman, hunting guides and a native whaling captain. Chuck likes and admires these people and their friendships survive a lifetime. Many of them were pilots and include Ted Stevens, Jay Hammond, Lowell Thomas Junior, and a few others. Sometimes they would fly their planes around the state for meetings to explain issues to Alaskans.

Governor Egan had regular informal meetings with congressmen at night in his office. Chuck would show up as a member of the house finance committee. The conversations would always end up being about 104 million acres Alaska was promised by US Congress in the Alaska Statehood act. The governor selected Prudoe Bay as one of the parcels because he was told there was oil there. In 1969, the state auctions off parcels of land for the right to look for oil. The auction brought in 900 million while the state was currently operating on a 200 million dollar budget.

In the Alaska Legislature, Chuck and Ted Stevens used to argue vehemently and whip the whole body into an arguing frenzy and then sneak off and have a friendly dinner together.

Chuck starts a youth football league in Anchorage with funding from First National Bank of Alaska.

In 1965, Ann’s parents are nearing the end, Chuck and Ann pull up stakes and move back to Southern California to help out. The Watts riots happen when they were there. Chuck lives in Juneau when the legislature is in session and travels to Anchorage often. After her folks pass they move back to Alaska and they stay with Ted Steven’s family three or four months before they buy a home.

Chuck is a Democrat and what you would call today, a liberal, but fiscally conservative except for with the oil money. Alaska needs airports, roads, schools, and all the other things a growing state needs and Chuck is willing to use the oil money to achieve this. He quickly becomes Majority Leader and Finance Chair and champions the University of Alaska, Anchorage, the Equal Rights Amendment and legalizing abortion, which Alaska did in 1970, three years before Roe vs Wade was legalized in the United States.

Chuck serves three terms in the house. In his last term, Gene Guess and a couple other Democrats form the first coalition government with Republicans to deny Chuck the speakership. He is heart broken and for a while lost his almost unshakable optimism—maybe for the first time. He runs for Lieutenant Governor and loses. Ann loves Chuck and is supportive in every way and the family lore is that she put a hex on Guess and he died a few years later of a heart attack. Chuck and Ann are disillusioned with Alaska.

The Sassaras move to Florida where Chuck sells airplanes and flies cargo to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Columbia, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Brazil,Panama, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, British Virgin Islands, Honduras, and Canada, to name a few countries. The Sassaras spend three and a half years in Florida and then return to Alaska. Chuck misses out on the real estate boom and once again needs to feed his family and buys into a flight service and continues buying and selling planes.

January 16th 1976, Chuck is working as the chief pilot for Christiansen Air Service in Bethel. They were operating twelve different planes and he needs to get a 206 to Anchorage for a new radio. He tells the crew he’ll be back in a day or two. Dave Fritzwater, nicknamed Fish Water, a drifter, shows up looking for a ride to town. A few minutes later they take off headed for Anchorage. Chuck has flown this route many times and the weather reports are good. At Merrill Pass he could see no clouds or weather and they flew through here easily. When they reach Chakachamna Lake he hugs the south shoreline and it starts snowing. This is no problem until he reaches the end of the lake where it’s dumping snow. The window to Anchorage is closed ahead and Chuck turns the plane around. He thinks out his options and decides the best thing to do was put the plane down on the west end of the lake. Chuck cuts the power, he can’t see anything—only snow. He keeps the plane level and they come down hard which spins the plane around. Neither Chuck or Fish Water is hurt, but they have no radio and no ELT because it had been swiped for another plane and Chuck knows he screwed up because he didn’t check to see if ELT was there. It snows for six days and they have no food. There isn’t much firewood around and they burn the airplanes’s tires to stay warm. Six days after the hard landing, the clouds lift and soon after Chuck hears a plane. It is a De Havilland Beaver with Gene Wieler at the controls and his wife Ann in the passenger seat.

Chuck and Ann live a wild life. Adventure was always part of the deal and basically Ann is always on board. Chuck as an aviator flew commercial, multi-engine and was an IFR rated pilot that flew 175 different types of aircraft, logging over 25,000 hours in planes as small as the Breezy to as large as the four-engine Lockheed Constellation. Often, Ann is copilot. As a sailor he crossed the Atlantic, made passages from Miami to Los Angeles, solo from Seattle to Whittier and made several dozen trips to the Bahamas and beyond, finishing with an offshore passage from Florida to the Carolina Outer Banks with son Charlie, nephew Rick and friend, Michel Bourquin in 2015.

Ann is quite the card too. She drove a 1975 Rolls Royce for a while and wore white driving gloves. She said, a girl ought to own a Rolls at least once in her life.

Chuck was fascinated by almost everything. He raced both sled dogs and ice racing cars at Fur Rendezvous. Ann and him homesteaded property at Point Mackenzie, which their son Charlie, still owns today.

Chuck still buys and sells airplanes, cars and whatever he thought he could make some money on. He even got a real estate license. His motto is buy for one dollar and sell for three dollars. He buys a lot in Girdwood and his son Richard builds his parents a home. Anna and Chuck became close friends with trooper Mike. Ann was driving a Jaguar Coup at that time and occasionally she would call trooper Mike Opalka and see what section of the Seward Highway he was patrolling and she would go the opposite direction and put the pedal to metal.

Chuck loses a run for Lieutenant Governor, he’s done with politics. This story is getting too long and I’ve only hit the high points. Chuck is the most accomplished man I know of in Alaska. I’m awed by the width and breath of his experiences and I need to get this story finished.

One more story though, sometime around 1976, Mark Norquist reads an ad in the Anchorage Daily News for a used house trailer. He calls the number, Chuck answers, they discuss the mobile home, Mark’s interested. Chuck tells him to meet him at his office. Where’s that? Mark asks. A window seat at Del Mundo’s coffee shop on Benson Boulevard. Mark ends up buying the trailer, but the story lasts his lifetime.

Ann and Chuck are blessed with three grandchildren, Tyler, Rachel and Annalyssa from Richard’s marriage. Ann wants to be near them so they buy a house in Dalles Oregon. She tells them they will never get in trouble at her house and the kids love their grandparents.

Ann has a stroke. Chuck moves her into a home in the Dalles, Oregon. She has another stroke and another and Chuck moves her to a home in Tacoma. Ann’s only there for a couple of months before she dies in Chuck’s arms on December 9, 2010. The family spreads her ashes in Babbling Brook, a tributary to Glacier Creek in Girdwood.

Chuck finds the low point of his life. He’s confused, as well as heart broken. He stumbles around for three months and then one day he takes stock of himself and knows Ann wouldn’t like this version of Chuck and he dredges up the old optimist, Chuck Sassara.

One day, as a disillusioned writer sitting in City Market New Sagaya drinking coffee hoping some young girl admirer would find me and tell me how good my books were and how cool I was, but instead this rather big man with white hair approaches me and says, Jim Sweeney, I’m Chuck Sassara. Can I sit down?

He sits down, his elbows take over most of the table and he says, Charlie says I should talk to you, because I’m writing a book and the word is that you wrote a good book with no prior background in writing.

Why do you want to write a book? I ask and Chuck starts telling stories.

Chakachama Chicken soup gobbles up ten minutes and the Cuban missile crisis and Governor Egan’s response, then he and his wife Ann are in the Volkswagen Bus and they’re driving to Alaska. Chuck doesn’t stop for twenty minutes, I can’t get word in. I’ve been writing full time for eight years and there’s nothing less creative than telling your story instead of writing it.

CHUCK!, I say, interrupting him. Don’t tell your stories, write them. You’re beating a dead horse.

Sheepishly, he looks at me and says, That’s what Charlie says, too.

I tell Chuck what I’ve learned about writing. Read like you’re possessed. You only need three things, action, dialogue and description to write your story. Read Stephan King’s book, On Writing. Love your characters.

We have a great conversation. I can feel that he wants to tell me more stories. We exchange phone numbers and I tell him, you have great material. Write your damn book.

A couple of years later, I hear Chuck has written his book,.Chuck Sassara’s Alaska Propellers, Politics & People. His son, Charlie paid for it and made it happen. I meet up with Chuck and we trade books.

Chuck wrote a good book. He’s getting lots of press and it’s good press. Todd Communication published his book, so he has book events at Barnes and Noble and Costco. He’s interviewed by the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media.

I see Chuck at a David Stevenson reading and Charlie takes a picture of David, Chuck and I. For some reason he is honored to be hanging with two other authors.

I’m back living in Hope and volunteering at the Library again. Susan tells me she wants to invite authors to sell their books in a tent between the Hope Library and Gift Shop during Wagon Days. I call Chuck and he agrees to come down.

Hope is busy during Wagon Days. I’m at the library early. Behind the tent where the authors are going to sell their books, a dome camp tent is set-up. I open the library and see that Susan is in the gift shop. After a few minutes, Chuck and Maxine Rader walk across the library parking lot.

Maxine is Alaska royalty and was married to John Rader who was one of Chuck’s cronies in congress. I saw both Chuck and Maxine at Marjorie Nyman’s funeral and celebration of life last year. Maxine and Marjorie were good friends and Maxine used to get after me for getting David Nyman in trouble in the mountains.

Is that your tent? I ask Chuck. Yes, it is. I go ask Susan if it’s okay that they camp there? Susan doesn’t get bothered by much and she has no problem with it, but it’s really funny that these two Alaska icons are camping together at the Hope Library.

Chuck sells a bunch of books and Sourdough Dru tells me to get Chuck to come over and sell books on her front porch on Main Street that evening. Chuck heads over there and I check on him. He’s selling books like hot cakes and harassing some local kids for being worthless bums.

The next morning Chuck’s up early. Sam has a coffee cart out in front of the library and Chuck and Maxine have coffee. He asks Sam how to get to Doug Pope’s house. Chuck tells Maxine he’ll be back in a few minutes and grabs one of his books and heads down Second Street towards the Turnagain Arm. At B Street he takes a trail to the right and has to walk a plank over a Little Resurrection Creek and past the Trimmingham’s horse stables where Joe, a big white horse, tries to get Sassara’s attention, but Chuck is on a mission. The trail ends at Third Street and he turns into the driveway on the right. It’s around eight a.m. He starts hollering, Doug Pope! Doug Pope!

Doug is awake, but still in bed. Beth, his wife, stirs as Doug gets out of bed to see what the racket is. Doug looks out his east facing window and there’s Chuck standing in his driveway waving his book in his left hand.

Doug hustles downstairs and invites Chuck in. Chuck stops as he steps into the living room, mesmerized by the view of the Turnagain Arm and the mountains beyond through the big windows. Chuck doesn’t stay long, Maxine is at the library. He hands the book to Doug and Doug looks for the price and counts out the cash. Chuck has a pocketful of money. He sold 36 books in Hope. I’d say his trip was a success.

Chuck was a star for a year or so and he played the part well. His son, Charlie paid for everything, was the force behind getting it published and made sure Todd Communication gave Chuck one thousand books to sell on his own and Chuck was flush with cash. Plus, Charlie helped immensely with this story.

I see Chuck a few more times. Charlie would bring him around. He always had a fire in his eyes and a smile on his mug.

Chuck and Charlie

Chuck has no retirement of any kind. He receives a monthly Social Security check. Charlie takes good care of his father and he lives in a condo downtown and hangs out with his buddies at Fletchers in the bottom of the Captain Cook Hotel and at City Market New Sagaya.

Charlie tells me about Chuck’s last few hours. He has a date, but he needs a burger first so he stops at Carl Jr on C Street between Northern Lights and Benson Boulevard. He gets it to go. He pulls out onto Cheechako Street and after 100 feet turns left on Benson Boulevard. He passes Dawson, Eureka, Eide, Park and C Street and the lights are all green and he turns left on A Street and is met by a red light at Northern Light Boulevard. He takes a bite of his burger and sets it down when the light turns green. After he crosses over Northern lights he pulls into the Speedy Gas Station on the right. He pulls up to the pump and uses his debit card to pump gas. While his Toyota is being filled he opens his door and grabs his burger. He takes a bite and collapses. A passerby calls 911. Chuck Sassara dies Friday afternoon September 25, 2020.

Audi is a big girl, 6’3” and her weight is all over the map on the internet, but I’d say she looks around 250 pounds. Her nickname is Lady Shaq, because her play reminds fans of Shaquille O’Neal’s dominance in the NBA.

I’m a big fan of women’s hoops. The personalities, effort and comradeship of the players is much different than the men. Opposing teams help players get up off the floor, on average they barely make a living wage and women work harder on defense than the men.

Audi’s parents both played basketball. Her father Jimmie Crooks is black and her mother, Michelle Cooks is white. Audi practiced with her mother on a driveway hoop and drew inspiration from her father’s style as a player. Her father died in 2021 and this affected Audi greatly. She wears the number 55, which both her parents wore.

You might think that it’s strange that I write about Audi, but I’ve yearned to write about women’s basketball for awhile and when I watched Audi play last night I saw a smile as big as Iowa and her skipping off the court was pure happiness. It’s great to be a fan of a sport that girls and women like Audi, get to shine in.

During my research I came across what kind of gal Audi is. Through her Audi Crooks Foundation she’s given away nearly half of her considerable earnings (677,000$) to feed children at poor schools and she did it without fanfare.

Originally in Alaska Sports Report

Farewell to Dick Griffith, the grandfather of modern Alaska adventure

by Roman Dial | Dec 4, 2025 | Adventure, Cover Story

Dick Griffith, the grandfather of modern Alaska adventure, died in his sleep this week. He was 98.

In his 50s, a thick shock of white hair crowned Dick’s head. Many of us in our 20s hoped one day to be like him: Clint Eastwood in tennis shoes and a backpack.

But by the time our own heads had grayed, we knew we could never be what he was: the person we meet once in a lifetime, and even then, only if we’re lucky.

I met Dick in 1982, the night before the inaugural Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic, then a week-long, carry-all-your-own-food-and-gear, no-roads-or-outside-help race across the Kenai Peninsula.

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He was 55 and had made dozens of wild journeys for personal reflection, not fame, fortune or being first.

That night around the campfire, Dick didn’t mention any of his accomplishments, leaving me to wonder, “What is this old guy doing here at the start of a 150-mile race across the wilderness?”

Soon enough, he’d show us a path that would change our lives, a path he’d been blazing for decades.

Dick Griffith on the Grand Canyon in the early 1950’s. Photo courtesy of the Griffith Family.

In 1949, at 22 years old, Dick met his future wife, Isabelle, while retracing John Wesley Powell’s 1,200 mile trip from Green River, Wyoming, to the end of the Grand Canyon. She offered to help finance the trip if she could go along.

They didn’t complete the trip that year. But they did fall in love. They married a year later and returned to Green River in 1951. Together, they made the first complete inflatable rubber raft trip down the Grand Canyon.

The following year he and Isabelle took a small Air Force survival raft through the sprawling depths of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, making the first descent of the Rio Urique.

When asked where he found that little raft, he replied, “They were everywhere after the war. You could buy ’em for a dollar.”

In 1954, Dick and Isabelle moved to Alaska, where their two children, Barney and Kimmer, were born. Five years later he flew north to the Arctic Ocean to walk 500 miles from Kaktovik to Anaktuvuk Pass, across the North Slope and through the Brooks Range, living off the land as he went.

Dick liked to recount that 50-day epic in his spare understated way. “I left Barter Island with three dogs and a partner. The partner went lame the first week and flew out. One of the dogs died. I ate the second one. And the third one got smart and ran off.”

Despite hunger and hardships with mosquitoes and river crossings, Dick made it to Anaktuvuk, where he struck up enduring friendships with the Nunamiut people he met there. They were only then settling down from their nomadic lifestyles.

Dick’s Anchorage home has long been decorated with the masks his Anaktuvuk friends carved, a symbol of how Dick’s life straddled pre-statehood and the modern era.

While his kids grew and he worked as an engineer, Dick stuck closer to home through the 1960s and 70s. He returned to Anaktuvuk at age 50 to complete his Brooks Range traverse from Kaktovik to Kotzebue with his good friend Bruce Stafford in 1977. His is the first complete documented traverse of that Arctic mountain range.

Dick along the northern coast of Canada in 1995. Photo by Rodger SIglin, courtesy of Griffith family.

Two years later he suffered a horrible injury when he froze his legs and buttocks during a blizzard on a solo Arctic ski trip. He spent a month in the frostbite unit in Anchorage where, he recounted humbly, “They amputated my butt.”

But that didn’t stop him from heading back to the Arctic to ski big distances alone.

At 61, he began a 4,000-mile trip from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay, across northern Alaska and through the Northwest Passage. Nearly every March or April for a decade he’d head north for a month or two of solo skiing.

Once, a polar bear followed him for days. Eventually the bear screwed up its courage enough to slice the tent wall with a claw while Dick slept.

Lacking a gun, Dick realized he had to take creative action. He wrapped dozens of Tylenol and Advil in smoked salmon and left it on the snow. He never saw the bear again.

At age 73, after eight annual trips, he reached Hudson Bay.

My own age provides renewed, informed respect for the trips he made at my age and beyond. Last year I told him so.

“How old are you?” he asked. “Sixty-four? You’re only 64? Well, you’re in the prime of your life!”

When Dick was 64, he skied 450 miles from Point Barrow to Barter Island alone, dragging everything he needed in his sled for the month-long journey.

We all watched Dick grow older and continue at post-retirement age to do what we young ‘uns would never do. “Life is like a bicycle,” he told us. “If you stop moving, you fall over.”

The start of the 1995 Donnelly to McKinley Park Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic. Dick is holding his 11-year-old Sherpa Raft. It’s the only race in 43 years that everyone finished; “This route is too easy!” Dick said.

Throughout his 50s, 60s and 70s, he continued to complete the annual Wilderness Classic races all across Alaska and row rafts down the Grand Canyon. His did his last Classic at 81. He rowed his last Grand Canyon trip at 89.

Dick’s wit was as legendary as his adventures.

In that early Hope to Homer race, Dick unrolled an inflatable vinyl raft at the first of three rivers the rest of us rightfully feared having to swim in our rain gear and backpacks.

As his intent dawned on us, he put on a furry Viking hat with soft horns and chided us. “You young guys may be fast, but you eat too much and don’t know nothin’!”

For good measure he added that “old age and treachery beats youth and skill every time.”

He then inflated what would eventually be called a “packraft,” rowed across the churning glacial river, and waited to make sure we all crossed safely.

Dick wasn’t just helpful in the wilderness. Raised on a Wyoming dirt farm during the Depression, he once wrote, “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth but I certainly intend to die with one.”

Dick and a Tarahumara Indian at the bottom of Mexico’s Copper Canyon in 1952. Photo courtesy of the Griffith family.

By building and maintaining his modest house in the Anchorage Hillside woods, avoiding all debt, living frugally and investing wisely, he made good on that promise and shared his success with the community. Especially the Eagle River Visitor Center—and his friends in need.

Besides his financial giving, he gave his time, helping his neighbors and hosting holiday and Sunday dinners for his “orphans,” as he called us.

Dick spent hours, days and weeks spread over decades hand-working Chugach State Park Trails, usually with other volunteers and often with Boy Scouts earning their merit badges.

Almost single-handedly, he kept the Alaska Mountain and Wilderness Classic alive for the last 43 years. He’d host the pre-race dinner at his home each year with a wonderful salad served up in a giant wooden bowl. He would drive racers to and from the race for more than 30 years.

Most importantly, he brought up the rear and corralled the stragglers, who learned more in one week with Dick than they did in all their previous years of backcountry and wilderness travel.

Dick would never have noted that his trips and generosity helped shape the Alaska outdoor sports world as we know it. Those facts make him the legend he is.

Farewell, Dick. We will miss you on your next great adventure.

I wasn’t thinking when I decided to write a book about dead Alaskans; I just went for it. I’ve always written about dead friends, but lately the muse grew and included people I admired, loved, or had stories that were too good not to tell. To be fair, I don’t have that much control over who, how or when I write, but I try to focus on writing about dead Alaskans.

Mother is in San Jose visiting her sister for Thanksgiving. I’m taking care of her cat, Inky and the dog, Kobe we inherited from my brother Pat. This is the first break from taking care of my mother I’ve had in five months. I looked forward to writing full time the whole four days she’s going to be gone.

I’m writing about Chuck Sassara now. He died five years ago and lived one hell of a life. He drove the Alcan in a Volkswagen Bus to Alaska with his wife Ann in 1955. He flew a 175 different types of small aircraft. He drove the Alcan fifty times. He was a sailor and sailed solo from Seattle to Whittier; one of many ocean adventures. He was majority leader of the Alaska Legislature. He was part of the group that legalised abortion in Alaska in 1970; the second state to do it after New York. He’s had tea at the White House. He wrote a book. He owned a lodge on Big Lake in the fifties. Chuck has my full attention as a writer, but my last story was about Balin Miller and he won’t go away. He came around last night and drank a bunch of my beer and we watched music videos on YouTube.

I got up this morning feeling poorly and wondered if Balin was really here last night. I look in the recycling bag counting beer cans and hope so. I feed the cat and get coffee. I turn on the computer and open my story about Chuck. I read the last words I wrote yesterday, over and over. I don’t type anything. Balin’s name is all over my computer and I text with his dad all the time. His mother wished me a happy Thanksgiving. Balin is here and he’s not letting me write about Chuck.

I throw in the towel trying to write about Chuck. I’m spending Thanksgiving with Balin and Chuck and I invite them to dinner. I have a big chunk of ham and green beans from the next door neighbour Caroline’s garden and salad from my garden. Red potatoes are ready to be mashed and I have pork sausage for gravy. I start cooking dinner at three o’clock.

Balin and Chuck have arrived. They go back and forth from the football game in the living room to the kitchen table where I’ve laid out some hors e’oeuvres. They don’t talk to me, but they’re yaking up a storm. Balin seems impressed that he’s Charlie Sassara’s dad. I want to tell him that Chuck is much more than Charlie’s dad.

I want to tell Chuck about Balin. I want him to read my story about Balin. I want to show him the picture of Balin with glitter on his cheeks. I want to tell Chuck that Balin makes us old climbers look like hikers.

I want to tell Balin that Chuck is a badass and not scared of anything. I want to tell him about the time Chuck slapped a cigarette out of some smart asses mouth.

As I’m clearing the table before dinner, I hear Chuck tell Balin, You need a job.

Balin’s a polite kid and Chuck’s an imposing man and he says, Mr Sassara, I think it’s a little late for a job.

They both laugh.

I set plates in front of them. They think I’m their bitch. I’m working my butt off trying to write about them and neither thank me for feeding them. They act like I am not here.

Balin’s not a Samurai anymore, though he is still ripped. On the other side, there is no pressure to fight, climb, work or be a slave to anything. He takes a big helping of mashed potatoes, a slab of butter, green beans, two chunks of ham and then spoons gravy over all of it. Chuck copies Balin’s movements. Neither take any green salad. They both dig in and snarf their food. Chuck knows I’m here, he winks, but Balin doesn’t know, but that’s okay, because I’m just here to learn.

I bring Chuck coffee and beer. I can see that Balin wants some too and I bring him both. When I return with pie and ice cream, they’re gone. I imagine Chuck went to Ann and Balin floated over to his mother’s home in Spokane.

I head over to my computer and Chuck’s story is still open. I tell him, Hey Chuck don’t worry, I’m going to finish your story. I google up Warren Zevon’s last song, Keep me in your heart. It inspires me to write. I turn up the volume and when I’m back at the table and it’s clear of the dinner that never was and now Fred is sitting here and he has one of my beers in his hand. We can’t have a conversation, but he keep me from being lonely. I play Keep me in your Heart again and listen closely to the lyrics looking for something I can use in my story about Chuck. The ice cream on the pie has melted.

It is not lost on me that writing about dead Alaskans will be a hard sell as a book. That hasn’t deterred me, though and the good thing is that I’m writing history and I love my characters. I don’t want anyone to forget about them and it’s been a good Thanksgiving.

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Balin Miller is on top of the world. Denali basecamp is buzzing with excitement when he returns from the 14,000-foot camp. The word is out about Balin’s achievements. He’s climbed Begguya (Mount Hunter) to the summit twice on this trip, once solo up the North Buttress in seventeen hours round trip, the other on Deprivation with Vincent Landry and now he’s climbed Denali by the trade route, the West Buttress.

Balin talks funny, it’s not bad considering the hard time he had speaking and hearing as a child. He’s welcomed and offered fluids and food by more than a few of the many camps here. His voice is endearing, he’s really happy and comfortable in his own skin and if you get a moment with Balin, you feel the magic.

His tent is on a little hill above basecamp. All his friends and partners have deserted the hill and gone home. He sleeps all day and only wakes up to eat. His father says, The West Butt kicked his ass.

He gets up that evening and strolls down to basecamp. Everyone now knows about what Balin has been up to the last two years. The word is passed from guide to client to climber to climber, camp to camp. He’s on a climbing tear that most good climbers don’t achieve in their whole lives, much less by 23.

Last winter, he climbed Cerro Torre and Aguja Standhardt in Patagonia with Chris Labosky and Ethan Berkeland, his Fairbanks partner. Before he left Patagonia, he solo climbed Californiana on Cerro Chaltén (Fitzroy) 5.10c 700 m, then he flew to Calgary and quickly soloed Virtual Reality WI6 and Reality Bath WI7, an ice climb in Canada that hasn’t seen a repeat since it was climbed 37 years ago. Including his travel, he climbed all this in seven days.

I got a kiss, Balin texts Ethan in Fairbanks with the Inreach his mother bought for him.

Balin was supposed to climb the Cassin with Canyon Tobin and Frankie Dunbar, both from Anchorage, but they had already lifted off on their climb when he got to the 14,000-foot camp and that’s why and when he climbed the West Buttress. Balin isn’t bothered that they took off without him, because now he is stoked for the opportunity to solo something big. He had spoken and questioned Matt Cornell last winter about the Slovak Direct and the route has been on his mind for a while.

Balin has been on the Kahiltna glacier for more than 40 days. He is in constant contact by text on his Inreach with Ethan Berkeland who is texting him weather updates and keeping Balin’s partners, Tristan O’Donoughue and Julie Costa in the loop. He debates flying out of the Alaska Range and going home. He questions whether he is actually going to go for the Slovak. The eleven mile approach up the East Fork of the Kahiltna is his biggest fear. He could fall into a crevasse and that would be the last of him. He cooks burgers and drinks beer on his hill.

Balin to Ethan—People weren’t meant to be alone in a two person tent for days. Not sure how Waterman did it. I guess the Slovak is calling after all.

Ethan to Balin—I’ve got between Oct 10 to Jan 5 off. Are we going to Patagonia or the Rockies?

Balin—I got laid last night by the climbing ranger.

Ethan—Damn nice.

Balin—Sitting out here alone listening to the ridge of madness.

Balin formulates his plan through a series of texts with Ethan.

Balin—This is the best weather window since March. Is it crazy that it’s day 46 and I’m still psyched?

Ethan—If I was 23, single and didn’t care about money, I’d be psyched too.

Ethan—I’ll be in Anchorage on the 19th. I’ll buy you dinner if you pull it off.

Balin—Sweet.

Balin goes for the Slovak. He borrows a pair of skis with Silvereta bindings and taped-on skins and he gets blisters. An uncomfortable pack and the heat of the day make it miserable, and he takes double or triple the time to approach the route as it should.

Balin—If I fall into a crevasse, it will be in the next hour.

Ethan—Please do not.

Balin—At the base. safe. Tired but psyched.

Balin gets a good night’s sleep. He crosses the bergschrund before noon and speeds up the snow slopes to the crux on the lower wall. The lower part of the wall is easy for Balin. He solos everything but the headwall pitch.

Balin reaches the hanging glacier in four hours and the bivy and the weather window are excellent so he decides to take an early day; it’s before noon and he knows his body good enough to rest and recover from the labors of the approach.

Balin leaves his bivouac 19 hours later. He feels good and he’s taking the leisurely approach to big mountain soloing, except when he climbs. He free solos everything in this section of the route.

Balin—I’m at the aid pitch.

Ethan—Sick.

Balin—I don’t want to high altitude solo. It’s not that fun. The lower ice crux was mostly sticky ice.

Balin—at the Cassin.

He spends fifty six hours on the Slovak Direct and 70% of the time sleeping. Balin runs into friends on the summit who let him eat some of their food. He descends to the fourteen thousand foot camp and doesn’t stay long. He wants breadsticks, root beer and a decent bed so he heads down and spends an enchanting evening descending alone to basecamp.

When word gets out to the rest of the world that Balin soloed the Slovak Direct, Colin Haley calls it, Super badass. Mark Twight, Balin’s idol and Slovak Direct veteran says, holy shit. Walter Harper, Hudson Stuck, Harry Karstens and even the liar, Frederick Cook roll in their graves and take notice. Dave Johnston and Art Davidson, from the first winter ascent shake their heads in amazement. Daryl Miller, retired lead climbing ranger for Denali says, most of us will never be able to understand how extraordinary his accomplishment was in the climbing world today. Charlie Sassara says, Balin slept his way up the most impressive climb ever accomplished in the Alaska Range. Roger Kempell, eighty plus year old athlete/climber says, he won’t argue with me, if I call, Balin’s solo of the Slovak Direct the most impressive athletic achievement in Alaska history.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Balin Miller’s story hits me hard. Balin’s an Alaskan, grew up in Anchorage, learned to climb on the Seward Highway. That’s where I learned to climb. He died after he finished a rope solo of Sea of Dreams on El Capitan in Yosemite trying to unstick his haul bag. He went off the end of his rope. Someone filmed it from meadows down below and his fall is all over social media. I call Charlie Sassara, he mentions that my close friend, John Weiland knew his father. I remember that I had heard about Balin. I have a chance to not write Balin Miller’s story, but I call John and he reads me text messages from Dave Miller, Balin’s dad. He thinks I’m going to write about Balin. I didn’t think about writing about Balin until after our chat and then, I think about Balin all night.

In the morning, I text John. I want to write about Balin. He sends me Dave Miller’s contact. Why should I write about Balin? I don’t even read about climbing deaths, achievements and basically don’t follow climbing. I call Dave and realize I know him. We had one interaction. He chopped bolts that I put on one of his aid climbs that was actually a pretty good free climb. This is the first time we ever talked about it. He tries to apologize—fuck that! I won’t accept his apology. I don’t care one bit about bolt wars from thirty years ago, but it’s funny. Writing about Balin is an avalanche and a roaring giant of one. I’m free falling. I tell Dave, all I do is write about dead Alaskans and I promise to write the story right.

Balin was born on January 12, 2002 in Anchorage at Providence Hospital. His mother’s name is Jeanine L. Moorman. She was born and raised in South Africa. Balin went to Winterberry Elementary for grade school and 7th through 12th grade at Steller High School. Both schools were alternative.

Dave and Jeanine’s marriage didn’t last long and she ended up being one of five women that Dave Miller married over Balin’s short life.

Balin has seven siblings—brother Dylan, Danielle, Aisha, Jonas, Paige, Mia, Matt. It’s hard not to call Atticus Rosen a brother of Balin’s.

Balin struggled as a kid. He couldn’t speak or read well and had a hard time at Winterberry grade school and Dave or Jeanine often had to pick him up from the principal’s office. He was picked on by the other kids, life was a struggle and he was very isolated. He had an imaginary character Happy, who he communicated with. Sometime between first and second grade the doctors figured out he had hearing problems caused by weak eardrums. Jason Moorman, (Jay) Jeanine’s husband after Dave and Balin’s other dad, had military benefits and a very skilled ENT MD happened to be stationed in Anchorage and took a small piece of skin from his neck and grafted it to his ear drum and miraculously brought the world to Balin. Jeanine and Dave put reading into high gear. In the evenings after the surgery, Dave and Balin would go down to the basement. It wasn’t easy, Dave was hard on Balin, but he wasn’t going to have a kid who couldn’t read. He told both his boys he wasn’t going to let them be retards. Balin went to a speech therapist, and he worked hard so he could be understood. In a few years, Balin had caught up with the kids his age in reading, his speech improved, he quit visiting the principal’s office and quickly blossomed as a deep thinker. I surmise that Balin had a chip on his shoulder from getting picked on as a kid and climbing was the way to show them who he was.

He read philosophy, he won a chess tournament at West High and he got along with almost everyone. Somehow his abrasiveness, brashness, goofiness and loud mouth, charmed many kids. His favorite line to use in an argument was: to be fair. Balin had his opinions and he loved to argue. His father and siblings say Balin’s favorite book is, 100 Years of Solitude.

Balin inherited a deep love of travel from his mom and she took him to South Africa and on road trips in Alaska and the lower forty-eight. She gave him a credit card when he went to Europe with Dave’s second ex-wife, Silke. She was determined to show Balin the joy exploring the world past the confines of their own backyard. When reflecting on his childhood travels, Balin spoke with gratitude for the gift his mother had given him.

Julia, Dave’s fifth and current wife said one of her first experiences with Balin was when he told her that her own son was a pussy, because the cross country race he was in was only three miles long. Balin was quite the rascal, so irreverent and inappropriate but hilarious, goofy and brilliant. His Instagram moniker is: Halter top guy who pretends to climb. He earned the nickname from a woman who went crazy one night in Camp Four at Yosemite after ten days of listening to Balin’s loud voice at night while trying to sleep. Tristan O’Donoghue, has video of the confrontation.

Balin was cantankerous, argumentative, sarcastic, off the wall and ridiculous. His old Instagram handle was: Twink Climber. He inspired everyone he crossed paths with and was beautifully self-deprecating. His schooling, his parents and his climbing partners never held Balin back. He told his father a joke: What’s the worst part about being an addict?

Becoming a christian.

Balin’s father took him and his brother Dylan rock climbing at Telephone Pole Rock when he was ten. He took them ice climbing right after this. Dave took them on the Bomber Traverse, a grueling three day hike in the Talkeetna Mountains and Balin loved every minute of it. Almost immediately, all Balin wanted to do was go climbing. Dave Miller was an aid climber. He says he turned to aid because he was too weak to free climb, which I don’t believe, so Balin was working on his aid climbing by the time he turned twelve. They went to the Alaska Rock Gym and they climbed peaks in the Chugach Mountains around Anchorage. Dave took Balin on a climbing trip to California and rock climbed at Taquitz and Mission Gorge in San Diego. Dave loved everything there was about climbing and he passed it on to Balin. Balin was soon climbing rock and ice at a high level even though he was barely a teen. Dave says he was an irresponsible father and I disagree vehemently. He passed on a love of the mountains and outdoors that was a gift of immeasurable value.

Balin wore black fingernail polish in high school. He befriended nerds and played chess regularly. He told his older brother Dylan, I believe I can be the best climber in the world.

Balin was not afraid to speak up at a young age. He knew what was right and wrong and in a family with five different women/mothers he could be the voice of conscience. His brother Dylan, tells me this with admiration of his younger brother.

When Balin was 12, his father took him ice climbing at the far end of Eklutna Lake and they stayed in the Serenity Falls Cabin. They climbed Miller Might, Serenity Falls and the Iron Curtain. They also went rock climbing and camping at Hatcher Pass. Dave bought Balin Petzel Nomic ice axes from Sarah Masco, after she busted up both legs ice climbing and Balin used the tools the rest of his life.

Balin did everything he could to go climbing. He read every climbing book he could get his hands on. He knew his Alaskan climbing history. He worked at the Alaska Rock Gym. He idolized my climbing partners. He had very good manners and he liked girls and like his father, he liked them all.

His other father, Jay, took Balin hunting out behind Sutton and Balin shot a moose. He also took Balin to Prince of Wales Island bear hunting. He taught Balin how to butcher and take care of the meat. I tried to ask Jay some questions for this story when I was interviewing Balin’s mom, but he couldn’t speak, he was so sad. Jeanine, Balin’s mom said he walked out of the room. Dave Miller calls Jay, fifty percent Balin’s dad. Dylan says Balin never argued with Jay.

Balin soloed Bridleveil Falls when he was eighteen and soloed Greensteps when he was nineteen, both WI5 in Keystone Canyon outside of Valdez, Alaska.

I call John Weiland and curse him for giving me this story. I’ve been working on it for almost a month. I also tell him he owes me for my rope he took a fifty-foot fall on 21 years ago while climbing Weiland’s Evil Eye and even more for setting me up with Balin’s story. I tell him, Balin soloed Nemesis. John asks me in a quiet voice, He soloed Nemesis?

Yeah and Whiteman Falls. Sounds like he could solo anything that’s been climbed with rope.

Balin met Ethan Berkeland at the Spire Rock Gym in Bozeman, Montana where Ethan lived in his van and Balin was going to school at Montana State University. Their first climbing trip was to the Grand Teton where they got wet and met failure. The second trip they went ice climbing in Cody, Wyoming and tore it up. Balin complained about climbing in Cody. He didn’t like climbing in canyons and gullies and said that he’d rather climb ice on a big steep alpine face. They made plans to climb Mt Huntington that summer when they both returned to Alaska.

Dylan and Balin were roommates at MSU. They had a competition to see who could run the most miles in a month. Balin took the competition seriously and would text Dylan at school with the distance he had run that day. After school at night, Dylan had to make up the distance, because he didn’t want to lose to his younger brother.

Balin hated college and was depressed for many reasons. His friend Noah, another very strong climber and his girlfriend helped him through this difficult time and Balin never went back to college.

Balin and Ethan climbed the Harvard Route on Mount Huntington that summer after an attempt that included Frankie Dunbar. They made a video and it’s on YouTube.

I spoke with Balin’s mom Jeanine for two hours on the phone. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a son like Balin and really, no one else can either. Kids like Balin don’t come down the tracks hardly ever. His Slovak Direct climb is Alaskan legend. He walked up to climbs that were nearly impossible for almost everyone else and soloed the routes with ease. Balin was a warrior. Balin was a samurai. He’s Achilles, Beowulf, and Hercules.

Balin told his mother Jeanine, I might die before you. He also told her, I feel most alive when I’m climbing mountains. Balin still had the credit card his mother gave him when he went to Europe as a teenager and she wanted him to have the security of his mother’s support. She also paid the monthly charge for his Inreach. He put three thousand on the card for his Denali trip. He always paid his mother back.

Balin stayed with his mom and Jay for two weeks before he left for Yosemite and the Sea of Dreams. The woman he had sex with in Denali basecamp visited there and they spent time together. They went for a hike on Mount Spokane. Balin loved the forest up there and the smells and the way the light came through the trees. The morning he was going to blast off for Yosemite he was downstairs sleeping and his mother slipped into his bed and hugged him like he was a baby.

Dylan was miffed his brother didn’t go cragging with him at Index or Leavenworth on his last trip to Spokane, but went back to Anchorage to climb on the shitty rock of the Seward Highway. This trip he wanted Balin to go with him to the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho but Balin had bigger dreams and maybe some girls to chase. He must have felt bad that he didn’t go climbing with Dylan because he did mention as some kind of consolation, that Dylan was probably a better rock climber than he was.

Sea of Dreams was not his first rope solo on the big stone, El Capitan. His first wall was Lost in America where he followed a one-legged climber named, Aiden Costa and he climbed South Seas solo. The mice had gotten into his Toyota Prius car while it sat at his mother’s place while he was in Alaska. The Prius stunk like shit.

I can’t say Balin died rappelling off the end of his rope. He died trying to unstick his haul bag. The top of El Capitan is a desperate place. Most climbers are dehydrated and famished when they reach the top and only want to get down to the valley floor and eat pizza and drink beer.

Here’s some words I find pertinent from Andy Kirkpatrick, who also soloed Sea of Dreams, in his story about Balin on Substack, The Kill Pause. And so, in spite of the content and the comments, I clicked play and watched it to the end, saw the tragedy unfold, as I’d already guessed it probably had, having been there, and nearly done that very thing more than once. It wasn’t a rookie error, it was the opposite, a master’s error.

Mark Twight, Balin’s idol, wrote a moving, personal story, Slow Pulse Boy on Substack immediately after his death. He knew Balin, because after Reality Bath, he interviewed him to a packed room at the Beringia House in Bozeman. I still feel his sorrow and pain, three weeks after I read his column. Mark Twight, more than anyone knows Balin’s story, because he lived it.

I took a quote from another of Twight’s stories that seems appropriate.

Up there, in the mountains, the purity and happiness of his spirit was clear. Down here it appeared blunted, pressured by the demands of earning a living and figuring out how to spend more time up there.

I’ve spent a month learning everything I can about Balin Miller and I just read a great quote from a story about Balin on Substack. In his story, Balin Miller’s Influence by Luca Faso, whose friend was climbing Denali this summer said, Balin was the only truly nice climber he met on the Kahiltna Glacier.

Dave Miller gave me Ethan Berkeland’s, Tristan O’Donoughue’s and Julie Costa’s phone numbers first—Balin’s best partners. They’re Fairbanks climbers—Ethan was born in Minnesota but from four years old on, raised in Fairbanks. Tristan was born and raised in Alaska. They know who I am. I have two stories on alaskaiceclimbing.com. Plus my name is on many routes. I promise to honor Balin and write the whole story. We have a good conversation. They tell me about Balin wanting to solo the stiffest ice climb (Sans Ami) of my generation. They also tell me about Balin climbing overhanging ice on two hits of LSD. Ethan tells me, Balin thought he would die in the big snowy mountains, not on TikTok in Yosemite.

The social media posts about Balin’s death have me in a rage. It’s amazing how many fucking old, but not bold climbers, there are. I must tell seventy five posers to fuck off! He wasn’t live streaming, he wasn’t an influencer and his record is stupendous. I call the San Francisco Chronicle and tell them how much they suck for writing that Balin was live streaming. Tristan tells me everything he can about Balin. I can feel his love.

I’m lucky because Roman Dial and David Stevenson are the two main readers of my stories. If they like my story, I know I’m on the right path. They both lost sons. Roman sends me a bunch of texts he received from Balin asking him about Mount Hayes. David Stevenson is ready to punch some guy talking shit about Balin online. We circle the wagons around Balin and they all encourage me to write this story.

Balin climbed Reality Bath with glitter on his cheeks. When he was a kid, the neighbor girls, Katy and Moly Scoggin painted his face with glitter. He resumed putting glitter on face a few years back after a summer of alt rock, a girl and lots of partying. If he was just going rock climbing he wouldn’t put on glitter, but like a samurai, if he was going to battle a difficult climb he’d wear glitter.

After Balin’s 53 days in the Alaska Range, his mother Jeanine, comes up from Spokane because she and her husband Jay have a place in Seldovia. She takes Balin out for Eggs Benedict at Middleway Cafe. That is his favorite. He is thankful. They go for a hike around Blueberry Hill at Flattop Mountain and Balin tries to initiate an argument around politics, but she won’t take the bait. He takes selfies of her behind him on the trail and he’s wearing the goofy grimace that is in many of his pictures.

As a consolation prize to us mere mortal ice climbers, here’s a story about Balin’s and Dylan’s attempt on Wowie Zowie. On the approach, the weather was good but as they were hiking the final hill to the base of Wowie Zowie, it starts to snow. Balin leads the first pitch as the snow picks up in intensity. Spindrift avalanches blast off the top of Wowie Zowie and fall right behind Dylan and fill his hood with snow. Balin climbs right through the spindrift. He sets up a belay and spindrift avalanches keep coming down. Dylan is getting hammered. Balin reluctantly realizes the climb is hopeless and prepares to rappel. Dylan hustles away from the base of the climb while Balin eats the spindrift. Balin attempts the climb again, but conditions prevent him from the ascent. Balin never climbs Wowie Zowie and he complains about the shitty climb for the rest of his life. Wowie Zowie is a bad climb, he says.

Balin climbs Unknown White Powder WI6+ M5 on the Seward Highway just south of Anchorage. Easily, it’s the hardest climb in south central Alaska and a big step up from anything my generation climbed. He used a rope for this, but he solos Kingsbeard WI5+ at Victor Creek which is known to have every type of bad ice you could ask for, all of it steep.

Balin was no slouch on rock either. He climbs the notoriously dangerous Sandstone Samurai 5.11R/X, 210m in Red Rocks Nevada, on-sight with someone he met on Mountain Projects. Alaskan climber, Clint Helander said Balin said, it was pretty casual.

Balin has transformed himself in the last two years. He used to have dark spells and some anger. Since he’s been cut free as a climber, he’s found himself and is confident. The hard childhood and his stubbornness are now masked by the goofy, irreverent and really fun inspiring climbing machine that is Balin Miller.

After the Slovak Direct climb, Balin flies out of the range with Paul Roderick, owner of Talkeetna Air. Julie Costa is waiting for him in Talkeetna and drives him back to Anchorage. She spoils Balin with root beer and breadsticks and love.

Balin doesn’t have much time to bask in Julie’s world before he has to fly to Nome for the start of the crab season. His friend Atticus is already in Nome and has been very worried that Balin might not show up because of some climb or another. They are crewing on his uncle Adam Boekmann’s boat, the Anchor Point. Balin is whooped from his climbing trip but he’s so strong and he’s a balls to the wall worker. They head out from the Nome harbor, and the fishing is fair and the water is not too rocky.

Atticus and Balin weren’t friends until an eighth grade literature class. He found Balin’s goofy, abrasive, brash but not mean, persona admirable. He brought Balin home and his mother Rachelle Bachman took Balin in and he became family. Rachelle and Balin would argue, (Balin’s forte) about pretty much anything: politics, music, people and relationships. To be fair, Balin would say. Atticus would sit back and enjoy the show.

Back on the Anchor Point in the Bering Sea, Balin has coffee, peanut butter and V8 juice for breakfast. The boat is rocking and rolling. They have a few crabs they are picking from the pots. Balin’s stomach is roiling with the Bering Sea. He races over to port side and blows chunks into the sea and then races back to Atticus yahooing to beat the band and resumes pulling crabs from the pots. He blows chunks three times and he’s so fast to the rail and back he never misses a beat.

The crab season abruptly ends eight days later due to low crab numbers. Atticus is bummed. He needs this money to live. Balin’s happy with the five grand he made. It’ll pay for his trip to Patagonia this coming winter.

Balin returns to Anchorage on June 30th. He stays at Julie’s place and is enjoying the break, but Ethan is asking Balin and Julie to come with him and Tristan to Nenana Mountain for some rock climbing. Rock climbing on the road system in Alaska mostly sucks, but with a long hike, a pack raft or preferably a plane or helicopter ride, Alaska is an unbelievably great place for rock climbing and Nenana Mountain could be the crown jewel. Balin is slow to commit. He didn’t make that much money crab fishing, he’s never experienced just rock climbing in the range and he’s tired. Julie offers to pay for his trip. She is a sheet metal worker, she makes good money and she wants to go to Nenana Mountain more than anything. Balin’s friends call her his sugar momma. She’s already buying food and packing gear. Ethan somehow convinces Balin to go. Maybe he calls him a whiny bitch, because that’s Balin’s favorite term whether he thinks you’re a pussy or he loves you. Julie also takes Balin to Alaska Mountaineering and Hiking (AMH) and buys him some new gear.

They fly in from Cantwell in a helicopter on July 2nd and land on the Nenana Glacier at 10:30 AM. They break into two teams and they’re climbing perfect granite with splitter cracks in no time. Flowers sprout from the stone. There’s even a few mosquitos out.

In the evenings, they party in camp. They have camp chairs, a cooler, some beer and this is no expedition. Balin is not a real drinker, nor is he a pot head, except on this trip he is drinking Ethan and Tristan’s beer. He never buys beer and he’s always poor. On the Fourth of July, Tristan and Ethan break out a Karaoke machine and serenade Balin and Julie. The sounds echo up and around the granite walls and disappear into the mountains. They climb two routes, Relaxation Spire 5.10 D-, a total sandbag grade and another route on the Stimulation wall. The trip is a success, and they fly out of the Hayes Range full of dreams and aspirations. To be fair, their joy is not for me to describe.

Chuck hasn’t been climbing much this year and he is the only one I could get to go today. It’s five fifteen in the morning and we’re driving to the climb in his truck. A lunar eclipse is taking place and a fuzzy red shadow rolls across the moonlit snow. A ring circles the moon. Chuck’s truck thumps badly as it limps down the road, but he isn’t fazed by the noise or the eclipse. In high nasally voice while coughing, he says to me, Knuf! Knuf! Knuf! Sweena, I want to lead. The truck is pulling to the right and Chuck’s leaned forward hanging on to the steering wheel pretty tight. I pretend to not hear what he’s saying because he’s just messing with me anyhow.

We park the truck and gather our gear. The wind’s vicious and we ski down a Alyeska Pipeline access road through tall alders. This is my third trip in four days. The temperature is twenty, it’s blowing forty.

An hour later we’re at the base of the climb, deep in Hole in the Wall Canyon. There’s no wind here and it’s getting light. Chuck takes off his coat and hangs it on a ski pole. Against the base of the climb, he builds a bench and sets his pack here. He takes his hat off and his head steams. He sits on his pack and puts on his crampons with bare fingers. The green webbing on his ice axe is frayed and faded, so is his harness. I tell him, Sure Chuck, you can lead.

I’ve spent two days and thirty hours with Paul Turecki trying to climb this frozen drip. I’m tired of messing around. I want to get up this climb. This is my earliest start yet and Chuck seems motivated, we’ll see.

Chuck flails on the frothing chandelier ice at the base of the climb. I don’t tell him that I just climbed around it on our two previous attempts, but after a while, I yell, Chuck, he looks down and I point my finger to the left. He down climbs a few feet, moves left, finds the groove, and goes up twenty feet before he calls down to me, Swee-Knee, this is easy. You should let me do all the leading.

Morning is slow. Purple mountains hide in the white mist. The full moon nearly vanishes into a pale sky and a lone raven cries. I run in places to stay warm. Before Chuck gets too high, I yell up to him, This pitch has already been climbed. It ain’t no virgin. He grunts and keeps moving. When he gets to the top of the pitch, he wants to haul the pack, but I throw it on my back and sense I’ve already climbed this pitch twice, I scale it fast.

Sweeen-knee, I wanna lead this pitch too. Chuck’s lip bulges with chew. Yellow orange dreadlocks stream from his helmet. His skin is pale, his eyes are bloodshot. I wonder if we’re climbing or training as seconds for Cheech and Chongs upcoming movie. Chuck lips sneers digustingly, he tells me, Yeah Schwiinii, I’m climbing pretty good.

I let him lead this pitch too. He ascends fifteen feet and I tell him, Chuck, I’ve already climbed this pitch. I done had it. Nonetheless, Chuck keeps his attention to the six-inch-wide runnel of grey blurry ice running up beneath an overhanging roof. Chuck has a contradictory flamboyant-backwoods style. He wears corduroys on hard routes and has irreverent nature. Right at the lip of the roof a key Frrisbee shaped hold protrudes from the stone and Chuck dramatically latches his right hand around it and hollars out, Schweenie, that was easy.

He climbs up a little past Turecki’s and my high point and sets up a belay. I shoulder the pack and climb the roof as fast as I can. Then I’m standing next to him on a six inch wide ledge; we’re four or five hundred feet off the canyon floor. Through an open spot in the creek I can see rocks in the clear water. It’s still a long ways to the top so I tell Chuck, It’s my turn to lead.

Chuck’s a Valdez local. I’m just here to climb and ski. He’s pissed I didn’t come out to his place when I was here last winter. This year, when I saw him and offered my hand. He looked away towards the ground and told me, Schweena, ur on my list.

Chuck, why am I on ur list? I mimic and it bothers him.

Because you think your too good to come out to my place. Comstock speaks with a drawl, his movements are quick, his facial features are fluid.

Chuck, I came out to your place. You weren’t home. I lie. Chuck’s roof caved in on his trailer last winter. I heard you could see stars from his couch. I figured after spending all day out climbing in the cold, I didn’t need to visit Chuck’s cold dumpy trailer.

Chuck is an expert at needling people and vowed to myself not to let him get to me today. Last night, he referenced a tough time I had on a climb a couple of years ago. Today, I suppose, I’m showing Chuck my strength as a climber, and I fly up a series of steep yellow pillars of ice that spill from protruding ledges. I’m as comfortable I as ever will be ice climbing. Two days ago, he pissed off a group of climbers during the speed climbing competition we have during the ice festival. When he got to the top of the climb, he pulled up a bunch of slack in the rope and then, without warning jumped. He pulled his belayer off the ground and argued with everyone when they told him it was dangerous and stupid.

I called everyone before calling Chuck to go climbing today. He went to UAF and, as is typical with Fairbanks people, thinks he is smarter than anyone from a lower latitude. Smarter than me, he may be but all did last year was climb and I’m not letting a whiney dread head screw up this climb.

I lead two pitches and the sun is making it’s way onto the upper half of the climb. There’s a good ledge where I stop.

On belay, I call out pulling tight on the rope. The sun is on me and burns brightly. I belay without gloves. This is the warmest sun I’ve felt in months. Way into the Chugach Range, I wonder what peak that is that I’m seeing. Comstock isn’t moving that fast now. I know he hasn’t been out that much this winter so the pack is probably messing with him. He’s disheveled and sweating as he arrives at the belay. I tell him, Thanks Chuck. By the way, those last two pitches were virgin.

The belay has a waist high ledge to put gear on. Chuck digs through the pack for candy bars. He’s a diabetic and needs the candy to keep his blood sugar up. He holds up a Payday, Snickers and Milky Way and tell me, Sweeney have a candy bar. Nice leads. This is a good hard climb. Second hardest ice climb of my life after Broken Dreams.

For three days I climbed in the shade and was cold, miserable and discouraged. Right now we have a comfortable belay. Our helmets, gloves and hats are off while we bask in the sun and all the gamesmanship and negative feelings fall away like a piece ice bouncing down the climb. Chuck has a kind smile on his face and freckles on the back of the hand holding the Snickers Bar. We roast two bowls, it’s so nice here.

I leave the belay, unsure what spurs me to ascend. Reaching the lip of the canyon, I put Chuck on belay. Approaching me, a sundog haloes him with his golden dreadlocks and like a child, he calls out to me, Schweenie! Schweenie!, let me name the climb.

Sure Chuck, name the climb. What is it?

Natty dread.