So why don’t I just go to UCLA too?
You can. But Harvard is better.
We were back in Lake Tahoe, at Squaw Valley. It was a big race—the top three finishers overall, from J3 to J5, would qualify to try out for the Junior Olympic Team, and certainly qualify for the Southern Cal Championship race.
At breakfast that first morning I talked freely with my new teammates, describing powder skiing with my dad, hockey triumphs, surfing Mexico, cannonballs at a secret hot springs, and they responded with wide-eyed grins and asked me lots of questions, the antithesis of those blank faces back home. Feeling valued got me so excited that I talked through the entire breakfast and couldn’t wait for lunch.
The snow was hard and Yan said the course was tight like the way they set them in Europe. It was on the same hill as the 1960 Olympic slalom course and my dad called Al and told him. We slid the course twice and the pitch was unrelenting, no breather sections, with two flushes in steep hangs.
On the first run I stayed high and took it easy, positioning myself fifth overall, which gave me confidence. On the second run I let the ruts sling me from turn to turn and I thrust my hips for extra bursts of speed. For the entire run I was on the verge of out of control.
I won my division and finished third overall and for the rest of the weekend my dad called me Ingmar Ollestad.
During the car ride home I voiced my hopes and dreams.
I think I can win the So Cal Championship next weekend and make the Junior Olympic Team, I said.
Absolutely, said my dad.
CHAPTER 25
I’M BREATHING HARD. I must be alive. You’re lucky you didn’t hit a tree on that tumble.
My stomach burned and my head tingled. Translucent diamonds waltzed amid the falling snow. Everything whirled and I thought about going to sleep. This is just a nightmare. I’ll wake from the dream and we’ll be landing in Big Bear. There was my dad carrying me off the plane.
Gradually my eyes found focus. The chute had widened. The rock borders on each side had melted into the slope. I figured I must be near the wooded section.
I sat up. It was not as steep. My whole body decompressed. But that gave way to a rush of images—Dad’s curly hair, his head on his knees, arms dangling, fading to an ice sculpture slipping away into a casket of mist.
I tried to shake it off. My mind reeled, desperate to escape the fact that my dad was actually dead. I needed blue sky. A place to ascend to that was not this gray universe where death and pain and cold ruled. But all I could see was ashen cloud pressing down from all sides. Even so I tried to imagine my life thriving beyond this sludge. Nothing. I saw myself as a flame tussling in a draft alone in a barren world. I missed Sandra’s mumbo-jumbo.
I just sat there staring at the gateway to what I knew was the wooded section beyond the fog. My mind refused to initiate anything, too absorbed in my dire circumstances. I can’t. I can’t do this anymore, echoed in my head.
But my body moved. As if my muscle memory heard my dad’s voice, Go for it Boy Wonder. You can do it. I stood up.
I wandered across the chute to a tree and broke the ends off a couple limbs. Paring away the needles released their familiar scent and it gave me a boost, setting my mind into motion. An idea blipped. I dropped to my butt and began sliding downward, a stick in each hand to control my speed and turn around trees or crags of rock.
The spine of rocks to my left gathered back into a formidable border and this last few yards of the chute fed into a rivulet-like channel that ran along the base of the border. I went with the flow and saw patches of blood in the rivulet. My quickened pace and the idea that I was now beating the night charged me. At this speed I had a chance, I kept telling myself.
The border of rock blunted and I came around a small cliff face. Sandra’s body lay in my path. She was on her back. Her boot tips pointed into the air. Her hair flowed out from her head, dark against the white snow. I was afraid to call her name, afraid she wouldn’t move.
She was in a wooded enclave of tall spruces. Just above her was my airplane seat, leaning against a tree. I stood and my feet plunged. I couldn’t move. The snow clung to my thighs like quicksand. Every strand of muscle in my legs burned as I lurched to unplug my drenched sneakers from the snow. I staggered toward Sandra, calling her name. But she didn’t answer.
Her eyes were wide open. Skin purple. I stood over her and she stared right at me. I kneeled and my legs trembled with fatigue. I shook her. I spoke to her.
Are you there? Sandra. Sandra. Your eyes are open.
I got right down in her face. You just slipped, I said. You’ll be all right. Let’s go!
She stared into the leaden gray and her body was stiff like a mannequin. She was dead. A stark fact, confused by her intense gaze.
The mistake, my overreach in the chute, piled on my shoulders and I needed to hide from it. I stamped and bucked like an animal then shrank down into what felt like a thicker skin. Huddled, my body was sapped of power, ravaged by all the death, the bleakness ahead, and I had no strength left for shame, for anything.
I let precious time pass, hunkered there. Then a growl rumbled in my chest and sent up a burst of energy. I rose onto my knees and hands, swinging my head upward to stand. I broke twigs from the spruce limbs, spending more precious time covering her body and face, leaving two openings for her eyes.
I have to go, I said.
Photographic Insert
My father
My father, in a still from Cheaper by the Dozen
My father, in a still
Dad at the office
My father’s book, Inside the FBI
My mom and dad
Dad and Al Freedman with Austrian woman at The Castle in Feldkirk, Austria
Dad, sunburned/windburned from skiing
Dad at the office
St. Anton, Austria
Our family
First surfboard. All shots are on Topanga Beach
Surfing with Dad and Christian Andersen
Surfing with Dad
Dad
With Mom and Dad
Puerto Vallarta
St. Anton
St. Anton
Ski race in the U.S.
With Mom—same pair of blue Vans I wore February 19, 1979
At grandparents’ house, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
CHAPTER 26
WE LEFT TOPANGA Sunday morning at 5:00 a.m., headed for the championship race. My dad and I wore Levis and T-shirts, and Sandra had on a parka. I cramped in the back of the Porsche on top of my hockey bag with my sticks on the floor—ready for my game that night after the ski race. My dad and I sang country songs all the way to Big Bear while Sandra slept on her pillow against the passenger window.
It was a clear day. The sun came up right over the Snow Summit ski resort, edging a pink halo behind the yellowish rotting snow. I had breakfast with the Mountain High ski team and realized during breakfast that I was racing for Mountain High today. When I asked my dad why, he said that in order to race in the Southern California Championships I had to be on a Southern California team, not the Incline team—even though I was from farther south than anyone else racing. My dad had arranged all this and in his typical fashion slid me into a whole new world as if it were just a minor detail. Without a fuss, without resentment, I reframed the situation, like Dad always seemed to do. Just a new name, the rest is the same: same gear, same mountain, same skis, same race. Looking at it like that was sure a lot easier than fighting it. At the end of breakfast Dad presented me with a fancy new Spyder race sweater to complete the transformation.
The snow had turned to solid ice over the last few days. By noon it would soften and my dad hoped they got the race going right away so that my second run wouldn’t be in the slush. The course was set much like Squaw Valley—steep and tight.
At 9:30 I took my first run. My line was too aggressive, a bit cocky, and I had to gouge the ice to make up for my poor angles. Still I was tied for first plac
e with Lance, who was racing for Big Bear.
When the girls took their first run the sun was high and the snow was getting soft. Dad said there was a fast-moving shot of moisture coming in off the ocean, which was only eighty miles away. And by the time the girls were done I felt spindles of cool air wafting over the ridges and saw wispy clouds.
Come on baby, said my dad up at the clouds. Keep it cool for us.
After lunch ruffled blankets of cumulus striped the sky and the cool breeze was steady, keeping the snow hard enough to be to my advantage.
Let it all hang out, Ollestad, said my dad.
Come in high. Nice smooth turns, Norman, said the Mountain High coach.
Racer ready, called the starter, who then began the countdown. I adjusted my goggles under the rim of my helmet. A deluge hit my bladder and I pinched my thighs together, catching it in time. I cocked my wrists, guiding my pole tips over the wand and into the holes, arms stretched forward like Superman in flight.
Two…one…Go! said the starter.
My chest shot out between my hands and I drove my poles downward as my heels kicked back, rocking me onto my toes. My whole body launched off the pad before my boots tripped the wand. I came in high on the first gate. I brushed the gate and sliced up under it setting up my next turn. As the hill got steeper the ruts got deeper. My skis bent, uncoiling as I came out of the pockets, flinging me into the air. So I pulled my knees in on the next turn and felt my skis suck up the rut. One more gate to go, then the flush. I was well ahead of the turns and charged into the flush. Five quick edge changes—five quick turns through this tight section of gates. Slithering out of the flush the next rut bent 90 degrees, and when I hit it my kneecaps rammed my chin. Stars and the taste of blood. I was late into the next turn. Half blind, I chiseled my edges into the ice and abruptly released them, bouncing off the rut floor and into the air, losing some time in the process. When my skis touched down I set them on the proper line and spit out the blood before compressing into the next rut. Spit, compress, pivot the weight. Another jagged trough. Delicate edge work. Light as a cat. I found my way back into a good rhythm.
When I came through the finish line I choked on the blood. I coughed it up and spit onto the snow. My dad skied beside me. I looked up and his insatiable grin said it all.
Am I in first? I said to make sure.
Yep. Two more racers, he said. You okay?
I nodded. Lance’s coming now, I said, pointing up the hill.
He whizzed through the flush and ka-banged into that gorge of a rut and was thrown back onto the tails of his skis—never regaining control all the way to the finish line. My dad and I swung around to the board. My combined time was faster.
The next racer hit the first rut on the top and I saw him flip over. D.Q.
My dad nodded. Looked down at me. His face was placid. His smile was gentle.
You won, Ollestad.
I raised my arms and spit more blood. We stared at each other. I saw him so clearly. The cranium shelf rising off his forehead bumpy and uneven, the cluster of diamonds in the blue of his eyes fragile cracked windows, and I saw someone younger and full of grand ambitions and I thought about how he had wanted to be a professional baseball player. He looked at me as if into a mirror, studying me, like I was holding something that he admired, even desired.
Way to kick ass, he said.
Thanks, I said.
The Mountain High coach skated over and patted me on the butt.
Good skiing, he said.
He looked at me intensely too. It felt like there was a small fire in my cupped hands and everybody wanted to savor its heat.
Finally, I said.
CHAPTER 27
I TURNED AWAY FROM Sandra’s body, shielded by twigs, and surveyed the landscape. From the crash site I had mapped out this elliptical apron and the tight gulch below it. I had to control my descent down the apron and, hopefully, forge that gulch, then I would find the meadow and, below somewhere in the woods, the road that would lead me to shelter.
As far as I could see the apron was perfect for my energy-saving technique of sliding on my butt. Off I went. After a few minutes I realized that I was turning around markings in the snow—rock tips, bumps, animal tracks, anything—and that I was whooping as if it was a slalom course. This playful whim struck me as careless so I stopped whooping, went straight, only turning to control my speed.
Nearly a thousand feet later the slope tapered into the gulch and the sides of the gulch rose like two tidal waves of rock about to slam together. I was deep in its heart. The pitch got steeper and I alternated between skimming on my ass and flopping onto my stomach to cleat the snow with my sticks.
As I descended, the terrain mutated into uneven rock mixed with snow, and the pitch tilted close to 35 degrees. It was too dangerous now. I had to stay on my belly.
Slowing down gave the gathering night a chance to overtake me. Each methodical step and fingerhold over the broken ground became a chore. Soon both sides pinched so tight I was forced toward the creek bed. I had sensed it down there in the crevice and wanted to avoid it at all cost. Getting wet would surely slow me down. Might give me hypothermia.
I noticed shrubs squeezing from the rock and decided it was worth taxing my strength to get to them. I used cracks in the rock, wedging my frozen fingers into them to traverse the dicey overhang above the creek. I got hold of the shrubs and lowered myself as close to the creek’s edge as possible. I was short by about two feet.
I eyed the transparent layer of ice coating the slurry of water that flashed beneath like schools of silver fish. Recalling how my dad almost froze when he had gotten wet during one of our backcountry powder adventures, I knew I had to stick the landing. Fall sideways, not backward, if you lose balance, I told myself.
Lowering my body, my hands slithered down the vine and I dropped. My feet plunged into the snow and I teetered backward. I forced myself to one side, landing on my hip, avoiding the creek. The buried foot did not release and I felt my knee tweak. I got up on my hands to relieve my knee. I pulled my feet out and started moving. The knee hurt but it worked.
The wall on this side was too vertical, and the bench of snow next to the creek was too narrow. So I jumped the four-foot-wide creek. The creek bench was only a foot wider on this side and I had to descend on my hip, with my back to the creek, facing the gulch wall. Using nubs in the gulch wall to control my speed I slid down on my hip—an unproven technique. A mistake here would be disastrous. Don’t slip off this bench of snow, I warned. You’ll freeze and that’ll be the end.
I maneuvered my body into a chain of contortions, spidering the bench of snow between the gulch wall and the creek. A couple hundred feet lower I had staked out a landing site—a rock surface shaped like a bowl with no water in it. I hoped that either to the right or left of it there would be a needle hole through the bulwark of rock.
The tedium made my eyes dry and itchy, and I started to blink incessantly. Later I stopped in a good place and shut my eyes for a few minutes. Then I opened them to assess my progress. Not even halfway to that bowl-shaped rock, still over a hundred feet below.
I went back to the tedium of inch-by-inch, crag-by-crag, nail-by-nail progress. The minute details at my nose were my entire universe.
By the time I made it to the rock bowl it was noticeably darker. I scrutinized the clouds hoping they were the culprit. But they had dissipated in the gulch and hovered way up the sidewalls. Overcome with dread that ate away at my resolve, I succumbed to the numbness and exhaustion and hunger gnawing to be recognized. It hit me all at once and I plunked down onto the cold rock, whacking my chin against my knee. Just like when I rammed that gorge of a rut, I thought. If only I had wiped out during the race then I wouldn’t have won that stupid trophy, and we wouldn’t have gotten on the plane. This stopped my mind in its tracks and I rested down, as if to sleep.
I thought about my dad not allowing me to eat junk food. One particular time at my Pop Warner football
team banquet, which Nick took me to, the coach tore open boxes of Snickers and Hershey and Three Musketeers bars and we all raced toward the feast. I had grabbed my favorite—a Three Musketeers—when my dad appeared out of nowhere. No way, Ollestad, he said. I cursed him and he told me he would always be there, even when I was sixteen on a date with a girl about to open a beer he would pop out from the backseat and say, Ah-ha!
Again my body reacted when my mind was too weary and I lifted up off the cold rock. I searched for the best way to proceed.
The gulch bent 90 degrees, leading toward a crack into a wider gully or canyon. But the rock floor just ended, a cliff for sure I thought. The other sides of the rock bowl climbed upward and integrated back into the massive ridgeline. I had to go wherever the gulch took me.
On all fours I crabbed backward, following the rock floor. Below me the rock was shiny with patches of ice and I had no reason to believe there would be anything to hold on to once I went over the edge.
As I approached the edge I lay on my belly. Feet first, I wiggled over the brim. It was a dry waterfall, except to my far right where a vein of water poured down the face. The throat of the waterfall was composed of icy rock blisters stacked vertically. At least in the chute I had a chance of avoiding a collision if I slipped, but here the waterfall emptied into slabs of big and pointed shale about fifty feet below me.
There was no decision-making process. I had to go. So I went. Using the curved sidewall and whatever cracks I could find along the face to leverage between, I spread my limbs horizontally. I wormed my way down the face crease by crease, my numb fingertips and toe tips inexplicably culling the flaky holds and discovering tiny leverage points.
Crazy for the Storm Page 15