Did I Ever Tell You About The Time That Smoking Saved My Life?

Its true. Next time someone tells you smoking is bad for you, you tell them this story.

It was my one and only ski tour. I refer to it as The Ski Tour. It taught me that I don't particularly like ski touring, and it taught Heidi Rader that she doesn't particularly like me. We all learned a lot.

Skiing up the Nelchina Glacier

It was the first real day of the tour, and we were side-hilling above the moraine of the Nelchina Glacier on our way to getting on the glacier. The four of us stopped to take a break. At the end of the break Yoshi pulled out the pipe.

A bit about Yo: Yoshi lives to ski tour and smoke dope. Frank claims he can tell when Yoshi runs out of pot because the pace of the trip changes so dramatically. At the time he was in his mid-thirties, lived with his mom, occasionally drove around Japanese tourists for work, and was generally more fulfilled by his life than either you or I. When Yoshi began to grow his own he effectively removed himself from the western economy as we know it. I saw him last week and it didn't seem that much has changed. We did discuss this story, though.

Yoshi

"Hey Yoshi, can I have some?" "Yeah, bro" came the rhetorical reply. Frank and Heidi were, as usual, re-packed before us and started skiing off. Yoshi and I sat a bit longer, smoking and procrastinating putting my shit back into the bag.

What came next was more of a surprise. Through now-glassy eyes, Yo pulled a big, beautiful bud out of his bag, and tossed it into the snow. "One for the spirits."

Laughing, "Yoshi, man, as soon as you ski away I'm gonna go get that."

With as much alarm has his fish-bowl eyes could muster "no man! Don't!"

I shrugged and laughed, and then turned myself back to attempting to pack my bag. I have problems getting organized enough as it is, and getting stoned was probably a passive-aggressive attempt to make myself slower. I hate ski touring, I just didn't know it yet.

Then Yoshi and I heard Frank shouting for us and sounding agitated. We responded, but we were downwind, and he couldn't hear. Finally Heidi saw us and settled Frank down.

"DID YOU SEE THAT???"

"guess not?"

"There was just a HUGE avalanche!!" and he gestured up the hill with his ski pole. Sure enough, there was a pretty big crown line on the hill above us.

"did that just happen?"

"yeah, it was right behind us! totally silent!"

"huh."

The slide path was quite big - at least 100 feet wide. I don't know how deep the debris was. Frank said it ran right behind him. Generally, I finish a break at least a minute behind whoever I'm with. If I hadn't stopped to smoke pot with Yoshi, I'd be a dead man.

Thanks, marijuana.