The Emerald Mile - Review

The Emerald Mile

By Kevin Fedarko

Reviewed by Matt Lindon of the Friends of the Park City Library

Kevin Fedarko’s book The Emerald Mile was first published in the summer of 2013 and became an instant hit with river rats and water geeks alike.  It is basically the story of the spring of 1983 when the winter snow pack continued to build unexpectedly in the Rocky Mountains until Memorial Day weekend when it all started to melt all at once.  This snow melt runoff caused unprecedented flooding along the Colorado River systems that stressed the Bureau of Reclamation on-stream dams, their engineers and their operators.  From this adversity came an opportunity for a select, almost mythical, group of river runners and guides.  They seized the moment, as well as the high water, and attempted to break the fastest rowing record thru the Grand Canyon.  These stories are seamlessly woven together in this book to provide an enlightening and entertaining story of the various, often competing, special interest groups, and stakeholders of the rivers and the water in the west.

Kevin Fedarko was originally a staff writer for Time magazine and a contributor to Esquire and Outside as well as other magazines.  He is a part time river guide in the Grand Canyon which manifests as respect, almost reverence, for that place and the river that carved it.  This may contribute to his over-the-top storytelling and his fraternity to the culture of the river guides.  Every chapter is an adventure, and every subsequent chapter is an exciting opportunity that is not to be missed.  He also translates the complex hydrologic engineering concepts and numbers into layman terms that flow like water.  The book therefore reads itself and is impossible to put down. 

Along with his complete history of river running and the development of the culture of the western river guides, Fedarko does equally well in describing the operating engineers for the Bureau of Reclamation at Glen Canyon Dam.  They are first seen anxiously watching car sized sandstone boulders shooting from the spillway tunnels and then hopefully putting plywood on the dam’s spillway gates to hold back the relentlessly rising level of Lake Powell.  Only BOR dam operator Tom Gambel really knows how close we really came to losing the dam that year.  From this gripping true story we all become more aware of the power, persistence and patience of the Colorado River from this story.   As these competing cultures converge in a crescendo of crisis, Fedarko navigates the storylines like a well season river guide riding an invisible eddy line. 

The story starts benignly enough at the beginning, where most good stories start.  Don Garcia, a captain in the 1540 Coronado expedition sent to find the seven golden cities of Cibola, accidently stumbles upon the Grand Canyon and is relatively unimpressed.  From that inauspicious first sighting of the Canyon by a white men, to the courageous first navigation of the Canyon in 1869 by John Wesley Powell, the story proceeds systematically to the dam builders, conservationist and the river runners of modern times. 

Martin Linton is presented as the enlightened entrepreneur and environmentalist who perfects the method of running the river in elegant but fragile wooden Dory boats.  He also fights along side David Brower of the Sierra Club against the dam builders for the preservation of the canyon.  His Dorys are subsequently named after environmental tragedies and we are introduced to a beaten and battered boat called the Emerald Mile that is named after an old growth, Redwood clear cut in Northern California.  This bastard boat is adopted by guru guide Kenton Grua and meticulously repaired and rebuilt for its epic run. 

Along with his equally skillful and obsessive friends, Steve Reynolds and Rudi Petschek, Grua ignores the National Park Service closing of the flooded river and, on the night of June 25 1983, launches the Emerald Mile just below the dam into a river swollen to almost 100,000 cubic feet per second.  This book is unmistakably about this historic run but it is wrapped nicely in the other side stories of the canyon, the river, the dams, the conservationists, the guides, the bureaucrats and the competing interests for the American west. 

It could be the text book of a Western Water 101 course and stands among the great books in this category along with Cadillac Dessert by Mark Reisner and Beyond the 100^th Meridian by Wallace Stegnar.  The Colorado River is the poster boy for the exploitation of the waters and the resources of the American West and this book is a revelation of the complex consequences that arise when you mess with mother nature, for thrills or for profit.

This is also the story of hubris and arrogance, confidence and adventure and the surprisingly counter-intuitive forces of nature on our unsustainable life style.   It is a rollicking ride full of the hyperbole and didactic exaggeration, courage and legend and the conquering of the gear and the fear that is the lexicon of the river culture.  Strap yourself in and prepare for a frantic and fantastic journey.  You will not be disappointed.

Size Matters

I went skiing the other day far from my home.  When I got there I realized that I had taken one of my boots and one of my wives boots.  Luckily one right and one left.  Unfortunately, she is a 6, I am an 11.  Nonetheless I painfully put them both on, as a penance for being a bone head, and went up skiing.

 It wasn't too bad but I had to adjust my binding to fit her boot and I could only Tele turn to one side on account of my scrunched toes.  I have skied with my boots on the wrong feet once, during my hung over college days,  when I thought it odd that my buckles were rubbing together like never before.   I often ski with my skis seemingly on the wrong feet but this was a new extreme experience.  The four hours of skiing were not bad but the two hours I spent waiting for a downloading tram in the après ski bars became excruciating, since I dared not take off my boots for fear of not getting them back on.   

When I finally stumbled to my car and took off my boots, I expected to see bloody toes and black toenails but found that my foot did not look bad and it felt real happy to get out of that boot.  By the next day my feet had completely recovered and I have determined that size really does not matter.  For ski boots, that is.

KEEP THE BEAT

We were camping at Chaco Canyon New Mexico on a cold and rainy night, having a comfortable dinner underneath a fortuitously overhanging wall.  The sand was warm and dry next to our fire and the lighting was exquisite as we listened to the subtle sounds of the dripping desert.  A car pulled into the exposed campsite next to ours and sat there for a long time with the motor running.  My indignant wife Tracey eventually told me to go over and tell them to turn it off.  I stormed over and tapped on the window.  When they rolled down the window and I saw the confused faces inside, I changed my attitude and I asked them if they would like to join us for cocktails under our rock.  The husband and wife pair was flabbergasted and grabbed some whiskey and wine and quickly joined us in the sand. 

They had just flown in from New York City, rented a car and headed off into the wilderness.  In the rain and the dark they were a little discombobulated, making the transition from the city to the country, and they were having a hard time getting their bearings.  They were designers and developers of sonic playgrounds in NYC where the action and motion of the kids energized tubs and drums buried underground creating a symphony of tympani and percussion.  They were great folks so we shared our dinner and drink, shade and warmth.

It turned out that they were drummers by trade and hobby and said they always travel with their drums.  We asked if they would break out their drums and play for us, pa rum pum pum pum.  They went back to their car and came back with a big rug that they laid out next to our fire.  Then they kept coming back with more and more drums, elaborate drum sets for themselves and smaller drums for us.   They pulled drums out of their rental car like clowns popping out of a circus car.

 They started playing and we all started grooving haphazardly.  After the first cacophonous round they offered us the key to good drumming, one hint.  We are all responsible for the best.  They started again, laying down a simple back-beat and we were encouraged to join in.  We started tentatively but were soon riffing and improvising, dropping related layers of rhythm on top and around each other, never forgetting the original beat.  It sounded great, in our cozy little amphitheater, and we jammed harmonically late into the night, talking and playing with our new found friends.  

They left in the morning, after coffee and breakfast, with their rug, drums and their rental car.  We exchanged hugs and contact information as they thanked us for our hospitality and we thanked them for the drumming and the life lesson.  We are all responsible for the beat.

Plainsong

By, Kent Haruf

I love literature, good literature.  A classic story well told. But I am an engineer with no training for picking good books. I always had an American Studies major friend in college to steer me in new directions; from Kerouac to Woolf, Leopold to Abbey, Fitzgerald to Steinbeck, and Stegner to McPhee.   In the real world it is harder to find a mentor who shares your tastes and can make new suggestions.  I am lucky now to have my friend Andy as my reading associate. Andy doesn’t sleep a lot so he reads voraciously, anything and everything western.  He has steered me from McCarthy to McMurtry, Sprague to Kitteridge, Guthrie to Reisner and from Bass to Doig. Andy has read them all and always has a new book or author for me to check out.  Literally.

He left me a note a while back and all it said was Kent Haruf.  I knew what that meant and it felt like a new door had already been opened for me.  Walking eagerly down the Library’s alphabetical Fiction Isle, I found Haruf nestled comfortably between Jim Harrison and Ernest Hemingway, my favorites.  I randomly grabbed a heavy hardbound edition of the book with the nicest cover, called “Plainsong”, and checked it out. 

Kent Haruf is a teacher at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and sometimes lives in Salida, Colorado.  The setting for all of his books is Holt, Colorado, patterned after the north east Colorado town of Yuma, on the edge of the Great Plains where he lived in the early 80’s.  A ““Plainsong”” is technically a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Western Church, but Haruf has explained the title as “any simple and unadorned melody or air”, most likely emanating from the Great Plains of the western United States.

“Plainsong” was published in 1999 and became a U.S. bestseller. Verlyn Klinkenborg of the New York Times called it "a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader.” “Plainsong” won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.

“Plainsong” blew me away.  Seldom have I read a book so deceptively simple and lyrical in style, and so well written that it evoked a deep emotional reaction.  I was reading it before bed one night and my wife asked me if I was crying.  I said yes because the characters were so real, so hurting and so good.  This is a compelling narrative about the town of Holt as exemplified by a pregnant school girl, a lonely schoolteacher, a pair of old, curmudgeon bachelor-brother farmers, two young boys abandoned by their mother and trying struggling father, trying to start his life over.  It is a story of community and compassion, and about our natural predilection to help each other in times of need, whether it is large or small.  It is about the inherent good in most of us and our inclination to bond together in our small communities, whether they are our towns or families, bars or our jobs.  Life on the plains seems too hard to go through isolated and alone, too lonely sometimes to even to try.  But we do try, with a little help from our friends. 

This is complete story with villains and thieves, heroes and protagonists, good woman and everyman.  It is a positive, uplifting story about the good in our human nature and our natural connections to others.  It does not punch you in the face but it infiltrates your soul.  Haruf craftily writes a simple story that builds on itself into a convincing tale of the human condition.  It is easy on the eyes and gentle on the mind.  The arc of this story flows thru your senses like the story of our lives and our towns, like the great American Novel should.  His everyday prose is neither flamboyant nor esoteric.  He uses the right words, not the biggest or the most words. 

You wonder if this story told itself to the writer during a period of inspiration, as he wrote it, revealing his subconscious view of the human condition, or if he technically blocked out the story, beginning to end, before he started.  I like to think the former.  This is literature.  Art divinely inspired and merely translated by the author, like a great song or sculpture.  In these times of isolation and ideological diversion this story attempts to bring us together in a spirit of compromise of consensus that minimizes the things that divide us and magnifies the things we have in common. 

When I finished “Plainsong” I wanted more.  The story was not tied into a neat bow or a happy Hollywood ending.  To my surprise this book was the first of the ‘Holt Trilogy’ followed by “Eventide” and “Benediction”.  These stories involve the trials and tribulations of the community of Holt with some repeating characters and story overlap.  They stand on their own, however, as singular stories with resonant themes of frailty, family, resilience, redemption, humanity and community.  They are worth the read but they fall off in content and feeling and are ultimately not as good as “Plainsong”. 

Haruf’s other early books such as “The Ties That Bind” and “Where you Once Belonged” show the progression in story telling that got him to “Plainsong”.    His narrative to the High Plains photos by Peter Brown, in their award winning book “West of Last Chance”, is worth picking up to feed your fascination with images and stories of this  brutal and beautiful part of the country. 

Keep Kent Haruf in your pocket like a good old friend you call to cheer you up and renew your faith in mankind.  He will never let you down.

Storms Happen

Extreme Storms happen.  Every day.  Somewhere.  Maybe not on your backyard or dam, but around the country and the world there is always an unbelievable storm raging.  Sometimes we see them in the news or on TV and sometimes these extreme storms get names like Katrina, Irene, Sandy, Boulder or Snow-mageddon.  Sometimes no one hears about them at all.  But they happen, all the time, and they could happen to you.  Live long enough and they will.

Why should I care about extreme weather?

Hydro-meteorological experts put all the historical extreme storms, at all their locations, into a big data base to determine how often they happen, how big they can get and what is the threat at individual locations.  We all know about the weather in our own back yard but these storm experts consider hundreds of years of data at thousands of locations and have a much broader understanding of the size, scope and statistics of extreme events.  They know that extreme storms happen.


We have all heard of the ‘100 year storm’ as the typical flood design standard in the USA.  Things that are replaceable, such as a culvert, minor flood plain encroachment, or a low hazard dam, are designed for the 100 year level of risk.  Things that are not replaceable, such as a high hazard dam, bridge  or a nuclear power plant, where human life is at risk, are designed for a much bigger storm because of the high consequences of a failure.  With that kind of high risk and consequence there is no excuse for an acceptable or foreseeable failure and the design standard is the ‘non exceedance event’, no matter how rare that event is.  Design standards should never compromise human life and safety.

This kind of non exceedance event has been determined by the National Weather Service (NWS) to be the Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) in the USA.  These PMP events are defined by the NWS as, “theoretically, the greatest depth of precipitation for a given duration that is physically possible over a given size storm area at a particular geographic location during a certain time of year”.  By combining these storm events with the most severe hydrologic conditions that are reasonably possible in a given drainage basin determine the Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) that is the national industry standard for high hazard dam design.

The fact that these extreme storms happen, are predictable and quantifiable, make them the design standards for critical infrastructure and where human lives are at risk in the USA.  They are not random, unpredictable acts of God that surprise designers and owners with their ferocity.  We know they can happen and do happen, even though we personally may not have experienced them.  They are one of the most critical and elusive design components of a dam because they are the weather.  They must be considered like we consider all the dam loading factors and forces such as earthquakes, wind, and gravity, and material properties such as soil steel and concrete.

Dam designers and owners are therefore responsible and liable for all of these accepted loading conditions and their consequence, both legally and ethically. The standard of legal care, in a court of law for these instances, is ‘the actions of a reasonable man’ and a reasonable man.  A reasonable dam man should know the proper loading conditions, and must design against exceedance and failure under these foreseeable loads. 

In conclusion, the impoundment of water is a hazardous undertaking and those who benefit from its storage must also be responsible for its containment.  We never fail to underestimate the power, persistence and the patience of stored water and we must diligently guard against its catastrophic release.  To do anything less, knowing the potential loading conditions of extreme storms, would be ethically irresponsible at best and gross negligence at worst.

Ski Bum

‘Hey John’, I shouted to the first guy in the gondola line, on the last day of the year, at Canyons Ski Resort, ‘how many days did you ski this year’.  ‘All of them’, he said.  Now that is a ski bum.  A skiing curmudgeon with squinty blue eyes, perma-tan and a wild haircut with a grey beard extending down to his chest, 68 year old John Haney is 155 pounds of pure modern mountain man.  With almost 40 years of skiing on the Wasatch back, he is the definition of a local and the quintessential ski bum. 

Haney, as he is called by his friends, is the face of old Park City and someone we all came here to be.  He has not been distracted by love, work or money.  He has remained true to himself and to the focus of this town - recreation.  Skiing an average 140 days and riding his road bikes 225 days each year, he remains singularly fixated on the basics of mountain life and to this town. 

Born in Nebraska in 1945, John served in the Army and moved west after college in the early 70s.  He lived in the classic early Park City institutions like the Palace Flophouse, Last Resort and Alpine Prospector and started work at Mileti’s restaurant as a dishwasher.   There were stints as a surveyor at Jack Johnsons and Alliance Engineering and part time work at the Racket Club but he never let the job get in the way of his passion.  He kept his recreational priorities, never missing a powder day, a sunny day, a cloudy day or even a rainy day.

Operating out of his small house in Swede alley, insulated with bike parts and old skis, John has perfected his trade.  Up before dawn and on the first bus out of old town, he arrives at Canyons sometimes an hour before the lifts start.  Although he does ski PCMR and Deer Valley and the Cottonwoods occasionally, Canyons is his home.  Dressed in an old Deer Valley ski coat and pants, allegedly waterproofed with bacon grease, he positions himself at the front of the Gondola line.   Every day.  

On a typical day John will ski the corduroy at the resort in the morning and slip out the back door gate in the afternoon to farm some slack-country slope for 10 - 15 laps, cutting an up-track too steep for any mere mortal to follow.  No ‘Texas Traversing’ for this buckaroo.  On a powder day he will start on the old Park West mountain, getting first tracks down Stampede and Geronimo Bowl (he doesn’t use the new names).  He then works his way over to the new mountain for the opening of 9990 and Dutch Draw, outlasting skiers ¼ his age before heading home on the last bus.  Skiing on a pair of 20 year old K2’s, Haney links turns effortlessly, spooning economically in the backcountry and keeping to the sides in the resorts.  He can often be seen skiing under the chair-lift on a weekday powder day, shouting to his yuppie friends on the chair, ‘ get a job you trust funders.’  

Thrifting and dumpster diving for his clothes, bikes, skis and equipment John lives a simple minimalist lifestyle.  He once told me he lives on 300 dollars a month and I believe it.  His house on Poison Creek is paid off and I imagine there is a mattress full of 100 dollar bills in his back bedroom.  Sometimes accommodating a roommate, he eschews the company of the fairer gender saying simply, ‘women cost money’ although he has softened recently saying he would ‘have any woman in Park City, if any would have him’.   John has also learned to enjoy the some of the other finer things in life.  Coming late to an Alliance Christmas party we found him alone at the head of the table of the Seafood Buffet with a pile of shrimp the size of the great pyramids and a big smile on his face.  When, later that night, he was told that, ‘it takes money to make money’ John shot back ‘and it takes money to lose money’.  Maybe. 

Haney proudly eats raw sweet potatoes on the chair lift for lunch, because ‘they are gouging us lately  on the price of carrots’.  When I asked for a sample bite one day he told me, with a mischievous grin, to ‘get my own’.  Frugal but generous, he once lent a needy neighbor boy a hand-built aluminum Trek road bike with Campagnola  components for a fun ride across Iowa.  While the local bike shops were asking 500 – 1000 dollars for the monthly rental, John asked for only 25 dollars and a tee shirt. 

John rides his bike everywhere; for economy, efficiency, exercise and for the sheer fun of it.  Legend has it that he rode his bike down to Salt Lake one day, completed the Snowbird Hill Climb race in less than an hour, and hitched a ride home.  He routinely participates and wins the World Senior Games – Bike Stage Races and Track Events in Cedar City.  Several years ago, when he turned 60, he entered the National Road Bike Championship race being held in Deer Valley.  He won his age group easily lapping many riders in the field.  He rode a mountain bike and a snowboard once or twice but likes to stick to what he knows best, the soft and the smooth.

Haney occasionally wages his personal crusade against rampaging snowboarders, unleashed dogs on Main Street and Slurry Seal road repairs, all of which have sent him flying at one time or another.  Otherwise he is OK with the ‘inevitable’ changes he has seen in Park City but laments the traffic and the ‘eventual grid lock from Old Town to the freeway’.  He thinks the free bus system is the best thing about modern Park City as well as the library and the new hospital at Quinn’s junction.  He recently had his hip replaced and knee rebuilt by an old ski bum’s best friend, Medicare.  He wonders if the eventual ‘Aspenization’ of Park City will leave us with a touristy ghost town of rich people, Olympians and servants.  In spite of everything, he plans on staying in Park City in perpetuity.    ‘Where else would I go’, he wonders.

Sometimes community leaders do not sit on city councils or in the corner office.   As a quite Park City icon, John Haney is an example of the bygone days when skiers would just move here to wash dishes and load chair lifts, all for the privilege of living and playing in our sleepy little town.  He serves as a constant reminder to some of us of why we came here, who we tried to be and what makes this town great.  Simple, focused, honest and happy.

 Photos by Mark Maziarz.       maziarz.people.com

Powder Paradigm

    The gondola door slammed shut and the 6 old friends inside settled down for the quick ride up the mountain.  Doctors, Dishwashers, Engineers, Entrepreneurs, Real Estate Magnets and housewives, fathers, mothers, outstanding members of the community, they are defined, above all, as skiers.  The weather outside was a raging blizzard, in the middle of a Rocky Mountain three day storm, with new snow stacking up to the roofs of the small resort condos below them.  Although this group of skiers had taken this ride dozens of times before, they were incredibly excited by the upcoming challenge and potential adventures of the new snow. They had skied with each other many times but were hesitant to speak at first, until someone finally took the lead.

Luke – What’s it going to be today folks?   Biggest powder day in 5 years.

Chip – I gotta go for the gusto early, I’ve only got 3 hours to get my ya ya’s out and head home.

Rick – Efficiency is key, I’ve got till noon and then it’s back to work.  It would be great if we can, for once, stick together for more than 5 minutes, for safety, for group continuity and for shared vicarious experiences.

Peter – I don’t care, I’ve got all day and no agenda.

Martha – I’ve got an agenda but it’s hidden. 

Olivia – What are you guys talking about?

Chip – Well, we can improvise this day, wing it haphazardly or individually like we always do, or we can organize it, optimize it, maximize it and super size it with good team work, communication and planning.  I’m willing to facilitate the process if you guys are game for a paradigm shift. But I still get to vote.

Luke – I’m oldest here so I’ll be team leader but I will probably contribute only as much as the rest of you.  Powder skiing is like a commodity or a widget, a limited resource to economize and distribute competitively to the most deserving.  This is a business model, and engineering application of efficiency.  Let’s take the first derivative of this day’s fun equation and solve for zero to maximize it.

Rick – The first derivative has all the optimization in it but the second derivative is where the fun is, like acceleration – the rate of change in the change, the slope of the slope.  It’s only a 10-minute ride, we can do this.  Can we be called Team Powder Hound?

Peter – Fine with me, we can be called Team Butt-Face for all I care

Martha – I’ll record and remember the salient points of our discussion.

Olivia - I’ll be the heart and soul of the process, a Leo leading by example driving from the back seat.  Did anybody see my ski poles?

Luke – Good, we need to establish our agenda for the ride and state our goals.  I think that we need to optimize routes and timing for the deepest snow for everyone involved. We need to identify the root cause of our typical problems and come up with solutions from all our options.  We need to find the critical path for everyone involved.  We should assess the technique and results of this meeting when we are done and meet again at the end of the day to calibrate and adjust our strategy for our next powder attack.  Anything else?

Chip – How bout lunch.

Martha – Lunch is for wimps.

Peter – Eat it on the chairlift.

Rick – I could use a bathroom break soon.

Peter - Pee off the chairlift.

Olivia – My goggles are fogging.

Luke – Settle down people we are wasting time.  For 10 minutes can we be serious and not goof on each other, speak one at a time and respect everyone’s viewpoint.

Martha – Sure, and no group domination or manipulation.  All our time and ideas are equally important.  If I recall correctly, last time we tried this it was all about Chip’s needs and we wound up checking back at the lodge every 30 minutes to find his girl Pollyanna Powderday.  Remembered we agreed last time that meeting other people limits our flexibility.  Also remember that we all agreed to carry beacons and shovels and keep them with us all day so we are safe no matter where we go and we not tied to return to someone’s pack drop area.

Olivia – And if you can remember what I had for lunch the last time, I will be really impressed.

Martha – That’s why I’m the human recorder, my photographic memory.

Pete – That never develops. 

Rick - Are we bonding yet?   It’s storming inside and outside of this gondola car and we are not getting anywhere.  Let’s do this together, or not at all.

Chip – OK, we have defined our quest, established rules, and set our course, now everyone tell us what you know about the current conditions outside, in 1 minute or less.

Luke – 27 inches of new in the last 24 hours, 45 in the last 48 and 63 in the last 72.  It came in on a south wind that shifted to the northwest after 24 hours.  The density gradient is from 10 to 3 percent, inverted with a Crème Brule crust in the middle.  Could be death cookies.

Peter  - Temps at 10,000 feet have been below freezing for 5 days, no sun, I say we stay high all day.

Chip – No sun this week but things baked big time before this storm so we should stay off the hard crusty south faces.  Go north young man – I say.

Rick – Speaking of Baked, what do you know Olivia?

Olivia – I know that puppy dogs have cold noses….

Luke – Give me a freaking break

Olivia – OK OK, I’ve been up skiing the last 3 days and the sheltered trees have been primo deluxe.  Its almost too deep, we need the wicked steep.

Peter – That sounds safe, anyone hear any avalanche control bombs this morning.

Martha –They have been blasting early only over on Condor side.   The Trophy Wives in the Trophy Homes over in the Colony do not like to be blasted out of bed too early so they only bomb that side after the Cappuccino hour.

Luke – How bout the backcountry gates.

Rick – Closed indefinitely due to the high avalanche hazard, and trail breaking would be a bear otherwise. 

Luke – We need data, Peter stick your head out the window to see which way is the wind blowing.  Martha call the avalanche forecast report on your cell phone, Rick monitor the ski patrol bomb squad on your walkie-talkie.  Someone find Olivia’s poles.

Peter - Don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows and even a blind man knows when the sun is shining.  It’s blowing from the NW  20-30 gusts, to 50.  10 degrees ambient, 30 below wind chill.  It’s a white out.  Wish I brought my fat skis.

Olivia – I wish I brought my hat.  Weather, ultimately it is what it is, always, perfectly.  We take what we get.

Martha – The Avalanche hazard is off the charts.  Anything between 35 and 45 degrees is sure to slide; anything else would not be worth skiing – too slow or too steep. 

Rick – The Ski Patrol can’t even get to their blasting routes yet it is so deep.  Is there such a thing as too deep or is that concept in the same category as spare change, or extra beer?

Luke – This is all good technology and information and it should be good skiing eventually, but the problem remains that we have so many options and we are all going in 6 different directions.  This is inefficient and we waste too much time in transition, we need to coordinate and attack this as one.  If we can close this gap, we can ski twice as much terrain in half the time and all be home for Gilligan’s Island re-runs.  I know there are ‘no friends on a powder day’ but we can reinvent the paradigm and ‘all be friends on a powder day’.

Chip – That means a little sacrifice, compromise and pain on everyone’s part and it will require us to reach consensus.  This is not a democracy, this is Utah. 

Olivia – You mean that my opinion as a lowly dishwasher is as important as your plastic suited, cell phone toting, real estate mindset.

Rick – Ouch, that really hurts.  Remember the rules, no personal attacks.  Out here we are all equal, especially you.

Chip – Ok, now we are ready to brainstorm the root cause of our problem our ideas.

Luke – Personally I think we have too many options.

Rick – I think we all have types of equipment and different abilities.

Chip – The problem is we have different needs, for boards, skis or tele’s.

Martha – I feel that there are too many natural things out of our control.

Olivia – Obviously, there is too much snow.  We should not ski the same run twice, as if it was metaphysically possible to ski the same run twice.  You change, the run changes, the snow changes, nothing is ever the same…

Peter – Deep Space girl, let’s focus people.  In my opinion it is impossible to second-guess the ski patrol and the bomb squad.

Luke – Speaking of space, we have too many places and spaces to go.  The more you do the more you miss.

Chip – I really do have to meet up with Pollyanna some time, or I’m a dead man.

Martha – And a pee break at a lodge is critical.  Forget the trees boys.

Peter – We always do the same thing, let’s be different today, somehow.  Change is always good.  A change is as good as a rest or vice versa…   Our minds think only of linear change and can only extrapolate linearly.  Let’s think exponentially, nature is all an exponential spiral, like the shape of a hurricane, the flow of a flushing toilet, or the shape of a sea shell, the curvature of a cornice, a natural log.  Let’s think outside the box, outside the gondola….

Olivia – And don’t forget lunch.  Life is too short for fast food and slow skis.    Let’s combine all the lodge issues into one category since it is one stop.  And let’s combine the natural unknowns into one category and the variety of equipment, ability and schedules into one also since they are close. 

Chip – Let’s clarify these ideas now and analyze them with the data that we have.

Luke – I think this mountain is so huge we couldn’t possibly pick an optimal route for all. 

Rick – I think we are all on different equipment, skis, boards, tele gear, that we can’t keep everyone happy and healthy.

Chip – With all our schedules and time constraints, how do we coordinate?  I still have to meet Pollyanna.

Martha – Pollyanna is a symptom of a personal agenda not a problem in itself.  My problem is that with the bad wind and visibility we won’t know where we are or where we are going.

Olivia – With so much snow we can’t get to half the places we want.

Peter – And the ski patrol does their own thing that we can’t predict.  Snow cover is almost random and multiple natural hazards could be anywhere.  Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know.  How can we choose?

Chip – Any other clarifications necessary?  If not let’s vote.  Criterion should be what works for you.  Agreed?

Luke  - Also consider the biggest problem for your needs.

Rick – 5 minutes left. We are on schedule Captain.

Olivia – Thank you Mr. Spock.  It doesn’t really matter, time is relative.

Rick – You can’t mix ‘matter’ and ‘doesn’t matter’ on this team.  We all have to care and try, or it doesn’t work.

Luke – OK the votes are in. The top 3 are;

A    Natural/Human Conditions  6

D    Route Preference  7

F     Personal Schedules  4

Chip - Now everyone rank each problem in order of importance to him or her, on the back window.

Martha – What about my pee break, I really have to go.

Luke – OK put that one up there too, even though you were the only one to vote for it.  Her is how it shakes out people.

Chip – It looks like the highest-ranking problem is Route Selection, and of course a pee break is still an irrefutable side solution if we want to stay together.

Peter – Great, can we move on and find a solution.  How do we look for time?

Rick – 4 minutes.   Let’s hurry, fast fast fast…

Olivia – The secret to life is enjoying the passage of time.

Luke – Let’s brainstorms some solutions for optimum route selection, informally, just shout out your ideas.  I say we go high to The Peak and ski the steeps until they open the backcountry gates.  Remember for everything you do there are some things you don’t do.

Chip - I think things will be closed for a while and we should stay at the Tombstone lift so we can access the first thing opened.

Peter – I say we go to the Condor lift and go fast on the rolled stuff

Rick – Let’s go over to the Colony side and cruise real-estate runs to be safe.

Martha – I vote we go to the lodge to pee, have lunch, wait for Pollyanna and watch what opens first.

Olivia – I say we split up and do our own thing or go home and forget this group continuity thing.

Chip – Olivia, we need consensus and some group buy in by you, what is your real problem and what can we do to get you on board.

Olivia – All right, I don’t know why Luke is the leader he is just big old and loud.  I ski everyday, twice as much as any of you and I should be running the show.  And besides I’m hungry, tired and cranky and need to pee too!

Luke – Olivia, you were supposed to leave your ego at the door, but if you want to be the leader you can.  Does that mean I get to be the backseat burnout space cadet?

Chip – OK back to solution ideas, are there any more constructive ideas.

Peter – Let’s check with the ski patrol in person for the inside scoop.

Martha – If you analyze some of these ideas there is a pattern forming, with a stop by the lodge as a part of each plan.  Then it is a question of going north or south to different parts of the mountain and then a question of how far and how soon.

Rick – A real solution would have portions of everyone’s solution but done in a priority that makes everyone happy.

Olivia – OK it looks like these are the priority rankings as I hear them.  We stop by the lodge first to pee, eat, and check with the ski patrol.  Then we head to Condor to warm up on some safe, rolled cruisers.  Then we head back past to lodge to pick up Pollyanna and head to Tombstone to wait for rope openings.  Once they open up the Colony we can cruise that before going to The Peak to ski the steeps and by then we can check the backcountry gates.  Those who want to stay can go for a tour; others can go home if they need to.   How’s that sound for all??

Peter – Great but can we just stop at the lodge only once, at midday for everything?

Martha – No way, we need sustenance and info NOW and I can’t wait till mid morning!  Stick with the solution, feel the force and trust the tools.

Rick – One minute left till the top.

Chip – OK, it has been decided, does everyone feel good about this plan?  Congratulations on the good consensus.  How did you guys like the format, the meeting and the results?

Olivia – I think it went great once we got a good leader and stopped bickering.

Luke – I think it went well but you guys should eat and pee before we start the day so we can focus and are not distracted or over concerned with your pressing personal needs and minutia.

Peter – I think it is a little over formal for a bunch of ski bums but I admit it is effective.

Martha – Let’s celebrate our success, I’ve got one beer we can share, no backwash please.

Rick – The gondola has stopped  - one-half minute left and holding.  Can meeting time stand still.  Are there any other problems to solve while we have to opportunity?

Chip – How bout world peace and global warming – we are getting good at this.

Luke – Don’t get cocky kid.  Here we go, we are moving again.

Rick – We are at the top, meeting adjourned.  Let’s assess, calibrate, verify and evaluate our solution at the mid morning break. I want Pollyanna included in this decision process and we should use a similar agenda and process to include her needs and desires.

Olivia - But first the group hug, on 3   1-2-3 mmmmmmmmm.

Martha – I love you guys.

            They pile from the gondola stumbling out into a ghost storm, white on white, with the realization that they optimized without manipulation, coordinated without compromise and reached group consensus and continuity without the loss if individuality or freedom.  Their personal bond and mutual goals allowed them to transcend the situation and themselves.  Together the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  As soul mates, they skied together that day, with vicarious and personal enjoyment of each other’s ability and performance.  Their highly functional, multi disciplined team and deep personal commitment to each other overcame insurmountable obstacles and a pressure cooker time constraint, guaranteeing them that they would solve their problems and achieve their goals.  They all made it home for Gilligan’s Island re-runs.