Finnegan's Pass

A Story by Will White

A skier finds himself in a situation far beyond his own control.

Finnegan’s Pass

By William White

My skis slapped the ground, making a noise just loud enough to wake a nearby dog. He barked at me and jogged away. I dusted by boots off with a repetitive motion. Then I stepped toe-first into my ski, pressing my heel into it. The skis clicked and I slipped my gloves on. The sun just peeked over a white mountain.

I pulled my poles out of the fresh snow and propelled myself to the slope. The lift at the bottom of the slope was only starting to move as I approached. I waved to the lift operator as I looked to move in front of the swinging chairs. Before I could, however, a hand pulled me back, “Have room for two?”

“Climb aboard,” I said cheerily, “Good morning.”

The three of us - one man with a red jacket and the other with a green one - moved in front of the leather backed chairs. The leather chair lifted us into the air and beckoned us to the void.

“You visiting?” One of the men asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “Just got in last night.”

“How confident d’you feel?” He asked me, pulling the chilly metal bar over our laps.

“Pretty confident,” I said, “Why?”

“We’re headed to what’s fabled to be the hardest run on the planet,” he said, “Finnigan’s Chute.”

“Oh?”

“Have you ever skied Stauffenburg in Taos?”

“Only a million times.”

“It’s like that - or Walkyrie's chute - but three miles long.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” I said, “Where is it?”

The other man answered, “Six mile hike into a canyon and out.”

“Can’t be so hard,” I said.

“How would you like to come with us?”

“I’ll tag along,” I said innocently.

The rest of the ten minute lift ride was silent, with only the bitter breeze for sound. Pine trees and Aspens moved toward and away from me. Then rocky mountain tops and a brown bear passed below us.

One of the men pointed it out and took a picture with his cell phone. The bear saw us and grunted. It pawed at the air and lumbered back into the forest. The wind swept through the huge gully which contained most of the main runs of the resort. The lift station was approaching and we lifted the freezing metal bar and positioned our poles in one hand. We pushed ourselves off the lift and crossed over the groomed terrain to a small sign with a simple message. A skull marked the entrance, and below it stood two very familiar black diamonds. Just past the sign the hill shot straight up. No tracks led anywhere, but the absence of trees gave us an idea of what we were up against. I stopped by the sign. The man in the red jacket stopped and said, “Like to take a last picture?”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

We removed our helmets and gators. The man in the red jacket wore a thick, black beard. He was about thirty. I’m twenty two. The man in the green jacket had very little facial hair, but his chin made up for it. He was nearly fifty. We took three pictures near the sign, then laid our skis on our backpacks. We tied them down and put the packs on. They motioned for me to lead them on, so I did. The terrain was steep. My legs were burning after ten steps in the high powder. The men didn’t struggle but kept my pace. I asked about the run and they gave me the information.

It’s called Finnegan’s Chute, named for the guy who made it. He was on a mining expedition in the summer of 1943 when he left a crate of explosives sitting out all night. His camp thought they were being shot at as the crate slowly spilled the ten tonnes of explosives down the mountain. They fell in such a way that when they exploded, the explosives carved a very narrow, jagged three mile chute down through the mountain.

When it snowed, a legendary skier found it and skied down it. He proclaimed it the most difficult run in the world, saying that he nearly died more than ten times. His description included the fact that the run was, “Steeper than all hell, you have to jump from outcropping to outcropping at some points, the cover was thin, so I had to polish my skis in the middle of the run, and it’s so long. I have never skied anything so long and hard in my life.”

All this and more kept my mind occupied while we were climbing the steep terrain. A light nearly directly above me told me we were nearly there. The steeple of the mountain came into view. I stepped over it and was face to face with a difficult chute. I asked the men, “Is this it?”

“No,” the red jacket man said, “This is the chute to get to the chute to get to the glade which leads to the final hike.”

I nodded and unhooked my backpack. I slipped my skis off it and onto the thick powder. I managed to get them on and shake the snow off them. I let my mass carry me over the edge of the slope. I stopped my freefall on a snow-covered rock and turned sharply to another. I hopped over a dangerous rock and turned around a mound of snow. After that, the slope widened and I took wide, arcing turns toward another sign, this one was the same as the first. A skull and two black diamonds.

The men arrived behind me and placed their skis on their backs. We loaded ourselves down with stuff again and ventured on. The next chute was very similar to the first. It was narrow and steep, like chutes are. And like chutes are, it was short and snappy.

At the bottom of the chute, I stopped by the final warning sign. This one had an addition, a whiteboard with some handwriting on it, “If you’ve made it this far, there’s no turning back. However, if you like, you can take the way just to your left and it will take you down a chute to sixteen miles of glading. That will lead you to the peak which is generally considered the highest accessible to the resort. Glading is to your right and that will lead you to your final hike.”

The green jacket man said, “That’s a lot of glading.”

“I’ve done it before. It’s mostly poling through trees,” the red jacket man said.

I asked, “You’ve made it this far before?”

“Back when I had my wife to live for, yes. I decided she deserved me and didn’t deserve to be a widow.”

“So you took the easy way out.”

“Now, I’m doing it to remember her,” he patted his pack, “I’m going to scatter her ashes on Finnegan’s Chute.”

“Just hope Finnegan doesn’t think you’re shitting on him. He’ll kill you.”

With that, we set off into the dense forest. The glading was nice. I was tired by the end, but I found the last chute. More difficult than the others, it was steep and narrow, but it didn’t widen.

“Just a warmup for Mr. Finnegan,” Green Jacket man said, “It’s this, but steeper, more jagged and longer.”

I took the first turn and found myself in the perfect position for another. But before I could make it, some snow blew into my vision. My visibility was null - I was blind. I kept my edges buried in the snow, staying perfectly still. The snow blew off and I looked down the mountain. I had remained perfectly still. I took my turn and then two more. Then I slid from one rock to the next and conserved my momentum to another, turning around it. I fell twenty feet and landed on my skis, stopping in two turns.

I grunted and made a quick turn and the terrain flattened out. I made my way to the obvious trail. A steep absence of trees in the huge, stark wilderness. I stepped out of my skis and placed them in my pack. My accomplices arrived.

They grimaced at me and followed my lead. I led them up the steep incline for an hour. Then the trail cut back, sending us up, just as steep.

Thirty minute later, we came to a nightmare. Many inexperienced skiers look at peaks and think they are knife edges. They’re usually wider than one might think. Thirty to forty feet is usually the width. But this one truly was a knife’s edge. Not of soft snow which you can walk through, but of rock. The rock shot up and down like a dinosaur’s back. I kept my balance on the knife’s edge which proved remarkably easy. It was six inches wide at its narrowest, so my feet easily fit on it. After thirty minutes of hard climbing, a pile of stones appeared in the distance. A small carne rested upon the top of a high point. A lined sheet of paper was stuck in between the rocks. One name, absent of any note rested on the second line. I wrote mine under it and handed it to the men. They signed their names and beckoned me go forward.

I kept climbing over the rock, breathing heavily, feeling the fatigue in my legs and body and seeing nothing but what I had - or perhaps the lack thereof. I stopped when I saw a huge, shattered box. Marked - nearly illegible - as, “Explosives,” it sat above a never ending death trap. Resembling the throat of a dragon, it was covered in snow making it appetizing. One small sign was painted in the handwriting of a brave ski patrolman. The first evidence that the run was in fact called Finnegan. But this sign said, “Finnegan’s Pass.”

With no words, we unpacked our gear. We each ate six hundred calories worth of hiking bars, then put our skis on. I gazed down the steep slope. The beginning of the run perplexed me. It was a cliff covered in snow which immediately choked into the chute. I thought for a moment.

I let myself fall over the rocks and laid my skis perpendicular to the run. I slowed and stopped, then turned hard around a boulder. I let my skis take the brunt of an impact with a snowy rock, then took three more turns. My heart raced and my breath quickened. My eyes shot around at every detail. This skiing pushed me to the bounds of my physical abilities as an athlete. I found a rock and tried to turn, but was going too fast. While I still could I turned my body and time slowed. I turned ninety degrees in mid air, I caught a glimpse of something I had forgotten about. The mountain range shot up in every direction, giving everything the feel of a downhill slope. My rotation set me up to stop on a rock with a small brown cylinder. My mind reeled, looking at the stick of pavement. Dynamite was one danger I hadn’t been warned of.

I took two turns recklessly to get away from the explosive. I felt the blast before I heard it. It threw my torso ahead of my legs. My goggles shattered as I slid across the hard rock. My skis shot off, game over. My vision cleared for just a moment to see the end of the safe rocks. I tried to self arrest. I dug my toes and hands into the rock, but to no avail. My body slid over the six foot drop and kept rolling. My arm shattered upon impact with the rock, but my head and neck were safe. Pain radiated through my left arm.

I tried to stand, but my balance was off. My legs shot me straight off the cliff once more. I fell for what seemed like days. Bitter cold wind blew past my ears and into my helmet. The dark blue sky fluttered for a moment as I collided with the jagged rock below. I felt a shattering behind me and my eyes snapped shut.