Going With the Flow

I drove up to the LaSal Mountains yesterday morning, itching to skate ski. My knee is still pestering me a little, a month after I sprained it. Climbing is fine, BASE jumping is fine, skating with caution on uphills and flats is fine….but skiing downhill is what my knee most does not appreciate at the moment, thanks to all the torquing force. Skate skiing in Moab can only be described as rugged. Last season, the local avalanche forecasters and a few devoted skiiers banded together to get the town to purchase a small grooming roller, and started a volunteer grooming coalition. On Mondays and Fridays (weather permitting, scheduling permitting, hangovers permitting, and, well, you get the idea….), volunteers head up to the LaSals to hook the little roller onto a snowmobile, and groom the track for skate skiing. When the conditions are good, and the track is newly groomed, it’s pure heaven! The LaSals are white and grey and blue, full of aspens and pine trees, and nearly unpopulated, except by all the Moab locals who love to go up there to sled, ski, snowshoe, snowboard and snowmobile. Some of the prettiest mountains in the world, I think, and part of what makes Moab the most wonderful place in the world. Which I may have mentioned a few times before.

Unfortunately, it often snows a lot, between Monday and Friday, and the terrain is pretty hilly. Often, as soon as the groomers finish making a beautiful, corduroy track, happy snowmobilers rip over it and chop it all up (I think they don’t realize). Then it freezes and gets icey and trenched out, and skating is an adventure, to say the least. But I can’t resist, because I love skate skiing so much, and have been slowly, cautiously venturing up to the mountains in the last week to try out my knee. Anyway, I found the track to be a complete mess, and icey to boot. I skated up for a while, and then realized that my cautious downhill return was going to be pretty harrowing, with the peculiar left-knee-favoring, falling-is-not-an-option snowplow technique that I have going right now. It was, but at least not disastrous. A little disappointed, I drove back down to Moab, and climbed on my wall for a couple of hours.

Last week I got a little carried away with BASE jumping, and was such a junkie that I started jumping alone every day, since I couldn’t get enough. After a while, I started to feel like I was pushing it a little too much. I was feeling ragged and spacey-eyed, and I just kept repacking my rig and going out to jump, over and over. Finally, after one pretty scary and very nearly injurious landing by myself, I didn’t want to jump. I felt oddly emotional and weepy, a little bit whiplashed, and generally kind of wacked out. I decided to chill out for a few days. Dean was sympathetic, and a little amused, telling me, “I remember my first year of BASE, and I was just like you.” Whatever that means. Maybe BASE jumping is kind of like wine or chocolate–all those good things that are so good in moderation, or even for some greedy binges. But you just can’t binge all day, every day. Because, you just can’t.

Three days ago, I got my second BASE rig. Dean had an extra canopy that was sized right for my weight, and actually too small for his weight, a 222 Dagger which is a classic, very beloved parachute. For Christmas, he bought me a used Warlock container from our friend Marta, my BASE her(oine). Since Warlocks aren’t made anymore, they’ve become kind of a cherished classic for some jumpers, and I really wanted one. The gear I learned on was a Warlock with a 222 Dagger, in fact, borrowed from my friend Jay.

I sent the Dagger off to a rigger friend to have new lines put on it, and just got it back a few days ago. I attached the canopy to the container, and attached the brake toggles, the bridle and the pilot chute, and packed it all up. Now I had two rigs, packed and ready to jump……knowing it would be a little scary making the first jump on my Warlock, since you always feel just a tiny bit doubtful when you make the first jump on a rig you have just put together, even though you know you haven’t forgotten anything. But I wasn’t ready to jump yet. I wasn’t feeling it.

After I finished climbing on my wall, with a quick fingerboard workout, I decided to go for a relaxing run, down Kane Creek Canyon, since the skate skiing had been pretty unimpressive. It was a beautifully mild day, the perfect temperature, quiet and calm. I put my two rigs in the car, on the very off chance that I suddenly decided to jump, and drove out in my running shorts, the three miles along the Colorado River into Kane Creek. Just as I pulled into the main dirt parking lot, a guy got out of his jeep next to me and planted a wind flag. “Hey, are you going to jump?” I asked.

Mick turned out to be a Moab local, originally from Europe, whom I hadn’t met yet. He broke his ankle last October just after moving to Moab, jumping Meri’s Gash out by Mineral Bottom–hitting the wall but somehow managing to turn his canopy around and land successfully (!)–and has just been starting to hike and jump again. His wife Kresta is a local jumper too, who was at work just then. I was very happy to meet Mick, thinking that these would be great new friends to jump with in the future. As we hiked up the canyon, Mick told me about his accident, in great and frightening detail. Then we talked about other BASE accidents, and various other BASE injuries and fatalities, in great and frightening detail, until I managed to change the subject to dogs. It was super relaxing.

I’d decided not to take my new rig, because I was a little nervous about it. I figured I’d have a good jump, after my weeklong layoff, with my trusty Asylum rig, and then take the Warlock out later. Mick and I both jumped and landed safely, and as we stood at our cars he said, “I think I’m going to go for another one. I have another rig here.”

“Well, I will too!”

We hiked up again, catching the beautiful sunset light. My Warlock was perfect, and fortunately it turned out that I had in fact assembled everything correctly.

I drove home, looking at the moonrise turning the LaSals pink. The jumps had been great, and totally unexpected, and so was making a new friend. I felt good about jumping again, and back to normal, revitalized. Whenever I just follow the flow around me, it seems that things drop in together, as though they were meant to be.