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Full Moon Skiing by William Deleo - added September 30, 2006
Authors note: Some look forward to skiing under a full moon almost as much as a deliciously deep powder day. For me, skiing at night has a different thrill- a sublime mystery and silence- and a chance to look at a mountain we think we know well, through nocturnal eyes. I wrote this short eight years ago, but looking on it now, the feeling is the same as when I originally scribbled it down.
I skinned up to Germania Pass in the cold silence of an early winter night and was soon mesmerized by the moon's reflection streaming across my skis with pulsing flashes as I made my way uphill. I climbed methodically, just me and well, just me and the night. I'd made this same trip before with different groups of people, sometimes many, other times with one other, but tonight I looked forward to the solitude and introspection of a solo trip. I kept pretty warm despite the chill in the night air, and even my hands stayed warm.
Halfway. Heart pounding, getting a rhythm. Feeling good. Huffing and puffing, zig-zagging across the fall line of the slope, looking at my skis and listening to the scuffing sound as they glide across the surface of the snow, I was soon in my own little world again. Thinking about the night and the trees and drinking in the clean air filling my lungs. Thinking about life and time and sex and death and similar topics that fill a person's mind when they are alone in the mountains in the darkness.
When I reached the top, wet with sweat, I had a drink of deliciously cold water and a little food and looked around at the scenery. The upper part of the canyon was illuminated by an eerie bluish moonlight and the entire mountain changed suddenly in the darkness. For a few minutes, the area returned to times past, the times before the lifts when the men burrowed deep into the mountains in search of silver.
In the cold silence pausing for a moment, I remembered a spooky story I came across while researching the area in the University of Utah library and it sent a chill down my spine. The story is from an interview with Elbert Despain, the old mail carrier at Alta.
Despain said in an interview a few years before he died:
"It is certain too, that at the foot of Rustler Hill there was (and is) a graveyard filled at least in part with the victims of its snowslides. In my day the graves were still discernable, though unmarked by any monument. There, some of the old timers- the REAL old timers of the 60's and 70's sleep undisturbed and unknown, lulled by the whisper of passing skis, patiently awaiting the Trump of Gabriel. Wait with their past merging with the present, which in its turn grows dim. Ghosts they are, of time and things that were and are no more. Put in the main, I think they must be nappy ghosts. Their memories would make them so."
I like ghost stories. I have ever since I was a kid when I received and treasured a book on ghosts and on this night in Utah, I scared myself and I felt eight again. The feeling of being a little spooked is a good one, the uneasiness puts things in perspective, especially the part about the "REAL old timers" and "of time and things that were and are no more." I liked the sound and meaning of those words spoken years ago.
I stood mute, tiny and frozen and looked across to the Emma's, up at Baldy and then west at the lights of Salt Lake City and the distant Oquirrh's stretching out in the distance. I felt very happy to be up here spooking myself on this cold, clear evening in December. One person exhaling a breath which became visible in the night air.
Soon I started to get chilled, so I peeled off my skins, put on my jacket and started down. I made some big slow turns, looking around at the weird shadows and thinking how startling the mountain is at night. I picked up a little speed and my eyes started watering in the cold air. I skimmed over the fresh corduroy, my skis humming along, and I looked at my shadow stretched out in front of me like some elongated phantom. My turns got shorter, faster, and I raced my phantom shadow to the bottom.
I don't know who won, probably him, it doesn't really matter. I unclipped my skis, hoisted them onto my shoulder and looked up at the mountain; more stoic, eerie and bluish than anything I had ever seen. I slept well that night.
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