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Ralph Lasky Profile by William Deleo - added August 2, 2006
Ralph Lasky is a skier, not an ordinary skier mind you but a 80 year old who logs between 90-100 days a year skiing the Rockies, mostly at Alta, Vail and Aspen. His story is a unique mix of skiing and mortality. In the time Lasky has spent skiing in the mountains, he has been caught in an avalanche and seen others die around him. Through the years, he has seen death and skiing become inseparable.
He is a tall man; tall and long limbed with a full head of grey hair. The first thing I notice about him aside from his height, are his hands. He has the gnarled hands of a fighter and he admits with a laugh that being a young boxer while serving in the US Army gave him those hands and also made him "kind of goofy."
Born in San Francisco in 1920, Lasky worked as a bartender, a bail-bondsman and a stagehand; the job which brought him to Las Vegas, where he lives when he is not skiing or windsurfing. He tells me a little about his previous life but says, "I was not a success at anything and I've been retired for fifteen years." Most of his retirement he has skied.
"I started skiing at a little place near Las Vegas called Lee Canyon. Then me and a friend went to Alta and Park City. Through the years I've skied almost every area in the west driving in my truck to Whistler, across Canada to Fernie and Red Mountain. I've skied Montana, Hood, Crystal, everything in Tahoe, Idaho, Targhee, Jackson, Utah and Colorado. I've got a million vertical heli-skiing in Canada and that's where I was buried in a slide.
"We were skiing in the Bobby Burns and we were sleeping in trailers because the lodge was not built yet. On the day of my avalanche, it was one of the greatest days I've ever had skiing. I was number nine in a ten person group and we were skiing kind of a chute in deep champagne powder. I jumped in and made about four turns and I heard the guy behind me yell, 'Avalanche!' I looked up and saw it coming over my shoulders and it knocked my head down into the snow.
"As soon as it hit me I got rid of my poles and I tried to swim and stick my hand up, but I was buried six feet deep and my hand was not even close to sticking out. While I was laying there I tried to struggle, but I could not even move my little finger. I was encased. I figured I just better lay still and breathe shallow and maybe they will come to get me.
"I could hear my transceiver going 'beep, beep' and it was awfully dark. I was starting to go to sleep from the lack of oxygen and I had a few thoughts like my mother, who was 97 at the time, I thought, 'Jeez, I wonder what she will say when they tell her?' And I thought I should have spent more money." At this he laughs and says when you are about to die there is a moment of levity and you have funny thoughts.
Lasky explains this with his hands folded in front of him staring into the wooden table before us. He appears at ease with his ordeal, as many years have passed. But an event like this- when one is literally buried alive- that feeling never really leaves you. I can tell it never left him.
He continues slowly, telling me about the macabre atmosphere that often settles over heli-skiing outfits when there is a death of a client.
"I had been at the lodge when there were five dead people in the basement. They take them down in the morning in body bags. I thought, (while I was under the snow) 'Son of a bitch, tonight's my night in the bag. I'll be in the basement and those fuckers will be up there eating and arguing about who's going to be in which group.'
"When a guy dies up there, it's like they forget you in five minutes. You are dead and they go on like nothing ever happened. They sit around talking,
'Which group are you in tomorrow?'
'I'm in group one.'
'I thought I was in group one.'
'No, you are in group two.'
"I figured those bastards are going to be up there and it is going to be me in the basement. Now, I was just about to go to sleep and I felt the probe hit me in the back of the head. The guy in back of me, John Demetre- the guy who used to make those sweaters- he found me with his Pieps. They dug a hole down to my face, but it took them a long time to get me out. That night we had a big party and I bought wine all night long. I really wasn't that shook up until I went to bed that night and my head was like a camera and I was thinking, 'God Damn,' and I couldn't shut it off. The stuff keeps coming back.
"The next day (after the accident) I went out and I'd lost a brand new pair of Lacroix skis in the slide. The guide said, 'When we find them in the spring, we'll send them to you.' I said, 'I don't care what you do with them I was just glad to be out of the snow.' I got a pair of K2's from the rental and I was looking over my shoulder a little bit when I was out skiing, but I felt o.k.. Then that was the end of the week.
"The next year I went back to the Cariboos and when we were at dinner the first night the guide tapped his glass with a spoon and said, 'I have an announcement. There's been two people killed in the Bugaboos today.'
"When I went to bed that night, I was done. I just couldn't shut it off. The next morning I said to a friend, 'I am getting out of here as soon as possible.'
The next day I took the first copter down to the road and I took a bus out of there. I went back once or twice a few years later, but it was too much on my nerves."
Though Lasky escaped his own death, others around him through the years were not so lucky. "I saw four guys killed in one shot in a helicopter accident," he says matter of factly.
"I saw a patroller from Mammoth die in a treewell upside down. I've seen and heard of a lot of people dying. My good friend Jim Brennan's ashes are on the High Traverse at Alta. Once at Alta about 15 or 18 years ago the entire Castle (The Devils Castle) let loose and it took the lake out (Cecret Lake) and it went over the elbow and killed that kid. The patrol gathered everyone from the lodges who could ski and took us up on a Sno-Cat to look for him. A patroller named Richey found him wrapped around the first tree at the Sugarloaf elbow. The kid was about thirteen years old and his father was standing there and I'll never forget the look on that guy's face, 'like how am I going to explain this to my wife?'
It is only now that Lasky appears different to me. These recollections have clearly drained him, and as he gets up to leave I notice for the first time he looks tired. "Well," he says slowly, "that's my story. I've got to go now."
It is odd that while skiing is a celebration of life, this man has seen so much death go right along side of it. When I see him the next day skiing in the fresh snow Alta received overnight with a big grin on his face, I know this man does not take one minute of life for granted.
William DeLeo has spent five winters at Alta and is working on a book about his experiences in Little Cottonwood Canyon. He is looking for a publisher and can be reached at: wdeleo[at]hotmail.com
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