Drawing lines on a map isn’t the same as lines on a slope. Both curve to and fro, and have their moments—leaps of faith you could call them. Each, at their finest, warrants a certain amount of audacity to attempt.
Over the course of 20 years, I’ve drawn lines throughout Washington State’s Cascade and Olympic mountains, pioneering new descents and traverses, with only one goal in mind–discovering places on skis that I’ve never before visited. Not to say that I’ve done them, but to say I have gone there. For adventure is in the traveling, not in the arriving. The bushwhacking through dense underbrush full of tortures to grin and laugh at, as they are nothing compared to this or that place or, God forbid, they are; the fruitless search for snow that lost its way when spring decided to bring the melt early; the weather that tumbles from the sky in every blend of snow, sleet, and rain; thunderstorms that turn a sunny day into a tent bound day, during which you pray you aren’t served on a mountain’s plate.