The mountain always wins Part 1 A true story from the slopes of Yamagata...

Enter Matt Cox, Weekend Warrior. A mild-mannered salary man by day and an avid snowboarder/adventure-seeker by night. I am not a professional snowboarder, merely a boarder of leisure looking to fill every available weekend of free time with adventure in the form of pure untracked powder. If you fit a similar description, please read this true story of a day last month that changed my life forever.

Last year, on a whim, some friends and I decided to climb 30 minutes to the peak of the mountain in Yamagata Zao Onsen. The rewarding view was enough to justify the climb but, the discovery of an untouched, off-piste route through Zao's famed snow-monsters was the golden nugget that made me and the other accomplices want to return. A surreal, Dr.Seuss-inspired, alien, run with pure white trees and snow-whipped curls that few non-professional snowboarders get the opportunity to experience. After 15 minutes of whooping laughter and pure delight we met on the course below and agreed that, one day we would return.

Eleven months later, we were all on a bus toward Zao with every intention of reliving that run. After almost a year of recanting tales, the run had taken on epic proportions, and we viewed this as our one chance of re-living the glory. Nothing would deny us that run. Nothing.

Sunday, February 11th, 2001 was a day I will never forget.

It was a beautiful morning. Clear skies are a rarity in Zao and we greeted them gratefully. Despite the sun, however, the bureaucracy of the resort frustrated us. We had misunderstood the ticketing system that limited the number of people who were allowed to take the cable car to the summit and had spent the last ninety minutes lining up to take minor lifts toward the peak. By 10:30 we rode our final lift and it was time for the climb. We had been on the road for about two and a half hours and as each minute passed we became more blinded with determination. We would not turn back.

The first part of the climb to the peak in Zao is a cinch, a groomed course that takes you to the arrival point of the cable car near the summit. After twenty minutes of climbing, we stopped in the lift building to regroup our twelve members for the last leg of the journey. While we were resting, a dark line of clouds bum-rushed the sky, sunk the sun, and brought the cold. Despite the weather, we had our mission so, we re-grouped and ducked the familiar fence on our way to the summit.

However, something was different from the previous year. When we had first climbed the peak, we had followed a whole troop of strangers along a well-worn trail through the snow but this weekend there was no trail and no people. Figuring the trail was lost under a light cover of snow, we began to shuffle around looking for it with little success. For a moment I hesitated in the waist-deep powder and looked back to see eleven faces staring at me as if to say, "What next?" The lack of other adventure-seekers made me nervous but, after waiting so long and climbing so far, turning back because "no one else was climbing this weekend" was simply not an option. This year, the last part of the climb was a hassle plagued with fragile patches of snow that were ankle deep at one step and waist deep at the next. We took turns paving a new trail until we topped the ridge that brought the summit to view. This ridge unfortunately brought with it flying chunks of ice and snow that flew through the air on the wings of a wind the strength of which I had never experienced. More than once I was brought to my knees because the wind was just too much to bear but we fought on and finally made it to the summit where the last of our visibility faded to gray.

The painful ice and unsustainable wind caused eight of our members to turn back toward the lift building after reaching the summit, leaving four of us, Cedric, Joe, Will and myself to cross the barren icy peak to the other side. Our visibility in the blizzard was reduced to 15 feet so, there was no way we could pick the course but, we had made this trip before so, I followed my mind's eye across the peak to where I thought the run began. Besides, if we were off course, we could just drop below the ridge where the wind - which was now beyond whipping or howling but simply a constant pressure, like gravity closing in from the side - would die down and then readjust our aim in the improved visibility. It was under these seriously false pretenses that we began our slow descent. If I could take that moment back now, I would.

Cedric suggested we try to keep all four of us within each others' sight at all times and to start off moving to the right which would bring us in sight of the cable car. He was new to the course and had much more ski experience so, in the extreme weather, we followed. His two suggestions were to prove exceedingly difficult to uphold but, in the end, they saved us from the grave we were beginning to dig for ourselves.

Much to our disappointment, the visibility did not improve as we descended, in fact it grew much worse. I have been in situations where a fog or strong gust of wind has caused me to lose sight of my board eliminating my ability to judge speed, direction, and sometimes motion but, as the sweat from the climb froze my goggles to a solid screen, I was introduced to a hauntingly new world of pure white. Just as my board had done, my companions quickly disappeared from view, and I discovered that I could not even see my own hand frantically waving before my eyes. Afraid of losing everyone or having a collision, all I could do was yell, "Stop!" Raising my goggles brought the sting of flying ice and snow but at least I could see the gray shadows of my three companions stopped in front of me. Joe lent me his handy goggle towel and we continued on our journey making frequent stops trying to regain a view of our surroundings.

The powder we had climbed so far to discover was blown to a bumpy sheet of ice in the screaming wind. Sliding along I had to focus all of my energy on keeping all the members of our group within my sight, until I saw all 198 cm of my friend Will disappear right before my eyes. Everything stopped as he yelled and we soon realized that he had dropped into a ten-foot hole. After climbing out, Will mentioned that he had twisted his knee in the fall but that he could still proceed. The fact that he had fallen into the huge 10-foot pit because he "simply hadn't seen it" was enough to cause us all to strip off our boards and hike to the right for the next few minutes until we could find some more familiar terrain.

As we hiked along, I slowly began to admit to myself that the surroundings were completely unfamiliar. Last year we had spent the entire run in the trees but now we were standing in a steep open bled without a grove of trees in sight. Cedric had crossed to a ridge and Joe and Will were moving across the steep white field above me when the avalanche hit.

Will froze in his tracks as the snow began rushing past and building up around his knees and thighs 10 meters above me. I had my board dug into the snow and was facing up the hill prepared to make my next step when the mountain liquefied and suddenly I was in motion as the slide carried me off down the hill. A Snowboard Life article I had read a week before sprung to memory. "When caught in an avalanche," the article suggested, "swim." I instinctively rolled on my back as I slid down the mountain uncontrollably thinking to myself, "This is it. The final swim." 25 meters later, the mountain stopped and I lay still atop the snow in shock. It took a few seconds for my awareness to catch up, tap me on the shoulder and say, "Matt, get the hell out of here." I quickly finished the crossover to the ridge where Cedric was standing in relative safety. We re-grouped on the ridge, and moved on without discussing the avalanche. My dream-run had been replaced by the most terrifying moment in my entire life.