The Word from Mount 7

Last Saturday (March 7th) we were flying out of Battle Abbey and our helicopter was delayed.  I called down on the sat phone.  The heli was being used for an avalanche rescue at Kicking Horse Resort and would be at the Abbey in about an hour which is not unusual.  there is often something of that nature going on on the weekend.  There are snowmobile accidents, traffic accidents and skier accidents.  From what I got out of the call, the outcome of the rescue did not sound positive.  This always gives me a pit in my stomach since I work in the avalanche business and know a lot of people who are out there skiing.  I always hope it won’t be one of them.  I rarely entertain the thought for long, so far I have been mainly unscathed by avalanche accidents.  On the flight out of the Abbey Don told me that the rescue went quickly.  the ski patrol located the victims right away and had them dug up in minutes.  However, he didn’t think either of them would survive.  Another disturbing, but removed piece of news.

The next day I went for breakfast in town with Tom and Kellie.  I ran in to Rob who had been skiing at the Horse the day before.  He was the person who told me that Hima had been one of the victims of the slide.

Hima and I grew up together in Canmore.  I don’t have a first memory of him, but I know we only knew each other after Grade 2 or so.  There was no memorable introduction, just a strong connection.  I remember eating spicy Indian food at his parents house, going skiing, doing the usual things kids do in a mining town.  Hima was into cars and motors and I remember a few good four wheeling sessions once we were old enough to get our hands on a vehicle.  He was always working to save money for his motor addiction.  I think he had a real job about 5 years ahead of the rest of us.  I remember when he got his first crotch rocket and saw God for the first time as he was flying through the poplar trees after an unsuccessful attempt at passing a Brewster bus on the 1A highway.  He had a need for speed which translated into motorcyle racing at first, then later in life, car racing.

One time I went to visit him in Edmonton while he was at U of A.  We did a four wheel slide around a cloverleaf at the bottom of the deep valley in town in his family’s Rabbit.  Wow, that was intense, but at the same time I felt like Hima knew what he was up to.  I was in good hands.  After that, I rode back to Canmore stuffed in the cargo area of the Rabbit along with Hima and Deviani’s stuff.  That’s how I remember it.

When Hima married Kavita I was down in Red Rocks, Las Vegas and wanted to be home for the wedding.  We were pulling on to the Interstate out of Vegas and my Tercel started doing some kind of funky thing. The front right brake seized up.  I totally lost it and was jumping around on the side of the road.  When I got back in the car it seemed to work fine, the jumping and yelling must have worked.  We carried on to Idaho, it was getting dark and we were low on gas.  I figured, well, we’re in America on the Interstate, there has got to be fuel available everywhere.  We ran out in a little town with a closed gas station, so we slept at the pump.  In the morning we fueled up and made it to the wedding.  It was at the base of Pigeon Mountain and I remember all the great food.  It was a good party and I was impressed with Kavita.  Those two looked good together.

That winter they came up to Assiniboine for a little honeymoon Rocky mountain style.  Hima brought some Indian food, we skied some of the nice tours around the area, it was great to be in the mountains together.  I think this was the seed for Hima’s trips to Battle Abbey later on.

Three years ago we were talking, having a beer or something, and I mentioned that I could use some help opening up the Abbey.  This involves a lot of shoveling, fixing things, cleaning the place up so it is ready for the guests.  Plus, we usually get in some skiing, make sure the snow is good, dig some pits and get a baseline on the stability.  Hima was excited about it.  He rented touring gear and came along.  I hadn’t skied with him since Assiniboine, which must have been in the mid 90′s.  It had been at least 10 years.  We did a bunch of shoveling, then one afternoon we decided to ski the Blue Danube ridge into the valley.  Hima was crashing all over the place, having a hard time with it which seemed strange to me.  I remebered skiing as kids and he was good.  We finally figured out that his rental bindings had the DIN set to 0 so they would pop out any time Hima torqued them at all.  He was getting kind of tired so he decided to wait for us about half way down the run.  He would begin breaking trail back to the cabin and we would catch up to him.  The rest of us skied on then climb back up to Hima who was still in the same place.  He had tried to go up but wasn’t able to break trail in the deep snow.  He had been working so hard at his racing career, family life and at Riegel Tuning that he was completely out of shape.  I thought, holy shit, how will he do getting back to the cabin which was about 1300′ above us?  We took it easy and slowly climbed back over the ridge to the cabin.  It was dark.  Hima just sat on the bench by the table looking pasty and pale.  He wouldn’t even drink a beer, water only.  Eventually he went outside and threw up.  After that, we took it easy on him.  He enjoyed the rest of the week and was really into the idea of doing more touring.   This was amazing to me because I have skied with a few people who have suffered like Hima did and you just don’t see them coming back for more.  They are usually done with it.  Hima saw the value in it though and was eager to get back out, get back in shape.  He started biking in the summer, riding to work, doing mountain bike rides. He took Kavita to Skoki for a weekend of cross country touring.  Then the next winter he bought his own touring set up and we went to Roger’s Pass.  By this time he was in good shape.  It  was awesome to see, he had the passion to get through the pain and get back at it.  I was psyched for him and he was ready to get out on more trips.  This year he came back to the Abbey.  Unfortunately the stability wasn’t that great, so we had to curtail our ski ambitions.  We did get out and do some good turns together.  Hima was eyign all the great lines around the hut and I was telling him that he had to come back later in the season or another year so we could ski them.  One evening he introduced us to “Din Putty,” a three card Indian gambling game.  There were a few good sessions and quite a bit of beer and scotch was consumed.  At the end of the last game we all went all in and Hima won the pot, sneaky litle bastard.  I had plenty of visions of future good times we were going to have at the Abbey.  Everyone loved him up there and he wsa so psyched about the whole thing.

I saw Hima once more after that trip.  He came by my place to drop off my car which he had taken to Calgary to put a block heater on it.  Later on he called me to invite me to Mike Weigele’s in April.  I was stoked about that.  4 days of heli skiing as a guest with Hima, nice.

Well, Hima isn’t around anymore.  Its a big loss for all of his friends and family.  You don’t meet people like Hima very often.  All I can say is that I have a lot of great memories and I miss him.  He died too young and right as he was starting to do well at all his ventures.  Since I started writing  this I had a bad ride in an avalanche myself.  Its a bad way to go and I’m sorrry it happened to you Hima.