It's May, springtime is budding everywhere, and Dan and I embark upon what turns out to be a nearly continuous blizzard conditions backcountry ski trip in the Ruby Mountains in Northeastern Nevada. We were there with his dog Dora for seven days. After a few pleasant sunny hours during the first morning, a storm laid upon us and didn't let off for five days straight. The second morning I woke up with 10 inches on my bivvy bag, and after four more days there were nearly 4 feet of fresh and light powder on top of a 10 foot base. It was some of the best backcountry skiing we'd ever had. The Rubies are steep mountains, with many peaks over 11000 feet. Incredible terrain. For days on end, we skied waist-deep powder down every run, with powder flying over our shoulders on nearly almost every turn. It was awesome. The storm was so massive and prolonged that we found out later that the Forest Service, State Police, and County Sheriff all traced Dan's car's license plates back to his folk's and called his Dad several days in a row asking if they should send in a rescue party for us. Dan's dad is a mellow guy, and wasn't worried. Thank goodness they didn't call either of our mothers.

I guess all good things come to an end, and this trip ended abruptly, with lots of blood. On our seventh day, we were breaking branches off dead trees for an evening fire. Dan was having trouble with a particularly strong snag, and asked for help. We couldn't break it, so I suggested we tie a rope to the top and break it like he had done to a branch earlier in the week. So we did, and pulled hard, then harder. Finally, we were pulling with everything we had and the snag broke, and the tip of it flew bullet speed about 25 feet straight into Dan's forehead. It happened so fast that neither of us saw it, Dan just knew that it happened. Stunned, he directed my attention toward his head, which was gushing blood. I plugged the wound with my thumb, then he pressed it with a handful of snow. It didn't look good. At least he didn't have a concussion (I drilled him), but the wound was big and definitely needed stitches. After we slowed the bleeding, I cleaned, butterfly bandaged, and dressed it. We packed up all of our stuff (it was 6 pm), and skied out of the wilderness to the road. In order to reduce the possibility of Dan falling and maybe upsetting his wound, he carried a few pounds and I carried the rest - close to 100 I would estimate. That ski out was one of the hardest things I've done. Once we got to the road, we had to walk a few miles to his car and get it unstuck from the snow, then raced to the Elko, Nevada hospital, reaching the emergency room before midnight. Upon undressing the wound, the first thing the doctor said was, "Oh boy, that's deep." Dan got 12 stitches in the dead center of his forehead.

The funny thing, in a terrible way, is that three years ago to the day, Dan and I were backcountry skiing the Dana Couloir in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and he fell and lacerated his skull with his ski. I had to dress that wound too (above photo); then we had to continue skiing another 2000 feet down to the car, and race him to the Mammoth hospital emergency room for several staples in his head. Nothing like a tradition, eh?