A Day in the Life.

I have to start with a shout out to Jeff and Katie Peak for the birth of their son, Huxley Atturio Peak. A future river rat and NBA All-Star. Congrats y'all!!!

My week started with free skiing to Les Arches through untouched trees and seeing the biggest tram in the world. Yep, holds 200 people. You'll never see me on that thing with 200 people. The day was also sponsored by Kate McAtavey's Birthday Mix, if you don't have it, get it.

The next day off was spent skiing another ridiculous route to Champagny. Along the way we assisted in a helicopter rescue and drank white wine at a refugee that sleeps 46. I hope to spend a night here with some good friends to remind me of Polar Star.

The patrolling in France has proved again why I have the best job ever. After 40+ cm's of new snow fell a couple nights ago, we've been out working in bluebird skies. Loving every minute too. After O.B. and I finished our route we skied the line below. I went first. Then hauled ass to the left to outrun the avalanche I started on my third turn. Good times!!!!

Today we continued the PIDA work needed to get the Glacier Sector open. Overnight we had a lot of wind and it made for some good sized avalanches. Almost every charge had results that ran to the basin floor. My morning ended with some fun. Olivier Chenu and myself went to do a route under the Traversee TS that put us in a tight spot. Olivier couldn't get the charge to slide on the top of the snow as far as he wanted it to. He tried for a good 30 to 45 seconds to replace the charge. With only a minute and a half fuse on the charge, we had to grab what we could and hold on. I grabbed the flat rock I was standing beside and got a real nice hold of nothing. At this point the charge is only 15-20 meters away from us and I'm thinking the ride over the cliffs below us isn't going to be pretty. BOOM! We weren't moving, but the slide poured over the rocks we had knelt down behind and gave us a good white washing. Nico said he wished had remembered his camera when he finished watching us get blasted. The fracture line had broken above us and around the rocks where we were standing. When I looked down my skies were just the edge of another fracture. Man I love this job. The slide went over La Combe piste twice but without any riders, thank god!