By Bruce Kirkby / Photographs by Bryce Krynski and Bruce Kirkby
I am standing acrest accelerator ridge, beside a gnarled larch snag, deep in the backcountry of the southern Rockies. It has been a record year for skier and snowmobiler fatalities, and once again, buried surface hoar crystals (think: feathery winter dew) and warming temperatures have sent the avalanche danger rocketing skywards.
My companion is on her knees, vigorously digging through the snowpack with two hands, like a dog on a scent. She karate-chops a microwave-sized block free. Shaving crystals from the bottom and spreading them across the palm of her mitt, she inspects each for what seems like an eternity. Eventually she stands, popping the entire handful of snow into her mouth with a muffled laugh. Despite having spent the better part of two decades in the bush, when it comes to the mountains I know squat compared to Kirsten Knechtel. Today, she’s got my back.
“Watch this,” Kir winks. (She is known universally, to friends and strangers alike, as Kir, which rhymes with purr.) After making sure I am well back from the edge, she stomps down with one ski. Instantly, deep cracks appear in the snow around us, racing outwards. There is a whoomphing sound and a barely perceptible settlement. Then silence.
We crane our necks, peering over the edge of the ridge. Nothing. Then, magically, the slopes below fracture into a spiderweb of blocks. Moving slowly at first, the chunks pick up speed, disintegrate into a plume of powder and whistle downwards. Moments later the avalanche harmlessly dissipates into the forests far below.
“I knew the hoar was in there,” Kir smiles, pun intended. “Well, that slope ain’t gonna cause us any problems for a while.” We climb onwards up the ridge to stomp out another section.
Kir is the general manager and lead guide for Powder Cowboy, a cat skiing operation based in Fernie, B.C that ferries customers to untouched powder using lumbering “snowcat” machines. Today she is working on the snow safety team, investigating conditions and clearing loaded slopes before they become dangerous. She has generously allowed me to tag along, which is kinda like going for a hike with Yoda. Kir is a legend; she has mastered the Force. (Her friends describe her earnestly using the word “hero.”) In the mountains, without any apparent effort, she is always several steps ahead, physically and mentally. Short and strong and disarmingly modest, when she talks, people listen.
Earlier that morning, I stumbled into a windowless basement office, coffee in hand, to join 10 others – guides, cat drivers and snow safety techs – for a safety briefing. While her crew ploughed through piles of eggs and hash browns, Kirsten set the day’s plan, summarizing the weather and snow forecasts, and then methodically designating each slope in Powder Cowboy’s enormous area of operation as green (OK to ski), yellow (snow safety team needs to investigate) or red (nobody goes there).
Glancing around I could see all the telltale signs of a guiding existence: topo maps, VHF radios, sun-kissed skin, bed head, water-bottles plastered with stickers, clothes held together by duct tape. Having spent 20 years guiding rafts in the Canadian Arctic, it was good to be back in familiar surroundings. It was jarring, too. Unexpectedly so. It had been two years since my last guided trip, and somehow I’d forgotten about the enthusiasm and pride. The camaraderie. The sense that anything and everything remains possible. I’d forgotten that some folks wake up each morning and simply can’t wait to go to work. You have to admit, it’s kinda rare.
In that bleary-eyed moment, I realized the significance of Kir’s story lay far beyond just her own extraordinary accomplishments. Along with every other scruffy, bright-eyed person sitting around that table (and, indeed, every member of the loose-knit guiding tribe at large), Kir had walked away from a “normal” life. To do so requires tough choices. It forces one to turn off the auto-pilot, to look in the mirror and ask: How the heck do I really want to spend these quickly passing days of my precious life?
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