Life at the Top
Art: Bryan Haynes
“Wow. You’re taking your baby on the snowmobile?” A woman has noticed my son peeking out of the Snugli nestled inside my oversized down jacket. Her eyes are wide, and there is an edge of disapproval in her voice. She pauses from where she sits in her car at the top of the parking lot, one stocking foot waiting to go into a ski boot. “Yup,” I answer, not bothering to elaborate as I hoist a backpack full of groceries up and adjust my hat and goggles.
I feel the woman’s eyes follow me as I trudge up to the snowmobile parked just beyond a metal gate. I know she is watching as I unlock the cable, fish out my key, prime the choke, pull the start cord, and drive away, feeling a rush of glee and euphoria as I zip up the hill and leave the parking lot far behind.
My daily commute, routinely a spectacle for curious skiers, dog-walkers, weekend visitors, and the like, is a mere 10 minutes on a sunny day. It’s a hop, skip and a jump compared to the commute my husband Chris and I faced when we first moved up to Guardsman Pass six years ago. Before the construction of the Empire Lodge, commuters were still parking in the lower lot by the old High Country Snowmobile Tour outfit (whose friendly guides dragged me out of the snow nearly every other week, back when I was first getting the hang of snowmobiling and a Utah winter at 9,000 feet).
That first winter living at Guardsman’s, I sat back and enjoyed the ride (literally). After parking my car, I would stand 10 or 12 courteous steps back, in the manner of a traditional Chinese housewife, as my husband-to-be fussed with our snowmobiles. When mine was up and running, I gave him a smile (which grew less effective as the winter wore on) and boarded, giving no thought to the mechanics or maintenance of the loud, smelly blue Polaris that had become my primary means of transportation to and from home six months of the year.
“Hogulus,” as I affectionately called my snowmobile, owing to its massive weight and the greedy way it devoured snow, remained full of gas and oil until the day it died on my way to work one morning. I seriously had no idea what the problem could be. The needle of the gas gauge registered “half-full.” Why I propped open the hood when I had no idea what I was looking for escapes me, but it seemed the right posture for the moment when my neighbor Michelle (of the beautiful, blond, mechanically inclined, embodiment of “mountain woman” variety) pulled to a screaming stop beside me, quickly assessed the problem and promptly unscrewed the top of the gas tank to show me how the gauge had frozen stuck on “half full” even though my tank was bone dry. “Didn’t you notice it had been a while since you put gas in?” she asked. I was too em-barrassed to tell her that Chris had done it for me. After that, I started filling my own snowmobile gas tank.
That first winter, we had more snow than I would see for years–storm upon storm of thick, white, heavy powder that I soon recognized required some measure of acrobatic transfer of weight to get through. At first, when the back end of my machine began its ceremonious sinking, I would automatically squeeze the gas as hard as I could, as if that action alone could propel me out, as Chris screamed, “NOOOOO!” This activity only succeeded in entrenching my 150+ pound snowmobile even further into the confines of the cement-like snow, each quarter inch creating 10 more subsequent minutes of digging to get it unstuck. Later, I learned that by shifting my weight, jumping up and down, or rocking my snowmobile, I could avoid getting stuck—and that if I did get wedged in, the goal was to free the under-belly of the machine while keeping a precarious amount of snow under the front skis for leverage (rather than frantically digging or pulling at any part of the machine still above the surface at random).
Though traveling to and from our house was a constant battle, being at home was an absolute sanctuary. The first thing Chris and I would do after a particularly harrowing commute was pop into the hot tub on our back deck with a cold beer or glass of port. The tingling, numbing effect of snow crystallizing on our wet heads was delicious (and undoubtedly served as a kind of catalyst related to selective memory loss, enabling us to go out into the nasty weather again). There were wonderful weekends when we made big breakfasts and skied out the front door to explore the peaks in the backyard, or shuttled friends up for late night dinners. That first winter, we didn’t have a functioning kitchen and only a 2,000-gallon holding tank to ration over six months of snow, but we made do, improvising via a hot pot, woodstove, and toaster oven.
We had some hurdles. Once, it was so cold that the casing on our water pump cracked. Another time, the engine on a brand new snowmobile seized the first week we bought it. There were mornings when it took four hours to get to work because the snow was so thick, or weekend afternoons spent digging out strangers. But the 10 or 11 days of difficult snow a season could never outweigh the singular pleasure of coming up the mountain to the top of the ridge, witnessing a different stunning view each day. We’d take in high peaks, open meadows, neighboring woods and Mt. Timpanogos in the distance, with the quality of light and time of day offering varying vantages and colors on wide-open vistas or glimpses of heaven through the clouds.
“Home” is a word so loaded with meaning that words fail to describe it. It isn’t only the dear little cabin that has undergone so much renovation in the last three years, but the let down of my shoulders and defenses as I take leave of traffic and people and a busy infrastructure. Whatever “it” is doesn’t seem to matter quite as much when deep green woods and meadows dotted by wildflowers spread out before me. And there is something about going to sleep with the sound of snow settling on the roof overhead and miles and miles of quiet woods around, that lends itself to the kind of deeply restorative sleep I have been unable to experience anywhere else.
Beauty aside, living at Guardsman Pass certainly isn’t convenient. The question is always out there: Why do we do it? It lingers and nags when we are weary or disgruntled; resurfacing at the end of a long winter when the lovely faces of fresh flowers and shiny green lawns begin to show down in Park City, and we are still buried under two months of snow (with lots of mud to follow).
Why did we do it? Because people said we couldn’t. Or shouldn’t. Because our environs remain some of the most breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful landscapes either of us have ever seen, including during travels in Europe, Asia and South America. Because it helped form an incredibly close and loving bond in the early years of our marriage. Because it was crazy. Because the housing market shot up and it seemed like a better idea to renovate and rebuild what we had than lose it for something with less privacy, albeit much more convenience, in town. Because deep down, some part of us knew things were changing and would never be the same and that we wouldn’t be, either.
Everything did change. It was inevitable. Thankfully, the cabin improved. We bought into a well, dug out phone lines and added a kitchen and another living level complete with living room, additional bathroom, and laundry room. Having defensively, vehemently denied that I would ever live in the cabin with a baby, I found myself expecting with a due date of mid-December (great timing)! Our two doctor neighbors (the same ones who talked us into starting the family) groomed a trail from the parking lot to our front door with their snowcat, and Chris and I had an easy commute to the hospital on a moonlit winter night. I transported our newborn son back up the mountain in a Snugli, and we have spent two lovely winters here together. We take long walks in the snow, read books by the fire, and I spend many hours writing while he naps. We go back and forth at least once or twice a day, and sometimes shuttle friends up for play dates. My son loves to snowmobile and now insists on sitting in front of me and “steering.”
Chris and I know our time in the cabin is waning. Although we have had a wonderful time, we plan to move into town by the time our son is ready for pre-school. We hope to keep our cabin in the family forever, sharing it with friends and family as a weekend retreat. It will always be a special place to return to, but different from when we first moved here. Development has already begun on the lower mountain, with talk of expansion into our area. More wells are dug and building permits issued each season. Since the road has been extended, more people can be found on the once desolate ridge at all hours—Nordic skiers, snowshoers, hikers, and a greater number of backcountry skiers.
The awesome beauty of this place, the reverie it inspires, instills a kind of fierce ownership in our small but loyal group of local residents. It’s an attitude, however, that may threaten the future of this place if it is not held in check. Every so often I have to remind myself that the magnificent landscape I have grown to feel so entitled to is not mine alone. My brief existence here is short-lived compared to the span of time that second homeowners have been enjoying the area. There is certain to be some controversy over transportation between current and new residents if the upper meadow is developed into luxury resort property and a road becomes accessible year-round.
Also consider the impact of growth on our oldest residents—the deer, elk, and coyotes; the mountain lion I watched loping across the snow early one spring morning; the bobcat with tufts of white fur framing his face, chasing a jackrabbit across the top of our drive way; or the stunning clan of four moose that come out of the woods to graze at the edge of the meadow at dusk each evening in the later months of summer.
These are moments that will remain in my mind, and there are more: standing in the middle of the meadow under a moon so bright the dark shadows of clouds passing overhead left impressions in pools of black ink on the snow before me, like ghostly spirits; coming so close to a coyote that I could see the wind lift silver and gold strands of fur on his chest; the piercing cry of a hawk teaching its young to prey as it swooped over the tops of trees; the sight of a mountain bluebird, its coat the same sharp blue as the sky, perched on a telephone wire welcoming me home. This place, more than any other, reminds me that we are all but honored guests here on this mountain.
Vanessa Reichartinger Conabee is in the middle of her fifth winter living at Guardsman Pass and accessing her home via snowmobile each day. Holiday traditions she looks forward to at her cabin include snowmobiling the family up for Christmas, her husband’s eight-course Italian feast on New Year’s Eve, and bonfire and sledding parties on New Year’s Day.
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