As Ben Geiger and I walked up to the resort, he mentioned that he wanted to get up to Revelstoke to visit our old friend, Jeff Lee. He had just listened to a voice mail from Jeff explaining his plans to spend some time there soon. Little did we know Jeff was setting us up for a real surprise. Ben and I rounded the corner toward the gondola line when a tall bearded guy approached us grinning ear to ear. We watch him approach and I was slow to realize what Ben shouted, "Jeff!". I couldn't believe my eyes. This was the first I'd seen of him in ten plus years. Jeff was just trying to make sure that Ben was in town when he called. Jeff figured he'd leave it to chance and hang out in the base area for a short period of time. If he saw us, then he'd blow our minds by showing up out of nowhere. A great idea. Classic Jeff. It worked.
^Jeff and Ben are looking into the zone we were saddling up to. Ben and I were giving Jeff a hard time while we guided him into lines that he had shown to us ten years ago. Time flies when your in the Alaskan bush.
^Jeff is still a super burly mountain man, and had no problem diving in. This little down climb was a real pain in the ass, but Jeff made it look easy. Slow and steady has always won the race.
^Wes is posing for this one in front of our tracks on Needles Face. We certainly scored on that lap. Jeff and Ben skied the north face of this ridge while Wes and I opted for these beauties. Yum, yum.
^At the very end of the day, Jeff, Ben and I kicked over to one of Ben's classic finale lines. The 1400 vertical foot gully is one of Ogden's finest. Also, it is notorious for late afternoon bluebird break outs. As we sat in the fog and waited for one such phenomenon Ben was rallying the group dynamic to energize nature's movements. Low and behold the cloud lifted and gave us a once in a lifetime gift for our reunion. Powerful stuff. In the photo above, Ben is poised and ready for the blue skies you can see just beginning to show itself to us.
^Jeff certainly appreciated the universe's energy support of our ski day, and he was jumping for joy across the foot bridge on our out. We had an epic boot pack and down climb epic out of the bottom of our line, but the stoke was still high. Folks like these, why wouldn't it be.
^The alpenglow show that finished it all off was further evidence that our entire reunion with our dear friend Jeff was being driven by some serious momentum from the universe. The sequence of events seemed very blessed to me. I am grateful for it, that is for sure.
