"We'll save the best for you," Glen Plake promised in late January. 

 Dumping their packs on a high windy moraine below Mt. Humphreys, Glen and Darren turn to study a sunlit chute across the valley.  

Glen and Darren boot climb everything they ski and twenty minutes later have shrunken to black specks slowly moving up the steep chute.

Once they ski the chute, they will then need to climb another 1200 vertical for a total of 3400 feet in five hours. 

 When pressed, Plake confesses he's an environmentalist but insists there's a difference between him and "Tree Huggers" and "Greenies." 

We were clueless on our first trip into the back country. We didn't even have a topo map, much less know how to read it and ended up walking across a frozen lake that was named after seven convicts who died after falling through the ice.  

 It is past 10, the stars are incandescent above the tent and the cold is finding the seams in my sleeping bag when Glen admits, "I admire what Dave McCoy accomplished at Mammoth. I'm forty years too late to build my own resort.  These mountains are my resort."  

A wrong move could send them tumbling down the cliff and I wait and watch until Darren finally catches the rope, fixes protection and continues up the crack to the summit ridge.   

I watch Glen and Darren jump from edge to edge until the chute widens and they are able to link turns through a thin crust which shatters, rolls and hums by like buzzing saws.

On the next run while skiing bumps at a suicidal rate, Glen's tips drop; he flips over the handlebars and explodes face first into an icy mogul.  Except for scrapes around his goggles and a few stars in his eyes, he is unhurt.

"We'll save the best for you," Glen Plake promised in late January of 1995.  Glen and his close friend Darren Johnson’s best turned out to be a late February three night, four day haute route which started in one high Sierra basin, crossed to another, then crossed to a third before exiting out "Yahoo Gully." In that time Glenn and Darren will climb over three vertical miles, ski half a dozen extreme chutes and cook, eat and sleep in the snow. 

Over the course of researching prior articles in Niseko, Japan, South Lake Tahoe and the Down Home Tour, I was well aware that Plake loved to live on the edge.  I believed, however, that by exercising a little caution I might be spared the worst. I did not expect to come away unscathed from four days in the Central Sierras but kicking boot holds in forty degree chutes have taken a toll.  Dark pools of blood have blackened my big toe nails and the thought of scaling another face or descending another narrow ribbon of snow, now triggers a deep, painful throb. 

The paper clip is beginning to glow in the cook stove's blue butane flame.  To be of any use, it must first reach the right temperature.  White-hot is best, but pink will do and as soon as the round metal shaft begins to glow, I center the tip on my right large nail and push. Smoke pours from the hot metal and, seconds later, a geyser of black blood erupts from the blackened hole. The relief is immediate.  The pain ebbs, I slip my foot into a clean sock and force my foot back into my ski boot.

From my vantage point on a 12,000-foot ridge, I watch Glen and Darren boot up a narrow, north-facing chute to the 13,330-foot summit of Mount Emerson. A camera cannot capture the forty-five degree pitch or the width or length of this chute. A camera would flatten it out, make it appear as dangerous as a city sidewalk flanked by brown stone walls.    

A half hour passes before the two friends climb out of the chute and hesitate above the vertical ribbon of snow. Plake is the first to drop in. He sweeps around a rock and stops against the vertical wall. Darren commits a second later, links three turns then traverses to one side. Even from this distance I can see they are testing the snow, minimizing their risk in case the chute fractures.  

 During the course of past assignments, I have spent a week with Plake in Lake Tahoe, shared a twenty four foot Fireball trailer on his honeymoon with Kimberly and devoted ten days in Japan to watching Japanese skiers mob him for autographs. I think I know Glen well . . . or at least as well as anyone outside his family can know him. And yet, as soon as I think I've got Plake figured out, he professes a love for Sumo Wrestling, or consults a psychic about the afterlife, or dumps the Henry Rollins Band in favor of classic Beach Boys, or spends a week bivouacking above twelve thousand feet. 

In fact, Glen alters his interests as often as he changes his hair color that now falls like red, pink and yellow hot rod flames from beneath his white Daytona cap.   Covered with the autographs of NASCAR crew chiefs, the hat suits Glen for it ignores the Dale Earnhardts, Rusty Wallaces and Sterling Marlins in favor of the faceless mechanics who make these super star drivers go fast.

He shrugs. "I respect anyone who has worked their ass off at achieving something, whether it's engine building, or motorcycle racing or skiing." And it's obvious he respects Darren Johnson.

Plake and Darren share two things in common. They have known each other since grade school. And, they are both gifted athletes. The major difference is lightening struck Plake and just missed Darren. It wasn't that Darren didn't pursue fame and fortune in photos and film. But Plake got lucky. 

"Success amounted to two pair of skis and fifty bucks a day," he remembers. "I was twenty two and crazy and Greg Stump was looking for someone who could land a jump. I asked, 'Off what?"    

With a background on the Heavenly Valley Ski Team and a stint on the Pro Mogul Tour, Darren is an incredible skier.  He is also an experienced mountain climber and a gifted wood worker who attributes his superb physical conditioning to the fact that he works summers for the Forest Service installing Gas Ex avalanche triggers above slide prone roads.

Four days have passed since we turned off Highway 395 toward the alpin glow washed Central Sierras.  The plan was to snowmobile across the desert then skin up to a high basin below Mount Humphries.  After a month on the road, Glen wanted to ski at least one untracked chute before dark and it was one o'clock when we parked the snowmobiles in the woods below the 13,986 foot Mount Humphreys.  Millennia of wind, snow and bitter cold had sculpted the vertical gray, dark brown and black strata into cliffs, crooked spires and jagged outcrops and, shouldering our packs and sliding one foot in front of another we started up the first steep face. Our progress was steady but slow and by the time we reached the campsite the sun was sinking toward the western ridges.

Dumping their packs on a high windy moraine below Mt. Humphreys, Glen and Darren turn to study a sunlit chute across the valley. The chute empties into the valley a half a mile away and to reach it, they will need to lose the 1200 vertical feet we'd just gained, then climb an extra thousand vertical feet.  Once they ski the chute, they will then need to climb another 1200 vertical for a total of 3400 feet in five hours.  With only three hours of daylight left, speed is essential and I watch them lay long GS turns down an untracked bowl to the valley below. To help them locate ice, rocks and crust--conditions that might trigger an accident--Glen and Darren boot climb everything they ski and twenty minutes later have shrunken to black specks slowly moving up the steep chute.

Alpin glow is washing across the distant White Mountains and the lights of Bishop are glowing below when they return to camp. Lighting the stove, Glen described a group that was climbing up the chute as they were skiing down.

During an average five trips per year Glen insists, "We've never seen anyone here before!  Never! Now the basin is full of fucking 'beeler' tracks (snowmobiles are not permitted above tree line) that, if the Forest Service finds out, is going to fuck our whole deal.  It's like, 'Well hey, 'LET'S TAKE A LITTLE VACATION IN THE BACK COUNTRY.' Maybe we can even, 'BAG A CHUTE!" he sneers.

When pressed, Plake confesses he's an environmentalist but insists there's a difference between him and "Tree Huggers" and "Greenies." 

Melting snow in a blackened pot, he points out, "A person who lives in the city shouldn't be making decisions for people who are out here skiing these chutes. The best of them are just day hikers scribbling their thoughts in summit registers." 

Darren takes a break from shoveling a depression in the snow for his sleeping bag. Recalling their first winter ascent up Red Slate, a peak south of Mammoth, he reminds Plake, "Three years ago, we weren't that much different." Accompanied by friends Steve Peche and Robby Tavaras, Darren remembers, "We were clueless. It was like, 'we want to go there but didn't know where the trailhead was. We didn't even have a topo map, much less know how to read it and ended up walking across a frozen lake that was named after seven convicts who died after falling through the ice."  

A violent thunderstorm broke just as they reached camp and though Glen had borrowed a forty below "Tangerine Dream" sleeping bag, Peche and Tavaras had cloth Coleman bags that were quickly soaked by the torrential rains. The two somehow managed to get a fire going and spent the rest of the night heating rocks to warm their sleeping bags. Darren recalls, "It was a total hot potato scene, with Robby throwing rocks to Steve and Steve throwing them back. It was hilarious. My bag still has spark holes in it from that fire."

A bitter wind has begun to blow down the basin and watching Glen heat water for soup, I learn that there are definitions of extreme that have nothing to do with cliffs or chutes. Plake is impervious to cold. Though the frigid night wind rakes the exposed moraine, he is perfectly comfortable in a thin pile pull over and no gloves. 

Darren confesses he is still haunted by the death of Paul Ruff (the Tahoe stunt skier who died while trying to set a record for longest cliff jump.) Leaning on one elbow in his sleeping bag, he says "I got hardened to photographs because people never see the progression, only the result. There was no denying Paul was tough," he pauses, shakes his head then continues. "He tore an artery off his heart and still managed to get up and walk around."   

It is past 10, the stars are incandescent above the tent and the cold is finding the seams in my sleeping bag when Glen admits, "I admire what Dave McCoy accomplished at Mammoth. I'm forty years too late to build my own resort.  These mountains are my resort."  

From time to time, Plake needs to escape from the pressure of being Glen Plake.   The high country offers him a chance to get back to basics. On this high, cold moraine, life is reduced to a warm sleeping bag, a good tent, a reliable stove, boots that fit, bindings that work, a partner you can depend upon and stable high pressure.

Both Glen and Darren have begun to question their own immortality. "You only have so much time while you're young," Glen says. "I would love to ski some of the classic chutes in the Alps but right now I am learning skills that I can use if the opportunity arises. Who knows where? Patagonia? France? New Zealand? "

I ask if he's ever thought about enrolling in a school for guides.

"I don't have the time," he says as the frigid wind rustles the tent. "So much of guiding involves learning the terrain. A European could come here and be pretty much clueless.  He'd have the skills but no knowledge of the terrain. "

 But it is more than the terrain and untracked snow that draws Plake to the Central Sierras.  It is also the reward that results from prolonged physical stress.

"I don't like apparatus skiing." he says echoing Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard.  "You've got to give the mountain a chance."    

The following morning we are up and moving while the eastern horizon is still a chain of black peaks and rose tints. To reach the northwest face of Mt. Humphreys, we must kick our way up a 1200 vertical foot chute.  Darren and Glen are waiting when I finally break out on the col beneath the sheer rock wall.  

The guidebook says there is no easy way up this monolith and one look at the exposed rock walls tells me that climbing in my plastic ski boots is out of the question.  I stay behind while Glen and Darren start up a long crack.  Darren is leading when he is stopped by vertical dead end pitch. The retreating move is too dangerous to make without protection and for the next hour, I watch Glen struggle to reach Darren with a rope.  

A wrong move could send them tumbling down the cliff and I wait and watch until Darren finally catches the rope, fixes protection and continues up the crack to the summit ridge.   Glen soon joins him on top where they study the register.  

On the day O.J. Simpson was running from the police in Los Angeles, a wag had written, "OJ is hiding out in the High Sierras, bring food." 

Glen and Darren plan to ski the "Checkered Demon" the following morning and we break camp and climb across a low saddle. The first stars are rising in the east when we pitch the tent in a grove of sub alpine fir. Glen fixes his transistor radio to a tripod of ski poles and Bishop's KBIS country is soon lamenting about the price of cheap whiskey and cheating love as the wind rises to shake the tent and the pot of Ramen soup begins to boil. 

I ask Plake if it bothers him to be called an “entertainer.” Taking a second to think he says, "No, if I wasn't an entertainer, I wouldn't get paid what I do." Though most extremists can't ski bumps it doesn't bother him that he's not given credit for being able to ski the extreme. "It's rare to have both back country and mogul skills.” He shrugs. “My job is more about being the total skier." 

The sun is up when we break camp and skin across the basin to the base of the “Checkered Demon.” Though Glen and Darren have often scouted this chute, they have never skied it. The earliest notation in the summit register is 1964--the same year Glen was born--but none of the entries since mention a winter descent.  

If skiing this narrow, rock studded chute is akin to flossing the devil's teeth, Glen and Darren bring a joy to the challenge and I watch them jump from edge to edge until the chute widens and they are able to link turns through a thin crust that shatters, rolls and hums by like buzzing saws. A fall would be catastrophic but Glen insists he is not afraid, only a little angry over a single shaky turn.  

It is an anticlimax when we strap our skis to our packs and began to climb toward the sunlit saddle.  It takes me an hour to ascend the thousand vertical feet and by that time, my toes are toasted.  It was a stupid mistake, but I should have known that the high country tests both equipment and men.

By the time Glen and Darren return from their descent of Mount Emerson's North Face the sun is directly overhead. Dropping his day pack Darren notes, "The last winter ascent was in 1976 and if they skied that chute, they were getting after it."

An approaching storm is rolling thunder heads above us as we traverse across the south face and start down "Yahoo Gulley."   Narrow at the top, "Yahoo" opens into a long chute that eventually leads onto forested hills.  Held by the shadows, the snow is boot deep and two thirds of the way down, I begin to eight Glen's turns.  The number didn't set a record and from below it isn't even that pretty but I see now that simple rewards often create the best memories.

 There is a postscript to this story.  Glen wanted to ski moguls to prepare for an upcoming trip to Japan and the following day he, his father Jim and I boarded a chair at Mammoth Mountain.  Leaning forward Glen inexplicably taunted Fate by volunteering, "In the high country there is no margin for error and you must respect the mountain.  But in bounds you can dominate the mountain!"

On the next run while skiing bumps at a suicidal rate, Glen's tips drop; he flips over the handlebars and explodes face first into an icy mogul.  Except for scrapes around his goggles and a few stars in his eyes, he is unhurt. "I guess I needed to get the fall out of the way," he shook his ringing head.

When I later asked Jim Plake what he thought of Glen's courtship of extreme, he replied,  "I don't have a problem with it, but how far do you go?  Today Glen had no intention of going head over heels in the moguls.  That's what worries me.  You can't walk a tightrope forever."

Glen's wife Kimberly is more pragmatic. "The element of surprise––things he can't predict, or plan for––disturbs me but I can't worry about him all the time. It's not healthy."

The day after we got back to Mammoth, despite threatening weather, Glen and Darren re-provisioned and hiked into Mount Williamson where they skied an extreme chute they had coveted for two years.