Since I was running late, as usual, I was lucky there wasn't that much ice to scrape off the windshield. It was pitch dark and reliably cold out when I got in the already running car. I took a sip of strong coffee as I put the car in gear. I turned the music up a bunch of clicks just to make sure I was awake, and I started aiming for Taos Ski Valley. It was a good bet that snow was falling up there in the Sangre de Cristos, even though there was nothing new on the ground out on the high desert mesa.

The Patrol was going in two hours early to bomb anyway. There had been enough storm before last night to warrant a day of "clean up" around the ridges and chutes. I was coming back to this familiar role after a little too long away — it had been a long season in Antarctica. And so I had to go through a mental checklist as to what gear I couldn't do without on such a morning. I knew the other guys had it down to a science by this late point in the season, and I envied them as I kept looking anxiously at my watch. The lift was going to run at quarter to six, and I needed my boots clicking into my bindings then or I'd be left behind. I did not want to be left behind.

As I started taking the first blind curves on the ski valley road, I started to think ahead to what a day of avalanche control could do for me. I knew I needed some high altitude cold exercise, but then I always was in need of that. I figured that I might still feel like a part of a hard-working team and I wanted that. I thought I might get a little adrenaline flowing if the high explosives did their work. I got thinking that I might actually turn a few times in Rocky Mountain powder before the morning was done, rarely a bad thing to do.

I sipped the coffee, checked my watch and cranked the tunes until I came around one of those curves and continued on in a fine four-wheel drift that would have been lots of fun if not for the Hondo River and a passel of trees and rock guarding it. I was careful not to hit the brakes as I brought the slide into a gentle fishtail and eventually started tracking straight up the road again. Realizing that Dave Matthews was singing "Crash into me..." I turned the music off, stowed the coffee and gripped the wheel good and hard to navigate what had become a black ice highway.

As I neared the base of the ski area, at 9,400 feet, I was driving through a surprising amount of new snow. I nosed into a snowbank in the parking lot and happily killed the engine. Grabbing all my toys, I hurried to the locker room. Coming out of the dark and into that warm and busy room felt pretty good, since there were about 20 of my good friends in there. There was the usual amount of ridicule and back-slapping to welcome me back to what they all believe is my only really important job. I was plenty happy to hear it as I grabbed a radio and headed past a few happy avalanche dogs to an empty locker and a cold set of boots. Minutes later, zipping my patrol vest up, I was chasing the gang over to the base of the first chair. I clicked in and loaded up alone, slightly thankful that I could compose my scattered thoughts for the duration of the 10 minute ride in the dark.

By the time I got off that first chair, it was just light enough to ski without a headlight to the second lift. I felt out a couple of soft turns in the untracked snow of the trail edge, but opted for the safer and more sure groomed track leading through the cloud and murk to the chair I needed for the top. It was light enough getting on that one that the guys could see the clothing I'd chosen for the day and start making fun of it. Hopelessly too flashy for Taos, my Gore-Tex suit was nonetheless a good choice for the conditions. Up top, we clambered into the Patrol headquarters and everybody went about their business as the dispatcher picked a few loud tunes for the stereo.

I got my avalanche beacon on as I checked out the familiar scene. Dave Mount was pounding away at the computer, getting it to cough up odds and ends of weather data, snowfall and water content during the night, wind speed and direction, etc.,. Mike Parsons and Rey Deveaux were chalking up this data and telling the route leaders what hazards to look for and how hard to hit things on the first pass. The route leaders were calmly sitting down with their notebooks and guessing how many explosives of various weights were going to rain down on the cornices and chutes of Taos Ski Valley. The Patrol Directors, Jim Lee and Royal Moulton, were helping to figure who would go where to start the festivities. Joe LeBlanc was already down at the "avalauncher," getting that gun ready to make some noise.

I clunked back into the bomb room to help the guys already there at putting together the one and two pound charges we'd be throwing. Case after case of cylindrical cast primers of pentalite were getting threaded with the cap and fuse assemblies that would put some excitement in the volatile mix. I tried to pitch in by ripping a little duct tape, and wondered how the patrol had been getting by without me and my sharply honed skills while I'd frittered away the past months in Antarctica. Just fine, came the answer, everywhere I looked.

I was assigned to work the lower mountain "cutbanks" with Royal. Not glamorous stuff, not battling the storms at 12,000 feet on spooky cornice with every toss of a bomb getting big and fast results, but important duty nonetheless. And a chance to make a mighty big noise down near the base area. We geared up with a couple of packs lightly loaded for bear, and I went through my checklist as I headed out the door. Probe Poles. Avalanche Shovel. Beacon. Igniters. Crimping Tool (for cutting fuse) Radio On. First Aid gear. Skis...One, Two. Good to go, I assured Royal.

Royal was interested from several angles to see if I was forgetting anything. It was a cinch that he, after at least 25 years on the patrol, would not forget what he needed on a control morning, but if he could catch me screwing up, he might be saving himself from some physical harm out on the route. Probably of greater importance to Royal that day was the chance to catch me forgetful about the way good work gets done. Such a breach would only stay between us for a moment or two before the whole patrol would find out I owed another case of beer for my sins. I'm pretty sure that I have bought more cases per number of days worked than anybody over the years, but that has been a small price to pay in return for getting to call myself a Taos Patroller.

We set off down the hill as the radio came to life with warnings of "fire in the hole!" for places like the Trout chutes and Blitz and Donkey Serenade. The deep explosions began to rock the cloud-shrouded ridges around us. I could hear Joe starting the avalauncher, shooting away at Treskow Ridge and Kachina Peak off in their own clouds. Those blasts were coming from miles away and made me wish I'd shown up for some bigger storm cycle that would get the 106mm Howitzer riled up. All of its shots sound up-close-and personal, and I was starting to miss such big action.

Royal and I didn't waste much time getting down the mountain although we put a test shot in Pipeline and viewed some natural slides that had come out during the night. We looked at where the wind had stripped a lot of snow away and tried to guess what we'd find down where Skyway cuts through Goldmine Corner on the way to the bottom lifts. We set a few charges over the trail edge without much result. Royal had thrown charges down here just a week before and so had a good feel for what had changed and what hadn't. He didn't figure we'd get much, but each time there was some question as to whether some lense of snow needed the violence of one of my bombs, I voted for the bomb. Two pounds of pentalite takes a lot of the guesswork out of the snowpack science.

I was familiar with the routine: I'd grab a charge out of my pack, place the bomb between my knees, close the pack, find an igniter in my pocket, size up the intended bomb placement again, make sure my arm was ready to do some throwing, look to see what Royal was doing, get a solid stance on my skis, place the iggy on the fuse, pull hard on the igniter string, observe the spitting smoke and sparks of the lit fuse and drag it over the snow surface to see the burn scar. Don't throw an unlit bomb... don't hold onto a lit one too long. Don't wind up for a big throw and then toss it into a fence or branch that bounces it right back to burning away at your feet. Lots of don'ts.

Do concentrate once that thing is on fire, do it all the same way every time, so that you won't find a way that doesn't work. Throw the bomb. Get out of the way and put your hands up on your ears. Not just your fingers, press your palms hard against your head. Wait. Wait. Look over at Royal. Wait. Wait. Wonder how loud it is going to be. BOOM. Not just a noise, more like a big fist punching the world in that particular spot.

Bomb dirt flies and drifts down onto my ugly suit and coats my goggles, snow erupts over the crater, and perhaps a wall of it goes whispering down into the timbers below. That is a fine thing when you've hit the sweet spot and an avalanche goes chasing away having hurt nobody. Just a smoking hole in the snow and no avalanche leaves all sorts of questions for a guy like me. I've been known to throw another bomb in search of answers but I have to be careful. They gave me the golf course award one year for turning perfectly good skiing into multi-cratered battlegrounds in my quest for certainty. There are many times when the slope just doesn't want to avalanche... and that is a good thing.

Royal and I got some small but suitably exciting slides that morning. We rode back to the mountaintop and I geared up for a "cutting mission" even as the first skiers were hitting the slopes around us. They were carving up the powder, yelling with delight and asking every patroller what slopes were opening and when. The clouds were starting to pull away and blue sky was breaking out as the results of the morning's work were becoming more apparent.

We needed to hit some of the in-area trails with "ski-cutting" often the final step in stabilizing and checking slopes before the public gets on them. Six of us headed for Castor and Pollux then. I teamed up with Trey Curl, yet another veteran of several decades. We hopped into the woods and quickly spread onto the approaches for our target slopes. As Trey made a ski "cut" (a straight line traverse, trying at once to cut the tension in the slope and push the slope below him into sliding), I kept a hand on a tree and an eye on him. He found a tree, I made a cut. We alternated on down through the woods until we came on the wider open expanse of Castor.

The first cuts did nothing, but we both knew we were getting to a place where the wind had piled things up a little more seriously. I could hear our partners yelling out through the trees or giving one or two word commands and responses on the radio. These guys knew their jobs well and had worked together so long that things could go along pretty quickly with little chance of one team getting below another. And things needed to keep going quickly.

Trey found a tree and told me to make my next cut out there to the right. I didn't have time to chicken out, even though I could see that this was the kind of angle and loading and area that should give one pause. I moved out, picking enough of an angle that I could keep good speed to the next tree, not so much angle that my cut would be wasted. Out in the middle of things, all my senses were firing warnings, but I had to keep going then...besides, isn't this what I'd come for? Didn't I want to make that slope safe? Wasn't I ready to take a ride if necessary? Isn't that why we brought all the gear? Isn't that tree a long way away?

I felt the earth move then. Continental Drift, possibly, but more likely a slab avalanche trying to break free. It probably didn't move more than an inch, but I was quite aware that it was the whole of Castor moving an inch in the wrong direction. I was also quite aware then that if the whole damn thing broke free I'd face the tumble of a lifetime. They don't call these mountains the Rockies for nothing. Castor is steep — it has trees, it has rocks. Surviving the fall would only get one buried at the bottom.

These were a lot of thoughts to maintain during one ski cut, but I made them all as I latched onto a big old Ponderosa Pine with both arms. It may even have been a Cork Bark Spruce, my face was so close to it then that I simply knew it was big and solid and good to hug. I looked then at the cracks radiating in every direction across Castor. A big slab, the real thing, had fractured but not released fully. Trey knew exactly what had gone on, but he began his own cut, just the same. Mine had taken a lot of energy from the slope, but it was a big slope, more needed to be done. I was a little rattled by the time we made those last cuts, and was not sorry to see four or five patrollers standing to one side "spotting us" on our exit (ready to dig, but more happy to make fun of my suit and cutting technique when it turned out that Castor was not going to fall on us).

I didn't do much more that day, really. One more control run, down Twin Trees chute in bright sun and in what turned out to be stable snow. My first and last powder turns for a short season. The first 10 or 20 of them had me telling myself to work, work, work, to accomplish them. The last 40 had me telling myself to play, play, play a little more. But I knew I couldn't play much that day. I needed to go home to pack my bags for Everest. I did so with four new moments locked forever in my cluttered mind; a car sliding sideways in the dark, a bomb spitting sparks in my hand, the Twin Trees turns going from work to laughing joy, and Castor moving...none of these left room for another relevant thought in the Universe. I'd gotten a lot of what I needed at Taos that morning.

I pretty much love the writing of Norman MacLean. In A River Runs Through It he explains how in his later days, although it is a little dangerous, he finds himself compelled to stand out in big, dangerous waters to fish. There, in the Big Blackfoot River, he claims that all existence fades to a four-count rhythm and "the hope that a fish will rise." I think I know what he means, even though I don't really like to eat fish. For me, I expect I'll be the bait again some day for a slab avalanche. I'll cut a few more slopes and all existence will sharpen with the possibility that an avalanche will fall. And with the hope that I won't.

— Dave Hahn, MountainZone.com Columnist