Run To The Hills
by
Luke Downey

The Moose was a strange man who we rarely saw, maybe once or twice each winter. He looked absolutely dreadful. A thick, bushy beard covered a well-weathered face, accompanied by a mop of dreadlocks that grew into a single, beaver-like tail right down the length of his back. 

He had these freakish eyes too. One blue and one green, which would stare straight into yours. And with those eyes came an almost sinister grin.

We all thought The Moose was crazy.

One afternoon, driving down the mountain from Thredbo in dumping snow, Grant and I excitedly called ‘the early’ for the next morning – to be on the first chairlift.

After a quiet night I awoke to the phone ringing. It was Grant. There had been 40cm of fresh snow overnight and he would be picking me up in 10 minutes. 

We were away early and secured pole position in the car park. Almost running up the stairs to the chairlift, we were confident of being the first there only to be confronted by a sole figure, already strapped into his snowboard, waiting. We recognised him immediately – it was The Moose.

He was getting his goggles out of a backpack which appeared to be completely filled with food. Cautiously we strapped into our boards and lined up next to him. The Moose looked Grant and I up and down but did not say a word. Instead he gazed up to the top of the mountain, contorted his face into this weird expression then burst out into hysterical laughter. We looked at each other and simultaneously freaked out.

The half-hour wait for the chairlift to open was of both anticipation for first tracks and hesitation of being in the company of The Moose for more than half a minute. Eventually the lift opened and we scrambled onto the first chairlift with him. The 10 minute ride to the summit saw a chain of events that left us with no doubt in our minds that The Moose was insane.

First, he opened his backpack, took out a can of spaghetti and demolished the contents as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. This hardly warrants labelling a bloke insane, but his backpack was overflowing with food. I just had to query him about the food. I’d never spoken to The Moose before, in fact, I wasn’t even sure if The Moose had ever spoken, full stop. The silence of the chairlift ride had to be broken.

“Hey Moose, are you a bit hungry mate?” I summoned up the courage to ask. 

“Oh yeah, gotta keep the energy up, big day today boys,” came a croaky reply.

The Moose had spoken and amazingly, he almost sounded normal. Then, within a minute, he was talking to us as though we were a couple of old mates.

“Yeah boys, it’ll be good to get back home”, he continued.

“Home?” Grant questioned. We were going up a chairlift, after all.

“Yeah, HOME!” He repeated, giving Grant a look of ridicule. “I’ve been living out in the backcountry for the past two winters.” The tone of his voice was one that suggested there was nothing out of the ordinary with how he was living.

The Moose began to describe how he had been hiking, discovering and snowboarding terrain most people wouldn’t even know existed in Australia. He had taken up winter residency in a tent outside the confines of the ski resort and the only reason he was on the chairlift was he had just returned from a supply run to town – hence the backpack filled with food.

We came over the final ridge before the summit to see the entire mountain blanketed in fresh snow. It was still snowing heavily and our decision was already made where we were headed. A steep bowl to our left – our favourite powder run – lay untouched and looked very inviting. The Moose saw us checking it out and broke into the same laughter that welcomed us at the bottom of the chairlift. Sensing he knew something we didn’t, Grant quizzed him on his first run. Again Grant was met with a bemused glance and again The Moose pointed up into the blizzard in the distance before reiterating, “I’m going home!”

At this point we weren’t convinced about The Moose’s mental state. Was he fair dinkum or was he a nutcase?

We reached the summit and as we got off the chairlift I kept an eye on The Moose. Sure enough, as we strapped in, he unstrapped his board and took off on foot in the opposite direction.

It turned out to be one of those rare, epic powder days in Australia. Grant and I milked it for all it was worth, snowboarding all day until our legs could go no more. But throughout the day my thoughts kept returning to The Moose out there in the wild backcountry. What the hell was he up to?

Over a few beers that night on the balcony, we watched a wintry sun setting over the mountains and it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to The Moose. To charge off like that, in those conditions, we figured he was either a lunatic, which was definitely possible, or he was, in fact, headed home to continue his search for the perfect snowboarding run.

If The Moose was true to his word, and the more thought we put into it he probably was, then maybe it was time for us to hike out there to find out for ourselves what made him take off into that blizzard.

The weather was forecast to clear during the night into a fine day so a plan was devised to be on the first chairlift again. To set off in the exact direction The Moose had gone and see where it would take us.

The following morning we stood at the top of the chairlift where The Moose had disappeared. His tracks had been filled in, but we could see two peaks in the distance, two to three hours hike away. Would these two peaks hold the answers to our questions about The Moose?

Was he just a messed-up guy out there living in the harshest of environments? Or was he really out there snowboarding alone in epic, untouched conditions?

There was only one way to find out. We set off towards the two peaks. It was tough going through the deep snow, but the closer we got the more potential we saw and the more determined we were to get there.

Some two hours’ hiking and we made the summit of the first peak. A massive, snow-covered rock formation continued out from the peak to a ridge, which led up to a second, larger and steeper peak.

“Yeow!” Our first discovery was definitely in The Moose’s favour. The ridge between the two peaks ran for about 200 metres, with cornices and cliff drops all the way along, ranging from solid 20-30ft launches to unmakeable 70-80ft death drops.

We rested atop the ridge and assessed the various cornices we could snowboard off. As we sat there I realised that other than our recovering deep breaths, there was absolute silence. Not a chairlift, not a T-bar, not even another person was in sight. I was overwhelmed by my surroundings.

But my thoughts were interrupted by Grant strapping into his board above one of the cornices. Although The Moose was nowhere to be seen, these cliffs were as good a spot to session as any. Grant was first to take the drop, disappearing over the edge. Feeding off his confidence, I strapped in and stood above another cornice. Totally focused, I felt this energy filter through my entire body. The combination of adrenaline, fear and anticipation produced a feeling difficult to describe. When you overcome that fear you are rewarding with a feeling of pure ecstasy. I took off.

With the blood pumping we decided to continue around to the far side of the second peak. Rounding to the summit we got our first glimpse of what would be an uninterrupted view of the entire mountain range. Once at the top, peak after peak rolled off into the horizon. Each peak individually contoured with endless possibilities for someone with a snowboard, a bit of ticker and a sense of adventure. We looked below us and were met with a wind lip of massive proportions that had just been reshaped by the last snow storm. There was not a snowflake out of place – it looked like an enormous white wave. A near-vertical lip ran for about 100 metres down into a gnarly chute full of huge boulders. It was almost too pristine to destroy but the thought of snowboarding down this incredible section was too hard to resist.

As we rested at the bottom of our run, an almost surreal feeling came over us. We could not believe the quality of the snow or the terrain out here, only a few kilometres hike from the ski resort boundary. We had spent several hours hiking and riding these two peaks alone. Lying there exhausted I looked over at Grant. He had this grin from ear to ear and I realised I too had an equally enormous grin.

Then it dawned on me. We had found what we had come looking for. The Moose was fair dinkum. We had ridden two of possibly hundreds of peaks out here. I looked back at Grant, and it had hit him too. We both burst out in delirious laughter.

Only one other person would have heard our laughter, a person who we once thought to be crazy, but a person who we were now very glad to have met. The Moose would have been laughing too.