So I grew up skiing in Lake Tahoe, California, and I was a competitive ski racer.

So all throughout my childhood and teenage years, I skied six days a week, 10 months a year, all over the world.

And it was great. There were about 12 of us on the Squab Valley ski team. We had grown up together, and we'd spent our entire lives together.

And when I was 17, this is in 2001, I was skiing with two, two of my best friends, Brendan Allen and Brian

Richmond. And we would ski out of bounds, which is illegal. You're not supposed to do it. We would

duck under the rope that says do not cross and we'd ski out of bounds because that's where a lot of

the good skiing is. And when we would do this, it would spit us out on this back country road. We'd have to hitchhike back. There's no

chairlift when you ski out of bounds. You have to hitchhike your way back. So we did it one morning

in February 2001. The three of us did it. And when we did it, we triggered a very small avalanche.

And I remember it so clearly. Like I can still feel it 21 year, 22 years later. I can still feel what it is like. It's the weirdest

sensation that I've had in my life because when you get hit by an avalanche, rather than pushing

on the snow to gain traction with your skis, the ground is pushing you. So all of a sudden,

you're skiing along and you got control and all of a sudden, boom, you have no control anymore.

The ground is pushing you around. Probably similar to what it feels like if you're

standing on the ground during an earthquake. Like the ground's pushing you. But it was a pretty small

avalanche, maybe came up to our knees, ended pretty quickly, and we kind of like literally

high-fived about it at the bottom and went about our day. We get back around to the base lodge. We hitchhike back.

And Brendan and Brian said, they wanted to do it again. They wanted to ski again. And I said,

hey, for whatever reason, I just didn't want to do it. So I said, hey, rather than hitchhiking back,

why don't you guys go do it again? And I'll drive my truck around and pick you up. So we said, great. We made our plans, went our separate ways.

They went skiing. I went back around to take my boots off and jump in my truck and go pick

them up. 20, 30 minutes later, I'd go to pick them up at the pickup spot and they weren't there.

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