Springtime sun is like a drug

"Next time I'll bring a rope," my husband said, as we teetered on a snow ledge just off the summit of an unnamed peak everyone here calls "Thirty-nine Twenty" for its height, 3,920 feet. There were two other places on the way up this mountain where I had thought I would be stuck. Places so steep my forehead seemed to rest against the snow slope. Places where I had taken the straps of my poles out of my hands and grabbed them about a foot above the baskets, like ice picks, to hold myself to the hill. Places where it was best not to look over my shoulder.

I have been goat hunting with my husband in dicier spots. I know I can trust my snowshoes, and I know enough to lean a little away from the hill. I know to keep three points of contact, and that if I start to slide to dig my knees and elbows in, and get my snowshoes sideways so they don't catch and flip me off the edge. But I am not a crazy dare-devil. Also, I'm a tad accident-prone. My husband says this is because I daydream and don't always pay attention. He has a point. But honestly, people who don't climb mountains can't fall off them.

This is springtime, and that means the sun is like a drug, and the mountains surrounding Haines have a pull that not only attracts snowboarders and skiers and their film crews from all over the world, but regular folks like us. When the forecast called for sunny and 50 degrees with light north winds, I knew we would be outdoors all day. I would not have minded a gentler walk on the river flats and a nap in the sun, but the ten-mile Mt. Ripinsky ridge traverse on snowshoes is one of those annual milestones my husband likes to complete.

The weather was perfect. It was so warm and with barely a breeze that I didn't even have long johns on under my nylon pants. For most of the day I didn't even need a wind jacket or a hat. From a distance, in the sun, the snow had a sheen like shaving cream.

Once, when I was stuck for few minutes, I imagined a helicopter rescue. But the only two in town were no doubt far away, shuttling skiers and snowboarders to more remote peaks. My foot quivered, and I heard the tightness in my husband's voice when he said I had to pull myself up onto a waist-high ledge where he was. I was a little scared. If I let myself become a lot scared I wouldn't be able to move. I thought, what the heck, I can do this. So I jammed one foot, then the other, making sure my poles were firmly planted. I made sure my feet were too, and that's how I climbed the rest of the way: one pole, one foot, slow and steady up over that knob and onto the hard snow ramp to the summit.

When I got there, I was feeling pretty good, the way I imagined Sir Edmund Hillary might have felt on his step near the top of the world.

We admired the view from high above the braided Chilkat River valley, across it, the Cathedral Peaks and the mountains and glaciers echoing up to Canada and down the west side of the Chilkat Inlet and Lynn Canal, and on the other side, Chilkoot Inlet, Chilkoot Lake, and the mountains on the west side of the fjord.

My husband said, "It's a piece of cake from here." And we stepped down toward the rolling ridge and the long relatively easy walk toward town.

He paused overlooking a ledge where in the summer you hold a chain bolted to the cliff as you wind down to better footing. The chain was buried under feet of ice and snow, which was getting soft in the warm sun. I took one look and said, "I can't."

"Sure you can," my husband said. "Besides, we can't go back the way we came." I thought about that soft, steep slope and knew he was right. He carefully dropped the eight feet or so over the edge to a shelf, and then I even more carefully slid after him. Then together we slid down the rest of steep section on our butts until we reached firm footing. The snow was like mashed potatoes, so we didn't move too fast.

The rest of the afternoon was as uneventful as a blister on my toe and as glorious as a kind of snowy heaven. Maybe it takes a little scare to make you appreciate being alive, because by the time we arrived home, I was so happy, and I felt so rich to live in the shadow of such a place, that I was almost embarrassed to tell you I'd been there.