Hilaree Nelson’s Body Found on Manaslu’s South Face

First encountered Hilaree Nelson when I started at Colorado College and her older CC gang put out their own ski movie called Misty Mountain Shop and distributed it across campus. She was the ski goddess among mortal bums in the flick. I was going to watch my copy tonight, which I probably haven’t viewed in almost two decades, when I realized I no longer have a VHS player. Darn it.

Condolences to her family, friends and especially her two sons. I almost did myself in by setting off an avalanche on a headwall above BP when my own son was just 6 months old. Only luck allowed me to walk away with “just” a compound fracture in my arm and a couple broken ribs. Obviously nowhere near the kind of exposure that Hilaree courted regularly amongst much bigger mountains. Glad I eventually learned to stay out of too much harm’s way….but I’ve also never stopped feeling the pull of adventure, mixed strangely with something akin to grace, that only the high winter alpine can deliver on a consistent basis. My wife thinks I’m a fool–or perhaps just callous, given what I put her through with the BP avy over a decade ago–for continuing to backcountry ski and admire someone like Hilaree from afar, even now after her tragic death. But I don’t see it that way. As a wise man once told me, “You got to live a little (or in Hilaree’s case A LOT) because long time dead.” RIP