On Monday, May 3, 28-year-old Mason Stansfield of Ouray, Colorado, died while skiing the Eldridge Glacier in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Stansfield was an experienced ski mountaineering and a mountain guide who had worked on Denali before.

As backcountry skiers and riders, we’re understandably keen to study avalanche fatalities, so that we may learn from them and avoid the same fate. But rarely do we analyze a life—particularly a life well-lived—with the same scrutiny. Luca Pandolfi, a 47-year-old Italian big mountain snowboarder who passed away in Italy’s Gran San Bernardo Valley on March 17, lived one such life, both on and off the hill.

Three years ago, an eight-year-old explained memes to me. I wish I’d written his definition down, because I’m sure that it was better than my own descriptions of the combinations of pictures and captions to create culturally relevant jokes. Now, in 2021, there are memes for every niche, from movies to politics to—you guessed it—backcountry skiing. In the past year, two anonymous memers under the Instagram handle Uphill Fiend have entertained us backcountry skiers and riders and now have over 10,000 followers. But the fiends have more to say than just poking fun at tele skiers and splitboarders. With ever posting, they take the time to think about how to educate the backcountry community and create a more inclusive space in the mountains.

In any Level 1 avalanche course, we learn about the different types of avalanches. Each is its own beast and carries its own unique challenges. Some problems hide deep in the snowpack while others live on the surface. They can be prevalent across big regions or very specific to isolated locations. Yet with such finite time in Level 1 and 2 avalanche courses, it would be cumbersome to truly dive into the nuances of each. After experiencing wind slab so vividly, I wanted to learn how to bring my avalanche knowledge to each specific avalanche problem in hopes that I could more confidently answer that important debrief question: Were we lucky or were we good?

A skier was killed Monday, March 22 in an avalanche outside of Colorado’s Beaver Creek Ski Area. According to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), the skier was traveling below tree line in an area known as the Sanctuary Chutes—a steep, northwest-facing chute—at approximately 10,500 feet when they triggered the avalanche around 3:00 p.m. This is the 12th fatality in Colorado this season and the 35th in the United States.

The lifts are about to close as I skin up the groomed slope of Buttermilk Mountain outside Aspen, Colorado, on a February afternoon. The last skiers and snowboarders whiz by on their way back to their cars after riding chairs all day. A father and his boys make one final lap through the mini terrain park as I pass by on my slow upward path. I feel heavy, laden with piecemeal equipment that is far from the latest, lightest, greatest stuff on the market. That’s OK. As a beginner ski mountaineer, lightness isn’t the most important thing anyway. The first step is to learn efficiency with the basic tools.