It didn’t work for sex. It didn’t work for drugs.

I made a mistake two years ago: I took an avalanche safety class before I knew how to ski. In the afternoon of the second day of the three-day course, I looked down at a glade on the east side of Snodgrass and thought, “here goes!” as I dropped into what was the steepest, most technical descent I’d tried on two slippery planks. Our class had identified the shallow gully in the middle of the…