In everyone's life, there's a friend who you may be attached at the hip with, or who's time you only experience briefly. It is this friend who has always had stories of the parks they have visited, the wildlife they have photographed, the mountains they have climbed, the ledges they have dropped, or the rivers they have tamed.

My friend Kjell, pronounced ' chell', is just this. In an indirect way, he is the reason I am in Alaska, having helped me develop a passion for the outdoors that couldn't be managed by being a weekend warrior. It had to be my lifestyle, my career, and my attitude.

At this moment, it is neither my lifestyle nor my career, but it most certainly is my attitude. It is what keeps me utterly contemptuous for any job I have that is meant only to pay bills. It is what keeps me quiet at parties and bars, because frankly, I'd rather be in the rain, hiking to some unknown spot in the forest, and sipping a flask of whisky with a friend.

So, on no day in particular, except that it was a weekend, a day my friend was not working, I decided to pay him a visit in Eagle River, AK. I live just a couple hours south in Girdwood. I had no idea what was to happen that night or the next day, but I brought my snow gear, my skis, my snowshoes, my backpacking gear, and a bit of food, just in case.

When you work property management as I do, checking in and out properties for guests coming from all over, the day before Christmas Eve is going to be busy. I decided that the truth would be best, though face to face confrontation would be left out of it. I left a message instead, telling my bosses I had to go to Eagle River to see a friend. We needed to see each other, I said. I told them I couldn't talk about it. Who knows what implication they took from that.

The first night was mellow with the rehashing of memories of people we knew and want to have experience Alaska for themselves. We ate pizza, and played the original Nintendo. He has two of them with a suitcase full of every game you remember. We drank each other's home brewed beer and talked about techniques with the brewing process. Before long, we decided we would wake up as early as our hangovers would allow us and set off for Hatchers Pass.

It was a grey windswept day, where any contours are non-existent in the eye of a rider, and knees must always be at the ready. The hike up is long, but worthwhile; spectacular views abound and the air is serene as we snowshoe our way up a 40 degree hillside. It's patchy, rocky and bushy, but expected and used to our advantage. Snowshoes grip well on frozen bushes beneath the snow, when slipping powder fails beneath your feet.

But we were there, panting along side each other, covering ground the way we used to, climbing a mountain that reminded me of the sand dunes we backpacked through in southern Colorado. We switch-backed those; the sand was loose like powder and would fall just the same. It would shift and slide in large sections, not unlike the beginning of an avalanche, but rarely producing the same devastation at the bottom. We would simply slide with it, and wait for it to come to rest. It never slid far.

That day at Hatchers, we didn't set off any great avalanches, and we found knee deep powder on the other side of the windswept ridge we had been climbing. It was a solid ride down, my first of the season, my first since I had my knee reconstructed and my first in Alaska.

I chalk it up with the day Kjell and I floated down the Nenana River in Denali, camping out at a sweat lodge along the river. We had others along for the ride, but eventually escaped on our own with a 1.75L of Jack Daniels and climbed the nearest mountain. Much of it was rock slide. We settled at the top for a small amount of time, soaked up the view, the riches of our climb, and began to head down. It was a clean run down but Jack didn't make it, shattering as I slipped on some loose ground. He lays buried on that hillside, because frankly, we weren't going to carry him back. His personality was a bit too jagged for the rest of the hike, and Kjell and I too drunk to cradle him all the way back to camp.

Back at Hatchers, in the parking lot, staring up at the mountain we climbed and the powder we skied, we ate lunch, drank a Guinness we had brought with us, in frosty pint glasses no less, and decided what was to come next. We decided to park lower on the road and take advantage of the option to hitchhike up the switch backing it does, after riding the terrain between it. After a few of these runs, some close calls with icy moguls and runaway sledders, we called it a day and drove back to Eagle River.

We went out for dinner, and then said goodbye. Back to Girdwood I went, in the beginning of a long stretch of snow. I showed up at work the next day with no qualms about being there and no hassle from my bosses for not having been there the previous day.

It's a normal thing in a ski town to skip a day of work for powder. I skipped it for the friend I never see, who on every occasion we meet, keeps me hell bent on chasing him up a mountain.

I'd venture to guess that everyone has at least one of these friends. They are the person who drives us to be better, stronger, faster, because if we're not, how will we ever spend any time with them. Our experiences would only be a presumption of the things we wish we could do, if not for the friend who drags our butt to the base of a mountain, only to have us follow behind at a pace that still needs work.

Roger Baty used to reside in the Briargate neighborhood.