Cold Smoke- A True Story About Love, Loss, and Skiing.

By: Grayson Zulauf

Hoot and I grew up in a Colorado town so small that you can see all the way down Main Street. Anyone you needed could be found in the Lift 9 line. At the noon bell, our high school classes gave way to ski P.E. We’d throw our books into our lockers, put on our boots, grab our skis, and walk three blocks to the chairlift for the afternoon of "school." We were graded on attendance and attitude.

Winter afternoons and weekends were spent hanging out on the lifts, grinning in the sunshine, gliding through the trees, flipping off jumps, and catching it all on camera. I still point out the best hits on Lizard Head Pass every time I drive by with someone new. The tree in our backyard I didn’t quite clear remains stunted, twenty years after I missed my landing. High school social status was determined by skiing ability first: Olympians, followed by future pros, followed by me, at the very end, the new kid in town who didn’t start skiing until the age of eleven.

On summer days, the crew would gather after early-morning swim practice or skate sessions. We’d pick up tubes and jump in the cold river at Town Park, alternating in and out of the hotel hot tubs lining the banks until we reached the gas station, where we’d catch the bus back to Town Park and do it all over again. Through town, the river was fast and steep, with tree branches bent low from their winter weight. Every summer, Hoot’s pale back was covered with the red claw marks of those branches.

It’s too perfect, perhaps, to grow up in a ski town. The adults moved here to discover, or rediscover, their childhoods. Our high school teachers were months late to grade our papers, but we would have beers with them on Tuesday nights. The town carpenter skied every single day, from the time the resort opened in 1972 to the year he broke his femur in his eighties. The only lawyer in town skied more than you did, and he made sure you knew it.

As kids, we had nothing to rediscover. Our dreams were powder days. The first to hit the jump. Finding the mystery song from the ski movie on Kazaa. Blunts, forties, and getting drunk on the gondola. Halfpipe laps on a sunny spring day. Hot tubs. Never saying “last run.” Our dreams were cold smoke, the wisps of snow left behind, hanging in the air, after a skier passes through.

Eight of us spent every moment of this ski town childhood together, skiing, laughing, loving, competing, and, in the end, hurting together. One won an Olympic medal. Two others became professional skiers. And two are dead.

Every year, we made a ski movie. On March 24, 2006, we were filming a sunset shoot after hours in the terrain park. We started on the “C-box.” I was filming, the local photographer was shooting, and the skiers were hiking between hits. As the sun set deeper into the sky, we decided to move up the hill to the jump line. A snow cat offered us a ride, and Hoot, Gus, Kolby, and I jumped on the back metal platform, above the treads.

A few minutes into the ride, we lurched and stopped. The driver jumped out, screaming. Hoot was on the snow in front of the cab. He was moaning, telling us how much it hurt. What hurt, Hoot? He didn’t answer.

My next memory is waiting in the Medical Center lobby. Between the accident and then, I can only guess. Most likely, we called Ski Patrol. They brought Hoot to an ambulance at the bottom of the mountain. The ambulance drove him to the Medical Center, where his stepmom, Laura, was a nurse. The medical team tried to stabilize him for an emergency helicopter flight to a real hospital. The waiting ended when Laura walked out from the back, her scrubs covered in blood, holding his helmet, a white shell hand-decorated with Sharpie. He was gone.

Ski style in the mid-aughts dictated baggy clothes. Hoot’s pant leg got caught on the snow cat treads. He was run over, legs crushed and lungs punctured. At 16, only the cold smoke of his life remained.

We held a memorial service. A ten-year storm came one week later. I wrote my college essay about that day, feeling Hoot at every turn on my favorite run, La Rosa. Kolby kept his helmet. We finished the ski movie, which we called Exquisite, in Hoot’s honor. The winter was over. With one year of high school left, the seven of us left tried to keep the dream alive: powder turns, tricks in the renamed Hoot Brown Terrain Park, and maybe, just maybe, getting paid to ski.

Hoot’s family started the Hoot Fund, a scholarship fund to carry on Hoot’s passion for skiing. Hannah received the first scholarship. She was the best female freeride skier in the country and the one of us most likely to go pro.

We didn’t make a ski movie the next winter. We graduated high school, without Hoot. Kolby and Woody moved to Breckenridge to pursue skiing full time. Gus finished school at a ski academy in Park City. The rest of us went to college, in California and Colorado and, for me, the East Coast. Every December 26, when we were all home for the holidays, Hoot’s parents would throw a holiday party. Every year was a reminder of where Hoot would be, or could be, in his life. This year, he would be in college. This year, maybe skiing professionally. This year, with a girlfriend or a wife. This year could have been his first kid.

Hannah was the first to move home after college. We weren’t kids anymore. She was a great skier, of course, although that currency faded slightly with time. She was joyous, with a laugh that felt like a shared secret. She was tough and kind, softening a too-real joke with a touch on the arm, a kind smile, and a twinkle in her blue eyes. She rose in her career to run the Hoot Brown Terrain Park as the manager of the Park Crew.

I’d run into Hannah at the Last Dollar Saloon, the local’s gathering spot, now a bit more upscale than it was in our youth. We would ski a lap on Lift 4 while she was working. And I’d hear her name around town, as in “you know Hannah?” She was the one who made an adult life in our hometown, with a successful career and the start of a family and a community that adored her.

I was the weekend warrior, as I was gently called by friends who skied for a living. I lived in a big city in California, spent my vacations at weddings on the East Coast, and was routinely dusted when I made it back home. Despite a successful career and a wonderful life and the ability to buy a round at the bar, I was the one dreaming of how to move home, jealous of Hannah, wondering if I would ever have what we had before Hoot’s death.

I knew the answer. I just didn’t want to believe it. I was an East Coaster, a flatlander, an out-of-towner, but maybe, one day, after making my money, after living and slowly dying in the real world, I would move home and rediscover my childhood. And so it wasn’t surprising that I found myself as far from home as possible, in a pool in Florida, when I got the call from Woody. We only texted, never called.

Hannah had taken her own life on March 14, 2021. It was days shy of 15 years since Hoot died. Hannah’s outward joy had belied a lifetime of internal mental health struggles. She took her life after a night out.

Hannah’s death was different. Hoot’s left me with survivor’s guilt. I was on the snow cat too. I’ll always carry the moment of him on the ground, gasping. Hannah and I weren’t in touch. Her death was less visceral to me. But, somehow, it was just as cutting. I was in Florida, in a pool. She had moved home, she was happy, I thought, living one version of our collective dream. But still, she couldn’t recreate our childhood.

Twelve days later, Kolby got married. Half of us attended his wedding in Hawaii. Half of us went to Hannah’s memorial. I went to Kolby’s wedding. We talked about Hannah.

Hannah’s death was the same as Hoot’s, too. Hoot and Hannah were knitters. They were the blondes with big smiles. They both died in March, as winter ended. They both dreamed of making a life around skiing. They both had parents that loved them.

Hoot’s parents still carry the sadness, nearly twenty years later. I first saw Hannah’s mom a few months after her death. We were getting COVID vaccines at the high school, shuffling in and out of the tents for the shots. I only had the ten-minute waiting period afterward to say hi. We shared a long hug. I asked her how she was doing. She was heading to Mexico to clear her head. I cried. She didn’t.

My wife now comes with me to my hometown. When we met, she could barely ski, but I took her on La Rosa every trip, starting with our first. I don’t think she really understood why. It’s the most advanced run on the mountain, and she fell almost every time we skied it in the early years. But there’s one picture of the two of us, standing at the bottom in the early years of our relationship, laughing and covered in snow, that always makes me think of Hoot and Hannah.

Kolby, Woody, and Lane moved home. Woody designs graphics for the local ski company and has a 2-year-old daughter. She is best friends with Kolby’s son. Lane and his wife live a stone’s throw away, as he says, from Woody and his family. Gus bought his mom a house near town after a successful skiing career, including multiple Olympics and a bigger impact as the first extreme sports athlete to come out as gay. Ryan and his wife live in Los Angeles but bought a fixer-upper in Silverton, just over the mountain pass from home, with dreams of moving there someday.

I make it home twice, maybe three times a year. Weekend warrior would be generous, now. This year, I was home for my Mom’s 70th birthday. I snuck out of video calls and spreadsheets and computer time for one day, at least.

I hadn’t visited Hoot’s statue yet on this trip. It had been 18 years, minus a couple of hours, since he passed. I sat with Hoot, and I sat with the sun, eyes closed. I remembered the trampoline, the river, and his last day. I tried to picture his life, now. Then I headed to the top of the mountain.

It was early, the bottom of La Rosa still in the shadows. I was alone. On my second lap, 20 of the newest generation came up, laughing and giggling and smiling. I waited to drop in. They skied down, gathering above the cliff on La Rosa where, terrified and under pressure from my friends, I tried my first front flip. I watched them push each other to go bigger. There were flips, and 360s, and switch landings in the powder. There were double ejections. And there was cold smoke, for just a moment in the morning sun, every time they stuck the landing and skied out.