Eric LeMarque - 6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain

Copyright 2017 by Eric LeMarque

Cover image copyright 2017 by 6 Below, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Mona Lin

Cover image courtesy of Momentum Pictures, LLC

Print ISBN: 978-1-68099-369-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68099-370-7

Printed in United States of America

To Hope, my adoring and amazing wife. You saved my life bringing the harmony and balance I have never known. Thank you for the tender loving kindness you provide our family. You are more than a Blessing you are my HOPE!

Proverbs 12:4: An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.

Contents

Prologue

I ran blindly, stumbling and falling, pushing my way through chest-high snow. My heart pounded against my ribs and I pulled each breath from the thin freezing air as if it were my last. I could hear the creatures behind me, moving in closer, fanning out to attack from all sides, a pack on the hunt for human prey.

Whimpering with fear, I shouted into the pitch-black wilderness, my desperate voice echoing into the invisible distance.

No!

It was both a cry of defiance, and of utter and abject defeat. I was helpless against the beasts lunging towards me. I couldnt believe I was about to die. It was a vivid, harrowing nightmare and I couldnt wake up. I screamed again, but this time it was nothing more than an anguished, inarticulate cry. I had been reduced to the level of the animals that were going to eat me. All thought and reason had vanished. I was a piece of meat, helpless prey for the savage stalkers.

I stumbled, plunging face first into a deep drift. I struggled to get up, moving a few feet before I got bogged down again and had to start pushing myself through the snow one laborious step at a time until I finally came to a complete halt. My legs were trembling and I could feel the trickle of wet snow mingling with my sweat. Terror had paralyzed me. I couldnt move. This was where it would end, in a flurry of sharp teeth and slavering jaws. As I lay motionless, waiting for death, one thought, one question, went round in my brain in an ever-tightening circle:

How did I get here?

The answer was simple.

I was addicted to powder.

When I say powder you might be thinking cocaine, or maybe heroin. But what Im talking about is even worse: methamphetaminespeedone of the most dangerous and destructive drugs known to man.

For over a year, at a key juncture in my life, my world revolved around little plastic bags of sparkling white crystals. I liked the way meth made me feel, the focus and energy and sense of unlimited power that came with that chemical rush, every time I snorted a line.

In that way, I guess I wasnt much different from the most ravaged of speed freak you might see tweaking on the street, talking to himself, obsessing over ever more miniscule details, endowed with a sense of his own importance and omnipotence. I was a crank addict like every crank addict and I was heading down the same path of death and decay.

Of course, you couldnt tell me that. I was never going to become one of those hollow-eyed, bleeding-gum human wrecks that haunt the underworld of the drug culture. I had too much self-respect for that, too much pride in my physical abilities and too much confidence in my own will power. No white powder was ever going to overcome my steely self-control.

Until it did.

But the story of my addiction doesnt stop there. There was another powder I was addicted to and in a way that addiction was far more potent and seductive than my need for speed had ever been.

That powder came out of the sky, when weather conditions were just right and the freezing bite of the air brought down a dust so fine and pure you could blow it away with a puff of your breath. It covered everything, coating mountains and valleys and the slopes in-between until it was all you could see, glinting in the sun or spreading out under a low bank of clouds where earth met heaven.

And it was heavenly, in a way thats impossible to describe to anyone who hasnt launched themselves on a snowboard into that clean, empty space where the only sound is the soft whisper of acceleration and all youre conscious of is a weightless, floating and buoyant exhilaration.

I was addicted to powdered snow. The crystals are tiny and dry and lighter than air, the polar opposite of the fat, wet and heavy snow that turns to slush even as you maneuver through it. Fresh powder gets thrown up in shimmering sheets as you make turns and cutbacks across the crest of a mountain in those precious few hours just after a storm. Your board glides over it with frictionless ease; nothing holding you down and nothing holding you back. Every sensation is heightened, every second stretches to eternity. You feel the flow beneath you, sliding past gravity in a vast white landscape, listening to yourself breathe or holding your breath as you hit a jump and suddenly youre airborne. The wind fills your lungs and the ecstasy of perfection overcomes you.

Theres the rush of speed that comes from meth. And then theres the rush of speed that comes from supercharging your senses in fresh powder. Theres no comparison. But then again, I didnt have to choose. I was addicted to both of them and in my mind they were intertwined. I lived for powder in one form or another. And before I could shake free of those twin addictions, I had to nearly die.

This is the story of that near-death experience, through the valley of the shadow of death and out the other side. Its a story of addiction, but its more than that. Its also about how you sometimes have to lose part of yourself, maybe even the part you love the most, before you can really know what makes you whole. Its a story about how finding your strength can come from reaching the limits of your endurance. About finding out if you never quit you will win. Its about God and the unknowable, unimaginable plan God has for our lives.

There was a time when I had no idea what that plan was. There was a time when I begged God to change His plan. And, finally, there was a time when I finally surrendered to His plan. They are all part of this story and one could not have happened without the other.

Until I survived an ordeal that would strip away every false assumption and easy belief I ever had, I thought I knew who I was. And as far back as I can remember, a big part of that identity had been about my feet.

That may sound weird. If most people were asked to single out their most important asset, they usually talk about their character and integrity, their mind or their heart or even their face. But for me, it was my feet. The carried me to victory after victory in my life, racking up one achievement after another. My footwork was what had earned me a place on the Boston Bruins lineup in the National Hockey League, the thrill of winning in the World Championships and the opportunity to play in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Everything I accomplished as an athleteand I accomplished a lot from a very young ageinvolved my feet in one way or another. Even on the slopes, as a professional rider, it was my feet that conveyed to me the sensations of soaring, gliding and jumping. They allowed me to master the terrain I was negotiating on every run, to make the split-second adjustments and last minute decisions that gave snowboarding its instinctive and spontaneous thrill. They were what kept me grounded and allowed me to soar.

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