It is important to affirm, and prove, that we go to the mountains to live and not to die, that we are not fanatics but firm believers, and that the few accidents which occur are hard but not useless lessons. – Guido Rey, Italian alpinist, 1861-1935
One year after an avalanche swept Melissa Hornbein over a cliff, the day came back to haunt her. In May 2012, the memory manifested in a wave of panic just as she and partner Aaron Gams crested a ridge on Taylor Mountain, on the western side of Wyoming’s Teton Pass. It was a bluebird morning, and the snow was bulletproof after a hard freeze the night before, still hours from warming into spring corn. The two were traversing under a cornice cemented to the mountain when the fear hit her like a punch to the gut.
Unable to breathe, heart pounding, suddenly soaked in sweat, she froze. Hornbein was certain that the snow was about to slide out from beneath
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