Fear of Falling

Years ago, I had a great volunteer job over the Mountainfilm weekend: I would get up before the sun and lead anyone who wanted to go on a ski tour from Ophir to Telluride via East Bear Creek. The festival was smaller then. Just one theater – the Sheridan Opera House. And films were programed only in the evenings, so festivalgoers could get out and climb or ski during the day.

One crunchy, blue-snow morning in 1988, I found myself hiking with a solo festival guest, a powerfully built but shy seeming, somehow reticent young man named John Harlin III.