Part Four of Snow (from upcoming book)

The group consisted of a branded adventurer and a goofy Japanese TV personality, along with two expert Japanese skiers. Toshio san, “Tosh” was handsome, determined and portrayed as always a step ahead.  He was a mover in politics and in life. Kazuo “Kaz” was the TV-made anti-hero of a popular reality series. On camera and on queue Tosh became all-knowing and unflinching, while Kaz made inane comments and tried to run away from every risk. When the camera was off, they were both fairly normal and equally capable. Each adventure, with hero and resident idiot, was scripted, edited and packaged to maintain their assigned roles and to meet the expectations of their huge national viewer audience in Japan.  It all left Snow scratching her head.

The pros were more straightforward. Tadashi “Toad” and Michio “Mich” were both level four instructors, with considerable heli-skiing experience. They were all business and were ultimately responsible for the quality of the skiing shots. Tosh and Kaz were already good skiers, but had been up on the Snow Cats for four straight days tuning up their powder skills. Snow was impressed with everyone’s work ethic. She also sensed that she had been cast in a specific role as well. She was waiting to see what it would be.

They had left their Snow Cat transportation at approx 3000 meters and been on foot, going straight up the ridge line for close to two hours. For the first hour of their climb, a camera crew had been with them and another film crew in a helicopter had tracked their progress.  Periodically, when they stopped to drink or rest, the Tosh and Kaz would go into their shtick, providing a kinetic and totally unintelligible commentary with much arm waving and vista pointing. They were enamored with her and she had to appear in almost every shot. She assumed that someone would voice-over her commentary with something in context once all the footage hit the studio. So most of her comments were intentionally nonsensical. She was waiting for one of them to break into perfect English and embarrass her, but, so far, no one had questioned her running commentary on snow boarding Sasquatches and unseen, lurking snow snakes.