Black Diamond Presents: The Human Factor, a five-part multi-media story that investigates the decisions skiers make in avalanche terrain. Starting November 11th, every Tuesday for five weeks, a new chapter will be released. This week's segment, released on November 18th, focuses on how individuals who find themselves in avalanche terrain perceive the risk of having an accident as well as the factors that play into their final decisions.

nickelordime

-Written By David Page

IT WAS THE LAST DAY OF 2013 when Jake Merrill and his girlfriend, Katie Griffith, set out from Bellingham, Washington, in separate vehicles packed with ski gear and their dog, Cedar, bound for the Wallowas. Merrill had just graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in Outdoor Recreation and Leadership. He'd heard about Wallowa Alpine Huts (WAH) from his friend Ryan Ghelfi, who'd guided there the year before. He'd emailed a resume earlier in the fall, highlighting his month-long glacier travel course in Alaska with NOLS, his winter alpine training with John Minier's Mount Baker Mountain Guides, and a 10-week professional internship with Larry Goldie and North Cascades Mountain Guides out of Mazama, where he'd covered everything from tweeting to complex rescue techniques, as well as cheerily humping up a glaciated volcano with a 100-pound pack containing, among other sundries, a freshly baked chocolate cake.

In November, he'd gotten an email from WAH owner Connelly Brown offering him his first bona fide (read: paid) guiding job. "He was all fired up," Goldie recalled this past summer, reclining on a couch outside his attic office in Mazama. Griffith lay curled up at the other end. "If Katie wasn't gonna go, he hoped their relationship would survive it, but he was going."

"I was like, 'Sure, I'll go. Why not?'" said Griffith. She figured they'd both work for three months down in Oregon, save some money, then travel in Thailand or Nicaragua for a while before starting jobs at Outward Bound that summer.

January was tough for the couple, with no room of their own to get away from the others and little snow. "There were all these new guides—like nine of them," Griffith said. "And no work." In early February, when Merrill saw his name on the online schedule as tail guide for a four-night trip heading up on the 9th, he was over the moon. Not Aspirant, not Powder Slave, but Assistant Guide! He wondered why he'd been chosen over others with more experience, like Ryan Matz. But he wasn't going to argue. This was what he'd always wanted to do. This was what he was here for. And as Matz would later write to me, "Although he probably wouldn't say it, he knew he'd earned the spot."

Finish Reading The Human Factor, Chapter 2: Nickel or Dime? on powder.com