ESPN Freeskiing

[Ed's note: Telluride-based writer Rob Story contributed this piece to ESPN Freeskiing commemorating Jack Carey. RIP, Jack.]

Doug Berry

"Captain Jack" Carey, 1944-2009

The death of Jack Carey matters on the sports scene. No, he wasn't some slightly misspelled member of the Harry/Skip/Chip Caray broadcasting dynasty. No, this wasn't the baseball writer for USA TODAY with the exact same name. This was "Captain Jack," a legend in the Telluride, Colorado and Red Mountain, British Columbia ski areas and many other mountains in between.

Captain Jack, an all-around jock, was road biking off Southwest Colorado's 10,222-foot Lizard Head Pass July 17 when he was hit by a pickup truck. He died within seconds. Carey was traveling on the shoulder of CO Hwy. 145 when he turned into the car lane. He had started a loop back—to close the gap between he and his wife, a maneuver he commonly executed—and apparently didn't notice the Ford Ranger behind him. The right side of the Ranger's windshield struck Carey, flipping him over the truck. The truck's driver was not charged, and there was no indication of alcohol, drugs, or excessive speed.

Captain Jack grew up in New Hampshire, where as a child he climbed up old logging roads before skiing down them, hardly making a turn, in a tuck. But he left skiing a long while to play hoop, since he was an athletic 6-foot-4. He balled through high school, college and the Air Force. In the military, he was based near Kansas City. At the same time, so was TWA's huge flight attendant school, and Jack sometimes regaled listeners with tales of chasing budding stewardesses (it was the '70s; they weren't called flight attendants then, and almost none were male).

Telluride Mountain Man - Jack Carey

He didn't get back into skiing till he was in his late-20s when he moved with a buddy to Steamboat Springs, CO. That's where he also took up hang gliding. In 1974, however, a hang glider was killed in Steamboat, and the local peaks were closed to hang gliding. So Captain Jack moved to the Telluride area, where the thermals were huge, owing to the confluence of nearby desert and the nation's highest concentration of 14,000-foot peaks. He set a hang-gliding record in the '80s when he became the first to fly above 20,000 feet; indeed, he got to 21,000 feet, not very far below the cruising altitude of transcontinental jets!

Telluride—which was a tiny, embryonic ski town when he moved here and still has less than 2,500 year-round residents—has no traffic helicopter of course. But it does have a community radio station, and Jack periodically strapped a remote broadcasting unit to his back, launched off Gold Hill in his hang glider, and reported to an amused town his descriptions of the mountains, the rivers and the trees. With his deep, life-long New England accent, rivers were always "rivahs."

He stayed near Telluride the rest of his life. Despite a lack of steady instruction, much less a race heritage, Captain Jack became one of Telluride's most hardcore skiers. On powder days, he showed up hours before lifts opened so he could snag the first chair. When he got face shots, it was a spectacular scene, for Jack wore a foot-long, Santa Claus beard for decades. The chin-puppet made him an icon. Pictures of him mountain biking were published often in BIKE Magazine and he appeared on the cover of SKI Magazine.

He busted ass in the summers, clearing timber, so he could spend his winter days skiing. He worked for Telluride Sports many years, raving about new gear to customers who couldn't possibly miss a towering guy with a bald head and Gandalf beard.

Jack's skiing jones governed his work life. He busted ass in the summers, clearing timber, so he could spend his winter days skiing. He worked for Telluride Sports many years, raving about new gear to customers who couldn't possibly miss a towering guy with a bald head and Gandalf beard. He became especially famous in British Columbia, where he'd go every winter to be a starter for International Free Skiing Association (IFSA) competitions, including the Fernie Freeskiing Challenges and Red Resort Canadian Freesking Championships. Competitors spoke of him being there, encouraging a good run when the weather was positively nasty and the crowds had all gone home.

He regularly dusted skiers half his age. Former heli-ski guide Brian O'Neill of Telluride tells of a story when Jack joined him and former World Extreme Skiing Championships winner Dean Cummings for a descent of Telluride's gnarly Sheep Chute: "Captain was by far our senior but he kept up with us all day as we did a variation on the climb, unintentionally of course. At one point we had to climb a tree and jump over onto a rock and snow face with ski boots on and skis on our packs. Captain was so in his element and energized I was blown away. He was climbing and skiing with some of the world's best and it made him feel like he was 20 years old because he was on an adventure with his friends."

On the final day of Telluride's ski season, when everybody drinks too much and flouts rules, Jack joined a bunch of friends, including me, for a poach down closed terrain, just to ski powder. We'd grabbed him at a slopeside bar, and he had drank more than the rest of us, not expecting a powder poach. But he nailed it, even though the uphill slog out crushed even the most fit of skiers.

Since 2002, Jack had become an avid poker player. He always liked to compete. He played in my Tuesday night game regularly. He enjoyed a pretty good spring and early summer, winning often. Just days before he died, he sat next to me at our Tuesday game. That Tuesday was a poor one for the Captain; I don't believe he won a single hand. But his damages that night probably were less than $60. A tolerable loss—nothing near like what happened three days later, a terrible, terrible loss from which Telluride will never really recover.

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