"Everything has changed," he said. "My relationship with Erika [his fiancé] has gotten stronger, and my bond with [her children] has gotten closer. My priorities seem to be pretty straight right now. I have a focus that I haven't had in a long time. And that feels really good."

Franzen, who was raised in Breckenridge and still lives there, healed while he hiked. "The doctors wanted me to be in the cleanest environment I could be in, and that for me is being outside," he said. "It was snowing every day, so there wasn't a lot of pollen or mold in the air. The doctors encouraged me to get exercise, so I spent a bunch of time right after Thanksgiving hiking Peak 10 and riding powder.

Devon O'NeilDropping in off the North Pole at A-Basin.

"I'd go do one hike a day. Two weeks later, I started adding a second hike, and then before long, a third. I was up there for a couple hours, mainly by myself. I just wanted to be out there and think about things -- kind of mull over what I just went through."

The lymphoma has a decent chance of returning within the first two years of a transplant, so Franzen knows he's still in the danger zone. This can lead to some tense moments when you've been through 15 rounds of chemo.

"Each time I go in for a PET scan anxiety is a little high," Franzen said. "I was pretty optimistic that the scans would come back clear, but there's just that little bit in there that you question, like, oh please..."

It had been more than a decade since Franzen had hiked the North Pole ridge at A-Basin. After a quick slush run off the Montezuma Bowl cornice, we started booting up. Franzen dropped in first and ripped down to the spine below, where an untouched pocket of dry powder rewarded our quick left turn. Even when Franzen starfished after exiting the chute into gloppier snow, he came up smiling.

We did one more North Pole hike and a few over on the Pali chair, where Franzen showed me a gnarly little hidden rock line he'd hit many years ago, then we hustled across the highway and called it a day. We were both so psyched to score such a good session in mid-May that we high-fived in the parking lot.

"I might just end my season on that note," Franzen said, a huge grin stretching across his face.