Brittany's Blog

As a 4-year-old, after his unrepentant hippie parents had moved him to a teepee in the Idaho panhandle, he scampered to the top of his first summit – Clifty, a lovely 2000-meter escarpment with a sweeping view of the Kootenai River valley below – a valley he and his family called home until answering the Green Mountains’ beckoning call in 1979.

Holland, Vermont – as unpretentious a Vermont town as exists – its proximity to Jay Peak and a moderately obsessive, ski-patrol neighbor launched his skiing career with gusto. Nearly every weekend morning saw the pre-dawn arrival of the neighbor who sipped thick, black coffee while Jack bundled into hand-me-down winter garb, gathered his well-used equipment and headed off in Bruce’s Datsun for Jay Peak where the most snow and the coldest skiing in Vermont prevail. For the next ten or so years, Jack was a fixture at Jay Peak, as much a part of the landscape as the Kitzbeuhel or the glades he helped pioneer – black diamond terrain unsurpassed in the East. Whether sipping hot chocolate at the Snow Job or as one of the youngest ski instructors ever, Jay was his home-away-from-home – or was that what Holland was to Jay Peak?

His nascent passion for mountains was never confined to the winter months. By the time he was 18, he’d hiked Vermont’s Long Trail from Massachusetts to Canada with his family. He’d attended the Green Mountain Conservation Camp – twice. He’d spent a summer doing trail and bridge work with the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps on the side of Camel’s Hump; a season with the Green Mountain Club’s Long Trail Patrol and a long stint building trails for US Forest Service out of the Rochester Ranger District.

It’s said that skiing the ice of the East is better training for skiing the West’s powder than vice versa. So a year or so after he graduated from North Country Union High School in 1992, the lure of the West’s deep powder and endless couloirs proved irresistible. He aimed his tips toward Crested Butte, Colorado and settled in for the next phase of his mountain love affair. While he came back to Vermont for visits he never “looked back” – for the next 17 years he called Colorado’s Rockies and British Columbia’s Coast Range home.

Just as Jay Peak has been spared the glitter and hype of a Killington or Stowe, Crested Butte was the perfect analog for Jack to land at – serious about skiing and shunning the trappings of a “resort,” he found his niche. Embodying the “work hard/play hard” ethos of his new found community of friends he blossomed and grew on both fronts. First as a landscaper and then as a carpenter, he managed to feed his mountain habits by following the annual rhythm of gathering enough financial acorns in good weather to ski all winter – to spend endless hours ripping remote lines on the back of “the Butte” and in the access-challenged peaks looming out of this bucolic valley.

There he also parlayed his fledgling Vermont hunting skills into standard fare for the dinner table in the form of regular success in harvesting Colorado’s elk. Never one to take the easy path, he had stories of downing an 800-pound animal in a roadless area and packing out quarters on his back. You could taste the effort in the gourmet home-made jerky he sent home to tantalize us here in Vermont. In another era he might have been at home trapping beaver and hunting “Griz” with Jedediah Smith or Jim Bridger.

There too he embarked on a circuit that had its roots in Crested Butte – the world of “extreme skiing” competitions. In the same way that a competitive diver who miscues slightly on a difficult dive might receive a higher score than a diver who nails an easy one, much of the scoring in extreme skiing hinges on the difficulty of the line chosen and the finesse with which the skier navigates that line. No terrain in the East could qualify as an extreme competition setting, save perhaps the headwall at New Hampshire’s Tuckerman Ravine. To say the format encourages “pushing the envelope” is an understatement – and push it Jack did. His list of podium visits is impressive including perhaps his most gratifying moment when he took first in the 2003 US Freeskiing Championships before the home-town crowd at Crested Butte. But Kirkwood, Snowbird, Whistler and other venues saw Jack take honors as well.

In Crested Butte he also met his future bride – house painter, artist and fellow extreme competitor, Laura Ogden. In 2005 she won the North American Freeskiing Tour, and in 2006 she took the World Freeskiing Tour in a clean sweep – woman aplenty to match Jack’s passions for sure! Their tours on the circuit gave them a taste of elsewhere and British Columbia’s more consistent snow and proximity to Laura’s family in Tacoma, Washington lured them northward.

In 2007 they moved full-time to Pemberton, B. C. – another bucolic, unspoiled valley with majestic Mount Currie for its backdrop. In 2008 they wed in a backyard ceremony celebrated by extended and complex families and a teaming host of friends. Their wedded lives launched in grand style, Laura settled into nursing school while Jack rode the crest of a building boom related somewhat to the pending arrival of the Winter Olympics in nearby Whistler.

Hundreds of miles of untrammeled wilderness and un-skied peaks range north out of Pemberton. Their thirst for competitive honors quenched, they channeled their zeal toward the shear joy of planning and executing first descents of peak after peak in this snowbound playing field. Snow machines, helicopters, crampons, ice axes, climbing skins and endurance all played parts in satisfying these urges. Their skills attracted more than one film company and many photographers. The internet abounds in visual accounts of their triumphs.

While Jack and Laura ranged far and wide in pursuit of fresh lines, Mt. Currie was their familiar haunt – it was “their” mountain. Virtually in their backyard and with an available heli ride for themselves and two friends, it was to Mt. Currie they headed on March 31, 2010. It was a perfect powder day, fantastic weather and a memorable run was the result. Stopping to put on skins for the rolling trek back to civilization, the serenity and satisfaction was interrupted by the freight-train sound of a Class 3 avalanche careening down the couloir they’d just skied. All raced for the safety of nearby ledges; all but Jack made it. It was over in seconds. A Class 3 avalanche is defined as capable of crushing cars and small buildings – Jack’s life was likely snuffed before the snow settled. His companions reached him in moments and had him extracted soon thereafter, but there was not life left to save. These were among the most experienced and well-equipped backcountry skiers in the world. They had avalanche beacons, avalanche probes, cell phones and thousands of hours of backcountry experience among them, but the suddenness of the tragedy proved to be a greater force than preparedness and skill.

Jack leaves behind his beloved Laura and her family on the West Coast, his mother, Carolyn Hannan and her husband Peter Moskovites of West Charleston, VT; “the dad he grew up with,” Paul Hannan, his wife Cornelia Carey and their daughter, Jack’s sister, Adelaide Hannan of Calais, VT; his brother, Cedar Hannan and his partner Jennifer Linck of Craftsbury, VT; his birth father, George Reeves, his wife Roseann and their sons Richard and Ian of Anacortes, WA, and relatives far and wide. More friends and admirers than there are ski lines in the Coast Range grieve his passing, with wonderful thoughts posted in various internet venues to bear witness to that truth and to the humility and spirit that accompanied Jack’s accomplishments.