ON AN UNCOMMONLY SUNNY WINTER DAY on Prince of Wales Island, at the southern end of the Alaska Panhandle, my old friend Andrew Mattox and I stand on telemark skis atop a snowy logging road in the Tongass National Forest, staring down at the gently sloping, 600-foot-long clear-cut upon which we plan to carve magnificent first tracks. We are caffeinated to the point of Tourette's and fidgeting with excitement.

I creak like the Tin Man, dressed as I am in a used lacrosse helmet with metal face guard, motocross chest armor, roller-hockey breezers, soccer shin guards, elbow pads, and a backpack filled with such last-minute sundries as a 30-pound, 18-inch chainsaw.

Roo, as I call him, is less concerned with safety. He wears a helicopter flight helmet (complete with boom mike), one of those blue-pinstriped hickory shirts favored by railroadmen and loggers, and a canvas kilt over bare legs. He's accessorized with a hip sheath for his brush saw, an orange buccaneer's sash, a snap-away pink cape, and, over the kilt, a Kevlar loincloth with a skull and crossbones that he sewed up in a flurry of enthusiasm.

"Remind me why I'm doing this?" he asks.

Below us, two-foot-wide stumps jut up through the thin veneer of snow in every direction. Snapped limbs lance sideways, abandoned logs traverse the hillside like parking barricades, and under it all is slash, a false floor of twisted limbs and rotted wood.

"You won rock, paper, scissors," I reply.

We gaze downslope. "No," corrects Roo, embodiment of the modern barbarian and master of the non sequitur. "I'm doing it for the children!"

With that, he poles off like a World Cup downhiller, trumpeting a loud "Yarrr!" He vanishes over the false horizon of a decaying log, then reappears in a low telemark crouch, leaning far back, picking up speed until his tips skim over the dog-hair bristle of slash poking through. He rides up over brush piles and debarks branches, his buccaneer's sash flapping. His first ten turns are nothing short of glorious.