Home »
Ten years gone
Kootenay Crust
By Ian Cobb
Ten years ago today a man who embodied the spirit of the East Kootenay left us.
Bored with all this terrestrial mucking about, trapped in a limited body, Roger Keith Madson blasted off for the great beyond.
His passing tore through the Columbia Valley, and around the world, because Madson could not be killed. Indeed, he was always the last one standing and the first to show up for work.
A true child of the East Kootenay, born and raised in Invermere, Madson co-pioneered glacier skiing, first using planes and later helicopters.
Imagine landing a plane outfitted with skis on a glacier, politely having your guests disembark with a guide, and then having to take off. There is only one crack at it – racing downhill on a glacier toward sheer rock/ice cliffs, with the skis stuck beneath surface crust. Pulling, pulling, swearing, swearing, certain death nearing, pulling, swearing – and the powerful Pilatus breaks free at the last second. With chunks of high alpine snow sheering and puffing away, it roars skyward, echoing off the Purcell Mountain-sides. Just another day on the job for Madson and the daring souls who called him friend and boss.
Roger Madson embodied ‘work hard/play hard.’
His struggles to build RK Heli-ski Panorama Ltd. were of the like that would crush most people a few yards from the starting line. Government tenures, changing rules and regulations, safety-safety-safety first and always and the myriad of challenges posed by operating a customer service/tourism business, kept RK running hot at all times.
As a result, he enjoyed cooling down with a few friends and no one cooled down with more style and panache than RK. Anyone who had even a single experience playing with Roger would stop, smile wide and proceed to tell a story with laughter and amazement, should you ask.
“Are we having fun yet?” Roger would often ask. It was a double-edged question because he’d ask it when he was entertaining his many friends or when he was brainstorming to find a way to solve a business (see also: government) problem.
If government regulations got in his way – like water – he’d find his way past them. RK was of the old school of Crown land users – men who did what they knew they had to and were prepared to deal with the fallout when it arrived. And he did.
I spent many an hour sitting with Roger, serving as a sounding board and test subject. It usually went like this.
I would be sitting at my desk at work (I was the editor of the paper in Invermere), finishing my last cup of coffee of the day – circa 3 p.m. The phone would ring.
Roger’s voice – firm but with a twinkle in it – “Is it happy hour yet?”
You just couldn’t say no to Roger. I’d end up at his lakeside home, directly across the lake from Invermere, either on the deck or in the yurt, and happy hour would get underway. But it was never just about twisting our brains – it was always about using them. Roger had a perpetual flip or pie chart mania going. He loved his pie charts!
He simply never stopping thinking or working, even when he was playing; which in more than 20 years living here I have found is the embodiment of the East Kootenay spirit.
His patient equal – his wife Jenny – would eventually arrive home from work and those who may have gathered at Chez Madson for that particular day’s sermon/program/safety meeting would drift off home or end up at the White House Hotel.
At the eastern end of the White House’s bar is Madson Road – where Roger held court countless times. It was where I had the fortune of meeting him.
Our first encounter didn’t make me think we’d one day become friends.
There had been a fair amount of snow in the high country in the fall of 1991 and I was directed by my editor to write a story about early avalanche worries. Naturally, a call to the local heli-skiing company would provide me with the best local information. I called Roger, who I’d never met before, but had heard about. I’d heard he was ‘the king of the valley;’ a legend in the ski world and one of the movers and shakers in the community. This is a man who would chainsaw a hole in a bar wall to accommodate a gathering too large for the space provided, I’d heard.
Roger took my call. “Yeah?” He barked.
I identified myself and about half way through explaining why I was calling, he shouted, “Fuck off!” And hung up.
Seems a previous reporter, some 10 or so years before, had burned him and that was that for The Valley Echo. I vowed to scowl at him henceforth and tout suite. Later I got a call from one of RK’s guides who answered my questions.
A couple of years later we found ourselves chatting in Madson Road, drifting in and out of the murky bar light, and that was that. We became better friends over the years and, upon reflection since his untimely death in 2002, I realize that he was also a mentor.
It saddens me to think what more Roger would have taught me; what more fun we would have had on frozen Lake Windermere or at Leona Creek or atop an unnamed peak, or in the White House, or on his deck or at ‘the plex’ or with fireworks and fabulous astronautic madness.
I can’t believe it has been 10 years since Phil Cleland and I retrieved his ashes on a cold, rainy night in Athalmer, and before we took him home to Jenny, we took him to the White House one last time for a few rounds of tequila. The world-wide tequila industry would have felt a sharp ripple from Roger’s death. There would have been layoffs.
With each shot knocked back by the teary-eyed mob in the bar, a shot would be poured on the box containing his ashes. When we eventually took him home, the box was wrinkled and sagging and I could feel Roger smiling.
It was a hard time after he died. Speaking for myself, and I know for a great number of other folks in the valley, a light went out.
Again, on reflection since 2002, Roger’s death signaled the end of an era in the Columbia Valley. It was the tipping point where ‘the old way’ parted for the ‘new way’; where the influx of new residents surpassed the ‘born and raised.’ Forestry and mining and Christmas treeing and building communities from the edges of the wilderness – replaced by second homes and tourism.
The world has gone on since then, as it does. Roger’s good friend Tom did him a solid by buying the business he and Jenny put so much heart and soul into. Jenny has remarried and Roger would be pleased to know that she is well and happy. His children, Christy and Shaw, are chips off the old block – quality people through and through.
But Madson Road remains silent. The spark that Roger brought to the Columbia Valley – the spirited embodiment he represented – lingers only in the hearts and minds of those who were so damned fortunate to know and love him.
And they are legion. On this day – to all ‘Madsonites’ – may you lift a glass of your favourite, and higher praise to you if it’s a tequila, and offer a cheers and a toast to ‘the king of the valley.’
Ten years gone; we miss you Rog. Cheers!
Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
Lead image: Roger Madson (circa mid 1990s) jokingly showcasing a sample of his paper work and files related to the Jumbo Glacier Resort project proposal, which impeded his ability to grow his business and, which he feared would kill his business.
