Another skier was able to reach Poole in under a minute, Wissman says, freeing Poole from the slough that had partially buried him. "Billy was gasping for air but was conscious at that point," able to say his name and his phone number. "But he got less and less coherent as the minutes went by." He was flown by helicopter to University Hospital, where he died.

Poole started skiing at age 3 at Snowbowl in his hometown of Missoula, Mont. When his family moved to Massachusetts, he told Powder's Josh Rhea, the East Coast skiing depressed him. "I'd go to the mountain and just scratch my head."

He skied recreationally during high school, but his real sport then was wrestling, says his mother, Phyllis Erck. It wasn't until his last semester in college — a brief respite at Montana State following three years at the University of New Hampshire — that he started doing extreme skiing. And that meant leaving behind a career in civil engineering to hang in the air over snow.

"He had a very intense approach to life," says Erck. "He lived life to the fullest. And he loved the outdoors and the mountains." Although Erck says she was terrified by his career choice, she knows he died doing the thing he loved most.

"All of our moms are always scared for us," says Wissman. "It's one of those things we talk about — 'Well, what did your mom say?"'

In the summers, Poole worked as a carpenter, framing houses. In the winter he lived off his savings and several sponsorships, traveling in recent years to Japan, Argentina and Alaska to be filmed and photographed as he sailed through the air. Wissman, who has photographed Poole for five years, describes him as a superb athlete and a man who had a passion for every place he visited and every mountain he skied. "I've worked with the world's top skiers and snowboarders, and he was one of the best."

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com