Carlin Houston, a 23-year-old paratrooper with the U.S. Army's 501st Airborne Infantry Regiment, traversed the slopes of Big Mountain with relative ease, looking every bit the part of a seasoned snowboarder Flylow jacket, baggy Goretex pants, mirrored goggles despite having never set foot on snow.
For the servicemen who recently visited Whitefish, the opportunity to process their recent combat experience with other veterans in a setting far removed from the base in Fort Bragg, and even further removed from the recent conflict in Afghanistan, was both healing and surreal.