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The Isolation Issue

O F F R I E N DS AN D
F I RST D E SCE NTS p. 64
Sometimes you go on an expedition for the
objective; other times you arrive, and the
objective finds you. That’s what happened
when Christina Lustenberger, Brette
Harrington, Hilaree Nelson and Emily
Harrington spotted an untouched couloir
from their charter plane on their way to
the eastern coast of Baffin Island. The first
descent Lustenberger and Brette Harrington
logged was a feat, but the women left more
struck by the relationships they formed.
B U S I N E SS AN D
P LE AS U R E p. 74
A dirt road dead-ends at the start of
a cat track. This is the final leg of the
journey to Argentina’s newest resort,
El Azufre—designed by skiers for
skiers. While a heli-skiing op, multiple
ski lifts and high-end lodging are in
the master plan, José Beccar and Dani
Nofal—the men behind El Azufre—
are committed to keeping the resort
ski-bum friendly with high mountain
refugios and an emphasis on touring.
TU R N S ALL YE AR p. 84
From Mt. Shasta in California to Mt. Rainier
in Washington, Cascade volcanoes have
long inspired anyone who ventured beneath
them. Glacier-draped peaks like these with
up to 10,000 vertical feet of skiing are a
rarity, and the Pacific Northwest’s historically
deep winters, abundant glaciers and mild
summers create the perfect circumstances
for year-round skiing. But with glaciers
receding, taking with them the quality
corn snow that used to persist through
the fall, how much longer will it last?

In a long-running Cascadian tradition, Tyler Roemer and

crew spend a night above Oregon’s Crater Lake, the
deepest in the U.S. at 1,943 feet. Tyler Roemer
 DEPARTMENTS

Editor’s Note 17 | Letters 18 | Spectacle 20 | Depth 105

D E POS ITI O N
14 Perspective 
We’ve all felt the glow of golden hour just before
the sun sets. Capturing that ephemeral moment of
ideal light, especially far up in the mountains, isn’t
easy—plus it requires a ski down in the dark.

31 Straight Lines
Betsy Manero finds the bad kind of snow record, Blair
Anne Hensen breaks down backcountry psychology,
and Brendan Koch leaves his guilt behind.

B LOWN I N
38 Two Feet and a Heartbeat
Mt. Hood up and down in one hour, 31 minutes. The
80-mile Bugs to Rogers Pass Traverse in 44 hours, 37
minutes. Backcountry skiing Fastest Known Times—or
FKTs—are falling almost as fast as skiers are moving.

45 Mountain Skills: Expedition Planning

Internationally certified mountain guide
Erin Smart knows a successful trip requires
a solid plan and a strong team.

49 Gearbox: Camping Gear and Powsurfers

Tents, sleeping bags and more that make winter
camping feel like home. Plus, ride the binding-
free trend with these four powsurfers.

57 On Location: Svaneti, Georgia

Wedged between 18,000-foot peaks and a UNESCO
World Heritage Site with 1,000-year-old buildings
sits Svaneti, Georgia, an unlikely ski town in the
Caucasus Mountains that has persisted through
historic avalanches, the Iron Curtain and civil war.

B LOWN O UT
103 Biff America
Sometimes you end up stranded in a nudist
colony with missing nuts…. Well, at least, Biff
America does. But a good attitude and healthy
perspective go a long way in a sticky situation.

More than 100 miles above the Swedish Arctic

Circle, Chad Sayers finds cold snow, blue skies
and swooping lips formed by the region’s
intense winds. Mattias Fredriksson
 CONTRIBUTORS

Rider in Chief Drew Zieff is a landlocked surfer

who scratches the itch by splitboarding and
powsurfing in his backyard Sierra (and occasionally
surfing the North Shore—of Lake Tahoe, that is).
On p. 53, he shares what he learned after testing
powsurfers and accessories at home as well as on
backcountry breaks in Japan and the Wasatch.
Growing up in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, Mary
McIntyre came to enjoy long days spent exploring at
an early age. While currently reimagining her path due
to illness, she loves to combine her interest in travel,
history and personal connection to share stories of the
world’s people and places, such as a trip to a 1,000-year-
old town in Georgia that she writes about on p. 57.
Drew Smith is a photographer and mountain athlete. His
multifaceted talents and pride for the people he works
with have launched his career, earning him a diverse set
of collaborators. Smith continually hones his unique
style, drawing out the quintessential harmonies and
frictions from nature and athlete alike. He captures this
Brian Mohr, Matt Power, Christian Pondella, Tyler Roemer, Carl Skoog
in a photo essay about a trip to Baffin Island on p. 64.
Editor in Chief | Betsy Manero
betsy@backcountrymagazine.com
Art Director | Mike Lorenz
mlorenz@backcountrymagazine.com
Managing Editor | Tom Hallberg
tom@backcountrymagazine.com
Associate Editor | Greta Close
greta@backcountrymagazine.com
Senior Editors | Craig Dostie, John Dostal
Rider in Chief | Drew Zieff
Editors at Large | Jeff Burke
Tyler Cohen, Megan Michelson
Creative Editor | Sean Prentiss
Technical Editor | Lance Riek
Contributing Writers | Jeffrey Bergeron
Heather Hansman, Mike Horn, Brigid Mander, Mary McIntyre
Andrew McLean, Devon O’Neil, Drew Pogge, Ryan Stuart
Senior Photographers | Jay Beyer, Adam Clark, Lee Cohen
Jason Hummel, Oskar Enander, Mattias Fredriksson
Grant Gunderson, Matt Kiedaisch, Iz La Motte
Fredrik Marmsater, Bruno Long, Ming Poon
Contributing Photographers | Louis Arevalo, Adam Barker
Chris Bezamat, Chris Christie, Ryan Creary, Jeff Cricco, Jay Dash
Liam Doran, Guy Fattal, Mark Fisher, Jay Goodrich
Jim Harris, Ryan Irvin, Christoph Johann, Blake Jorgenson
Reuben Krabbe, Steve Lloyd, Scott Markewitz, Mary McIntyre
Andrew Strain, Dave Trumpore, Sam Watson, Noah Wetzel
Colin Wiseman, Adam Ü, Greg Von Doersten

Riding his bike around the streets of Portland, Oregon, as a

kid, Managing Editor Tom Hallberg used to gaze at Mt. Hood’s
crystalline slopes. He started backcountry snowboarding
Editor & Publisher | Adam Howard
after college, climbing and riding the volcanoes that are howie@holpublications.com
unmistakable across the Pacific Northwest’s skylines. On p. Publisher | Justin Reyher
justin@holpublications.com
84, he shares the stories of these peaks, the big slopes hidden Associate Publisher | Paul Davis
by long walks and a deep snowpack that lingers for months. paul@holpublications.com
CFO | Karen Huard
karen@holpublications.com
Business Manager | Michele Peoples
Jason Hummel did his first multiday winter traverse of michele@holpublications.com
Mt. Rainier when he was just 10 years old. A lifetime Subscriptions Manager | Holly Howard
subscriptions@holpublications.com
of exploring has inspired the photographer in him to Events and Partnerships Coordinator | John Costello
become a student and avid researcher of Washington’s john@holpublications.com
glacial history. Along the way, he has documented Account Executive | Conor Sedmak
conor@holpublications.com
his own epic multiday and multiyear projects in Events Coordinator | Meg Schultz
meg@holpublications.com
the Cascades, one of which is featured on p. 96.
Propellerhead | Duane Howard
The views expressed in Backcountry are those of the writers
and not necessarily those of the staff and owners of the
magazine. All activities described in this magazine carry
the risk of death or serious injury. Anyone who is not an
ON THE COVER expert should use an experienced, qualified guide or seek
qualified instruction before heading into the backcountry.
For professional skiers and photographers in pursuit of powder, the
compass points to all corners of the globe. Unfortunately for Tom SUBSCRIPTIONS
Peiffer and Guy Fattal, a trip to the Bella Coola Valley, renowned for 888.424.5857 or www.backcountrymagazine.com
its legendary snow and terrain, was uncharacteristically hampered by Rates: U.S. $39.95/6 issues; $64.95/12 issues
Canada – add $10.00 per year
bad conditions. Instead, they immersed themselves in the area’s First All other countries - add $20.00 per year
Nations history, dipped in hot springs and ate seafood plucked right All rates in U.S. Funds
from the ocean. Then the area’s exceptional snowfall returned for the tail Newsstand Coordinator:
end of their visit, helping Peiffer enjoy the fabled alpine. Guy Fattal Howard White & Associates: Hwhite9611@aol.com
Newsstand Distribution: Comag Marketing Group
Shop Sales: Height of Land Publications 888.424.5857
Contents copyright © 2023
by Height of Land Publications, LTD. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
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WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES GOLD
During the wee hours of dawn and the day’s final
moments, the sun crosses the horizon—or rather we,
subject to Earth’s orbit, spin past the sun. In those fleeting
minutes of transition between night and day—when the
clouds clear and weather permits—we are immersed in the
magic of the golden hour. Ephemeral and impermanent,
as captivating as the precious metal for which it’s named,
this evanescent moment elevates the value of its scarce
light. To experience this phenomenon when the rays of
light striking our planet hit their most flattering angle
is one thing; to capture it is another. For photographers
seeking that flickering, presunset glow thousands of
feet up in the mountains, the challenge only grows.
Last winter, in search of a heavily hunted, transitory
moment, Oskar Enander found the light he was looking
for, and Connery Lundin slashed the turn to make it all
worth it in Engelberg, Switzerland. Oskar Enander
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 EDITOR’S NOTE

Take a Knee

C
ourtney was lounging atop South Sister in a
full-body, fuzzy squirrel suit when we sum-
mited. “Sick costume,” Griffin told her. He
was known for rocking a banana suit on Gaper Day,
short shorts on Fourth of July and a safari hat anytime.
He laid in the snow, then pulled out something
he found below the surface—a frosty, dripping Smirn-
off Ice. Courtney gasped, her eyes wide. “That was
for him,” she exclaimed, pointing to her friend. But if
you’ve ever Iced, or been Iced, you know it’s a find-
er’s, keeper’s situation. Struck by the randomness, Griff
laughed, took a knee and housed the bottle.
I’ve had many memorable experiences on Cas-
cade volcanoes. On South Sister, again, I ran into
a pair of friends celebrating their engagement and
drank Champagne with them. On Mt. Rainier, a Ger-
man immigrant and her daughter fed me because I’d
underestimated how hungry I’d be. On Mt. Bachelor,
after the lifts stopped spinning in the spring, I’ve held
pond skimming contests with strangers. On Mt. Hood,
campers on Cooper Spur gave me fresh headlamp bat-
teries as I tried to complete the 42-mile Timberline Trail
circumnavigation in one day (I came up 4 miles short).
Cascade volcanoes can conjure images of
crowded slopes and dangerous newbies, but the flip
side is a sense of community among strangers and
friends simply there to have fun in the snow. Among
all my memories, that moment with Griff stands out
because of its unadulterated fun. With the sun shin-
ing and minimal wind, at least 60 people had made
the 5,000-foot walk up the tallest of the Three Sisters,
and the crowd laughed and cheered when he took
that knee.
It’s easy for mountaineers, on skis or otherwise, to
take themselves and their craft too seriously. Some of
that is with good reason: The stakes are high, the nec-
essary skills a lifetime commitment. When I’m caught
up in training or objective planning, I’m guilty of being
overly stuffy, too, but that seriousness misses why we
love skiing.
Griff died a couple of years after that trip—that’s not
the story I’m here to tell—but he always encapsulated
the fun of snowboarding, never its self-seriousness.
After the Ice was gone, we descended the south face.
Dreadlocks billowing, Griff wall rode a steep section,
then took a ridge into the flats. When Ellen and I joined
him, he bear-hugged us. “I’m so glad we did that,” he
said, beaming under a cheap pair of sunglasses, ecstatic
not about how fast we climbed or even that we’d sum-
mited, just stoked to be snowboarding with friends.
So, when you’re skiing in the sun this spring,
whether you’re setting a speed record or climbing
a volcano for the first time, Ice your friend, wear a
banana suit, talk to strangers, because you never
know. —Tom Hallberg

Lowell Skoog investigates the new summit of Mt. St.

Helens in 1985, five years after the mountain blew its
top, losing 1,300 feet of elevation. Carl Skoog

17
 LETTERS
Small Potatoes
[Editors’ Note: This letter is in response to the
letter “Leave the Cows Out of It,” which ran in
The Evolution Issue in December 2022.]
I love your magazine and applaud your
efforts to educate your readers on climate
change and environmental stewardship.
But I’m afraid some readers may get the
wrong idea about how best to help when
you publish letters condemning arti-
cles in your magazine because they have
pictures of meat and cheese! Seriously?
And this isn’t going where you think.
I’m not going to blame or cry hypoc-
risy at our community of backcountry
skiers with quivers of skis, boots, poles,
skins, beacons, probes, clothing, etc. made
of plastics and synthetic materials derived
from fossil fuels. Nope. That’s not seeing
LETTER OF THE MONTH
What’s Luck Got to Do With It?
[Editors’ Note: This letter is in response
to Ryan Stuart’s article “To Go Solo or
Not to Go Solo,” which ran in The 2023
Skills Guide in January 2023.]
Backcountry inspires people to get into the
backcountry (duh, the name!), and its photog-
raphy and content highlight people skiing in
some pretty awesome places. While the ethic
of backcountry risk is “to each their own,” I’m
going to get a bit judgy here, based on science.
The Skills Guide had a lot of great content
in it, particularly around prior planning and
encouraging skinners to take an avy class.
Everyone should take one every season.
From personal experience, I’m not going
into the wilds with people who won’t make
that investment in our collective safety.
We should be accountable for our own
behavior. Given the article “#worthit,” it is
clear an increasing number of backcoun-
try skiers aren’t. If you want to enjoy nature
by going out solo, make sure your family is
covered for the risk you are taking. If you want
to ski big lines, same. It’s not just you who pays
the price for that risk. If you need a rescue,
pay for it. Get rescue insurance. The article
“Blind Spots” covered the topic of healthcare
insurance but had a blind spot about rescue
insurance. I look forward to an article on that.
18
the forest for the trees. Let’s get real here.
Don’t be fooled by carbon footprint and
recycling guilt trips promoted by Big Oil to
distract us from what’s really needed. The
fact is approximately 100 fossil fuel compa-
nies are responsible for 71 percent of global
carbon emissions. The fossil fuel industry
popularized the term “carbon footprint” so
we would blame ourselves instead of them.
It doesn’t stop there. Recycling, our
most treasured act of environmentalism,
was another ploy pushed by Big Oil. Larry
Thomas, the former president of a plastics
lobbying group, said, “If the public thinks
that recycling is working, then they’re not
going to be as concerned about the environ-
ment.” The Environmental and Energy Study
Institute reported that direct subsidies from
the U.S. government to the fossil fuel indus-
try totaled $20 billion per year. Fossil fuels
Ryan Stuart’s Straight Lines essay “To Go
Solo, or Not to Go Solo?” had a phrase that
is grating on me: “Avalanches are unpredict-
able.” That misses perhaps the single most
valuable risk minimization insight of snow
science. Avalanches are actually predictable
on slopes under 30 degrees. You don’t get a
slab avalanche. That is a powerful insight.
Once you break 30 degrees, avalanches then
become unpredictable, and your risk has
increased exponentially, not linearly. Yes,
slopes are variable, and if there is terrain
power our comfort, convenience and trips to
backcountry ski destinations. They may also
be the architects of our impending doom, but
that is not likely to get us to change our ways.
Humans just aren’t a “sacrifice for the
greater good” kind of species. We’re going
to need our politicians to act now and to
act urgently, just like they’ve been saying
they would for decades. So, write a letter
to your local senator or congressperson
and VOTE! Let’s hold our officials account-
able to keep the promises they continu-
ally make and break. The uncomfortable
truth is that recycling your beer cans and
eating vegetarian is not going to fix the
climate crisis. Governments across the globe
must end our reliance on fossil fuels. And,
for God’s sake, leave the cows out of it!
RYAN SCHUSTER
JACKSON, WYOMING
above you that is more than 30 degrees, then
you have increased risk, and you should
always appreciate what could go wrong above
you and what your deposition situation is.
But you won’t read of someone dying
from an avalanche on a consistent sub-30-de-
gree slope. If you are skinning without
primary regard for the slope angle you plan
to be skiing and aren’t adept in the use of an
inclinometer, you are putting yourself (and
maybe others) on a whole ’nuther risk vector.
Does staying sub-30 make for less
exciting skiing? You betcha it does. But
you have taken luck largely out of the
equation. That’s what the science tells
us. Be well, have fun and stay safe.
PERRY BOYLE
KETCHUM, IDAHO
BETA SPRAYING
Topo maps to trailheads, avy reports to skintracks,
kickturns to face shots—we want to cover all the
grit and glory of the untracked experience. But we
know we don’t always stick the line, which is where
you come in. Enjoy the read? Tell us what you
love. Have some beta to share? Even better! Let
us know how we can improve. The author whose
letter we enjoy the most will receive a prize, like
this issue’s EVO4 avalanche beacon from Arva.
Send your letters to
tom@backcountrymagazine.com
for a chance to win.
HELLYHANSEN.COM

WITH COMES
SAFETY EMPOWERMENT

Rachael Efta and her team use

their training, knowledge and
trust in each other to open
the mountain.

RACHAEL EFTA, BIG SKY PATROLLER & MADISON ROSE OSTERGREN, PROFESSIONAL SKIER.
Spectacle
A 30-year love affair with her home mountain, Arlberg,
Austria, has made Nadine Wallner an expert when it
comes to slashing powder stashes. Pictured, Wallner
leans way into that expertise—and we mean way into it.
Daniel Bear
Izzy Lynch freezes, sunstruck—paralyzed
by the beauty of the rising sun—above
Black Peak Hut in New Zealand.
Zoya Lynch
While most skiers were sleeping off a hangover on New
Year’s Day, Eric Balken was getting a head start on his
resolution in the Wasatch: skiing more powder.
Jay Beyer
After a 5 a.m. start and two hours of hiking, Brooks Curran found a few fresh
turns on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont before the rain came in the next day. Dave
Trumpore jokes, “Classic New England...a ton of work for 10 powder turns.”
Dave Trumpore
Those not familiar with the Wasatch’s deep snowpack would call this
the best day of skiing of their season, or even their lives in some cases.
For Salt Lake City local Kyle Toohey, this is just a Tuesday morning.
Iz La Motte
A warm-up run doesn’t have to mean noodling down a
blue-square groomer. In Engelberg, Switzerland, Marcus
Caston went all-out on his first run of the day.
Oskar Enander
Crowds might plague many of the backcountry ski destinations in the
Lower 48, but Chris Davenport knows the secret to finding solace,
deep snow and mesmerizing light lies north in the Alaska Range.
Fredrik Marmsater
“Combined with the soft Arctic light and Olle Regnér’s
powerful skiing, I knew I had a knockout shot already
before I pressed the shutter button,” says Mattias
Fredriksson. Regnér explores deep turns while Fredriksson
explores the depth of field in Swedish Lapland.
Mattias Fredriksson
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 STRAIGHT LINES
SASHIMI AND K ÄSESPÄTZLE
by Betsy Manero
I n January 2020, I left my home in Victor, Idaho, for a trip to Japan with
my dad and brother. The 11-hour flight to Tokyo couldn’t dampen
my excitement for the legendary powder skiing I was sure to be heading
toward. Neither could losing my favorite sunglasses on the bullet train
to Hokkaido. Who needs sunglasses when it snows every day?
Turned out, I did need sunglasses. It barely snowed while we were
there. Meteorologists remember the 2019/20 season as Hokkaido’s
most balanced winter in recent memory, in which it was bluebird just
as many days as it was stormy—a sweet spin on one of the lowest snow
totals in the past 60 years. While we ’shwacked through willows that
were normally buried under 8 feet of snow, my ski partners posted
endless face shots in Grand Teton National Park on social media. In
the week I was away, January 2020 became Jackson Hole’s third-snow-
iest month on record.
When I booked the trip, I wanted the skiing to be the highlight.
Obviously, it wasn’t, so we found a different focal point. On the clear,
sunny days, we could see past towering volcanoes to the ocean in all
directions. At night, it was a rotating menu of ramen, Japanese curry
and sushi. My dad, brother and I still talk about the best piece of
sashimi we’ve ever had: a buttery tuna that just melted in our mouths.
This past January, I had déjà vu while packing for a trip to Austria.
The country was having an epically bad ski season. My social media
feed suggested news reports on what resorts in the Alps were doing to
combat their lack of snow. It wasn’t inspiring, especially given the deep
year the Tetons were having. In between untracked, waist-deep laps,
while setting a fresh skintrack on Teton Pass, I played with the idea of
bailing on the trip, wondering what the airline’s cancellation policy was.
After the 10-hour flight and a stint on the Autobahn, fat snowflakes
started to appear as our van climbed into the mountains. The craggy
peaks above the winding road disappeared in thick mists as we arrived
in the town of Altenmarkt. A snowplow clearing precipitation outside
our hotel woke me at 4 a.m., and I spent the rest of the morning lying
awake in anticipation.
The skiing was phenomenal. I made my deepest turns of the season
on quiet slopes under a blue sky. We continued to find cold powder
turns throughout the whole trip as we lapped open bowls and shady
glades, taking breaks only for slope-side lunches of schnitzel and
kaiserschmarrn.
On my last night in Austria, our crew toured up to a 100-year-
old hut for dinner, where one of the descendents of the people who
built the backcountry cabin served us käsespätzle—a fancy mac and
cheese—and radlers. A toast of zirbenschnaps was made to a week well
spent before we carved headlamp-lit turns back to our car.
Back home, over a cup of coffee, a friend asked what the highlight of
the trip was. I started to talk about the snow but quickly became side-
tracked describing the meal at the ancient hut and the pine-flavored
liqueur we sipped after dinner. As I recalled the mulled wine and stru-
del, the chalets and huts, I realized that perhaps the sashimi being the
highlight of my trip to Japan wasn’t just due to the low-tide year. After
all, powder turns can be found all over the world. What makes a trip
unique are the food, views and experiences that don’t involve skiing.
Editor in Chief Betsy Manero has a degree in media studies, journalism and digital arts
with a concentration in journalism and minors in political science and creative writing
from St. Michael’s College (and the dean of students did have to take a breath in the
middle of that during graduation).
Christoph Oberschneider
31
 STRAIGHT LINES
WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER KIND OF SAFETY?
by Blair Anne Hensen, LCPC
I t was my first spring ascent ever. My
roommate—a summer guide on
Denali—and I planned to ski with a
friend of his, also a guide. I had been
backcountry skiing for two seasons, and
before that my skiing skills were wher-
ever I left them when I switched to snow-
boarding at 12 years old. Surrounded
by mountaineering culture while living
in Anchorage, I desperately wanted to
belong.
We gathered midmorning, later than
I had anticipated. Music interlaced with
“get to know you” questions on the drive
down Turnagain Arm. There was no
discussion about safety, skills or terrain
options. At the trailhead, we slapped
skins on, quickly checked beacons and
started—me following clumsily behind. Near the bottom, I strug-
gled to maintain traction on the sun-affected snow. Embarrassment
and worry that they might regret bringing me crept in.
Midway up, we transitioned to a sturdy bootpack that became icy
at the top. The sun was setting when we reached the summit, where
both guys smoked weed during our transition. They asked if I wanted
to take a hit or ski first; I declined both, saying I would bring up the
rear. Their choice to smoke made me uneasy. “What if something
happens and one of us gets hurt?” I thought but did not voice.
Skiing first, my roommate slipped and slid down the face, self-ar-
resting with his whippet. Fear filled me as I watched. The slope was
between 40 and 45 degrees. The surface looked hardpacked but turned
out to be mostly ice. His friend, whose name and face I don’t remem-
ber, went second; he also slid and self-arrested. Left at the top, with no
ice ax or whippet, I was terrified. I took a deep breath, slowly talking
myself through how I would simply sideslip down. I crept onto the
slope, uneasy and scared.
Slowly, I made it safely to where they were waiting. Not many
words were exchanged. I felt frustrated with the day and anxious to
be at the bottom. Our next turns were some of the best spring powder
I’ve skied, though when we arrived in the parking lot, all I felt was
relief. I tried to express excitement about how “awesome” the lower
section was, but fear and frustration from the top lingered. I offered
few words during the ride home, instead letting my eyes follow the
alpenglow softly glancing at the ridgelines.
In retrospect, I see so many missed moments. I had taken a Level
1 avalanche course, but I was working under the assumption that if I
went with guide-level ski partners they would keep me safe. I didn’t
know what it meant to stay safe in the backcountry—whether navigat-
32
ing terrain or building relationships with
my touring partners. 
Interpersonal skills require similar
learning processes as to how we gain
knowledge about terrain management.
We can learn tangible things to make
better decisions, communicate more
effectively and travel in a way that feels
safe for everyone. But how often do skiers
invest in developing those interpersonal
skills to inform our decision-making?
In backcountry skiing, decisions
are usually made as a group. Each of us
is responsible for communicating and
managing the terrain feedback we have
received and synthesizing it to decide
together if a slope is safe to ski. Our
brains are organizing information about
weather, the snowpack, the avalanche report, our goals and partners’
goals. If we don’t stop to assess how our group members are doing
and check in on emotions, skill, risk tolerance and biology (is every-
one eating, did you get enough sleep, are you warm enough, etc.),
we miss the opportunity to understand how available everyone is to
manage this terrain, today. 
That day with my roommate, we didn’t talk about anything. My
partners assumed I could ski, bootpack, self-arrest, analyze the snow-
pack and perform effective companion rescue, and vice versa. Looking
back, nearly 10 years later, I see it was solely luck that nothing more
serious happened, given our many oversights. Hindsight is only a tool
if we use it, and what I see now is an opportunity to gather more data
about who we are skiing with and how to support each other. Not
only because it is a kind and compassionate thing to do, but because
it saves lives.
Next time you plan a tour, start by asking your partners how their
week has been. Check in about mental health, fitness, nutrition, risk
tolerance and skill levels if you are new partners. Try asking: What
stressors have been present in your week? How prepared do you feel
for today? Are we clear on what options we have for the day if we find
safety is not what we had hoped? Ask without judgment, expectation,
shame or blame.
As we learn and expand our knowledge of managing terrain, we
must also gain insight about emotions and communication. The more
we know about ourselves and who we are with, the better we can
Kene Sperry
manage and support each other when we get into a difficult spot.
Blair Anne Hensen is a licensed professional clinical counselor in Montana and former
Alaska wilderness guide. She works with individuals, families and couples in a variety
of settings to offer counseling, workshops and programs that support learning and
conversation about mental health.
 SAM COHEN | ALTA, UTAH
FREEDOM
TO
EXPLORE
NO SHORTCUTS

It’s about the freedom to choose your own path. It’s the
freedom to have no expectations but your own. The freedom
to seek the ultimate adventure. The freedom to reach the
summit by whatever means possible.
This is freedom to explore.

SCOTT-SPORTS.COM
© SCOTT SPORTS USA 2022 | Photo: Lee Cohen
 BACKSTORY

NIGHT SKI
by Brendan Koch

“I don’t have to go,” I tell my wife, Terri. 

It’s true. Although I will be back within two hours, any
time away from the house is a big deal right now. Our infant
son is happily seated in her lap and shows no interest in going
to sleep, despite it being well past bedtime. In addition, we have
spent most of our day making futile attempts to manage the
emotional hurricanes that accompany our 4-year-old. We are
both at our limits and need the support of our partner. Given
the situation, asking to leave so I can slide down a hill on a
couple of sticks seems ludicrous, but….  I flip my lifters and start kick-turning up the last rise to my
We live in a town with limited access to ski touring terrain.
While driving a couple of hours to reach higher elevations was
not an issue preparenting, it sure is now. Often, my only chance
to get some turns in is when the snowline comes down to the
valley and covers the rolling foothills that surround our home.
The drive to the trailhead is short, and soon I’m slapping on
skins and buckling boots by headlamp. My frenetic pace slows
as I start skinning. The chaos of the holiday season dissolves
into the gentle rhythm of boots tapping skis and skins sliding on
snow. My thoughts shift from nap schedules and meal plans to
life’s deeper questions: Can I justify buying a new pair of boots
this year? Is pizza a legitimate option for Christmas dinner?
Why are small ski hills disappearing, and why do the big hills
charge so much? The list goes on.
high point. A low cloud layer reflects the light of the town back
onto the snow. I may be able to ski without my headlamp. As I
emerge from the trees, my suspicions are confirmed. A warm
glow illuminates the slope, giving it an otherworldly feel. The
terrain is inconsequential, but skiing at night without a light is

It can best be defined as urban ski touring: The slopes deposit
you into a wealthy subdivision at the end of each run. Periods
when it is possible to ski this low are short—and not guaranteed
for any season. This year, a large storm cycle and cold tempera-
tures brought almost perfect conditions. The snowpack in our
valley is the deepest I’ve seen, and one could argue the skiing
is decent. There is certainly the opportunity for powder turns
if you are gentle and don’t punch through the thin base. Things
are good out there, and I don’t want to waste my window. Terri
knows this and graciously tells me I should go. I can’t thank
her enough.  I push off and disappear into the dark.
I grab my rock skis—bases scuffed from previous adven-
tures—off the rack and load up the minivan as quickly as I can.
Reuben Krabbe
always exciting. I turn off my headlamp to let my eyes adjust and
allow myself some time to enjoy my surroundings as I change
over. I wonder why my tracks are usually the only ones I see
out here. Does everyone else have more time than me? Have
others in my situation simply given up on getting out alto-
gether? Maybe there’s a better spot? Regardless, I am grateful
to have this resource available to me. I say a silent thank you to
my wife, my family, my skis, snow, even myself. I am glad I am
open-minded enough to enjoy dodging sharks on a grassy slope
in the middle of the night. It is still skiing, after all. 

Have a tale from the untracked to share? Keep it to 700 words

and send it to tom@backcountrymagazine.com, subject titled
“Backstory.” The winning story will be published here, and the
writer will win $200 and a prize, like a pair of skis from K2 Skis.
34
Left: Antti Autti camera Olli Oilinki/Top & portrait: camera Jani Karppa

Freedom Tools
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 Classics
One is Glen Plake, the legendary Freeskiing
icon, and the other is the Patrol 3D glove
PATROL 3D from the LEKI Classics collection.
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Photo: Grant Gundeson
 BLOWN IN

THE FASTEST KNOWN TI M ES MOU NTAI N S KI LLS ON LOCATION

ISOLATION Backcountry speed records

are falling almost as fast as
Erin Smart knows that success
starts with a solid plan and
Between 1,000-year-old buildings
sits an unlikely ski destination
ISSUE skiers are moving. p. 38 the right team. p. 45 in Svaneti, Georgia. p. 57

SURF’S UP
The pull of surfing is the natural propulsion of the
ocean across a wave’s unbroken face. With this
momentum, riders can get barreled in the green
room, snap the lip as it presses toward shore
or hang 10 across the line. Sometimes, summer
swells aren’t enough to scratch the itch. Surfing
has expanded into many mediums, from sea to
cement to snow. Powsurfing—riding a bindingless,
surf-inspired board through powder—is hitting the
mainstream. With the boards and accessories we
review on p. 53, the free-floating feel of surfing a
wave is no longer exclusive to coastal breaks.
Mason Mashon goes for his best impression
of surfing icon Gerry Lopez and effortlessly
carves through fresh snow on a powsurfer
he designed and shaped. KC Deane
38
 BLOWN IN

WITH TWO
FEET AND A
HEARTBEAT
Mt. Hood up and down in one hour, 31 minutes.
The 80 mile Bugaboo to Rogers Pass traverse
in 44 hours, 37 minutes. The 40 mile, 22,600 feet
of climbing Southern Monashee traverse in 30
hours. Backcountry skiing speed records are
falling almost as fast as skiers are moving.

by Ryan Stuart

A solitary, unknown skier skins up the Trorey-

Pattison col on Mt. Pattison along B.C.’s famous
Spearhead Traverse. Andrew Strain
 BLOWN IN
Summitting Oregon’s Mt. Hood by its stan-
dard southside route requires skinning and
bootpacking a 7-mile, 5,380-foot climb, an
endeavor that takes most of the thousands who
climb it each year the better part of a day. Not
so for Jack Kuenzle. Last winter, he made the
summit in one hour and 16 minutes, besting the
previous record held by runner Alex King by
seven minutes. Kuenzle then skied back to the
parking lot in 15 minutes, breaking the round-
trip record by 13 minutes and setting a new Fast-
est Known Time, or FKT, though he thinks he
could have been even faster.
“I definitely left some time out there,” Kuen-
zle says.
Climbers, runners, hikers and skiers use the
term FKT to describe a speed record, whether it’s
for a summit, traverse, trail or climb. It nods to
the silent crushers who might have gone faster
but never told anyone, while still establishing
usable benchmarks. According to some of the
people setting these records, various factors are
pushing skiers toward speed, but one thing is for
sure: Skiers are just warming up to the trend.
Setting speed records is not a new phenome-
non, says Eric Carter, host of coastmountainski-
ing.com, one of the best catalogs of ski-related
FKTs. “People have been claiming records as
long as we’ve been doing stuff in the mountains,”
says the former U.S. World Cup skimo racer and
holder of a few FKTs. “It’s just more prominent.
As skimo, trail running and climbing grow, more
people are out there and paying attention.”
40
“It’s an incredible
feeling to look 50
to 80 kilometers
forward and think,
‘I’m going to be
there in 10 hours
with just two feet
and a heartbeat.’”
According to Carter, some of the inter-
est is a push back to skimo racing. “Even the
coolest races, at some level, are a bit contrived
and restrained,” he says. He thinks three other
factors play a bigger role. Social media broad-
casts the accomplishments to far more people
than in the past, inspiring others to try. Explo-
sive growth in running and through-hiking
FKTs is spilling over into winter interest. And
advances in equipment enable faster speeds.
“The gear is getting better and better, lighter
and lighter, safer and safer,” Carter says, point-
ing to skiers like Kuenzle, who are breaking
uphill records previously held by unencum-
bered runners.
In addition to his sprint up Hood, Kuenzle
set ascent records last winter on California’s Mt.
Shasta and Mt. Tallac using skis. The Connecti-
cut native now lives in his van pursuing FKTs.
He has set 20 in the last three years on skis and
foot. To him, the ski world’s interest in FKTs has
everything to do with exploration. Or, more
accurately, that pioneering accomplishments
are hard to find and even harder to achieve.
“It’s not that the low-hanging first descents
are all gone, it’s that there’s less fruit,” he says.
“And what is left is extremely unpleasant or
dangerous. It’s a lot easier to find existing stuff
and go faster. In my opinion, speed requires
the same focus, energy and optimization as
being first.”
Both require skill and fitness, as well as
meticulous preparation, dedicated planning
and patience. Kuenzle spent all last winter
skiing in his skimo setup, even at the resort, to
build familiarity. He was living out of his van
around Lake Tahoe, but after Shasta, where he
broke his skis on the descent, and Tallac, he real-
ized he needed to sleep at a higher elevation if
he wanted to break the Hood record. He moved
to Mammoth Mountain and waited for the >>
[Left] Jack Kuenzle follows behind his
buddy on the Leuthold Couloir on Mt.
Hood. Courtesy Jack Kuenzle
[Middle] Skip the Lycra, strip to skin. Tyler Dille
bootpacks below the Pearly Gates on his FKT
ski of Mt. Hood. Courtesy Tyler Dille
[Right] Kuenzle checks his watch in the
Timberline parking lot after his Mt. Hood
FKT ski. Courtesy Jack Kuenzle
 United We Climb.
The AAC is the largest community of climbers
and skiers in the country, and our members
take pride in advocating for the public lands
and conservation policies that protect wild
landscapes and the wild people who love them.
Join us in this mission–and simultaneously ensure
you have the emergency rescue and medical
expense coverage you need to dream big.

Ready to up your commitment to the AAC’s

advocacy work, and looking for 100% peace
of mind in the backcountry? Consider upgrading
your membership today. Learn more about the
Club and join or renew at americanalpineclub.org.
AAC member Jason Gebauer
 BLOWN IN
[Left] Tired and zinc-stained, Greg
Hill looks back at the descent
into the Beaver Valley.
[Right] Hill and Adam Campell push
on during their Bugaboo to Rogers
Pass traverse in 2021. Hill and crew
lost their record last winter, which has
inspired them to return in the future.
Andrew McNab, both photos
right weather window, which didn’t materialize
until late April.
Similarly, Greg Hill relied on knowledge
garnered on dozens of trips for his 19-hour,
peak bagging, extended Spearhead Traverse
last winter with Revelstoke ski guide Andrew
McNab. He also held the FKT for the tradi-
tional traverse for many years. Along with Adam
Cambell, he and McNab also set the FKT for the
Bugaboo to Rogers Pass traverse in 2021. These
are just some of Hill’s records, which include
first descents and multiweek traverses. He sees
many similarities between firsts and fastests, but
says the mindset is different.
Skiing a new line is stressful and technically
demanding. Spending weeks in the mountains
is immersive, hard work. “Speed is more about
flowing through the terrain,” Hill says. “Using
all your skills to be as efficient as possible. It’s
an incredible feeling to look 50 to 80 kilometers
forward and think, ‘I’m going to be there in 10
hours with just two feet and a heartbeat.’”
Being successful means making all the right
decisions, with a little help from those that went
before. For his Bugs to Rogers FKT, Hill learned
from the 2005 party that set the benchmark for
42
the 80-mile route at 53 hours and 20 minutes.
Likewise, Kylee Toth, Emma Cook-Clarke and
Taylor Sullivan tapped Hill for beta before their
FKT, one of two speed attempts on the traverse
last winter. From navigation to resting strategy,
there’s so much to learn about what worked and
what didn’t, Hill says. Toth and crew used the
knowledge to knock nine hours off the FKT,
finishing the traverse in 44 hours, 37 minutes.
Losing the FKT hurt his ego, Hill admits,
but it also inspired him to dream bigger. He
thinks 30 hours is doable on the Bugaboo to
Rogers Pass traverse, but he’s more interested
in trying to go fast in new terrain. After McNab’s
Southern Monashee FKT with Dan Rohn, Hill is
thinking about the Cariboo Mountain traverse
or the northern Selkirks.
Meanwhile, Kuenzle is focused on promi-
nent and culturally important mountains with
direct lines up and down. The Pacific North-
west’s volcanoes and New Hampshire’s Mt.
Washington stand out. Classic traverses, like
the Wapta in the Canadian Rockies, the Sierra’s
Sawtooth and Whistler’s Spearhead are also
prime targets, Carter says. But anything, from
skinning a local ski hill to touring across an
entire range, could be a skiing FKT.
“The whole idea in my mind is that there
are no rules,” Carter says. “It’s who is the fast-
est from point A to point B. Period. Ski or run,
you choose the time of year, equipment, route
and go for it.”
All three skiers think the exciting thing
about the speed trend is that it inspires creativ-
ity and opens minds to what could be possible
in snow-covered mountains. Hill points to the
first party to ski the Spearhead Traverse in 1964.
It took them nine days to travel from the Whis-
tler valley, around the 20-mile alpine horseshoe
connecting Blackcomb and Whistler, and back
down to the village. The record is now 6 hours
and 27 minutes. Last winter, in just 15 hours,
Hill says he and McNab added 15 summits and
“some amazing skiing.”
“If you told the original Spearhead group
that, they would have said ‘No way,’” Hill says.
“They showed what was possible then and
pushed us to achieve what is possible now.
Breaking down mental barriers happens and
happens, again and again. I guarantee in the
next five years there will be some crazy FKTs in
winter that we haven’t even thought about.” ❆
 CO2MMITTED TO
THE MOUNTAINS

Moving in the mountains requires knowledge, skills and the right equipment.
To protect the mountains, it needs all of us. That’s why we rely on natural
insulation from Swiss wool in the COL BECCHEI HYBRID JACKET. It is part of our
first climate-neutral winter collection.
 DAMN IT
FEELS
GOOD
TO BE
A SKIER
Sven Brunso wearing
Bec de Rosses Jacket & Pants

We design skiwear in Åre, Sweden.

Combining the freeskier’s playful spirit with the
mountain guide’s uncompromising attitude to gear.

Sara Rönngren Jimmy Odén,

Freeskier, designer & founder. IFMGA mountain guide & founder. www.elevenate.com
 MOUNTAIN SKILLS

EXPEDITION PL ANNING
A successful trip starts with a solid plan and the right team
by Erin Smart

>>

A good plan brings a peaceful night. Jeremy

Jones and crew catch some Zs at 17,500 feet
while filming Higher in Nepal. Andrew Miller

45
 MOUNTAIN SKILLS
Determination and
some difficulty are
required on almost
every expedition,
but don’t have your
blinders set too dark.
ing a logistics leader to facilitate this will make
things run smoothly. The leader should create
the master to-do list then assign jobs to share
the work. This person can also set a timeline
and check in with everyone on how things are
progressing.
The Devil is in the Details
So, what details does the logistics coordinator
need to dole out? Some things are obvious, like
route finding, packing lists, travel plans and
food prep. But each of those things also has
subcategories that are easily overlooked.
When it comes to booking travel reserva-
tions, make sure that things can be refunded or
adjusted in case of cancellation or trip changes.
If there’s a more expensive option that will
better set the team up for success, try not to be
penny wise and pound foolish. It’s probably
worth the extra cost.
As for putting the menu together, take the
time to count calories. Group dynamics won’t go
very smoothly if people are hangry. Don’t skimp
here. Add additional high-calorie comfort foods
and easy energy options such as peanut butter.
A bottle of oil adds fat to meals, while hot sauce
can boost the flavor. Hot drinks and dehydrated
soups keep morale high and the team hydrated.
Maps, photos, beta, route descriptions and
time planning can be one person’s pretrip job,
but information needs to be communicated
clearly so everyone understands the general
plan and terrain. Ditto for weather forecasts.
To get up-to-date info in the field, have some-
one in the frontcountry text you on your satel-
lite device throughout the trip. Line them up
with all your locations and needs before you are
in the field. If you’re headed to a very remote
46
location where you won’t find a reliable fore-
cast, hire a professional to give you personal-
ized updates.
Have an emergency plan with emergency
contacts included. As soon as you’re more than
an hour’s walk away from civilization, you are
considered in the wilderness from a medical
standpoint, and consequences of anything
happening have risen. Make sure you have at
least two forms of communication (satellite
phone and a Spot-style device, for example),
and have a way to charge them. Everyone should
have a copy of a master gear list. This includes
the group first aid kit. Team members should be
familiar with the contents and make sure that
nothing is unnecessarily duplicated in individ-
ual kits.
Avoid bringing brand-new gear on your
expedition. Footwear and other wearables
should be broken in for comfort. Test equip-
ment with the entire group together before
heading into the mountains, including a short
overnight to test sleeping setups and make sure
you haven’t forgotten something critical. A day
or two before hitting the trail for your expedi-
tion, lay everything in a large room to get eyes
on it. Doing this early gives time to pick up
last-minute necessities.
In the Field
On a recent expedition in the Swedish Arctic,
communication completely broke down within
my team. Even though we succeeded in our goal,
we were all disappointed in the experience.
When stress builds in a group, it’s important to
try and resolve the issue early in the trip. Due to
a quick turnaround to a plan B, we had rushed
our pretrip planning. Our ambitious traversing
goal required lots of daily movement, and we
had a group that did not know each other well
enough, different expectations and very little
time for communication. I wish that early on I
had seen our group’s goals did not mesh well.
We could have stopped, reassessed and created
a new plan that would have pleased more of us,
and I think we all would have come away with
much better memories and better skiing.
Tent time is important for resting, but if you
have multiple tents, be aware cliques will natu-
rally form. If possible, bringing a cook tent is
a great way to make sure you have a commu-
nal space for everyone. When problems arise,
they will only fester if there is not a location for
open communication. If a cook tent isn’t possi-
ble, consider changing up tentmates part way
through the trip, or visit another tent with a hot
drink once in a while.
An easy way to keep everyone happy on a
long expedition is to make sure they are enter-
tained. Even when cutting weight wherever
possible, I always make sure I have two pairs of
headphones and plenty of downloaded music,
podcasts, some favorite movies and a few digital
books. There will be weather days, and people
are usually more at ease if they don’t have too
much time alone with their thoughts.
The most important lessons I’ve learned
over the years on a variety of expeditions are
to make sure you and your partners are excited
about the plan, know your team, prepare and
communicate, and be flexible. But, most of all,
enjoy the journey and have fun! ❆
That’s a long way down. John Griber and Kim Havell
take one last look before descending from Camp II on
GasherbrumII at 20,300 feet. Kristoffer Erickson
 From the publisher of Backcountry Magazine

RIDE WITH US
From bikepacking across the North Maine Woods to revitalizing
the 670-mile Oregon Timber Trail to exploring “Slab Heaven” high
above British Columbia’s Powell River we’ll take you there.

Subscribe to Mountain Flyer, The Mountain Bike Journal

MOUNTAINFLYERMAGAZINE.COM/SUBSCRIBE
 GEARBOX - CAMPING

WINTER CAMPING
Spending a winter night in the mountains carries a sense
of whimsy: no lights for miles, bright stars and a feeling
of smallness as the moon reflects off snowy peaks. But—
with the wrong equipment—subzero nighttime temps can
overshadow that serenity. To stave off the cold, one needs
a good sleep setup and a winter-ready tent. Plus, some
creature comforts like a warm meal and a pillow (yes, we
bring camping pillows) go a long way. —The Editors

MSR
REMOTE 3
$960 • msrgear.com

“This thing is an alpine hotel room,” said a tester who used it as a chalet in
the Cascades. MSR’s new Remote 3 provides comfort on stormbound days
with more length, width and head room (44 inches!) than the company’s
other four-season models. Hollow Easton Syclone poles make it light and
strong, and the 22 square feet of vestibule space holds three people’s
gear and a spot to make coffee. Clocking in at just under 4 kilograms, the
weight is manageable shared between a team of three, but if you don’t
have that many camping partners, MSR also offers a Remote 2 ($860).

SEA TO SUMMIT
ETHER LIGHT XT EXTREME
$220-250 • seatosummit.com

Skimping on a sleep setup for winter camping is a recipe for sleepless nights.
If you’re willing to invest, our tester says, the Ether Light XT Extreme sleeping
pad is top of the line. At just 709 grams, in the regular, with an R-value of 6.2,
“you can’t find better warmth for the weight,” he said. Thermolite insulation
lines the top of the inflated pad, and interconnected Air Sprung Cells are
meant to mimic the construction of a spring mattress and better contour the
body. Drawbacks? The outer material crinkles like an empty Sun Chips bag.

THERMAREST
POLAR RANGER -20
$790-840 • thermarest.com

There’s nothing worse than leaving your sleeping bag to make coffee
while snow camping. With Thermarest’s 1,474-gram Polar Ranger (in the
regular), which features two zippered vents for your arms, you don’t have
to. Hydrophobic, Nikwax-treated, 800-fill Responsible Down Standard
insulation, a cinchable draft collar and a Snorkel Hood that vents breath
out truly keep you toasty down to minus 20. “Makes me not want to leave
my bag to go splitboarding,” our tester said, half-joking. His one complaint is
that the toe box is a bit tight when cramming boot liners in it, but the baffled
Toe-asis pocket did keep his piggies warm and separated from wet gear.

RAB EQUIPMENT
NEUTRINO PRO 900
$550-575 • rab.equipment

Looking for a hut trip sleeping bag—warm enough when the fire goes
out, but not too hot when all is cozy? Check out the water-repellent
Neutrino Pro 900, which has a sleep limit of minus 10 degrees, an
adjustable neck baffle and hood, and weighs 1,350 grams, according to
Rab. “Great for winter overnight adventures—packable, light, WARM,”
said our tester, who runs cold and used the Neutrino on a yurt trip in
Colorado. Plus, because it’s made of 100-percent recycled polyamide
with a polyurethane coating, “I feel good knowing these long-lasting
materials are going to my bag and not the landfill,” our tester added.

49
 GEARBOX - CAMPING

BLACK DIAMOND EQUIPMENT

MEGA SNOW
$450 • blackdiamondequipment.com

Black Diamond Equipment’s Mega Snow, a megamid shelter with a single

carbon-fiber pole, is as simple as it gets. “Takes up much less space than a
tent and goes up in about two seconds,” our tester said. At 1,644 grams, it
offers the best stormproofness-to-weight ratio of any shelter, and our tester
found the nylon perimeter valance, which you bury under the snow, creates
a surprisingly weathertight seal. Billed as a four-person shelter, it would be
tight for that many, but luxurious for two. The meshed peak venting means
you can cook in it, too, making it a great kitchen tent for extended trips.

RAB EQUIPMENT
STRATOSPHERE PILLOW
$40 • rab.equipment

“Forty dollars, fist size and adjustable. I’m done cutting a pillow to make
space in my pack,” our tester quipped. Rab’s inflatable Stratosphere Pillow
features a soft cover, anti-slip fabric on the bottom, Stratus polyester
insulation and a scalloped shape on one side to accommodate the
neck and shoulders. It’s built for sleeping in comfort with an inflated
size of 36-by-26 centimeters. When you pack it away, it becomes
nothing but 95 grams and a ball of tiny stuff sack. “My newest winter
camping addition,” said our tester—and with a wicking liner, the pillow
might become a staple for overnights in warmer months, too.

PRIMUS
LITE XL STOVE SYSTEM
$140 • primus.us

Despite freezing temps, our tester had 800 milliliters of boiling water in
five minutes, thanks to what Primus calls the Laminar Flow burner, which
sends a massive amount of heat around the bottom inch of the pot. “The
built-in lighter actually works. Plus, the detachable handle is super sturdy,
and the small spout makes for easy water pouring,” our tester said. A fuel
canister and the stove itself both fit into the one-liter pot, which all together
weigh less than 700 grams. The Lite XL also has three small rods that
screw into the top of the stove to make it compatible with normal pots.

GOOD TO-GO
SINGLE SERVING DEHYDRATED ENTRÉES
$9 • goodto-go.com

“They don’t sit weird in my stomach like other dehydrated brands,” said
our tester after sampling the Thai Curry, Pad Thai and Mushroom Risotto.
Good to-Go preps, cooks, dehydrates and packages all its meals in a
farmhouse in Maine, and, judging by the ingredients list, the meals contain
real food, not chemicals. At 6,000 feet, our tester found each meal
rehydrated right in the recommended time (15-20 minutes), though she had
to add time as she moved up in elevation. “The single-serving bags were
a little light for a dinner after a day in the backcountry,” she noted. For
other hungry hikers, Good to-Go also offers double-serving bags ($16).

ALPINE START
DIRTY CHAI LATTE
$9 • alpinestartfoods.com

Our tester prefers to drink a latte in the morning. While her Breville is too
heavy to carry while backpacking, Alpine Start’s Dirty Chai Lattes hit both
her flavor and weight requirements (20 grams per stick). “It doesn’t have the
acidy flavor that most other instant coffee options have,” she said. On top
of including dairy-free creamer and chai spices, the Dirty Chai Lattes also
have 110 milligrams of caffeine from 100-percent Columbian Arabica coffee.
As for her final thoughts, our tester said, “I like that I can add either hot or
cold water. It’s nice to have the iced coffee option in the backcountry.”

50
The hardest fun
you’ll ever have.
 GEARBOX - POWSURFERS

GRASSROOTS POWDERSURFING
SPLITSURFER
$900 · powsurf.com

Skintrack maneuverability is rare in powsurfing. To

reach stashes a bootpack won’t access, one usually
needs Verts, snowshoes or approach skis, meaning
you always have extra weight on your back. Longtime
powsurfing innovator Jeremy Jensen has the solution,
the Splitsurfer, which, like a splitboard, turns into
two skis for the climb. On the descent, it ditches the
bindings for a classic powsurfer ride. “This makes me
far more likely to go powsurfing,” our tester said after
a week of testing around the Tetons last spring.
Grassroots offers the Splitsurfer in three models: the
Flying Carpet 3D, an all-mountain tool with a blunted
nose and tail; the Megalodon, a swallowtail built
for speed and deep days; and the Slasher, a mobile
whip that handles shallow pow and variable snow.
Our tester rode the Flying Carpet 3D 140 centimeter
in the split and the Slasher 3D 140 in the solid. “The
Flying Carpet could handle just about anything,” he
said. “The Slasher could bog down in deep snow, but it
handled post-storm, settled pow well.”
All Grassroots decks—solids and splits—are
handmade in Utah, with a layup that features a 3-D
contoured, sintered P-Tex base, layers of maple or
birch wood, and a 3-D Powder Foam traction pad that
Jensen tailors to a rider’s boot size. The Splitsurfer
also features carbon inserts for reinforcement in key
places, lending stiffness that would otherwise be lost
because of the middle seam, and it has Tundra Grip
spikes added to the traction pad.
Grassroots includes either Voilé or Spark toe pieces,
depending on which bindings riders want to use
for the uptrack. Jensen and a machinist developed
Ultralight Ascent Bindings that work with Spark or
Voilé interfaces and feature a metal baseplate, toe
and heel caps, and straps to lock in the boot. Because
of the shape and size of the available Splitsurfers,
Grassroots recommends using only Voilé skins.
“Skinning with it takes some getting used to,” our
tester said. “It’s awesome to take a powsurfer on a
long tour, but the short length means you have less
purchase.” He found icy skintracks were quite difficult,
and Grassroots recommends carrying a pair of Skeets
for firm walking conditions.
Our tester’s conclusion: “The split rides just as well
as the solid.”

“The Flying Carpet handled bigger

lines with variable conditions, plowing
through everything from blower
to firm, wind-affected snow.”
—Tom Hallberg

53
 GEARBOX - POWSURFERS

BURTON
FAMILY TREE BACKSEAT DRIVER
$390 • burton.com

A new powdercraft—let alone a new pastime—can stress a

board hoarder’s bank account and relationship. By far the
most affordable deck tested, Burton’s Family Tree Backseat
Driver makes expenditure and explanation easier, thanks to
construction techniques carried over from the Vermont brand’s
snowboard-building expertise. The construction—dual-wood
core sandwiched between triax fiberglass, topsheet and
base—has pros beyond its low cost, among them durability,
straightforward repairs and edgability. Its familiar feel helps
lifelong snowboarders pick up powsurfing in a single session—a
newbie took this on a 3,000-foot Wasatch wave and didn’t
wipeout once. (Credit’s also due to the convex nose and V-hull
tail, which help the board float, and a toothy traction pad that
ensures grip, even in thigh-deep blower.) However, one con was
a dealbreaker for diehards: “You lose some of the addictive
surfiness that comes from rolling edgeless shapes onto rails
in deep powder,” commented a tester who owns a Backseat
Driver but generally rides other shapes. “Other than that, it’s a
great shape for first-timers or budget-conscious boarders.”

ÄSMO
PHANTOM 154
$725 • aesmo.at

There’s a misconception that powsurfing is reserved for low-angle

meadows and hippy turns. Äsmo’s Phantom 154, the swallow-tailed
brainchild of Austrian rider and shaper extraordinaire Wolle
Nyvelt, reduces those preconceived notions to powder clouds. Our
testers’ favorite speed demon, the Phantom sports an ultrawide
34.7-centimeter nose, which tapers to an XL swallowtail for
unmatched float in deep snow. Reliability at speed comes from the
running length; a knobbed and contoured traction pad; and a 3-D
base with channels running parallel to a pronounced convex belly.
Inspired by surfboard design, the hull gives powsurfers the best
of playfulness and stability. “The belly is naturally buoyant, giving
you the surfy sensation of porpoise-like projection in and out of
turns,” one landlocked surfer reported. He felt the channels “let WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED
you put the board on rail with confidence—I definitely went faster
on this powsurfer than I ever have before,” a sentiment several
FOR POWSURFING?
testers echoed. The sole critique? A couple of riders noted the You may have noticed most powsurfers won’t get you very far on a
pronounced channels can feel “hooky” and catch at slower speeds. skintrack. Here’s what else might help you reach your favorite stash.
As such, the Phantom is better suited to Mavericks than Malibu.
DEELUXE CARBON
SHREDEYE FOOTLOOSE 2 BOOTS DRIFT BOARDS
THIRDEYE $200 • deeluxe.com $498 (nylon), $575 (mohair)
$1,350 • jgshredeye.com • drift-products.com
Built to bring the storied connection
What Merlin is to magic, Vermont’s John “JG” Gerndt is to board- between bare foot and waxed deck Use Verts or snowshoes on a skinner,
building. After over three decades at Burton, Gerndt launched his to backcountry breaks, Deeluxe’s and holier-than-thou skiers will
own powsurf brand: ShredEye. Crafted in collaboration with Varial Footloose 2 is our dream powsurf shower you with shame. Not so with
Surf, a surf materials innovator, ShredEye’s decks are laid up like boot—warm, weatherproof, low-profile, Drift Boards. Easy to use, remarkably
surfboards but with a higher-density foam core and astronaut- snug and offering maximum ankle lightweight and surprisingly buoyant,
approved fiberglass. Gerndt’s 127 centimeters Thirdeye shape mobility. Updated from the original Drift Boards are short, fat, skintrack-
sports a stable, yet pivotable, rockered round tail; floaty, pointed Footloose, the boot sports a powsurf- friendly carbon approach skis with
nose; concave deck; and V-bottom hull with four subtle channels. specific liner, heel-hold-enhancing permanent skins (available with nylon
The result? Pure, ecstatic surfing. “The flex pattern is on the midsoft lacing position and a burlier toe cap. or mohair) that strap to your pack.
side, and it complements the shape beautifully,” a surf-inspired “I’d been powsurfing in regular winter While big-wave riders may prefer
rider commented. “The board communicates with the snow, boots for a while and transitioning to splitsurfers—less weight on your
relaying every turn, bounce and rebound to your boots. It’s the the Footloose 2 has helped me level pack—the beauty of Drift Boards is
closest thing to actual surfing I’ve ever felt on snow.” Testers loved up considerably,” penned a convert, twofold: They’re faster in a transition
the lightweight build—it clocks in at 1,500 grams—with a Tahoe who gave Deeluxe props for “finding than prime Steve Nash, and you can
rider joking, “It’s so light, I kept thinking it fell out of my backpack on the seemingly impossible balance build a limitless powsurf quiver. For
the way up.” Concerns centered around durability—surfboards are between high-performance heel hold most powsurfers, there’s no better
easy to ding, after all—but a tester brought the ThirdEye to Japan and untethered ankle mobility.” way to paddle out to the lineup.
to gauge its resilience. Baggage handlers, road trips and pillow
drops have yet to so much as scuff this functional work of art.

54
 Athlete: Darcy Conover and Max Taam. Photo: Fred Marmsater

MAESTRALE & GEA

PLANET FRIENDLY
PERFORMANCE

The MAESTRALE & GEA, are legendary ski touring

boots. Reliable and comfortable for those who
approach this sport, they also excel on the feet of the
most experienced ski mountaineers. The use of Pebax
Rnew®, a material produced from renewable sources,
confirms SCARPA’s vocation for sustainability. SCARPA.COM
 THE

PODCAST
SEASON 11: AMERICAN MADE
Some brands are synonymous with ski and snowboard culture.
Hats and buffs with colorful, unique patterns; leading splitboard
bindings; that rubber strap that does it all. With American-made
products, Skida, Spark R&D and Voilé and their respective founders
have each shaped the ski industry—locally and globally.

Corinne Prevot
Corinne Prevot started making hats as
a form of self-expression in high school.
But why hats? “It’s on your face, it’s
connected to how you present yourself,”
says Prevot. Today that endeavor
has blossomed into Skida, the brand
whose well-loved head and neckwear
are now a staple of global ski culture.

Will Ritter
Backcountry first caught a glimpse of
Will Ritter’s prototype splitboard bindings
in 2008. It wasn’t long before word of
Spark R&D’s bindings spread like wildfire
in the close-knit backcountry snowboard
community. The Bozeman, Montana-
based brand that manufactures nearly
every ingredient in their products now
employs 120 people and operates 24/7.

Dave Grissom
For more than 40 years, Voilé has
broken trail in the backcountry—from
tele bindings to skis and splitboards to
the eponymous Voilé strap. Partner and
General Manager Dave Grissom has
been the wizard behind the curtain for
more than two decades. Like any small
business owner and operator, Grissom
wears many hats as he helps keep Voilé
on track and with an eye to the future.

Will Ritter tests his own designs in Bad Gastein,

Austria. Pierre Lucianazz | Spark R&D

sponsored by
LISTEN THIS WINTER

visit backcountrymagazine.com/podcast for more information


SEARCHING FOR THE
WHITE PRINCESS
Between a UNESCO World Heritage Site
and 1,000-year-old buildings sits an unlikely
ski destination in Svaneti, Georgia
words and photos by Mary McIntyre
ON LOCATION
A good half of the steel guardrails that
separated us from the gaping void on our
right next to the narrow, roughly paved road were
no longer attached to their bases. Instead, hefty
cables that linked the row suspended the metal
posts in space, leaving car-sized gaps between
the shoulder and the precipitous hillside. >>
Georgia’s highest peak, Shkhara,
pokes out of the clouds while Brody
Leven approaches from below.
57
 The sight was a solemn reminder to keep my eyes pinned
on the pavement ahead, rather than the wild terrain of the
Caucasus Mountains looming above, even as my co-pilots
and friends, professional skier McKenna Peterson and guide
Keree Smith, pointed and exclaimed. Ahead, the black-rock
turrets of Ushba’s twin summits spired skyward alongside
the graceful, glaciated swoop of Tetnuldi, the “White Prin-
cess.” In every direction were things we wanted to ski:
bubbling pillow slopes, steep rock-lined couloirs and craggy
massifs cloaked in snow.
As the valley widened, we entered the historic town of
Mestia, the capital of northwestern Georgia’s Svaneti region.
Bordered by Russia to the north, the area is the most popu-
lated region of the Caucasus, rich with mountain culture
from over a millennium of inhabitation, and home to the
range’s 10 highest peaks. As we navigated the narrow streets
toward our homestay we drove under the famed medie-
val-era stone watchtowers, and I felt sure we’d made the
right decision to embark on a last-minute trip halfway
around the world. We were eager for spring skiing, cultural
immersion and exploring new mountains.
I had visited Svaneti two years prior with Brody Leven,
when he skied a first descent on Georgia’s highest peak,
Shkhara. We came in June, after warm temperatures and
avalanches had flushed the steep faces, leaving them as
ready as they’d ever be for our ascent. With Leven, I climbed
halfway up the deeply incised couloir on the peak’s north-
west rib but turned around as the sun rose higher and I
realized the 4,000-foot, 50-degree couloir’s icy surface was
not going to soften any time soon. It was a terrifying, amaz-
ing trip, and I became enamored with the Svaneti region,
dreaming of what it would be like in midwinter when the
green hillsides, not just our shaded couloir, were buried in
several feet of snow. It wasn’t long before I’d shared this
dream with friends, and in mid-March 2019, we were off
to Tbilisi.
Of course, most dream trips don’t go as planned. After
a harrowing day’s drive, the three of us arrived in Mestia to
stay with my friend Tatiana, who had fallen in love with and
married a Svanetian mountain guide. She and her family
welcomed us into the Margiani guesthouse with piles of
homemade kubdari, flatbreads stuffed with spiced beef.
Sitting around a small, wooden table, we asked her husband,
Alexsei, and his brother, Mischa, also a mountain guide,
about the current conditions. They had bad news. The snow-
pack was extremely thin and dangerous, and they hadn’t
stepped out into big terrain all year. Our quixotic ambi-
tions of huge descents (fueled, unrealistically, by watching
[Top] The road to Ushguli might not have guard
Sam Anthamatten, Markus Eder and Léo Slemett’s Ushba rails, but it does have oxen and horses in plenty.
film) were crushed. Still, with snow in the forecast, we hoped [Middle] Svanetians know that breakfast is the
conditions might improve. Plus, the thrill of exploring new most important meal of the day, especially if
you’re chasing first descents like Leven.
mountains meant our spirits weren’t too low, especially with
[Bottom] Built in the Medieval Era, this
Georgian wine flowing freely and a never-ending supply of Georgian Orthodox Church has survived
meat- and cheese-stuffed breads hot from the oven piling for more than 1,000 winters.
[Right] After fresh snow brought high
several feet high in front of us. Stomachs full, we tucked avalanche danger, Keree Smith plays
ourselves into bed and dreamed of skiing. >> it safe in the Caucasus Mountains.

58

Our first few days, we hit the backcountry
from the resort above town, which helped us
access the higher, deeper and slightly more
stable snowpack. As Smith recalls, “We spent
a lot of time looking longingly at inaccessible
terrain miles away, realizing that to get there
required either days of hiking, planning and
logistics, or a helicopter.” Hoping elevation
could be our friend in the mixed conditions,
we opted to drive deeper into the mountains to
Ushguli, the highest settlement in Svaneti. From
our cozy wood-framed guesthouse, a small, tan
dog followed us through the narrow, muddy
streets of town.
Cows and horses munched hay below stone
towers that were built between 800 and 1100
A.D., all of which are part of a UNESCO World
60
Heritage Site. Hundreds-of-years-old villages
stippled with towers, churches and castles
that contain Renaissance mural paintings and
medieval-era metal arts have been distinctly
preserved, in large part due to the region’s
geographic isolation. The UNESCO designa-
tion aims to protect the region’s rich cultural
heritage: the Svan people’s language, traditions
and folklore.
Snow fell in quarter-sized flakes from low
clouds, drifting past ancient stone turrets. We
clicked into our bindings where the houses
ended and the snowdrifts began, sliding through
the mist past a small chapel with a decorative
cross hammered into the metal door. Ethereal
light and silence enveloped us.
Up the valley, steep hillsides hemmed us in,
Up the valley, steep
hillsides hemmed us
in, rising into thick
clouds. Closeness,
even claustrophobia,
descended upon
us, despite the
miles of space in
every direction.
[Left] Halfway there and living on a prayer,
Leven continues upward on Shkhara.
[Below] Smith and Mckenna Petersen make
friends with a local while skiing through town.
According to Mary McIntyre, “The local pup
joined us on the skintrack for the day.”
rising into thick clouds. Closeness, even claus-
trophobia, descended upon us, despite the miles
of space in every direction. The dog trotted
along behind us, as if backcountry skiing were
an everyday occurrence. The valley deepened,
jumbled piles of snow looming in the mist. With
such poor visibility, it was hard to tell what was
going on. Suddenly, the sun pierced the clouds
with slightly more intensity, revealing that huge
avalanches had ripped the surrounding slopes
to the ground, leaving debris piles that disfig-
ured the smooth, white landscape. We walked
cautiously up the center of the valley, and as the
terrain opened, we roamed gentle hills below a
glaciated massif that formed the Russian border.
In eerie silence we gazed at the destructive forces
at play, and the serrated peaks far above, >>
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 jumping at every whoomph, even though we
were in a safe location.
On our way back to town, playful shouts and
giggles echoed through the clouds, and we soon
emerged on the local ski hill. The short Poma lift
had been shut down that morning, but now that
school was out, it was spinning kids to the top,
where they flew off small roller jumps, taking
incredible yard-sale spills before leaping up to
do it all over again. We rode the Poma with the
grinning pack of children, finding gentle relief
in sliding downhill on skis and laughing after
our harried day in the clouds. Back at our guest-
house, dinner was a serious affair, an entire table
covered with garlicky stews, khinkali dumplings,
briny, fresh sulguni cheese and multiple types of
bread, just for the three of us!
Our last night in Mestia, we visited the
Margiani family museum. It was incredible to
imagine growing up with such tangible cultural
heritage, with the ability to walk through the
home your ancestors had lived in for 30 or more
generations, sitting in their throne-like wooden
62
chairs, holding their metal-smithed kitchen
implements and weapons. Mischa flicked on his
headlamp and led us up rickety stairs to the top
floor. One after another, we clambered atop a
stool and out onto the smooth slate roof. As the
swath of stars twinkled above the valley’s ring of
peaks, I thought back on our ski day. We’d made
one last attempt to access the alpine, touring off
the resort toward the 15,938-foot towering form
of Tetnuldi, the White Princess. We had eyed a
wall of couloirs with excitement, eager to slake
our thirst for the steep skiing we’d come for,
even if it was only one run on the last day. At the
base of a couloir, our snow pit revealed the most
layer-cake snowpack any of us had seen. Instead
of stepping out, we enjoyed a scenic picnic.
Laughing through disappointment is familiar
to travelers who have spent time and money to
go somewhere grand, only to be thwarted by
the conditions.
As the sun settled westward over vast, roll-
ing hills, we returned to the ski resort. The lifts
were done spinning for the day; a gauzy cloud
enveloped the subpeak in rosy light. As our skis
locked into the corduroy, Petersen and Smith,
both ex-racers, took off downhill, flying into the
steeps with whoops of exhilaration. It wasn’t the
technical, powder-filled couloirs we’d come for,
but with Ushba sticking its proud heads above
the clouds, it was something else, something
beautiful that created a tingling sensation in
my chest. The whole trip playing through my
memory on that rooftop, I bid Svaneti good-
bye—once again not having achieved what I’d
come for but still enjoying the unique culture
and ancient history that lent my experiences
here such depth. And, of course, the pure joy of
skiing, in whatever form it takes. I’m holding
out that the third trip is the charm. ❆
With the twin peaks of Ushba looming in the
background, Smith finds a different white
princess among a foot of fresh snow.
 PHOTO ESSAY

OF

+
FRIENDS
FIRST
DESCENTS
Female professional athletes
rarely have the chance to grow
together and admire each other’s
skill in the backcountry. On Baffin
Island, a team of four adventurers
found community and kinship
in a land of rock and ice.

words by Christina Lustenberger | photos by Drew Smith

64
 Brette Harrington, Christina “Lusti”
Lustenberger and Emily Harrington follow
their team captain, Hilaree Nelson, into the
wild, remote landscape of Baffin Island.
[This Page] Before landing in Clyde River, the crew’s charter
plane pilot flew them over the fjord where they would be
living. Through the window Lusti and and Brette eyed Polar
Moon, a couloir they would later make a first descent of.
[Facing Page, Top to Bottom] Lusti, Hilaree, Emily, Brette
C
ouloirs and granite walls burst from the frozen,
flat landscape—raw, inhospitable—two worlds
crashing together. From the plane window,
we spotted the line: a couloir, cutting deeply
through the shoulder below a stony spire. I
looked at Brette Harrington, my own invigora-
tion reflected in her face—there it was, our objective.
The trip started, like many, as an attempt to crawl from the
confines of Covid restrictions, to satisfy our pent-up restlessness.
When the world began to reopen, Brette, a friend akin to a sister
who had climbed and skied her way through quarantine with me,
and I were ready.
A few months, a handful of flights and a 93-mile snowmobile
ride later, we arrived at Kangigtualuk Uqququti (formerly known as
Sam Ford Fjord) on Baffin Island. It was May 2022, and our athlete
crew of two had doubled.
A true athlete, regardless of gender, can be hard to find. But,
with little effort, thanks to Hilaree Nelson inviting herself and Emily
Harrington along, we had four (technically five if you count Emily’s
in-utero baby) on Baffin.
Brette and Emily (not related) each brought their own climb-
ing expertise and extensive accomplishments—first ascents, free
solos, speed records and more—to our group.
Then there was Hilaree.
A mountaineer and adventurer, an expedition
skier—the strength, power and beauty with which
Hilaree traveled in the mountains made her one of
my most compelling role models. Her path charted
an alternative route for me to follow as a pro skier and
aspiring guide—one not centered around shooting
film segments in Alaska year after year but on explo-
ration and expeditions. In 2018, at the opportunity
to be mentored by her, I left Arc’teryx for The North
Face team. Baffin was our first, and last, ski expedi-
tion together. Hilaree died Sept. 26, 2022, in a ski
accident in Nepal.
She was special to Emily, too. Not long before the
trip, Emily learned she was pregnant, and Hilaree was
the second person she told. Hilaree had faced the
complex decisions of motherhood before, weighing
the balance of risk allowance and parenting.
With little intention, the four of us found
ourselves profoundly connected—our trip to Baffin
a catalyst for weaving together our experiences as
athletes, mountain people and women.
When we met in Yellowknife, 300 miles north of
the Alberta border, it was our first time all together.
We flew to Clyde River—a small, Inuit town south of
Kangigtualuk Uqququti—our charter plane packed
with all the gear and food to sustain us for 11 days on
the sea ice of Baffin Bay. Until we spotted the unique
couloir on our flight in, our objective had been simply to explore.
Arriving on the frozen fjord, we set up camp—home for us
four; our cinematographers, Mathis Dumas and Jordan Manou-
kian; photographer Drew Smith; and Andy Hainnu, our resident
Clyde River local.
Ready to explore, we looked out upon the landscape—a mesh
of converging planes of ice and rock that left us seeking a scale of
reference—searching for a small couloir to kick the trip off with.
Across the fjord, we spotted one.
Miles of churned snowmobile track later, we reached the point
where mountain met ice, only to find our “small couloir” had 2,600
feet of vertical. Struck by the magnitude of the surroundings, our
team clicked, and conditions—stable, chalky and not unbearably
cold—exceeded our expectations.
On May 4, we headed confidently for what we named Polar
Moon—an homage to her sister couloir, Polar Star, and the nearby
peak, Polar Sun Spire. Emily, clear that attempting Polar Moon was
too risky while pregnant, and Hilaree decided not to join us.
A well-oiled team, Brette and I followed the approach couloir
up. Carrying two 60-meter ropes, a rock rack and ice gear, we
topped out above Polar Moon. Below us lay scoured glacier ice, a
serac and 4,000 feet of never-descended snow. Roped in, we slowly
linked turns toward the edge. At the serac, skis off, we rappelled,
using rock and ice anchors, safely through the mass of ice, nearly
500 feet long, that spanned the couloir. Below, we
transitioned again. Tips pointed toward home, we
began the long descent—the first to carve the narrow
exit channel. With each turn and increasing speed,
the conditions became better and better.
To log an unexpected first descent far out on
Baffin’s coast was epic, inspiring and joyous, but it
wasn’t the pinnacle of the expedition.
Women, so often forced to compete for that one
spot, are rarely given the chance to truly admire one
another. Baffin was different. On the expanse of ice, a
common thread united us—our earned and mastered
craft. Humble, void of ego, yet aware that we were
each in the presence of legends, we developed and
leaned into a partnership that intensified the expedi-
tion. It made the trip one of the most powerful and
special experiences I’ve had in the mountains.
Before departing, we acknowledged the magic
of our time together. I put my arm around Hilaree
and shared how much she had influenced me. With
Andy, who we had grown close to during our time
on Baffin, we left as much gear as we could—and
our passion and example in the mountains that we
shared with him—a flame we hoped he would carry
forward in his life and on Kangigtualuk Uqququti,
as one of the few people who would return to the
fjord again and again.
Humble, void of ego, yet aware
that we were each in the presence
of legends, we developed and
leaned into a partnership that
intensified the expedition.

[Top] Brette checks her gear

before starting the descent
of Polar Moon, which Drew
Smith calls “one of the
wildest lines in Baffin.”
[Middle, Left] Brette sets
the bootpack on one of
the team’s missions.
[Middle, Right] Clyde River
resident Ben Hainnu was
the team’s point of contact
on Baffin. His son, Andy,
served as a guide.
[Left] Digital mapping
apps might be all the
rage, but dead batteries
and tiny screens meant
the Baffin team needed
to go back to good ole
fashioned paper maps.
[Bottom] Along the 90-mile
route to Kangigtualuk
Uqququti, Brette and
Ben chase the sun.
[Right] The team struck
stable snow gold, making
for epic ski conditions.
Lusti rails a turn down
one of the many world-
class couloirs on Baffin.
Struck by the magnitude of the
surroundings, our team clicked,
and conditions—stable, chalky
and not unbearably cold—
exceeded our expectations.
Brette and Lusti take
in the unfathomably
massive landscape while
standing on a prow just
halfway up a giant couloir.
72
 The strength, power and beauty
with which Hilaree traveled in the
mountains made her one of my
most compelling role models.

[Facing Page] Lusti

cruises down Polar Moon,
logging a first descent
and some stellar turns.
[Above] Between steep
turns and exploring new
zones, Hilaree, Brette, Lusti
and Emily take a moment to
enjoy the Arctic sunshine.
[Right] What is this, a
glacier for ants?! A tiny
Hilaree, Brette, Emily
and Lusti leave camp.
With a desire to stick to their roots, the team behind
El Azufre, Argentina’s newest ski destination, are set
on keeping ski bum accessibility at their luxury resort.
WORDS PHOTOS
BY BY
BRIGID RYAN
MANDER SALM
75

[Opening Spread] Under the stars of the
Southern Hemisphere, the first of several
off-grid guest houses at El Azufre glows.
[Above] Planes, trains, automobiles
and snowcats.... The road to El Azufre
is a long and winding one.
[Facing Page] Thousands of feet above
the valley floor, Molly Armanino does
her best Andean condor impression.
76
HE BOOTPACK, CHIPPED
INTO A MIX OF POWDER
AND CHALKY SNOW,
TOPPED OUT AT A RIDGE
CREST, REVEALING A SUNLIT
WORLD OF ALPINE GLORY.
It unspooled away from my perch on such a vast scale it was hard to
comprehend, oceans of snow-covered peaks and dizzying vertical relief
under an impassive, blue sky. Skiable faces and couloirs were on repeat
wherever my gaze landed from this remote spot in the alta cordillera of
the Andes Mountains, just inside Argentina’s border with Chile.
On a more manageable scale: In front of my ski tips was a long,
smooth, open face that rolled out of sight into a drainage a few thou-
sand feet below. Ten feet further along the ridge were two characters,
friends I’ve known for a decade and a half: José Beccar, a former Las Leñas,
Argentina, local and ski patroller, and Doug Krause, a Colorado-based ski
guide. Anxious to sort out the overwhelming options around us, I began
chirping, “Where are we going? What should we ski? What’s
the favorite zone so far?”
A short silence ensued. Krause waved in the direction of
half the Andes and said, “That way!” Beccar got busy adjusting
his boots and dryly muttered, “The bar.” Maybe it was a silly
question; there was no rush. No one else was here, and no one
would be showing up, that was for sure. Here, at the head of
Valle Azufre, a peninsula of Argentina’s territory that bumps
into the Chilean border on three sides, we were in a skier’s
paradise. It was the glorious middle of nowhere. Azufre is not
a day-trip kind of place.
The day before, I’d arrived to the (relatively) nearby small
city of San Rafael in the early morning hours with friends Owen
Leeper, Molly Armanino and Ryan Salm. After 30 hours and
850 miles of inefficient, ski bum, budget travel on buses north
from Bariloche, where we’d been skiing, we piled into a pickup
truck Beccar had sent. The trucks meandered west: Narrow,
winding roads turned to dirt, then a one-lane passage through
deepening snowbanks into the heart of a pure white, mountain-
ous world. We were heading toward a project called El Azufre
to see what it meant for the future of skiing in the Andes.
Where the road became impassable, a snowcat waited. We
kept climbing and heading west for few more hours, through
a narrow, mileslong drainage flanked by steep mountains,
summits out of sight far above—until we topped out in a wide,
flat alpine basin ringed by white peaks and rock-crowned volcanoes. This
was the site, currently occupied by a few, sleek metal-and-glass buildings
and rows of solar panels.
A project for skiers, by skiers, El Azufre will, eventually, be a small,
tightly platted, off-grid town, with at most about 3,000 residents and year-
round recreation. The ski plan, Beccar had said, includes about four lifts,
a heli-skiing operation, a guest lodge and, most importantly to us, a series
of mountain refugios with a big emphasis on ski touring.
 IT’S BEAUTIFUL. THE TERRAIN?
VERY PROMISING. BUT MOSTLY, IT
GETS SNOW. LOTS OF SNOW.

The project is the brainchild of Beccar and Daniel
Nofal, a passionate backcountry skier, venture capitalist
and founder of among other things, one of Argentina’s
largest telecommunications companies and a renewable
energy company. Still in its nascent stage, right now El
Azufre consists of ski guides, cat drivers, a hospitality crew
and a team of successful executives from various indus-
try backgrounds in Buenos Aires—all passionate skiers.
Tragically, ski guide Mike Hamilton, the plan-
ner behind the snow and heli-program, was killed in
an avalanche in Alaska in spring 2022. Devastated by
the loss of a close friend and integral team member,
Beccar turned to another good friend, Krause. A former
frequenter of Las Leñas, former head of snow safety
for Silverton Mountain in Colorado, heli-ski guide and
current manager of Colorado’s Irwin Lodge’s cat skiing,
Krause cleared his schedule and headed to Argentina.
That was how, finally, in the last rays of travel day
number two, we found Beccar and Krause lounging,
wearing the self-satisfied smirks of skiers who’d been
having fun. They offered us a bucket of cold beer. This,
then, was the tangible beginnings of El Azufre.
The heart of the project is at the confluence of two
alpine river valleys at 8,200 feet, 10 miles east of the inter-
national border, about 20 miles southwest of Las Leñas
as the crow flies and 125 miles west of Malargüe, a small
city on the eastern edge of the Andes. Its founders picked
this spot for a few reasons: A skinny dirt road leading into
Chile—currently open only for a couple of months in the
summer—makes this valley about a four-hour drive from
Santiago, the country’s capital. It’s beautiful. The terrain?
Very promising. But mostly, it gets snow. Lots of snow.
Azufre’s few inaugural buildings look impossibly tiny
and dark surrounded by the massive, treeless white peaks
and ridges that form the edges of the valley. A couple of
utility buildings, a small guest lodge, a staff lodge and
a two-bedroom house with massive windows that over-
look the pristine, glittering alpine. The lodges are all light
wood with local artwork and modern, cozy furnishings.
[Facing Page] Though it’s
still only a small outpost, the
minds behind El Azufre have
big plans for a sustainable,
year-round resort.
[This Page] A soak in the
hot springs is the type of
skid luxury that El Azufre
is designed around.
We bunked in the house, splitting the two bedrooms into
a girls and boys.
T
HE DAY AFTER OUR INITIAL RECON LAPS
on the open faces, we piled into a snowcat and
rumbled toward a huge massif with several peaks
and a complex mess of drainages.
“A big challenge of skiing in the Andes is everything
is so big—even when you’re already up here, it can be 10
hours to skin to a summit,” Krause points out. That’s part
of why the system of alpine refugios Beccar plans to build
high in the surrounding peaks are so important. They’ll
serve as remote base camps, perched at elevation in stra-
tegic places, to supercharge the human-powered access
and skiable terrain.
With construction a year or two out, we settled for the
cat. It rumbled next to the Rio Valenzuela and a series
of hot spring pools, skipping about 7 or 8 miles of skin-
ning and 5,000 vertical feet. Our eyes were set on Volcán
Azufre, one of a few peaks that towered over the valley
with an enticing ski descent. A steep, fluted snowfield
approaching 50 degrees formed its crown, and on the
right and left equally steep shoulders dumped into a
long, curving apron.
We booted the last pitch in summit winds that deliv-
ered standard Andean knock-you-down gusts, but the
view from the top was mesmerizing. Snow-capped peaks
made up the surface of the world. Behind us, it almost
seemed we could see across Chile’s central valley to the
Pacific. Nonetheless, the wind spurred fast descents.
Armanino stole the show. Despite hard chalk snow
and wind, she slashed the upper face in a few turns,
compared to everyone else’s cautious jump turns into
the basin below.
Out of the wind’s ferocity, we carved thousands of feet
of perfect corn, down and down, through little couloirs
and rollovers and curves in Azufre’s flanks. It was a glori-
ous party of snow and gravity that ended with a soak
in the namesake, sulfur-scented hot springs at the base.
79
[Above] Armanino
points ’em straight
on Volcán Azufre, the
mountain for which
the resort is named.
[Left] Doug Krause,
Brigid Mander,
Armanino and Owen
Leeper live large
with a post-ski buffet
delivered via snowcat.
[Right] Despite being
in the middle of
nowhere, El Azufre
offers amenities like
high-speed internet.
in the guest house.
 done to create a ski resort, backcountry outpost and small town
so deep in the Andes from the ground up was daunting. Around
the same time, Beccar and other longtime skiers at Leñas were
frustrated. Diminishing snowfall, shortened seasons, confusing
ski area management decisions and arbitrary terrain closures
were making access to backcountry zones and their epic faces,
couloirs and spines difficult.
Nofal, an avid Leñas skier, shared these frustrations. In 2015,
he asked Beccar if he’d be willing to assess the feasibility of a
project on the gauchos’ land. It was a perfect team.
Beccar had connections to guides and global ski indus-
try professionals from his time in Leñas and invalu-
able management skills from an annual stint running
on-site organization for Red Bull at the Dakar Rally.
Nofal had the business know-how, financial resources
“A BIG and access to investors to get the project off the ground.
It seems extreme that dissatisfaction with one ski
CHALLENGE area could lead to the decision to start another one
from scratch. And, although Argentina as a whole isn’t
OF SKIING IN a skiing nation, the recent, soaring popularity of back-
country skiing in the rest of the world has also found
THE ANDES IS an audience in Argentine ski culture. “The few huts
we have in the Andes are always booked out now, and

EVERYTHING people are preordering gear, which is not normal for

Argentines,” Beccar says. “Now people know they can
ski anywhere.” This puts Azufre and its future refugio
IS SO BIG— system in just the right position.
“Being on the edge of the Andes now, it is the
EVEN WHEN wrong spot,” Beccar says. “Azufre is not the perfect ski
mountain. But it does have a lot of snow.” He notes its
ALREADY UP best terrain is spread around the whole valley, part of
the reason for prioritizing the refugios for ambitious
HERE, IT CAN big mountain skiers. The few lifts will access mostly
family-friendly terrain closer to the village. “We will
BE 10 HOURS have it all here: backcountry, lift skiing, Nordic skiing,
racers. It’s a long-term plan.”

TO SKIN TO Paving the road from the Chilean side will be an

important factor, with a timeline that isn’t set, but
Beccar and Nofal expect it will happen within five
A SUMMIT.” years because support from the Chileans and local
governments is strong.
The project will have its luxury category, but

T
EN YEARS AGO, the El Azufre project was a vague idea
floated by the unlikeliest of proponents: a couple of
nonskiing gauchos. Sergio Cabus and Martin Policante
held grazing rights for their cattle on government land in adjoin-
ing, pretty mountain valleys in the high Andes. But, exhaustingly,
their valleys were always full of snow. So much snow that long
after it was gone and melted everywhere else, their spot would
still be white. Cabus and Policante began to wonder if maybe
such inconvenient grazing allotments would make more sense
for skiers.
In 2013, a mutual acquaintance of the gauchos approached
Nofal. He was intrigued, but the scope of what would need to be
exclusivity is not a goal. Beccar and Nofal hope they will see
skiers winter camping, using the huts and touring from the road
once it is open in the winter as much as anything else. “Imagine
like, Thompson Pass [Alaska], just with a small ski resort nearby,”
Beccar says with a smile.
For Krause, hopping onboard last minute to help Beccar was a
no-brainer, but he was also intrigued by the bold plans of Azufre.
“Backcountry has grown a ton here and among Argentines,” says
Krause, who’s been skiing in the Andes since the early 2000s. “Big
projects like this one have to cater to the luxury category a bit, but
this hut system and touring emphasis leverages that into some-
thing smaller, more attainable and cooler at the end of the day.”

81
 [Right] According to Bob Dylan,
“The answer, my friends, is
blowing in the wind.” If the
answer is a 4,000-foot corn
lap, Armanino and Mander
are on the right track as they
trudge up a volcanic ridge.
[Below] Tim Cartwright
suffers from seasonal
confusion disorder. In the
middle of August, he found
deep winter conditions.
[Facing Page] With its
sustainable initiatives, El Azufre
can even accomodate this
Andean fox and his brethren.

82
I
N MAY 2018, Beccar and two friends from Las Leñas,
Victor Cancinos and Federico “Tali” Huajardo (now Azufre
ski guides), erected the three reinforced geodesic domes as
a conditions and terrain reconnaissance base camp. Nofal set
up satellite internet for them, and they brought in food, fuel,
wood and two snowmobiles. “By the end of May, there was
enough snow we could start skiing everywhere,” Beccar says.
They spent 65 days there total, including one nerve-wrack-
ing 25-day stretch of heavy snowstorms. The project was a go.
How long into the future that snowy weather will last,
no one can say, but, for now, the storms keep delivering. The
government is reassigning the grazing rights as tourism use,
then it will sell the land to the project. An environmental
review is wrapping up—as soon as it does, Beccar is poised to
build the alpine huts. “It is my priority to start building the
refugios,” he says.
Despite running large parts of a project with hundreds of
millions of dollars in investment, Beccar is the king of keeping
it real. He’s secured Policante’s simple stone and wood summer
shelter and is making it into his own year-round mountain
home. In addition to prioritizing refugio construction this
summer, Beccar said, he must finish his cabin and guest accom-
modations. “So I can invite people to stay,” he says. “Bunk beds,

of course. Otherwise, you are not a ski bum.”
Yet, I had to ask, given the emphasis on sustainability and
low-impact living, why build at all in a pristine valley?
“People have this view the Andes are untouched, but
they’ve been overgrazed and altered for over 200 years,” Nofal
tells me. “And more and more people will want to live in the
mountains. If we can show how it can and should be done
sustainably with this project, from scratch, that’s a huge benefit.
We have to learn how to live in a more Earth-friendly way, and
the Andes are so inhospitable, if we can do it here, we can do
it anywhere.” The village will be purposely confined to about
100 acres, with no sprawling homesites or mansions, according
to Nofal. As an off-grid community, it will incorporate neces-
sary awareness of energy consumption and minimizing waste,
along with composting and recycling.
and first descent: the northeast face of Volcán Planchón. Tech-
nically, these volcanoes are overlapping calderas called the
Planchón-Peteroa Complex; the cat left us in a low saddle with
four smoking craters. Beccar dryly reminded us not to get too
close, lest we breathe poisonous fumes and fall in.
We crossed along an exposed ridge and booted directly
up a steep spine (which, per usual, took much longer and
was much steeper and higher than it seemed). A ski from the
summit proper wasn’t possible thanks to a crown of black,
spiky rocks, but it didn’t matter. As we dropped into 45 degrees
of smooth chalk, it felt like we were airborne over the cordil-
lera for a brief moment. The run ended via a couple of slip
throughs in a big cliff band and another long, flowy runout
to the valley floor.
Back at the tiny outpost, the crew was preparing a farewell
asado for our reluctant departure. A huge, white hare bolted

A
FTER A WEEK OF EXPLORING massive ski lines
deep down into drainages, and booting knife-edge
ridges from bowls to 3,000-foot ramps, we only had a
few days before we had to rejoin the rest of the world. A couple
of American friends from Las Leñas, Tim Cartwright and Matt
Driscoll, had just made their way into the valley, curious about
Beccar’s project in the middle of nowhere.
We headed to another steep, imposing face above the valley
near the flats, and a curious fox family checked out the aromas.
Andean ducks gathered in an open pool of the Rio Valenzuela,
and festive chatter permeated this tiny bubble in the otherwise
vast silence of the valley. The next time we come back, this will
be a different place. We were lucky to come now, but I was also
excited to return soon, and see what the passion of an unlikely
band of Argentine skiers would bring for this place, for locals
and far-flung visitors. ❆
 CO NTOU RS
C A SC A D E VO LC A N O ES

Turns
All Year by Tom Hallberg

From Mt. Shasta in California

to Mt. Rainier in Washington,
Cascade volcanoes have
long inspired anyone who
ventured beneath them.

Glacier-draped peaks with up to

10,000 vertical feet of skiing are
rare no matter where you live. When
combined with the Pacific Northwest’s
historically deep winters, abundant
glaciers and mild summers, the results
are perfect circumstances to ski around
the calendar. Those conditions drew the
first European-American settlers into
the alpine and helped ski clubs cultivate
an atmosphere of idræt—a Scandinavian
word that roughly translates to love
of outdoor activity—that brought
thousands into the mountains. Idræt
pushed skiers, homegrown and from
around the world, to test their limits
on some of the world’s longest steep
descents, and it convinces hundreds
each day to explore the mellow slopes
on the volcanoes’ south sides. But
with the Pacific Northwest’s glaciers
receding, taking with them the quality
corn snow that used to last through
the fall, how much longer will year-
round skiing in the Upper Left persist?

84
85

S
upine, gray backs of fallen ponderosas stretch across the trail,
some lined up three in a row, others haphazardly stacked. Each is
a formidable obstacle for Ian and me to clamber over. Manzanita
bushes grow so thickly along the trail that circumventing the logs would
be just as hard as going over them. We lose the route, find it in frozen boot-
prints, then lose it again in a thicket. After more than an hour of fighting
through fallen soldiers of fire, we leave the trail to follow Soda Creek.
Water navigates through the morass; perhaps we can, too.
We’re in the Three Sisters Wilderness, 286,708 protected acres that
encompass the namesake volcanoes along with Broken Top (9,175 ft.), a
decomposing stratovolcano to the southeast. Our path to Central Oregon’s
Middle Sister (10,047 ft.), Hope, traverses the scar of the 2012 Pole Creek
Fire, which ignited 26,000 acres east of the Middle and North Sister (10,085
ft.). It’s perfect Central Oregon ski mountaineering weather: a sunny day
after a hard freeze that creates thousands of feet of superlative corn skiing
off summits with limitless views. These are the days I remember best from
when I lived in Bend, the closest city to the Sisters, in the 2010s: alpine
starts, stars glittering over the sagebrush desert to the east; skinning, then
booting for hours to summit a volcano; riding perfectly pitched, perfectly
corned snow; sweating in the afternoon sun on the return before drinking
a well-earned afternoon beer at the truck.
These peaks that dominate Bend’s skyline encapsulate the unique
qualities of the Cascade Range’s volcanoes. Solitary peaks tower above
valleys. Millions live at the bases of these behemoths, and on their south-
side routes the hordes of climbers and skiers make one consider moving
away. But, like Ian and me, you can set your sights on harder-to-reach
areas and wonder why so few people are inclined to ski consistent snow
on steep, fall-line routes. As we walk fallen pines like gymnasts on balance
beams, our planks catch on lichen-draped grand and Douglas firs. I think
about how just a few miles south, a procession likely wends its way up
South Sister (10,358 ft.), an immensely popular walk-up accessible from
the Cascade Lakes Highway. Where else can you ski 5,000 feet of cruiser
corn one day and hope to God your edges hold on a 50-degree headwall
the next?
Shoehorning the Cascades into a single description is daunting. Book-
86
[Opening Spread] Since Sylvain Saudan
skied Mt. Hood’s Newton-Clark Headwall
in 1971, skiers have opened a total of
seven lines off the volcano’s summit
block, including the Newton-Clark. Asit
Rathod, skiing the Old Chute here, is
one of the big mountain skiers to knock
off all of them. Richard Hallman
[Left] Most start this line on Broken
Top from the saddle, but Mike
Schindler embraces the spirit of the
route’s name (Pucker Up) and drops
from the tippy top. Jon Tapper
[Facing Page] Stretching from Canada’s
Mt. Meager to California’s Lassen
Peak, the 700-mile Cascade Range
encompasses three U.S. states, one
Canadian province, dozens of major
peaks and a whole lot of vertical.
ended by Mt. Shasta (14,162 ft.) and
Lassen Peak (10,457 ft.) to the south
and stretching north to Canada’s Mt.
Meager (8,793 ft.), the range encompasses several distinct zones. Northern
California’s peaks have long springs with impeccable corn; Shasta consis-
tently delivers year-round skiing, though that may be changing. Southern
and Central Oregon boast an array of smaller peaks like Mt. McLoughlin
(9,495 ft.), Mt. Mazama (Crater Lake) (8,157 ft.), Mt. Thielsen (9,182 ft.) and
Diamond Peak (8,748 ft.), along with the Three Sisters, which feel like a
subrange unto themselves.
Mt. Jefferson (10,497 ft.) and Mt. Hood (11,249 ft.) in northern Oregon
represent the first shift toward the range’s wetter half, where forests grow
thickly with alder, devil’s club and berry bushes, fed by rainstorms from
the Pacific Ocean. Southern Washington, home to Mts. Adams (12,276 ft.),
St. Helens (8,363 ft.) and Rainier (14,411 ft.), is a ski mountaineer’s haven,
the wide, hulking peaks hiding a bevy of steep headwalls and glaciers.
These peaks comprise the High Cascades, a term often used in Oregon
to describe its volcanoes, which rose through the crumbling remains of
the Old Cascades. It’s a term I’d argue applies to the major peaks between
Shasta and Rainier, which jut from their respective valley floors, snow-
capped tops rising from blankets of rich, green forest. Washington’s North
Cascades and Canada’s part of the range are distinct enough in geology,
topography and remoteness, as well as their rich history of long-distance
traverses and hut systems, to deserve their own story (something I plan
to tell in a later issue).
These volcanoes have long been sources of power and interest for
anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest, spawning outlandish mythol-
ogies and scrappy mountain climbers. They’ve also occupied a singular
place in American ski mountaineering; they offer some of the best oppor-
tunities for year-round skiing on the planet, due to the convergence of a
deep snowpack and historically mild summer temperatures that allows
glaciers to form and snow to persist throughout the year. “The enticement
of year-round skiing really opened my eyes to glaciers and ski touring and
ski mountaineering,” says Chris Carr, owner of Shasta Mountain Guides.
Glaciers, as Carr mentions, are the secret ingredient to the sauce that is
Cascade volcano skiing. Led by Mt. Rainier, which has 26 named glaciers,
the Cascades contain more than anywhere else in the Lower 48. Making
year-round turns—that innately Cascadian ability to get in the car any
month and ski significant vertical—is possible because the sheets of ice
hold snow all summer, though anyone who’s skied a glacier in October
knows the sun cups impede linking good-looking carves.
A few miles from the parking lot, the drifts are deep enough to cover
the detritus from the Pole Creek Fire, but we are not out of the woods
yet, so to speak. Boughs as thick as my arm are frozen into the snow in
our path, and we skin carefully through close firs, branches occasionally
catching our packs hard enough to stop our progress. I’m reminded of a
deadpan half-joke Cascade pioneer Jason Hummel made when I asked
him what defined skiing in the range: “Bushwhacking.”
Two hours in, Ian and I exit the woods to a thought-arresting visage:
the North Sister’s imposing east wall cleaved by eroding pillars and the
Thayer Glacier Headwall, spiny ridges on the Middle Sister terminating in
cliffs hundreds of feet high, glittering, frozen snow absorbing its first rays
of sunlight. I love this moment on any volcano climb, the world suddenly
infinite, the path clearly laid out, but it carries the deflating realization
that the top is still so far away. I also love that inherent contradiction.
Though the peaks seem so attainable from town—their summits visible
from almost anywhere—it’s not easy to unlock their secrets. However, if
you put in the miles, time, scratched arms and snagged baselayers, the
range is, as Lou Dawson says in Wild Snow, “the demanding grail of Amer-
ican ski mountaineering.”

UPLIFT (1792-1888)
Ring of Fire

Likely the first white, European explorers to glimpse the Cascades

were British naval officers in 1792. Lieutenant William E. Broughton and
his crew, part of Captain George Vancouver’s western reconnaissance
missions, noted a conical peak south of the Columbia River as they trav-
eled inland from the Pacific. They named it after Admiral Arthur Hood.
Next came Lewis and Clark, Americans sent by President Thomas Jeffer-
son to scout the West. “This mtn. is Covered with Snow and in the range
of mountains which we have passed through and is of a Conical form but
rugid,” Clark wrote in his Nov. 3, 1805, journal entry upon seeing Hood.
Those early expeditions observed and named other notable Cascade
volcanoes, too. Hood towered to the south over the Columbia, rising more
than 11,000 feet above the water from the cliffs that form the river’s gorge.
To the north rose a pair of peaks, one gently tapering to a perfect point
(symmetry it later lost in an eruption) and a hulking mound of glaciers
over 12,000 feet tall.
The peaks they saw, eventually named to honor British nobles and
an American president, already had a rich history and mythology. Today,
a popular, romanticized version of an Indigenous creation myth shared
between several Northwest tribes says Chief Sahale punished his two sons
and the woman they were fighting over, who could not choose between
them, by turning them into three mountains: Hood, Adams and St. Helens.
Those early explorers didn’t know that mythology, but it carries traces
of the Cascades’ volcanism. The chief ’s sons were said to throw fire at
each other, and Loowitlatkla, an Indigenous name for St. Helens, means
“Lady of Fire.”
As part of the Ring of Fire—the volcanoes encircling the Pacific Ocean
that include peaks on North and South America as well as in the ocean off
the coasts of Asia and Australia—the Cascades formed through geologic
upheaval. Most of the High Cascades, which are stratovolcanoes, devel-
oped in distinct eruptive periods as layers of viscous magma pushed
 [Left] Peter Skene
Ogden, a trapper with
the Hudson’s Bay
Company, explored much
of the West—from the
Great Salt Lake basin to
the Cascades—on his
mission to establish “fur
deserts” by eradicating
furbearing animals.
[Facing Page] From the
area’s Indigenous tribes
to New Age hippies, Mt.
Shasta has long influenced
myths of spiritual power.
And the lenticular clouds
that ring its summit
have long evoked visits
from extraterrestrials.
Bryce Craig
through vents in the Earth’s surface, a process that lent them their classic
shape—tall, symmetrical, freestanding cones that terminate in a summit
block or crater. Diamond Peak in Southern Oregon is an exception, a
shield volcano formed by fast-flowing, thin magma that created a longer,
lower, less-symmetrical shape. The Old Cascades began to form 6.45
million years ago during a heightened period of volcanic production,
but recent activity (within the past 600,000 years) created the high peaks
we see today. St. Helens famously erupted as recently as 1980, when it lost
1,300 feet of elevation and carpeted the Pacific Northwest in ash.
Given their prominence, these volcanoes unsurprisingly acted as
beacons for early explorers. Starting from Fort Vancouver across the
Columbia from present-day Portland, fur trappers and missionaries trav-
eled south. Chief among them was Peter Skene Ogden, a British fur trapper
in the Hudson’s Bay Company. Ogden was hired to establish a “fur desert”
by trapping and killing all the furbearing animals in the “Snake Country”
of the Intermountain West to discourage American trappers from follow-
ing and competing with them.
Ogden led expeditions from 1824 to 1830, trapping animals and
mapping the Great Salt Lake area, the Snake River Plain and drainages
along the Cascades. In 1825, he and his crew became the first recorded
non-native people to glimpse the Three Sisters, though Mennonite mission-
aries gave them their Faith, Hope and Charity monikers 15 years later.
From there, Ogden continued south, traveling waterways, eradicating
populations of beavers and encountering signature Cascade peaks. In his
February 14, 1827, journal entry, penned next to a Southern Oregon aquatic
pelt factory, Ogden wrote, “I have named this river Sastise River. There is a
mountain equal in height to Mount Hood or Vancouver; I have named Mt.
Sastise. I have given these names, from the tribes of the Indians.”
Because of this journal entry, Ogden was credited with “discovering”
Mt. Shasta, the range’s second-highest peak. Authors Michael Zanger and
Andy Selters point out in Mount Shasta: A Guide to Climbing, Skiing, and
Exploring California’s Premier Mountain that based on his travel path,
he may have seen Mt. McLoughlin, a conical Southern Oregon volcano
roughly 70 miles north and 5,000 feet shorter. “Though Ogden’s maps
have never been found, history has effectively granted him the title of first
European-American discoverer of Mount Shasta,” they write. “Whether
he actually did remains a mystery to this day.” Ogden and his crews of
88
trappers showed mere cartographic interest in the volcanoes, naming and
noting them but sticking to lowlands and forests where their furbearing
quarry lived. Settlers who followed, however, found themselves drawn
to the alpine.
FIRST ASCENTS
Fall in the Cascades is a crapshoot—dreadfully cold and rainy, or
crisply sunny—and the weather can turn at any moment. Joel Palmer and
the other settlers’ progress was slow, and the threat of winter was making
success urgent. In late September 1827, they had arrived in The Dalles,
a Columbia River town where Old West chop shops turned wagons into
rafts for the final leg of the journey to Oregon City, the Oregon Trail’s
western terminus. Hell no, Palmer had said when he heard the exorbitant
river fares, so he and his wagon train headed toward Mt. Hood, where
Samuel Barlow was battling the brush trying to cut a road around the
mountain’s south side.
Twenty-five-foot, multibranched alder trees, Douglas firs thicker than
their wagons, and boulders hidden beneath inches of moss and duff
impeded their work, and winter was coming. Perhaps, the men thought,
a higher vantage would offer enlightenment, as their blind hacking had
yet to give them much purchase. Barlow, Palmer and a man referred to as
Mr. Lock headed for the alpine, hoping to glimpse a way through. They
followed the White River. Cedar-lined bogs slowed their pace to a crawl,
rainwater-saturated duff sucking at their boots. Finally, they arrived at tree
line, perhaps with the same awe-struck reaction I have each time I escape
the forest below that mountain.
In the glacial-till-laden river bottom below what was later named
the White River Glacier, they picked through the braided stream, then
ascended a spur onto the broad south face. Barlow and Lock, winded,
stayed behind while Palmer shot for higher ground, becoming the first
white person to climb that high on the mountain. Author Jon Bell points
out in his book, On Mount Hood, that Palmer likely ascended to Illumi-
nation Rock at 9,543 feet and perhaps higher.
“I then went round to the southeast side, continually ascending, and
taking an observation of the country south, and was fully of the opinion
that we could find a passage through,” Palmer wrote in his Oct. 12, 1827,
journal entry. He was right. The parties successfully navigated a route
through, cutting the first pass on the Barlow Road, a thoroughfare that
allowed wagons to make the trip directly to Oregon City.
Despite Palmer’s pioneering foray, settlers didn’t establish climbing
for climbing’s sake in the Cascades for several decades. Thomas Jefferson
Dryer, owner of The Oregonian newspaper, led a party up the mountain
Aug. 8, 1854, later writing that they summitted to find a wide perch with
sulphureous volcanic vents. Bell notes that Dryer’s account had several
oddities: He described seeing California’s Mt. Shasta (not visible from
Hood), but not the Columbia River (very easily visible to the north), and
he put the summit at roughly 7,000 feet higher than it is. Three years later,
five men—Henry J. Pittock, W. Lyman Chittenden, L.J. Powell, James Dear-
dorff and William Buckley—set out on another attempt, gaining the actual
summit and finding the view to be a bit different than Dryer recounted.
Other Cascade summits beckoned mountaineers in the 1850s. In 1853,
the year before he attempted Hood, Dryer notched the first ascent of Mt.
St. Helens. In 1854, a party of workers on the Naches Pass road summited
Washington’s Mt. Adams from the north side, and Captain E.D. Pierce
navigated to Mt. Shasta’s summit that same year. North Sister saw its first
white visitors in 1857, with future Oregon Gov. George L. Woods as one
of three men who scaled the craggiest of the Sisters and experienced the
Earth’s Root Chakra
by Greta Close
Rising 10,000 feet above the landscape, Mt.
Shasta lies in solitary, captivating grandeur,
visible from over 100 miles away. Seen while
one drives north on I-5, the robust massif—the
Cascade Range’s most voluminous stratovol-
cano—stretches toward the sky, its 14,179-foot
summit rising to the east of its satellite cone,
Shastina. Orb-like clouds—their whisked, cylindri-
cal appearance beautiful and unnatural—brush its
summit so often they’ve been reported as UFOs.
Just 40 miles south of the Oregon border, Shasta
is one of the southernmost Cascades. Known for
more than just its physical beauty, it stands out as
an impalpable entity—an energy, a sacredness—
that has inspired myths of hidden civilizations,
religious movements, a designation as Earth’s
Root Chakra and even a nonprofit recognized by
a President’s Council.
“When I first caught sight of [Mount Shasta]
over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley I
was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary.
Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not
been weary since,” John Muir wrote of the moun-
tain on the horizon.
Muir, of course, was not the first to feel the
mountain’s power. Thousands of years before
he set foot in California, the Shasta, Atsugewi,
Achuwami, Wintu and Modoc tribes residing near
Shasta incorporated the distinct peak into their
cosmologies, though documentation is incon-
sistent. One Wintu legend traces their people’s
origins to a sacred spring on the mountain. A
Modoc story says, “at last, the water went down…
then the animal people came down from the top
of Mt. Shasta and made new homes for them-
selves. They scattered everywhere and became
the ancestors of all the animal people.”
But these are not Shasta’s only legends.
In 1886, Frederick Spencer Oliver, a young
man who grew up near Mt. Shasta, wrote the book
A Dweller on Two Planets. Oliver claimed the spirit
Phylos the Thibetan channeled the stories of a
hidden city inside the mountain through him. In
1925, an author known simply as Selvius contin-
ued Oliver’s work, publishing an article about the
Lemurians in The Rosicrucians Mystic Triangle.
Selvius described the city of Telos hidden in Mt.
Shasta and its inhabitants: 7-foot-tall, supernat-
ural beings dressed in all white who descended
from the lost continent of Lemuria.
Decades later, in the early 1930s, mining engi-
neer Guy Ballard was hiking on Shasta when he
met the Count of St. Germain, who gave Ballard
a cup of “pure energy” and told him about the
Ascended Masters. “I had planned such a hike…to
spend some time deep in the heart of the moun-
tain, when the following experience entered my
life…. [St. Germain] stood there before me—a
magnificent God-like figure—in a white jeweled
robe, a Light and Love sparkling in his eyes that
revealed and proved the Dominion and Majesty
that are his,” Ballard wrote.
St. Germain, a medieval French “wonderman,”
was highly regarded for his skill in alchemy and
claimed by some to have discovered the elixir of
life. His mystical character lived on after his death,
earning him recognition as an Ascended Master
(one of the spiritually enlightened beings who
have transcended their corporeal self and return
to share wisdom with humanity). After the meet-
ing, Ballard published the book Original Unveiled
Mysteries under the pseudonym Ray Godfre King
and started the I AM movement with his wife,
Edna.
Almost 50 years later, in 1978, recent
Princeton University graduate Andrew Oser
journeyed to Shasta. In the peak’s presence, he
found himself at peace, connected to who he
was and left feeling re-energized. He returned to
the mountain for the next 28 years for an annual
reconnection and recharge. On his website, he
relayed an experience he had on one such trip
while camping at what he calls “one of his favorite
vortex spots,” where he had a vision of founding
a nonprofit to empower children through sports.
He moved to Washington, D.C., and started the
Joy of Sports Foundation—an organization which
the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and
Sports recognized for its work with at-risk chil-
dren. Eventually, Oser moved permanently to
Shasta. He now runs Mount Shasta Retreats and
works as a spiritual guide, helping people find
peace and connection on the mountain they can
incorporate back into their lives.
Ashalyn, a former Mormon turned clairvoy-
ant, shares a similar path to Oser. She came to
Shasta for a camping trip while living in Oakland,
California. Like Oser, she left feeling so rejuve-
nated that she returned each summer to recharge.
In 1988, she moved to Mt. Shasta and just over a
decade later opened Shasta Vortex Adventures.
“A lot of people are guided to the mountain by
their own spirit guides, their psychic healers, their
health practitioners…and then they show up in Mt.
Shasta at my door,” she says. “People worldwide
are coming here to feel the energy of the moun-
tain and connect with the spiritual energy.”
As much as people try to ascribe Shasta’s
allure to a concrete phenomenon, the essence
of its power lies in its intangibility—in the convic-
tion of the feeling experienced in the presence
of the mountain. As for what gives Shasta its
power, everyone believes something different—
some don’t qualify it at all. “It’s just the way God
made it,” Oser says. “The mountain doesn’t care
what you believe; it’s a place you can connect to
whatever you believe in.”

[Left] William Gladstone Steel
founded the Mazamas with
one goal: a club for alpinists,
regardless of creed or class.
Courtesy The Mazamas
[Facing Page, Left] In 1928,
the Skyliners Ski Club from
Bend constructed its first
lodge on McKenzie Pass,
a building it occupied
until 1934, when it built
another closer to town.
Courtesy Deschutes
Historical Museum
[Facing Page, Right] On the
Mazamas’ founding climb of
Mt. Hood, 155 men and 38
women made it to the summit
of Oregon’s highest peak.
Courtesy The Mazamas
expansive view many mountaineers have marveled at since. “To the north
of us stretched the Cascade range, with its wilderness of mountains, over-
topped by Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Hood,” he wrote in an 1870 issue of the
Overland Journal. “To the south the same wilderness of mountains was
seen over the tops of the other Sisters, with Diamond Peak, South Peak,
Mt. McLaughlin, and a far distant peak we thought might be Mt. Shasta.”
Other than North Sister, the peaks above are relatively easy mountain-
eering objectives, at least by what Hummel calls the “dog routes.” Alpinists
took several more years to summit the High Cascades’ most commanding
mountains, namely Oregon’s Mt. Jefferson and Washington’s Mt. Rainier,
which Dawson called the range’s “glacier-crowned monarch.” In 1870,
Hazard Stevens, Philemon Van Trump and British alpinist Edmund Cole-
man went with a Yakima Indian guide to Rainier’s base, where Coleman
lagged due to a heavy pack, Dawson writes in Wild Snow. Stevens and
Trump left their guide and continued above tree line, making the summit
but not an expeditious return. “The pioneers bivouacked in a steam cave
within the summit crater,” Dawson writes, “enduring an exhausting night
while being drenched by warm steam and scoured by gusts of freezing
wind—a fate similar to the many mountaineers who have since sought
similar shelter.”
It seems inevitable Jefferson would be the last of the High Cascades to
see climbers. Early settlers cut roads and paths over the mountains close to
the Three Sisters, Mt. Hood and southern Washington’s volcanoes. Shasta,
despite its distance from any major city, has long drawn attention for its
easy climbing slopes and purported mystical qualities. But, even with its
physical resemblance to Hood and excellent skiing, Jefferson remains far
less visited. Today, the closest paved road is 4 miles from its base, making
access difficult, and its summit pinnacle (often a pillar of alpine ice) acts
as a challenging deterrent. Still, in 1888, a group of alpinists, buoyed by a
low snow year, crunched their way to the summit August 12. “I have always
contended that we had one of the most favorable seasons, and that there
are seasons when it would be impossible to make the ascent,” climber Ray
Farmer wrote to the Mazama Bulletin in 1907.
Those first alpinists walked up and down the glaciated Cascade slopes
to etch their names in history, but people soon realized the moderate
slopes were perfect for skiing.
90
CONVERGENCE (1893-1948)
The Mazamas
William Gladstone Steel was attracting the wrong kind of people.
The mountain climber, outdoorsman and politically savvy maneuverer
wanted an Oregon club for alpinists, one to organize climbs, advocate
for protected lands and promote the nascent sport of mountaineering.
He’d tried in 1887, forming the Oregon Alpine Club, but photographers,
wildflower enthusiasts, hikers and contemptible tourism promoters had
inundated the organization’s rolls, and he wanted to start over.
So, he did what any connected community member in 1894 would
do—took out ads in the local papers. Steel called upon mountain-minded
people to meet him July 19 in Government Camp, a small outpost on Mt.
Hood, for the initiation of a new climbing club. When the day arrived, the
weather was less than ideal. Mt. Hood and the Cascades force wet air off
the Pacific to rise, orographic lifting that creates tumultuous storms, even
in summer. Peals of thunder rang around the mountain; sleet lashed the
more than 7,000 feet of slope between Government Camp and the summit.
Undeterred, some 350 people showed up. Folks from all strata of life—
men, women, blue-collar laborers, white-collar managers of industry—
mostly from Portland. One by one, they trudged through wet snow. More
than 100 turned back, cold and freezing, but 155 men and 38 women
braved the elements, clothes soaked and heavy, pushing each other onto
the summit ridge. While most reversed course immediately, descending
toward fires and hot food, 40 remained on the summit to validate the
charter of The Mazamas and name Steel the club’s first president.
Fittingly, since Steel descended from abolitionists, the Mazamas were
inclusive, their sole requirement being members had to summit a glaciated
peak. “When you look at the very early start of mountaineering, at least
in regards to the Mazamas, it was open to anybody because there really
wasn’t any gear,” Mazamas librarian Mathew Brock says. Steel’s vision of a
club for real climbers stuck, and this year will be the 129th anniversary of
that inaugural ascent. For the next decade, the club stuck to its core tenets,
mountaineering and conservation work, but skiing’s lure was inescapable.
A 1975 Mazama Bulletin article states that in 1903 members Colonel L.L.
Hawkins, Martin Gorman and T. Brook White took a trip with 10-foot
skis Hawkins built, along with nine-foot poles for balancing. According
to the Bulletin, White prophetically proclaimed during the trip that “the
time would come when more people would visit Mt. Hood in the winter,
than in the summer.”
Skiing came late to the Upper Left relative to its coastal opposite,
New England. While skiers on the other side of the country were testing
their limits on classic routes like Mt. Washington’s Tuckerman Ravine,
the Mazamas and other Hood pioneers were noodling around the snowy
lower slopes. The sport drove a second era of Cascade mountaineering:
Major peaks had been climbed, but skiing represented a new method of
exploration. It encouraged individual achievements as skiers turned their
tips toward the summits, and it drove general interest in the outdoors,
thanks in large part to the proliferation and outsize influence of skiing
and mountaineering clubs.
Such organizations provided transportation, equipment, search and
rescue, and publicity for larger events and seminal climbs. Though not all
individual pioneers were affiliated with clubs, the organizations moved
large numbers of people to the mountains. Cities west of the Cascades,
including Portland, Seattle and Eugene, aren’t mountain towns. Histor-
ically they were port, farming or timber outposts, with peaks on their
skylines. Residents needed infrastructure to access the hills; clubs provided
it through trips and ski races.
The Mazamas and the Mountaineers, a Seattle-based outdoor club,
established themselves in the early 20th century. They created outdoor
infrastructure and interest, setting the stage for the 1920s, when clubs truly
thrived. Throughout the history of these early organizations (which still
exist today), names of prominent magnates, politicians and socialites pop
up, but the clubs welcomed bricklayers and businesspeople alike, setting a
tone for the future of mountaineering in the region. As Brock puts it, “Once
you got out of the city and into the wilderness, everybody was the same.”
OUT OF LOSS
Everything in the Cascades is farther than it looks. When Ian and I
emerge from the brush, the Hayden Glacier extends like a handicap ramp
up to the saddle between the Middle and North Sisters. With an easy pitch
and open touring, we’ll be donning crampons to ascend the sastrugi-laden
west side in no time. Or so I thought. The morning sun rises higher and
higher, nearing its midday apex, as we follow the ramp toward Prouty
Point, a small peak in the saddle. After transitioning from skinning to
bootpacking, I gaze over the convoluted mess of glaciers, boulder-strewn
fields of till, spur ridges and forest in the immense, remote lands west of
the Sisters. Somewhere in that cacophonous terrain is the path Henry
Cramer and Guy Ferry followed nearly a century earlier, unwittingly
changing the trajectory of skiing in Oregon.
Labor Day weekend, 1927: The boys parked their Model T near Frog
Camp, a trailhead off the McKenzie Highway, a winding road along the
northwest corner of the Three Sisters that connects Eugene and the hamlet
of Sisters. Their plan was to climb the Sisters and enjoy the cool, long,
late summer days before returning home. From Frog Camp, they walked
southeast in the thick, subalpine forest, trees dripping with lichen, toward
North Sister’s crumbling bulk. Through chilly drizzle and fog, the boys
pushed into the storm.
In the next few days, they signed the Middle Sister summit register,
knocking one goal off their list. When they ran into forest ranger Prince
Glaze on Sept. 5, they relayed their plans to climb South Sister, too. They
told him they had climbed the North, though, believing them to have been
confused in the fog, he correctly guessed they had been on the Middle.
The next day, when they didn’t return to Frog Camp, where Glaze
was stationed, he searched the frigid, cold mountains in a growing snow-
storm. For two days, he prowled the area between the South and Middle
Sisters, but to no avail. By the time the search for the boys was called off,
nearly 200 men and women from around the state—from Bend to Eugene,
Portland to The Dalles—had canvassed the mountains, but swift snowfall
entombed the boys, whose bodies weren’t found for two years.
Though the Cramer and Ferry families left Frog Camp without their
sons, the search proved to be a seminal moment in Oregon’s outdoor
history. Around Portland and Seattle, the Mazamas and Mountaineers
were already going strong, but Eugene and Bend, two of Oregon’s largest
cities, didn’t have anything similar. Volunteers from the Mazamas had
directed the hundreds of rescuers, showing those from Eugene and Bend
a local club’s value. “The cold nights around the campfires at Frog Camp
were an incubator for ideas for helping people negotiate mountains in the
future,” states a 2022 retrospective on the rescue from the Nugget News in
Sisters, Oregon. West of the Cascades, the Eugene Outdoor Club formed,
quickly morphing into today’s Obsidians, while east of the mountains the
Skyliners Ski Club grew, both taking form in 1928.
In the 1920s, Bend was a timber town, with the Brooks-Scanlan and
Shevlin-Hixon mills employing many families and underpinning the econ-
omy. Skyliners founders Nels Skjersaa, Emil Nordeen, Nils Wulfberg and
Chris Kostol wanted to encourage more outdoor activity in Bend through
the Scandinavian concept of idræt. “Idræt has changed its meaning over
the last 150 years, but it’s really just this love of outdoor activity,” says Bend
journalist Tim Gibbons, who has written on Oregon’s skiing history. The
concept is akin to friluftsliv, a Nordic term that relates to a healthy life-
91
 Cynthia flew through the blizzard—cold, dreary
rain and snow pelting her. The journey from Mt.
Jefferson should have taken just a few hours;
instead, it stretched into four days. Bedraggled,
the homing pigeon returned to her loft Feb.
27, 1948, bearing news from Jack Meissner, a
28-year-old skier attempting to be the first to
traverse the 300-mile Skyline Trail between Mt.
Hood and Crater Lake in Oregon, and his ski part-
ner, Emory Woodall.
“Thanks a million for food, especially meat,”
the note read, in part. “Both of us okay. Forgot
camera and it’s really beautiful. Jack.” Cynthia’s
delivery was the first contact with the pair,
who began the hike Feb. 18. It must have been
welcome news for the U.S. Forest Service, which
had attempted to dissuade Meissner from making
the trip in the first place, but he had not relented.
Ski Area on Santiam Pass and at Meissner’s home
on Odell Lake near Cascade Summit.
Woodall left the trip before they reached
Santiam Pass, feet blistered from a soggy, three-
day march around the hulk of Mt. Jefferson.
Meissner, who had envisioned a solo endeavor
anyway, went on undeterred. Today, multiday
traverses are more common in the Cascades,
but in 1948 the concept was foreign to Forest
officials, perhaps even terrifying. “Nowadays
you would go, ‘Well, you guys can’t tell me that,’
but they said you can’t do it solo,” daughter Julie
Meissner says.
Meissner’s first partner, Ernest Pentheny,
bailed before they left Mt. Hood, so Woodall
jumped in. Over the 10 days before Cynthia and
her pigeon partner, Homer, took off from the
men’s camp, Woodall and Meissner slogged

Jack Meissner’s On Feb. 18, they left Mt. Hood, Meissner carrying
55 pounds of gear, including a two-person pup
through the hills between Hood and Jefferson.
The forests were thick with hemlock, western

Big Adventure
by Tom Hallberg
tent and a featherweight (for the time) sleeping
bag, along with a flaming red parka and 7-foot skis
with cable bindings. The men hoped to make the
red cedar and Douglas fir. The undergrowth
was a tangled bramble of devil’s club, salm-
onberry and myriad other bushes, all fed by
journey in 30 days, with refueling stops at Hoodoo the ample snowfall and rain from storms the

[Above] With an army pup tent and a

rotating cast of tentmates, Jack Meissner
completed a ski traverse in 1948 that
has yet to be repeated—Mt. Hood
to Crater Lake in winter. Courtesy
Deschutes Historical Museum
[Middle] The Obsidians from Eugene,
Oregon, utilized the West’s growing rail
system to move more than 600 people
into the hills for ski days in 1937.
[Right] Two patches from the
Obsidians Ski Club, later renamed
the Ski Laufers, were signifiers of
the Eugene club’s interest in the
growing sport. Courtesy Obsidians
Outdoor Club, all three photos

style characterized by connecting

with nature through outdoor activ-
ity, which Lowell Skoog, author and
pioneer of ski traverses in Washing-
ton, applies to the proliferation of
skiing in Washington in his book,
Written in the Snows. To promote idræt, the Skyliners built a “winter play-
ground,” as they called it, at the top of McKenzie Pass, about a quarter mile
east of the road’s winter closure, bringing the burgeoning ski industry,
already popular near Portland and Seattle, to Central Oregon.
Almost immediately, the club, and its counterpart in Eugene, achieved
the goal of promoting idræt. The Skyliners built a 40-meter ski jump, a
toboggan slide and a lodge, then held races, inviting the Eugene skiers.
McKenzie Pass’s closure starts well down the western side, so the Obsid-
ians parked at the gate on their end and walked up. “There’s 20 or 30
switchbacks,” Gibbons says. “They would do the race on the pass, and then
they’d ski back down. That’s like a 50- or 60- or 70-kilometer day.” Until
1934, the clubs would meet in the middle, but, with the help of Bend’s
mill owners, the Skyliners moved their playground to Tumalo Creek, just
10 miles outside of town.
Like today’s industry magnates have softball teams, the Bend mills had
a ski club, in a sense. By helping the Skyliners build a headquarters with a
lodge, 60-meter ski jump and two rope tows closer to town than McKenzie
Pass, they put Bend athletes on a level playing field with those around the
region. It also encouraged tourism, laying the groundwork for Bend to
become the recreational hub it is today. “The mills were supplying building
materials and money and supporting the efforts,” Gibbons says. “Employ-
ers were very different then in how they supported community activities.”
On the other side of McKenzie Pass, the Obsidians were looking for
ways to bring Willamette Valley residents into the mountains. Unlike

92
Cascade Crest impounds as moisture rolls off
the Pacific Ocean. Progress on the first leg was
slow, hampered by a blizzard that left him tent-
bound for nearly two days.
Meissner arrived at Santiam Pass on March 2,
sleeping in the lodge at Hoodoo Ski Area, where
after a few days of rest, he continued solo, fulfill-
ing his desire for solitude. If anyone was equipped
for such a groundbreaking trek, it was Meissner.
He ran trap lines in the winter near Odell Lake,
overnighting in snow caves when the weather
turned. “I’d make a seat for myself, and a small
shelf for candles and a door of pine [boughs]
and covered it with an army poncho,” he told Ron
Watters of Cross Country Skier in 2007. He’d been
a mechanic on fighter planes in World War II and
was a stonemason and carpenter. “It wasn’t like
he needed someone else to help him get some-
thing done,” Julie says.
Meissner left Santiam Pass en route to
Willamette Pass Ski Area near Cascade Summit.
Following him on daily flights was the Civil Air
Patrol from Eugene, which dropped him food
every few days and spotted his bright red-orange
parka to ensure he was alive. Planning to defend
his title in a downhill ski race at Willamette Pass,
Meissner walked 18 miles in one day, but to no
avail. “He was too late to run the course but
appeared in time to be welcomed by his many
skier friends and others,” a March 15 newspaper
clipping reads. After a few days, he picked up
friend Bob Pfeiffer, who had been piloting the
food drops, and two teenagers, Donald Temple
and Gilbert Bissell, from Oakridge and Eugene,
respectively. Though the weather had consis-
tently slowed him, Meissner asserted they would
finish the last stage by Easter Sunday, March 28.
But two days after leaving Meissner’s cabin at
Odell Lake, howling snowstorms pinned the four
down. Defeated, they returned to his cabin to wait
the weather out. When the snow subsided, they
departed again, heading south to Diamond Peak,
a shield volcano just north of Crater Lake they
planned to summit. Again, they ran into stormy
conditions. “The weather and the snowdrifts were
so bad that I had to take my skis off and climb,”
he told reporters later, “and there were some
stretches where I could barely just climb.”
Like those who’d come before, his three
compatriots turned back, leaving Meissner to
finish solo, just as he’d planned. Forty-nine days
after leaving Mt. Hood, he had established a
route that has potentially never been repeated
in winter, though hundreds follow that section of
the Pacific Crest Trail each summer. Other than
some circumnavigations of Cascade volcanoes,
Meissner’s quest may have been the first major
ski traverse done in the range.
Afterward, he never undertook such a venture
again, though he spent his lifetime (until he was
80) teaching skiing and running ski schools across
the West. As for why he endeavored to pioneer
the route, his daughter isn’t sure. Watters’s 2007
article posits that money, through sponsorship
or notoriety, was his primary impulse, but Julie
disagrees: “Did I ever see him really care if he
made a bunch of money? No, it was just not his
personality.”
Perhaps it’s best to take it from Meissner
himself, who told reporters before he left, “I just
want to see if I can do it.”
Turns out, he could.

Bend, which is a 30-minute drive (or less) from skiable terrain, Eugene
is a valley town, known for prodigious rains, the University of Oregon
and countercultural movements. Though the Obsidians’ main focuses
were search and rescue and mountain climbing, club historian Janet Baker
Jacobsen says, skiing provided a social outlet. In 1937, the Obsidian Ski
Club (later renamed the Ski Laufers) devised a novel plan to take valley
dwellers to the hills. “They organized a snow train for 600 people to go
up to the Crescent Junction to ski,” Jacobsen says. On Jan. 25, hundreds
paid $2 apiece for the round-trip, with a half-fare for kids under 12, riding
into the forested foothills just shy of where the present-day Willamette
Pass Ski Resort sits.
The first Ski Train Special, as the Obsidian Bulletin from that time calls
it, was so successful the club ran two more. For the third one on March
19, 632 people exited the train at Crescent Junction. Snow fell through-
out the day; some Nordic skied the 3.5 miles to Crescent Lake, where they
brushed snow off the frozen lake to ice skate. Some even flouted the rules
forbidding downhill skiing. Proving city dwellers can’t resist the pull of
pschussing once you put two planks on their feet, the Bulletin’s description
of the day reads, “‘NO hills’ at Crescent Lake is very loudly poo-pooed by
those who took more than one head-on dive from going down the track
that Toney Vogel started.”
OFF TO THE RACES
The short-lived Fort Klamath to Crater Lake cross country ski race was
not for the faint of heart. Forty-two miles, 4,000 feet of elevation gain and
loss, all on wooden skis. If that sounds hard, it was. Hosted by the Fort
Klamath Community Club, the race ran from the eponymous outpost north
of Klamath Falls to the rim of Crater Lake National Park, which was formed
in 1902 to protect the caldera left by the eruption of Mt. Mazama 7,700
years ago. Just two dozen participants entered the inaugural race in 1927.
In the 1920s and ’30s, clubs not only promoted skiing on their local
mountains, their members traveled to races put on by other organiza-
tions. Mazamas and Mountaineers frequently raced each other; the central
Oregon clubs sent representatives to races on Hood and Rainier. Members
were committed to growing the industry and intrigued by mountains
across the range. In that vein, Emil Nordeen, co-founder of the Skyliners
Ski Club, was drawn to the outrageously difficult-sounding, inaugural
race. It didn’t go well.
Nordeen’s strength was no match for the course, which required 21
uphill miles of grueling trail-breaking through alternately crusty, bullet-
proof and soft conditions to the lake rim. Contestants then navigated the
perilous snow back down, and Nordeen was not the strongest skier. In a
race that writer Kirby Gilbert notes took most people five to seven hours,
Nordeen finished in 13 that first year.
His equipment was partly to blame. “He actually tried to make a pair
of skis out of ponderosa, and they were terrible,” Gibbons says. “So he
ordered his skis from Sweden.” That did the trick, and Nordeen finished
first or second each year between 1928 and 1931, winning twice. In the
’30s, pure downhill races became more popular, and participation in the
Crater Lake race diminished until organizers abandoned the slog and
embraced the downhill trend in 1938. Nordeen didn’t return after 1931,
but the annual Great Nordeen cross country ski race that takes place in
Bend maintains his legacy. Despite low turnout and the overall difficulty,
the Fort Klamath to Crater Lake race—and contestants like Nordeen—set
the stage for feats of endurance that have become an important facet of
Cascade skiing, especially in the North Cascades, where traverses are more
common than on the volcanoes.
The Crater Lake race was always a difficult sell: Southern Oregon is
more sparsely populated than other parts of the Northwest, and a 42-mile
slog doesn’t exactly scream fun for the average skier. However, ski racing
was a hot ticket before World War II. Clubs up and down the range brought
droves to the mountains, with the Mazamas and Cascade Ski Club putting

93
 on popular races around Mt. Hood, and the Skyliners organizing their
events first on McKenzie Pass, then in Bend. No competition, however,
was more audacious than the Silver Skis Championship on Mt. Rainier.
Skoog notes in Written in the Snows that the Silver Skis was not orga-
nized by a ski club, but Hans Otto Giese, who often collaborated with The
Mountaineers. The Silver Skis drew upon the culture of ski carnivals held
by boosters and clubs at Paradise, a growing community on the mountain’s
southern flank. By 1934, Paradise bustled with wintertime activity. Lodges
and cabins dotted the landscape, though they were sometimes tough to
find underneath Rainier’s prodigious snowpack. With places to stay and
a plowed road, Paradise was aptly named. Ski clubs and the public alike
flocked to its mellow slopes, and Giese wanted to capitalize on that fact
to create a “true skiing spectacle,” Skoog writes.
And a spectacle it was. Male skiers hiked to Camp Muir at 10,100
feet, almost 5,000 feet above the finish line at Paradise, while women and
juniors started lower. With just four gates on the longer course, straight-
line speed was the name of the game. Roughly 60 entrants readied them-
selves for the geschmozzle, or simultaneous, start. The flag dropped; the
starting gun fired; pandemonium ensued. Tucked into crouches, racers
quickly gained speed, more than their homemade skis could handle;
several exploded in fantastic crashes, snapping ski tips and showering
gear across the slopes.
Don Fraser, a Northwest downhill skier, skirted the mayhem. “Fortu-
nately, I was soon out in front of the mob headed for Little Africa, so
I didn’t witness the terrible collisions that took place just behind me,”
94
Skoog’s book quotes him as saying. His avoidance of the carnage served
him well, as he held off a furious challenge from Carlton Wiegel to claim
the prize with a time of 10 minutes, 49.6 seconds. As Skoog notes, almost
3,000 people turned out that first year for what the Seattle Times called
“as astounding a ski race as America ever saw.” Despite the popularity of
races like the Silver Skis, ski clubs’ dominance waned in the late 1930s and
early ’40s, both because skiers started looking for solitude not offered by
large, club-sanctioned events and climbs, and because ski resorts began
to be built.
“Climbers were really rebelling against kind of this Mountaineers
policy of going out in these big groups,” Hummel says. “So, you started
getting climbers and skiers that started to get out into the mountains on
their own.”
SUMMIT SKIING
Since Thomas Jefferson Dryer falsely claimed to be the first to reach Mt.
Hood’s summit, Cascade mountaineering history has had a few points of
dispute. Another centers on Mt. Hood and involves Hyalmar Hvam, inven-
tor of the first releaseable ski binding, Cascade Ski Club member, skier
extraordinaire and proponent of the next phase of Cascade ski moun-
taineering: the small team.
Over his career, the chiseled-faced, tall Norwegian immigrant took
home more than 150 trophies, including the 1936 Mazama Cup on Mt.
Hood, the U.S. Nordic Combined championship at Lake Tahoe in 1932,
all four events at a 1936 Mt. Baker contest in Washington and the Silver

Skis. He was both a hotdogging racer and accom-
plished mountaineer.
Many ski scholars have taken as fact Hvam’s
claim that in 1931, he, Andre Roch and Arne Sten,
all Cascade Ski Club members, made the first ski
descent of Mt. Hood. They set what was at the time
the speed record on the peak, with a roundtrip
from Portland in under nine hours, including drive
time. An Oregonian article from April 27, 1931, says,
in reference to Cascade Ski Club President Harald
Lee, “It is the belief of Mr. Lee that Roch, Hvam and
Sten are the first to have made the entire ascent and
descent on skis.”
Unfortunately, the only evidence is the men’s
word, and not everyone takes it as fact. Dawson
writes in Wild Snow, “The men reached the summit,
but it’s doubtful they skied from the apex.” The Oregonian noted French
skier Sylvain Saudan’s 1971 descent as the first, though the paper retracted
that and credited Hvam and his team after an outpouring of criticism
from readers, including Skoog. Some online repositories of ski history
still give credit to Saudan.
No matter where the truth lies in Hvam’s claim, the 1930s marked a
turning point in High Cascade ski history: Skiers stopped simply noodling
on the low-angle slopes around timberline and started dropping the peaks
from their summits. It was a logical next step for the skiing in the region, a
leap spurred by new equipment and the commitment to outdoor pursuits
the clubs promoted.
Hood, like Rainier and Jefferson, requires technical climbing to reach
and ski off the summit. Other High Cascade peaks have relatively moder-
ate slopes straight to the top, especially on their south sides, including Mt.
Shasta, South Sister, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens (before and after it
blew its top in 1980). The year after Hvam and crew claimed Hood’s first
descent, a team of ski jumpers in town for a competition—Halvor Hals-
tad, Steffen Trogstad and Ted Rex—climbed to the top and “made the first
ski descent from Shasta’s summit in 1 hour and 15 minutes,” Zanger and
Selters write in their guidebook.
Silver Skis organizer Giese, along with Otto Strizek, claimed the first
ski ascent of Mt. St. Helens in 1933, but who first scratched turns from its
conical apex is unknown. Giese, however, had already etched his name
into Northwest history books with the first descent of Mt. Adams, St.
[Facing Page, Left, Top] Nels Skjersaa, Nils Wulfsberg and Emil Nordeen were
founders of the Skyliners Ski Club. Courtesy Deschutes Historical Museum
[Facing Page, Left, Bottom] The Silver Skis Championship on Mt. Rainier might have
been the apex of ski racing in the Pacific Northwest. Courtesy Lowell Skoog
[Middle] Mt. Rainier’s prodigious snowfall was prone to burying the lodges
and cabins at Paradise, where these skiers are ascending from. Courtesy
University of Washington Special Collections, Dwight Watson Collection
[Right] Look good, feel good, stay safe. Hjalmar Hvam, a
pioneering mountaineer and racer, knew how to look dapper
even while on skis. Courtesy The Oregon Journal
Helens’s taller neighbor, alongside a team of Walter Mosauer, Strizek,
Sandy Lyons and Hans Grage, on July 16, 1932. Mosauer, who made
numerous first descents in the Eastern Sierra and is called the “Father
of Southern California Skiing,” wrote about the experience, becoming
perhaps the first to encapsulate the Cascade volcanoes’ enduring pull: “We
had continuous skiing on the descent from the summit to about 6,000 feet,
an altitude difference of more than 6,000 feet in mid-July!”
It took until 1948 for skiers to drop off the summit of Washington’s
highest peak, when Dave Welsh, Kermit Bengtson, Dave Roberts and Cliff
Schmidtke convinced the National Park Service to allow them to do so.
The agency, as Skoog notes in Written in the Snows, was loath to let them,
believing ski mountaineering was more dangerous than traditional alpin-
ism. Finally, officials allowed the men to ascend and ski the Emmons
Glacier in mid-July, provided they gave a full report upon their return.
Like many later skiers, they discovered the summit block was icy and
exposed, a melt-freeze, sun-blasted, wind-scoured surface. In rope teams of
two, they descended slowly, ski pole in one hand, axe in the other, the top
skier giving the leader a running belay. Finally, they reached corn lower on
the mountain and abandoned belayed skiing. Upon their return, Skoog
writes, “Welsh completed his report to the Park Service, saying that as long
as summit ski parties were of proven experience and capability, they’d
probably make less trouble for the park than climbing parties on foot.”
ERUPTION (1960-1980)
The Difficult One
Cascade volcanoes are like Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Their
south sides are generally mellow, akin to blue runs, save for a steep summit
pitch, while other aspects harbor icefalls, cliffs and technical terrain. Take
Shasta: The Avalanche Gulch trade route follows an inviting valley to
the summit ridge with several options for cruiser corn skiing off the top.
Climb the north face, and you’ll navigate the Whitney Glacier, Califor-
nia’s longest, under the firing line of rockfall off Shasta’s satellite cone,
Shastina. Ski the northeast side’s Hotlum Glacier, and you’ll cross icefalls
to find excellent ski terrain.
Dawson writes in Wild Snow that for a long time Cascade alpinists
were conservative about steep skiing, choosing instead to seek out the
large snowfields and glaciers that offer year-round turns or lengthy ski
mountaineering traverses and circumnavigations. However, as steep skiing
gained popularity around the country, people were drawn to the Cascades,
at first the volcanoes because of their accessibility and deep, spring snow-
pack. The most enticing times of year in the High Cascades are spring and
early summer, when the nights stay cold and the deep snowpack corns
every morning on steep, open lines. “For most of our season, people aren’t
even considering the volcanoes,” says Dallas Glass, deputy director of the
Northwest Avalanche Center. “That’s really the spring-skiing Mecca for us.”
Nowhere in the Cascades is that enticement higher than on Mt. Rain-
ier, though Adams gives it a run for its money. Rainier represents a liminal
zone in the range. Its latitude and elevation combine to lend it massive
amounts of snowfall and intimidating lines, and its upper reaches are
95
Touring Through History
By Jason Hummel
Exploration is the flint in my eye and fire in my
soul. It has fueled most of my life; fanned my
adventures across forest and stream, cliff and
glacier from summit to sea; and burned across
every map I have of the Cascade Mountains.
Adams was my first volcano, my Rosetta Stone,
the one I returned to year after year, tackling
more challenging routes. More recently, I’ve
delved into the Cascades’ histories, studying the
earliest explorers. Thousands of hours exploring
into the lives of Native Americans. Thousands
more retracing the paths of surveyors and pros-
pectors, hunters and climbers.
That combination–the history and my own
explorations—is a curtain I want to fling open.
Behind it is more than high vistas, trackless wilds
and great friendships. Those things are enough,
certainly, but with me now, through snow and
swamp, are the mysteries and awe of those who
came before. James Joyce once wrote, “Mistakes
are the portals of discovery.” For much of my life,
depthless powder, bucket list lines and lofty
summits drew me in. The event horizon was all
that separated success from failure. Nothing
else mattered, and I was sucked in, body and
spirit. I skied across Washington, from Oregon to
Canada, just to see what was in between. I turned
my ski tips toward Washington’s named glaciers,
some 300, just to say hello (and bid farewell).
Born in the same womb as these schemes
was the Circumnavigation Project. Its goal was
to ski around Washington’s five major volcanoes:
Adams, St. Helens, Rainier, Baker and Glacier. I
included the non-volcanic Mt. Olympus to repre-
sent all quadrants of the state. My goal was
simple: ski a high orbit above tree line and on
the glaciers as much as possible.
I’ve skied Adams some 80 times since my
first foray at age 6, tackling nearly every conceiv-
able route, from Stormy Monday to the Klickitat
Headwall. When I circumnavigated the peak in
2008, the human history of the ground I traveled
was not important to me. Fifteen years later, I
now imagine those bygone footprints I followed
high on the Rusk Glacier and all the way around
the perpetual snows that grind down the moun-
tainside. They return to 1890 and the tracks left
by a teenage Claude E. Rusk and his mother
and sister, Josephine and Leah. How can you
not picture 12-year-old Leah tromping around
a glacier with nothing but wilderness rising in
Oregon and setting on the Pacific?
My own trip swept me up. Countless lines
suddenly fit into a puzzle fully formed. Rusk once
postulated, “The whole span of human history
was but an hour in comparison with the cycles
of the mountain’s life.” For him that was certainly
true. His ashes rest on the Castle, atop
the greatest of this mountain’s lofty
turrets.
Nearly a decade passed without
another circumnavigation, but in 2017
I turned toward Glacier Peak, the most
remote volcano along the 700-mile
Cascade Mountain chain. A high orbit
of the peak had not been recorded,
only those made on trails in the lower
forests.
On Glacier, I again crossed paths
with Rusk. Together with A. J. Cool, he
completed the third known ascent of
the mountain in 1906. Cool was a trap-
per and a photographer. Hazarding a
guess, we can presume it was his imag-
ery that convinced him to rush into his
small cabin, aflame and too far gone to
save but a few things. According to Sim
Benson, who found him, “Oh, he died
a fiery death and there was this one
dog, a big Airedale, he had up there,
and the dog wouldn’t let us get near
the body. He was going to kill anyone
who touched Cool’s body–we finally
had to destroy the dog.” A tragic story,
as Cool’s two greatest loves were lost
that day.
The third circumnavigation was Mt.
St. Helens, whose crater wall creates
a natural route around the mountain.
After the 1980 eruption, history has
been seen in the making. Seen through
The Breach, the Crater Glacier has
formed in my lifetime and grown to
be 700 feet deep. Like the box left in 1890 near Athena, Jeffers’s
Fourth was Mt. Rainier, an icon of moun- camera has never been found.
tain scenery. Walter Bosworth and party made Fog spun watery veils over Mt. Baker, my last
the first high circumnavigation in 1894. Of all circumnavigation. Blind, I stood on high rocks and
their stories, I laugh when they tell of how they howled with the storm. I had no partners, had
dropped a pan in a creek and dubbed it Frying seen no one for days. I danced atop fumaroles
Pan Creek. It reminds me also of the story of and wound my way through glacier cracks like a
the pioneering ascent of the Tahoma Glacier. A rat in a maze. All along, I reflected as much on
daring mouse jumped into the mouth of a dog the history of the mountain as I did my course.
(the first known canine to summit Rainier), and Thoughts intersected with Joseph Morovits, the
through the bars of teeth the creature stood Hermit of Baker Lake, who took two years to haul
unharmed until it leapt back out. a 2,300-pound mortar beyond Baker Lake to his
On Olympus, mountain kingdom on the sea, mine, who, alone, made pioneering ascents of
men in 1890 presumably stood near a sub-sum- Baker and Mt. Shuksan.
mit named Athena. They left a metal box with Coming full circle on Baker, I arrived back at
names and mementos. To this day, it has never the beginning, just as I had on the five others. In
been found, although I looked for it. the end, my passion for the mountains still rises
Further along, I tipped my ballcap to Joseph in the peaks above home and sets in my dreams.
Jeffers, a photographer who lost his footing and Yet, perhaps, beyond the trails I’ve followed and
died in 1924. I can imagine no better pallbearer made, I’ve carved a few of my own turns of
than a dying glacier, which now bears his name. history for others to ski across.
a discordant medley of snowfields, icefalls, seracs and glaciers, terrain
features that are more abundant in the North Cascades. Rainier has the
characteristics of a typical stratovolcano—mellow lower slopes, glaciers
and hidden steeps—but on as many steroids as a 1990s homerun hitter.
Its southside path to Camp Muir (10,100 feet) is mellow and heavily trav-
eled, but all aspects above 10,000 feet have steeps, cliffs and crevasse-rid-
dled glaciers.
Following the 1948 first descent, several parties over the next 13 years
repeated the Emmons Glacier ski, including Erline Anderson Schuster, the
first woman to ski the peak. A Washington native, she was quite active in
the 1960s, becoming the first woman to ski Mt. St. Helens, “the old one,”
her obituary in the Yakima Herald-Republic cheekily pointed out. Skoog
writes she did all this skiing and climbing even though she was born with-
out fingers on her right hand.
In 1961, perhaps drawn by the plethora of unskied lines on Rainier,
Teton steep-skiing pioneer Bill Briggs came to the Northwest on a team
that included guide Jim Whittaker, who later became the first American
to climb Mt. Everest, and his twin brother, Lou, also a climbing guide. In
making the movie Out to Ski the team opened a new route, the Ingraham
Glacier, a steep, exposed line they connected back to Camp Muir.
What truly set in motion the steep skiing revolu- Mt. Rainier feels
like a mountain
tion, which crescendoed in the 1990s and after the
range unto itself.
turn of the millennium, was the arrival of French- Carl Simpson
man Sylvain Saudan, known as “le skieur de l’im- points his tips
toward the
possible,” for feats that included the first descent of behemoth in
the Eiger. At the invitation of friend René Farwig, the surrounding
National Park.
then director of the Mt. Hood Meadows ski school, Jason Hummel
Saudan flew to the Northwest in February 1971.
Despite his penchant for steeps, Saudan was a
cautious mountaineer. He usually climbed a route before he skied it, a
common practice today that allows skiers to gauge challenging sections
and snow conditions. The Cascade winter had other plans. Clouds envel-
oped Hood, spitting snow across its 11,249-foot top, driving up avalanche
danger. Saudan waited.
On March 1, the snow briefly stopped. One wouldn’t call the weather
pleasant, but it wasn’t snowing. Deep, fresh drifts made a summit climb
impossible in the short window, so he and Anselme Baud, a steep skiing
pioneer and Mt. Hood Meadows instructor, hopped in a two-seater Bell
helicopter around 3 p.m. After all, Saudan was more interested in the
descent than the ascent. Wind howled at the summit, the temperature
97
 [Above] Saudan, who first skied Mt.
Hood’s Newton-Clark Headwall,
is likely one of few skiers to have
taken a helicopter to the top of
the peak. Courtesy Western
Ski Promotions Collection
[Middle] Hood becomes
progressively steeper the higher
in elevation you go, creating
some descents that start out
puckering and end in long, mellow
runouts. John Scurlock
[Facing Page] It’s hard to say what
Andrew McLean was thinking while
descending Rainier’s Upper Mowich
Face, but it’s easy to believe it
was along the lines of, “Think my
edges will hold?” Carl Skoog
hovering around zero degrees; the helicopter pilot tried one, two, three
times to place Saudan on the summit, but the elements deterred him. Four
times. Five. Saudan exited, but the pilot still needed to unload Baud. Six
times. Seven. Baud scrambled out, joining Saudan in the gale.
Blown free of snow, the ridge leading to Hood’s east face was a sheet
of 40-grit sandpaper, but Saudan approached the Newton-Clark Head-
wall while Baud downclimbed toward the adjacent Wy’east Face. Six
hundred feet below the summit, Saudan skied through an opening in
the cliff band above the headwall. Dead end. More cliffs extended below.
Side-stepping in the growing twilight, he regained the ridge and took the
next entrance. It went. He arced turns on the 1,500-foot, 50-degree face
before it mellowed above the Mt. Hood Meadows ski area, notching the
first descent on what would later become Oregon’s only entry in the Fifty
Classic Ski Descents of North America.
Of his choice to ski the headwall, and not the more forgiving south
face, he told The Oregonian, “I wasn’t looking for the easy one. I was look-
ing for the difficult one.”
SIREN SONG
After Saudan shot across the bow with his Newton-Clark Headwall
descent, other lines began to fall. Nowhere was that more prevalent than
southern Washington. As Rainier called to Briggs in the 1960s, it emanated
a siren song to steep skiers, with Chris Landry taking Saudan’s flair for
the extreme to a new level.
Fresh off his 1978 descent of the Landry Line, a showstopper on Colo-
rado’s Pyramid Peak with a 60-degree entrance, Landry, who declined
to be interviewed for this story, was a steep-skiing master, so much so
that Sports Illustrated profiled him in 1981. With climbing partner Doug
Robinson, Landry set out in May 1980 to climb and ski Rainier’s Liberty
Ridge, which had 50-degree exposed slopes and was generally viewed as
a two-day climb. Snow fell for two days, blanketing the upper mountain.
98
Robinson began to worry. Was Landry crazy? Could the route be skied?
What if he fell? Taking advantage of clear skies after the storm, the pair set
off up Liberty Ridge at 1:30 a.m., climbing most of the route by headlamp.
After summitting, Robinson descended first, downclimbing on
the front points of his crampons. Six hundred feet below the summit,
soft snow hissed past him, covering his boots. Sluff began hitting him
more frequently, waves of powder passing him. “Soon I can see a figure
behind them, pumping turns as he comes into view, skis flashing in the
air between the edge sets,” he told Sports Illustrated. Landry’s powerful,
smooth arcs down the no-fall zone assuaged Robinson’s fears. “I can see
from these first turns that he is way inside his limits. He can do anything
he wants. He is in perfect control.”
The same weekend Landry dropped Liberty Ridge, Dan Davis and
another team skied the Fuhrer Finger, also on Rainier and a later addi-
tion in the Fifty Classic Descents of North America. The Finger itself is a
3,000-foot pitch with minimal crevasse danger, but icefalls and glaciers
above and below present significant exposure. Skiing off Rainier’s summit,
Davis and his crew dropped past the Nisqually Icefall, spent a night at
their high camp below the base of the Finger, then skied to the Nisqually
Creek bridge, a full descent of 10,500 feet, which Skoog calls “surely one
of the longest ski runs in the conterminous United States.”
If Saudan initiated the steep-skiing revolution, May 1980 was the coup
d’état, a month after which skiing in the Cascades was never the same.
Before that month, just two routes on Rainier had been skied; Landry and
Davis doubled that number in a few days. “Liberty was especially trans-
formative as it was mainly thought of as a challenging alpine climb, so
when it was skied, it opened people’s eyes to what was possible,” profes-
sional ski mountaineer Andrew McLean tells me. “Turn by turn it doesn’t
seem too bad, but taken as a whole, with all of the route finding, crevasses
and massive exposure, it was a giant leap forward in North American ski
mountaineering.”
 Meanwhile, a solo skier named Steve Lyford took up Saudan’s mantle
on Mt. Hood, opening more routes on the mountain than anyone else.
Within the space of a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lyford
tackled a variety of steep lines around the peak’s upper circumference:
the Leuthold Couloir, Sandy Glacier Headwall, Sunshine Route, Cooper
Spur, the climbers’ left gully of the north face, and the Wy’east Face. Each
requires 45-to-50-degree skiing with significant exposure to snowfields
or glaciers below. Despite his considerable skill and deserved place in
Northwest history, Lyford was not the type “to boast his stuff,” Skoog says,
and did not make front-page news like Saudan.
The volcanoes drew their share of outside star power like Landry.
Perhaps the biggest names came to Mt. Adams, a sort of mini-Rainier that
in the 1990s had a bevy of unskied, 50-degree headwalls and couloirs.
Doug Coombs entered Northwest lore in the early part of the decade with
a descent of the Lava Glacier Headwall, a rock-studded triangle between
the North Ridge and Lava Ridge that maintains a consistent 50-degree
pitch, a rarity in much of the Cascades. A few years later, in 1995, Coombs
completed the first descent of the north face of Adams’s northwest ridge
with Glen Plake, whose penchant for steeps was matched only by his
mohawk. Skoog notes the route is now Adams’s most popular steep
descent, a contrast to the long, mellow trade route on its southern side.
Homegrown heroes like Skoog, his brother Carl and their friend Jens
Kieler pushed the boundaries of endurance skiing, but mostly in the North
Cascades, where they linked peaks in immense traverses that combined
technical mountaineering with multiple days on the skintrack. Lowell, in
Written in the Snows, says that, influenced by his other brother Gordy, he
was uninterested in joining the steep-skiing pioneers and would rather
continue exploring new traverses. However, the three Skoog brothers
claimed a few first descents, mostly in the North Cascades, including Carl’s
name dotting the records of Rainier’s lines.
If the 1980s and ’90s showed what’s possible, the two decades after
the millennium saw skiers scratch ephemeral marks down just about
everything on the High Cascades, so much so that it’s possible to see their
achievements as a coda on the pioneering started by skiers in the 1930s.
THE LAST LINE
“That’s steeper than I expected,” Ian says, peering off Middle Sister’s
summit at the Diller Headwall. “I haven’t skied anything like that in a
while.” It doesn’t matter. A former ski racer, he drops, pushing turns down
the slight ridge to skier’s left, looking smooth and in control. Slightly over-
cooked corn sluff gains speed and Dremels a groove down the middle
of the slope. Cliffs force him into the gut, where he straight lines over a
bergschrund at the bottom. I drop next, mirroring his line but on the right
and definitely not as smooth, allowing my sluff to gather speed and hit
the groove before I navigate the gap.
I first noticed the Diller Headwall in the 2010s while riding my bike to
and from work in a small community 20 miles east of Bend. On the farm
roads I took home, the Sisters were omnipresent, the headwall plastered
on the Middle. I first realized it was possible to ski the route because of a
2011 post on Turns All Year, a website Charles Eldridge started in 2001 as
a place for Pacific Northwest skiers to compile trip reports.
For those unacquainted with the Dark Ages before the smartphone,
in the era of the nascent Internet access was not ubiquitous. Computers
weren’t in everyone’s homes (or pockets), and the readily available infor-
mation on far-flung ski routes we can find in a Google search didn’t exist.
Instead, skiers banded together on a few sites, including Telemark Tips,
Turns All Year and Cascade Climbers, to find ski partners and publish trip
reports. Taking the inclusivity of the ski clubs in a different direction, the
sites broke down barriers of information, encouraging skiing just as Steel,
Skjersaa, Nordeen and others did in the early 20th century. In this era,
Lowell Skoog created his Alpenglow site to catalog new descents and other
relevant achievements. “Because of those sites, in the early 2000s, because
99
 of this sharing, there was this amazing boom in pioneering activity in the
Northwest, both in climbing and skiing,” Skoog says.
Skoog’s site covers Cascade peaks from Hood north to the Canadian
border, but not the region between Jefferson and Shasta. It’s obvious the
same kind of exploration was happening on those peaks, as most routes
see skiers these days, but no Skoog-esque figure was keeping track, maybe
because the pioneers weren’t talking. “People around here are very close-
lipped,” says Dexter Burke, a Bend resident and author of the Oregon Ski
Atlas guidebook. “They don’t share their secret sauce with many people.
It’s just kind of a culture thing as best I can put my finger on it.”
Reading the Alpenglow charts that track those northern volcano
descents tells a story of two groups in the 2000s and 2010s that seemed
hellbent on skiing the rest of the High Cascades’ steeps, especially those
in Washington. Jason Hummel and his twin brother, Josh, were part of
a small cadre of Washington skiers in the early 2000s that included Ben
Manfredi, Sky Sjue and Amal Andalkar, though others joined them.
Manfredi even had his own site, Cascade Classics, where he published
trip reports. This collection of sites not only helped them find each other,
it allowed them to identify unskied routes. For Jason, Adams was the
100
focus. “Adams was just a very fun place to go where you can tackle lines
that really became kind of a testpiece,” he says.
In the 2000s, they skied huge, obscure lines that Cascade skiers who
stick to easier, southside slopes rarely consider. On Adams, the Hummels
and friends ticked off lines not hit by Coombs: Stormy Monday Couloir,
two portions of the Lyman Glacier, Lava Ridge, the northwest face of the
west ridge, the Klickitat Headwall and a high orbit of the peak. On Rainier,
they took on lines that would scare most mountaineers, including Sjue’s solo
descents of the Central Mowich Face, Kautz Headwall and Sunset Ridge.
In the 2010s, the cast of characters changed. Peter Dale, Aaron Mainer,
Oliver Deshler, Andy Bond and Dan Helmstadter began to populate the
Alpenglow lists, opening 11 routes on Rainier between 2008 and 2017.
But a curious thing happened: The list stopped growing. Its last entry
is Thermogenesis, skied by Mainer and Dale on May 23, 2017. A look at
Thermogenesis offers insight into why.
Starting off Liberty Ridge, Thermogenesis descends the Willis Wall,
a rock-lined face with a few snowy ramps through it topped by an over-
hanging 300-foot ice cliff. One shed from the cliff while you’re in the gut
of Thermogenesis could sweep you off the mountain, and the bergschr-
 “How much longer is this route?” Josh Dirksen
and Forrest Shearer enjoy one of Mt. Shasta’s
legendary runs, which features some of the longest
vertical in the Lower 48. Tyler Roemer
und below would be an unforgiving catch. Due to
avalanche conditions during winter and danger
from rock- and icefall in late spring and summer, the
window is short, the hazard extreme. Says Mainer
about looking at the line before he skied it, “You’re
like, OK, I can see why nobody’s wanted to go down
that before.”
New routes are scarce (there is, after all, a finite
number of ways down each peak) and anything left
unskied holds a high relative danger. As Skoog says of
the pioneering he and his cohorts were a part of in the
1970s and ’80s and Hummel and his crew continued
through the 2000s, “Maybe we’ve run out of routes.”
Mainer, who points out the North Cascades still
have nooks and crannies to explore, puts it differ-
ently: “It’s hard to hide a fresh, cool line on a volcano.”
EROSION (THE FUTURE)
End of an Era
Maybe the prospect of no new first descents doesn’t
concern the average skier. After all, I’ll still have fun
whenever I eventually snowboard Saudan’s auda-
cious Newton-Clark Headwall on Mt. Hood, even
though hundreds or thousands have done it, too. But
Mainer and Dale’s descent of Thermogenesis might
reflect the end of an era, one in which exploration
increased exponentially as interest grew and ski gear
improved before reaching a natural denouement.
However, another threat to the Cascades—glacial
recession—is already limiting the way everyday skiers
interact with the mountains.
Joseph Diller, a United States Geological Survey
geologist and namesake of the fantastic Middle Sister
ski line, said in the late 1800s that the Three Sisters were the best place
in the country other than Alaska to study glaciers, according to Oregon
Glaciers Institute President Anders Carlson. Ice draped the Sisters, and
the other Cascades, remnants of the last Ice Age, which ended 25,000
years ago and saw ice caps extended over much of the range as they do
in Chilean Patagonia today. Since then, glaciers have receded, save for a
mid-1900s period when they briefly stabilized.
As temperatures continue to rise, glaciers from Shasta to the Sisters
are in danger of disappearing. “So the area that Joseph Diller in the 1880s
said was the best place to look at glaciers in the Lower 48 is going to be
ice free,” Carlson says.
Losing the ice will have disastrous impacts on economies in the shad-
ows of these mountains. Hood River, Oregon, depends on snowmelt and
late-season water from Mt. Hood’s glaciers to fuel thriving orchards. Same
for farms around the Three Sisters and in southern Washington. Aquatic
habitats that rely on meltwater to survive the driest part of the summer
will disappear as glaciers do. Recession is already impacting skiing, though
those effects might be seen as trivial compared to ecological and economic
upheaval. “We haven’t had year-round conditions in a few seasons,” says
Chris Carr, of Shasta Mountain Guides.
Warming weather is negatively impacting guiding services, lumping
them in with farmers, ranchers and fish. Carr says his company ends its
season earlier and is limited by which Shasta routes are in condition, a
problem that was less frequent a couple of decades ago.
The most glaring example of the impact on guiding was the Pacific
Northwest’s June 2021 heat dome. Valley temperatures eclipsed 115
degrees, melting asphalt and warping vinyl siding on houses. Guides and
weather stations reported conditions they’d never seen. “The freezing level
on Rainier was like 18,000 feet,” says Jonathon Spitzer, director of field
operations at Alpine Ascents International, a Seattle-based guide service
that works on Rainier. Subsequent heatwaves that summer eroded the
snowpack and glacial ice so much they changed climbing routes. On the
Disappointment Cleaver, a main route for guiding on Rainier, ice receded
at the base, leaving a section of eroding rock that hadn’t been exposed to
air in anyone’s memory. Spitzer and other guides attempted to create a safe
path, but they had to make an unprecedented decision to end their season
early. “By early September, we felt that we couldn’t maintain a feasible way
to get on to the Disappointment Cleaver,” Spitzer says.
What all this means depends on where you are in the range. Higher
latitude and elevation peaks, like Hood, Rainier and Adams, might fare
better, and if temperatures stop rising, glaciers will eventually stabilize,
though they’ll be smaller than they are today. That still spells the disap-
pearance of year-round turns in much of the Cascades, which, combined
with the lack of new terrain, creates a future for the volcanoes that will
not look like the previous century.
No matter what that future looks like, whether Cascade skiers will be
able to continue the tradition of making year-round turns or whether a
new group of adventurous alpinists will find new routes down the volca-
noes, I believe they will maintain the spirit of the ski clubs that popu-
larized the sport across the Northwest, something best seen not on the
puckering steeps but on the classic, mellow trade routes.
Climbing St. Helens in May 2022, I tagged along with Andy Goodwin,
mountain ambassador for the Mt. St. Helens Institute, a volunteer position
that has allowed him to climb the mountain nearly 300 times. Wiry and
affable, Goodwin checked in with each group, asking whether it was their
first time, offering advice, pointing out nearby peaks. Once, he descended
and reclimbed a section, just to offer encouragement to a slow-moving
group. His role is necessary, in part, because interest in climbing Cascade
trade routes has become so fervent that scores of climbers, many inexpe-
rienced, venture into the mountains every spring and summer weekend.
That overuse, which causes problems for Forest officials and rescu-
ers alike, was not what struck me, however. Instead, it was a group he
stopped to chat with on the summit. “Is this your first time up here?” he
asked, delving into his primary conversation starter. For most of them,yes,
they replied, but their friend had been up the mountain once with The
Mazamas, who are still leading trips and encouraging the connection with
the peaks that drove William Gladstone Steel’s 1894 climb. As she talked
with Goodwin, she pointed at Mt. Hood, 60 miles to the south. “I want to
climb that next,” she says. “I think next year I’ll be able to.”
That motivation right there is what still defines skiing and mountain-
eering in the Cascades, despite the impending changes. Even as glaciers
recede, volcanoes will still rise from the valleys. We’ll still be able to look
at the hills out our windows or on bike rides and envision ourselves
skiing some of America’s longest sustained slopes. Each time we do, we’ll
embrace idræt, or friluftsliv, or whatever else you want to call our love of
these big, beautiful volcanoes. ❆
101
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THE SMELL OF A GOOD ATTITUDE
by Jeffrey Bergeron ~ illustration by Alex Nabaum
I was stranded in a nudist colony with miss-
ing nuts.
Perhaps I should clarify. First, it wasn’t
a nudist colony. It was a “clothing optional”
hot springs. Second, my missing nuts were
truck parts.
To this day, I’m not sure if it was bad luck
or vandalism.
We parked at  a legitimate pull-off.
Though it is possible that we skinned
through about 100 yards of private prop-
erty to get to public land, we saw no “Keep
Out” signs. What, from a distance, looked to
be a nice ribbon of a spring snow patch was
anything but. It was a late May fool’s errand.
The snow sucked both up and down, though
it was a decent diversion on a long drive from
Montana back to Colorado.
We got back to the truck, got out of our
gear and were ready to leave when, for what-
ever reason, I looked at our front tire to see that
two of the six lug nuts were gone. The nearest
parts store was about 20 miles away. I probably
could have limped in with the four remaining
lugs, but the potential consequences were huge.
I suggested my mate wait in the camper while
I stood on the side of the road with my thumb
stuck out.
After almost 30 minutes of no nibbles,
finally a honey wagon pulled over. By honey
wagon, I mean sewer truck. The driver’s name
was Luke, and though he pumped waste for a
living, he was better dressed than me. He wore
khaki pants and a spotless white shirt with his
business’s logo on the chest.
To say Luke was into his job would be akin
to suggesting Kanye West lacks savoir faire. He
spoke with such emphatic earnestness that it
lent gravity to human waste. (I can’t believe I just
typed that.) Not that I’m complaining. Luke’s
home base was only a mile from the NAPA shop,
and he was happy to drop me off at the front
door, but he needed to make a quick stop first.
We turned into this small resort called some-
thing like “Tranquil Soak.” It had a few build-
ings, a small cafe and several tubs all supplied
with hot mineral water. Luke was there to
BIFF AMERICA
went into the environmental benefits of a
septic tank compared to a cesspool. He actu-
ally said, “I know we have already covered this
topic, but it is important to know the differ-
ence.” I wondered if he thought I was apply-
ing for a job.
At the time, I had no idea that the facil-
ity was clothing optional. When we drove in,
everyone I saw was dressed in shorts or swim-
suits. Luke put on rubber gloves up to his
elbows. He slid a hose down into the tank. He
told me to stand back (didn’t have to tell me
twice) and started the pump. We stood by the
honey wagon as Luke looked at some gauges
and occasionally moved the hose. 
In the middle of all this, two women and
a dude, wearing only hats and sandals, walked
TO SAY LUKE WAS by about 50 feet away. Luke was animatedly
informing me that about 25 percent of Amer-
INTO HIS JOB icans use a septic tank, a much lower rate than
WOULD BE AKIN in Europe. He glanced up, followed my eyes and
admonished, “Eyes front! Remain professional!” 
TO SUGGESTING Luke’s self-discipline was impressive.
Suitably chastised, I maintained eye contact
KANYE WEST LACKS
with Luke while he discussed the benefits of
SAVOIR FAIRE. leach fields.
Luke left an invoice at the office, and we
HE SPOKE WITH drove away. A few miles down the road Luke
SUCH EMPHATIC said, “You handled yourself pretty good back
there.” I have no idea why, but I took pride in
EARNESTNESS THAT his assessment. 
IT LENT GRAVITY TO The entire time we were together Luke
mostly spoke and asked very little about me. But
HUMAN WASTE. just before he dropped me off, he asked what I
did for a living. When I told him I work in the
media, he said, “Well then, we are in the same
perform the yearly maintenance.  business except I pick up and you deliver.”
Luke put on a spotless blue jump suit. When As he drove away, I still wasn’t sure if I had
I asked if I should remain in the truck, he said he met a guy who was really into his work or had
didn’t need help but would enjoy the company. an amazing sense of humor.
(I got the sense that Luke was a little lonely, But I do know this: A good attitude and
which could be expected of a dude whose favor- healthy perspective can go a long way toward
ite topic is sewage.) He handed me an oversized making the best of any crappy situation.
vest with the company’s logo on the chest. “Act Jeffrey Bergeron, under the alias of Biff America,
like you’re my helper and not a civilian.” can be read in several newspapers and magazines.
He can be reached at biffbreck@yahoo.com. Biff’s
He pulled up to a manhole cover that was
new book, Mind, Body, Soul, is available at local
disguised by an old-timey wishing well. Luke shops and bookstores or shop.holpublications.com.
103
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 DEPTH

WHEELER AND WALTER

PEAKS, JANUARY
a poem by Sean Prentiss

We set up a three-season tent within Wheeler Peak Wilderness,

just the three of us—two young men and one short-haired dog.
Our ambition: summit New Mexico’s two tallest peaks during
winter. We are ambitious or irresponsible or both. As night
temperatures plummet, we shiver, edging into hypothermia.
When our sun breaks over Walter’s ridge, we dance within
sun’s shimmer. Soon, we’ll summit Walter, slink across knife’s
edge in hurricane winds, nearly losing the dog, before scurrying,
absolutely afraid, to Wheeler. Here, rather than glory, we will
recognize recklessness, before skiing to our car below. As we
drive home, snaking along the Rio Hondo, we wonder what we
learned. Did we dream too big? Or can we, together, survive?

Micah Handell leaves Wheeler Peak, New Mexico,

in the rearview during a 2015 trip. Sky Sjue

105
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