The sun was setting over the South Face of 12,972-foot Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, when Canadian professional ski mountaineer Christina “Lusti” Lustenberger and IFMGA guide Guillaume “Gee” Pierrel decided to bail on their climb.

The two were attempting a first descent of the peak’s Great Couloir on February 13, and were just 650 feet shy of the summit when they decided to turn around.

“At that point we thought ‘Oh my God, future me would wanna go back, but I need a break from this.'” Lustenberger toldÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.

Lustenberger and Pierrel, hot on the heels of their astoundingÌęset of first descents on New Zealand’s 12,218-foot Mount Cook, were attempting to put their stamp on a face that has tested mountaineering greats for generations. Famed Canadian alpinist Barry Blanchard established a route called “Infinite Patience” on the mountain’s Emperor Face 2002, and in 2016, the late Marc-AndrĂ© Leclerc climbed that route solo.

Canadians Ptor Spricenieks and Troy Jungen skied the first descent of the peak in 1995, a line that would later enter the book . Their line, the North Face, has only been skied once since, by .

“Robson holds the names of so many legends of skiing and climbing,” Lustenberger said. “It’s iconic in so many ways and for Gee and I to put our names up there with those greats is incredibly meaningful.”

Lustenberger and Pierrel’s descent on that first attempt would prove to be much more difficult than the climb. The skiers had to reverse several pitches of mixed rock and ice climbing, ski some of the worst snow they’d ever encountered, and rig seven rappels through sections of decaying sedimentary rock and vertical ice—all in the dark.

The pair began their first attempt on February 13, and had attempted to climb the south face over two days, setting up camp halfway up the mountain while temperatures dropped below minus-13 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the way down, they packed up their camp and descended carefully. The Great Couloir is shaped like a giant funnel, and the further Lustenberger and Pierrel descended, the greater the risk that falling rock and ice could injure or kill them. The two ski mountaineers exited the lower gully through a section of trees so tight they had to remove their skis. They finally returned to their motor home at 10 P.M.

“On that first attempt, the snow was so bad,” Pierrel toldÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. “Hard, icy, all the stuff fell down the chute that day made little bumps and waves. The skiing was terrible.”

After regrouping in the nearby town of Valemount for a few days, Lustenberger and Pierrel returned to Mount Robson with a film crew. The team flew to the east side of the mountain and began climbing the Kain Route, a world-famous alpine climb, on February 15.

It had snowed during their break in Valemount, and conditions were much better for skiing when they returned. “Mt. Robson creates its own weather system,” Lustenberger said.

The skiers set out in sub-zero temperatures—ideal for keeping the rock and snow glued into place. “That’s why I invited Gee to come in February,” she said. “Robson has such a big South Face that we wanted to limit solar radiation. The sun is so intense in March that it would shed. Earlier than February, the days are too short.”

Luckily, the snow didn’t hide the rappel anchors the duo had placed on their first attempt a few days prior, which sped up their descent from the summit. This proved to be key for their safety in The Great Colouir.

“It’s like playing Russian Roulette, a game of chance,” said Pierrel. “We called the lower part of the descent the Cascade. You’re funneled through these little gullies. We can control how fast we move through those gullies but not what comes down on our heads.”

In recent years, Lustenberger has skied lines that have previous ski mountaineers haven’t even considered—Robson, Cook, the Great Trango Tower. These ski lines are essentially ice climbing routes that Lustenberger has descended on skis.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű asked her and Pierrel how they approach these routes, given the increasing danger around each objective.

“When you step into that line you’re accepting a huge amount of consequences that you can’t control,” said Lustenberger. “I think that’s part of being in the mountains. But I felt like Mount Robson was an important part of my vision and journey. It was something I felt viscerally compelled to do.”

Lustenberger said she’s assessed the south face of Mount Robson for a decade. “I decided to go this season because my requirements lined up. After skiing with Gee in New Zealand, I knew I had a partner that I trust completely and move really well with in the mountains,” Lustenberger said.

Pierrel is a guide, and he is accustomed to operating with much wider margins of safety. “This was so far from the style of risk management I often use in the mountains as a guide,” he said. “At one point I said ‘I’m too old for this shit, I’m not made of iron like you Lusti.’”

Pierrel said that by the end of the descent he was physically and mentally exhausted from the stress of being exposed to falling rock and ice. “Personally, I pushed pretty close to the maximum,” he added.

On February 16, after their painfully close attempt three days prior, the two ski mountaineers reached the summit and then carved their signatures down the South Face of the Rockies’ most formidable peak.

“Robson is the King of the Rockies,” Lustenberger said. “It’s elevation relief and scope is real, Himalayan-style terrain sitting in the Canadian Rockies. I am so relieved to be on the other side of this project. It’s been a dream in the making, one I had thought about for years. My ski partner Gee was a force and we worked hard as a team. Constantly pushing ourselves and each other to another level.”

Their film about the expedition, produced by production company Sherpas Cinemas, will come out in late 2025. As for what’s next? Pierrel hinted his interest in attempting to ski Mount Everest’s Hornbein Couloir, a line he describes as extremely similar to Robson’s Great Couloir—if it sat on the Roof of the World.

But first, both skiers told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű they needed a relaxing trip to the sauna.

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There’s no other way to put it: My skier friends and I are hedonists. We chase the pleasuresÌęof a 100-day ski season, cold snow splashing in our faces as we make turns in deep powder. We stay up late dancing, eat fondue and sip a cold beer on a sundeck under an azure sky. We minimize discomfort by shelling out beaucoup bucks for absurdly expensive outerwear and spend hours in a ski shop tweaking our plastic foot-coffins.

Despite this dogged commitment to skiing, I’ve recently made a compromise, to preserve my sanity while chasing snow 12 months a year, to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, I will no longer wake up at the crack of dawn on powder days to chase bottomless turns alongside the early-risers.

I know. I know. That’s what it’s all about—there’s an early morning ritual that skiers hold sacred. Rise early, brew coffee or grab a cup and a breakfast burrito at the local cafe, boot up in the lot well before the bullwheel spins, and snag first chair and an untracked run.

For dedicated skiers, that experience is universal. But I’m over it. My old early morning routine will give you a clue as to why.

It went something like this: I’d wake up bleary-eyed (I have never been a morning person) at 6 A.M. Fumble upstairs and realize the temperature of my living room has dropped to 48 degrees Fahrenheit.Ìę

After an arduous experience shoveling and loading the car, I would drive to the mountain. Rubbing a slim circle in the fog on my windshield so I could see if I was still on the road, I would hit traffic. Some crossover driver who thought all-wheel drive is the same thing as having snow tires spun off the road and stalled the creeping line of also ill-equipped cars to a standstill.

By the time I make it to the resort, boot up, and get in the lift line, I can see nothing but ski tracks on every bit of choice terrain on the hill.

It’s just not worth it. I’m done waking up early for pow days.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking, “Does this guy even like skiing?” No. To be clear:ÌęI love skiing. I eat, sleep, and breathe skiing. I’ve built my life around it to the point where I live 20 minutes from the resort, an incredible privilege that has ravaged my savings account to its core. In fact, I’m so obsessed with the sport that I couldn’t care less what kind of snow conditions I ski. Skied up chop is just as fun to me as deep powder, so I’ll be as happy showing up at noon on a powder day, just as the early birds are starting to leave from their primo parking spots.

I’ll spend the afternoon hours popping off soft moguls, finding air anywhere and everywhere. I’ll hunt for stashes of snow that the wind has picked up and recirculated. I’ll lap the chair that crowds have abandoned, thinking it’s all been skied out and laugh as I find pockets of pow and ski right back onto an empty chair lift.

I’m a backcountry skier too, and I live among a range that is more than 200 miles long and populated by fewer than 15,000 people. So don’t worry. I still ski powder. But to me, that’s no longer what resort skiing is for. It’s for hot laps with your friends and not stressing over morning lines, car accidents, traffic, or powder panic.

This weekend it’s going to snow another foot and a half, and you can find me lapping Mammoth Mountain’s Chair 22, the best chairlift on earth, from 2-4 P.M. Because I’m a hedonist, and I’ll be having more fun than anyone else on the mountain.

Jake Stern is a digital editor atÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű. He spends the winter months skiing as much as humanly possible. He just needs his beauty rest.

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On October 17, professional ski mountaineers Christina “Lusti” Lustenberger and Guillaume “Gee” Pierrel sunk their ice tools into the shoulder of New Zealand’s highest peak, 12,218-foot Aoraki, also called Mount Cook. They ascended the mountain under darkness, climbing over snow, rock, and ice beneath the aurora australis. Clicking into their skis atop their new line at 8 A.M., they spied the full moon and prepared to drop into their third big-mountain ski descent in just four days.

“We went on a bit of a rampage,” said Pierrel.

The line they descended, which they named Hunter’s Moon, after the Kiwi name for the full moon, was the most dangerous and demanding that either had skied. “Every single turn we made on that face had a serious consequence, because of the exposure,” Lusti told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.Ìę

Lusti and Pierrel met on a North Face team trip in Chamonix this year, and quickly developed a strong ski partnership. Pierrel is an IFMGA guide known for skiing steep and technical descents in his home of Chamonix, but he’s also descended lines in the Himalayas and the Andes. In 2021, he skied a first descent from the summit of Gasherbrum II in Pakistan in alpine style with no supplemental oxygen.

Lusti, meanwhile, has scored several noteworthy accomplishments in 2024, including the first descent of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower with Jim Morrison and Chantel Astorga on May 9. But the duo’s New Zealand rampage marked new territory for them both.

 

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Lusti first spotted Hunter’s Moon when she entered the Southern Alps on September 28. When Pierrel arrived on October 1, she decided to partner up with him to tackle a few lines.

New Zealand’s Southern Alps is home to famously fickle weather. The range is extremely close to the ocean and storms blow in quickly and often without warning. Lusti and Pierrel had spent the week prior skiing from a hut near Aoraki, but high winds and blowing snow kept them from being able to access their biggest objectives. During that time, they connected with Kiwi skiers Sam Smoothy and Will Rountreei, local legends who have been quietly ticking away extreme skiing in the range for the last few years. Together, the four athletes skied the Bowie Couloir, another line on Aoraki. Smoothy and Rountree’s efforts have brought attention to skiing in the Mount Cook Range, and Lusti and Pierrel credit the New Zealanders for piquing their interest.

“Sam and Will have shed some light on the steep skiing in this range,” said Pierrel. “They’re bringing a new vision to New Zealand and we got on that train.”

Once the snow stopped falling and their weather window opened, Lusti and Pierrel took full advantage of clear conditions. They first climbed and skied the glaciated southeast face of 9,853-foot Mount Dixon. They named their route the “Mullet Direct,” in honor of the alpinist Mike Gardner, an inspiration to both Lusti and Pierrel. Then, just two days later, they skied the cracked-up east face of 10,856-foot Mount Vancouver. The pair named that first descent “Uncle Pete,” for Lusti’s uncle, who died a few days later—but not before he saw photos of the line they dedicated to him.

On October 17, the duo began climbing Aoraki to ski by far the most demanding line either skier had ever attempted. Lusti and Pierrel climbed the rarely-repeated Jones route on the mountain’s east face, a sustained 55-degree series of ice and rock runnels that ascends from the mouth of the Caroline Glacier to the shoulder of the peak. “Our vision was always to descend this intricate ramp system further skier’s right,” Lusti said. “We started their descent at 9:15 A.M. in unforgiving icy snow conditions. Committed to the exposure, one turn at a time, we pushed each other out of our comfort zones.”

The icy surface required the utmost precision and attention, but Lusti and Pierrel were able to link turns down the entire face, save for one short section of glacier ice near the top that was too firm for their edges. They made a short rappel to navigate that section.

The ramp they skied looked improbable from the glacier floor, and even climbing up the pair of skiers could barely make out that it was skiable. Pierrel had spotted the exit ramp during an aborted attempt on the Jones route the week prior, which allowed the duo to escape the line cleanly on skis without needing to rappel. They backed off on the earlier attempt because the strong winds ripped the snow off the face, leaving bare ice.

But when the storm subsided, the gap of nice weather was longer than Lusti and Pierrel anticipated. That amount of time let them get acquainted with the snow quality and boosted their confidence when the time came to climb and ski Aoraki. “Going back-to-back with the lines like that allowed us to build a really intimate relationship with the snow conditions,” Lusti said. “We were so in tune with how the snow was changing that we were able to step out further each day into steep and dangerous terrain.” By the time the duoÌędropped in on Hunter’s Moon, they were able to anticipate some of the surprises the mountain threw at them.

New Zealand’s finicky snowpack added to the descent’s difficulty. Strong winds off the Tasman Sea create an transform the snowpack into an inconsistent and patchy surface. In any one descent, skiers are likely to encounter nĂ©vĂ© ice, refrozen surfaces, and loose, dry powder. “You need to be extremely calculated from turn to turn, constantly anticipating the conditions ahead of you—and whether or not you can surmount them with your edges,” Lusti said. ” You’re basically just clinging for your life at every turn.” That intimate knowledge of the snowpack proved paramount to the safety of the descent.

But equally important was the trust that the two built in the process. Lusti was holding the weight of the loss, but Pierrel helped her focus and be present in the mountains. “Having a partner like Gee who trusted what we were doing and who had a complete focus in the vision we were trying to accomplish allowed me to feel confident and push away my distractions,” Lusti said. Reflecting on Hunter’s Moon in particular, Lusti said she was grateful to have such a brilliant partner who pushed her forward when she needed it and was willing to be pushed by her in return.

Pierrel told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű that he felt lucky to be accompanying Lusti on the peak.Ìę“I’ve been skiing with the best athletes in Chamonix, and Christina was so impressive,” Pierrel said. He described her making turns on tiny ribbons of ice while he was using his ice axe to help him slide down.

To push the envelope of what’s possible in ski mountaineering, the stars have to align. SkiersÌęneed the right snow, the right partner, the right motivation, and even the right luck. “On that day we went, under the full moon, we had this incredible night sky,” Lusti said. “That’s when hard times’ silver linings appear. We were able to find such an incredible flow within our partnership and put down lines that were really special for the people in our community.” Under the full moon, the southern lights, and a sky full of stars, Lusti and Pierrel were in exactly the right place to make skiing history.

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Billowing smoke and falling ash blotted out the sun in Wrightwood, California on Tuesday, September 10. It was so dark that crickets began chirping in the early afternoon and drivers had to flick on their headlights. What had started as a small brush fire in the Angeles National Forest three days beforehand, the Bridge Fire exploded—by Wednesday, September 11, it would consume 47,904 acres.

The blaze crept up the hills of Wrightwood and began burning grassy hillsides within the beloved Mountain High ski area, a local resort famous for its easily accessible after-work night skiing for Los Angelinos. Luckily for Mountain High, the resort’s tenacious snow cannon operators jumped into action and began spraying trees and buildings with water. According to an update on Wednesday afternoon, the employees and firefighters prevented the loss of any resort buildings.

BRIDGE FIRE UPDATE
Fire raced through the area yesterday but GREAT NEWS! All the main lifts & buildings survived with little to no damage. THANK YOU to the fire fighters & employees for their hard work! Our hearts go out to the Wrightwood community, WE ARE WITH YOU.

— Mountain High (@mthigh)

“When the fire got close, they fired up all the guns and were able to get the trees wet and keep the fire off the buildings,” Dennis Nadalin, who runs video production for Mountain High, told me.

Mountain High has invested millions of dollars in snowmaking equipment, Nadalin said, and its new taller towers were instrumental in protecting the resort’s buildings.

“Our snowmaking crew is top-notch, probably one of the best in the world,” Nadalin said.Ìę “They have been making snow up here since the sixties.”

Videos posted on X on Tuesday night showed flames billowing near the ski area’s chairlifts and structures.

This is some of the most intense fire video I’ve ever seen. A California ski resort burned to the ground on a livestream. resort in Wrightwood, CA has been consumed by the .

— Gage Goulding – KPRC 2 (@GageGoulding)

Approximately out of the Wrightwood area on Tuesday after the fire destroyed 40 homes, according to ABC. Nadalin said he had to relocate several times due to approaching flames. He was evacuated from his home in Highland after a different fire, called the Line Fire, ignited. He relocated to Wrightwood, but then he had to move back to Highland due to encroaching flames from the Bridge Fire.

The entire city of Wrightwood, California, is under an evacuation order as webcam footage from Mountain High Ski Resort shows the burning through the resort.

Multiple fast-moving wildfires are beginning to impact communities across Southern California.

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch)

Nadalin told me he was relieved to learn that Mountain High’s structures were saved—it’s a place he’s skied since the early seventies. “The fact that the ski area exists in a place where you could actually see Los Angeles, Catalina Island, and the High Sierra all at once is really pretty incredible,” Nadalin told me.

Located two hours north of Los Angeles, the resort is something of a melting pot. Its night skiing draws a commuter crowd that can ski and ride after work. Its mix of gentle terrain and steep slopes draws skiers and snowboarders of diverse abilities. And it’s a great place to learn. When I lived in Oceanside, California, I would ski at Mountain High after work, and I loved to see the mountain’s diverse clientele: beginners getting on snow for the first time, semi-professional park riders hitting rails and jumps, and seemingly everyone in-between. I even wrote a feature on the Southern California ski scene for .

Nadalin credits the mountain’s quick response to firefighting to its innovative infrastructure. “Mountain High has always been an early adopter kind of place,” he said. “Growing up in Wrightwood and having a season pass since the early seventies, I’ve seen a lot of changes, a lot of improvements. Over the years, the snowmaking system has evolved into these big pipes and these big fan guns that are permanently mounted on the hill, where all they have to do is just turn a switch to get them going. That’s one of the reasons that the resort got saved—the snowmaking system is so good and so thorough.”

The mountain operations employees will soon begin running safety checks to assess any damage to individual lifts, but it seems that a majority of its infrastructure was left unharmed. The Bridge Fire is currently zero percent contained.

These conflagrations sparked after an immense heat wave brought record-breaking 110-degree temperatures to the Los Angeles Basin. High winds and dry vegetation sat waiting for a spark. In the case of the 35,000-acre Line Fire, outside of Big Bear, California, an arsonist provided the ignition source. San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department arrested 34-year-old Norco man Justin Wayne Halstenberg on Tuesday on suspicion of arson.

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Americans can hardly agree on anything to do with politics. But in Florida, a plan that threatens multiple state parks is proving to be an exception to that rule. Recently, the office of Republican governor Ron DeSantis unveiled a proposal to develop nine popular Florida parks into golf courses, pickleball courts, and luxury hotels. The plan has brought together people of all parties—Republicans and Democrats, alike, all hate it.

“They are literally paving paradise,” Heather Meade, a St. Augustine resident, said to . “State Parks are for the people of Florida. They are affordable and family friendly. There are plenty of hotels, condos, and golf courses in our area and no need to convert the parks.”

The plan, which the governor’s office released on August 20Ìęas part of their Great Outdoors Initiative, details the development of pickleball courts, disc golf courses, a 350-room lodge, a “glamping area”, and golf courses. It was met with fury from Floridians of all stripes on social media. Then, Floridians came together to protest the plan on August 27 at Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

In the days after the Great Outdoor Initiative document was published, more than 47,000 people joined a Facebook group called Protect Jonathan Dickinson State Park. The group organized a protest on Tuesday, August 27 at the park, during which Democratic state representative Lindsay Cross spoke to protestors in favor of stalling the plan and protecting the park.

According to the , Jonathan Dickinson is home to the largest amount of protected scrub-jay habitat in Southeast Florida.

In the days following its unveiling, the plan also attracted criticism from state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Florida’s Republican senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott wrote in a letter that the plan’s call for a one-hour hearing was “absolutely ridiculous.”

“We believe every voting member of the (Acquisition and Restoration Council) must attend a public comment meeting before taking any action regarding the proposal,” the letter reads. “An hour-long meeting on a weekday afternoon when most people are at work will not suffice.”

The governor’s office has defended the plan as a way to attract more people to the parks with enticing recreation opportunities. “Teddy Roosevelt believed that public parks were for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and we agree with him,” press secretary Jeremy Redfern said. “But it’s high time we made public lands more accessible to the public.”

This golf course would ensure that locals & visitors alike have access to a popular outdoor sport & provide accessibility for all. Here is our proposal.

— Florida DEP News (@FLDEPNews)

Questioned by reporters on August 28, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said “If people don’t want improvements, then don’t do it.”

On August 27, officialsÌęscrapped the plan for the Jonathan Dickinson golf courses after Tuskegee Dunes Foundation, one of its main proponents, backed out amid growing pressure from activists. But the remaining eight state park projects remain on the table.

But opponents say theyÌęwon’t stop until the other plans are axed. “We must remain vigilant and we will not stop,” Kim Begay, vice president and conservation advocate at the Clearwater Audubon Society, told the .

Hours after the letter was released, the department posted on social media that it would be postponing all the public meetings about the state park plans.

In the last five years, Florida has been known for a politics mired in partisan squabbling. Between attacks on Disney World and book bans in schools, it seems that the state’s parks are a beacon of unity. After all, our green spaces are a public good on which we can all agree.

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A massive hydrothermal explosion rocked the popular Biscuit Basin area of Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday morning.

According to the National Park Service, the eruption occurred at approximately 10:19 A.M. local time, and it occurred near the Sapphire Pool, just north of Old Faithful. Nobody was hurt, but officials closed the entire area—including the boardwalks—for safety reasons.

An unusually large eruption of one of Yellowstone’s geysers occurred at Biscuit Basin moments ago.

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch)

A California woman named Vlada March captured video of the massive blast and uploaded the clip to Facebook. According to , March said she and her family were on a trip to the national park when they noticed steam rising from Sapphire Pool. March began filming the area and caught images of tourists walking near the pool shortly before it exploded, showering the area in water, rocks, and mud.

You can hear March yelling “run run run!” to her loved ones in the clip.

The debris destroyed much of the walkway around Sapphire Pool and Black Diamond Pool, another thermal feature in the area.

“No other monitoring data show changes in the Yellowstone region,” said the NPS in their statement. “Today’s explosion does not reflect a change in the volcanic system, which remains at normal background levels of activity.”

The explosion comes just days after another eruption in the park—the Steamboat Geyser recently erupted and showered nearby cars in silica residue. Park staff and the USGS will monitor the area and determine when Biscuit Basin is safe to reopen.

This is an ongoing story, andÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű will update it as more news becomes available.

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One of Canada’s most popular national parks has been evacuated due to encroaching wildfires.

On Monday, July 22, the Canadian government ordered 4,700 residents living in Jasper National Park to flee, as flames from the Semo Complex Fire, roared into the area. Jasper National Park is located in western Alberta, along the province’s border with British Columbia, and the reserve encompasses large swaths of the Canadian Rockies.

According to multiple reports, the order to flee caught residents by surprise—most live in the town of Jasper, which is located inside the park. The blaze cut off a number of escape routes in Alberta, forcing evacuees to flee to the west into neighboring British Columbia.

The order came after multiple conflagrations and thick smoke spread across the region from the mega-fire, which is a union of several smaller blazes that have burned a total of 237,221 acres in Alberta and British Columbia. Currently, Canadian firefighting officials consider the Semo Complex Fire to be “out of control.” There are more than 160 wildfires raging in Alberta as of Monday.

“One wildfire is approximately 12 kilometers (seven-and-a-half miles) south of Jasper on both sides of the river and wind may exacerbate the situation,” Mike Ellis, Alberta’s minister of public safety and emergency services, said during a news conference on July 23.

On Monday, escaping tourists and locals posted messages to social media that had tones of both confusion and frustration.ÌęEscape routes were narrowed to single lanes in places and traffic slowed to a crawl amid the chaos.

“Crawling out of town. It’s been smoky all day ash started appearing 9p,” Jack Kearney, a videographer from New York, posted on X. “In a lodge full of tourists we didn’t get a heads up from staff. Most of us weren’t sure what to do.”

Carolyn Campbell, the president of the local Edmonton Community College, wrote on X that after nearly three hours of driving, she’d crossed just four miles due to traffic jams. “We heard mobile gas stations are being set up, we’re ok but we know friends are almost out of gas, and folks are sharing same.”Ìęshe wrote.

Stephanie Goetz, an Ontario resident, was on vacation in the national park when she awoke to a notification on her phone. “It was absolutely shocking. We didn’t realize how close it was to Jasper,” she told the . “When we were stopped, there was tons of cars behind us. And really realizing how close those cars had been to that fire … There’s a much larger fire south of us. I can’t imagine how that’s going to impact Jasper.”

Alberta residents are no strangers to wildfire, and over the years the province has seen multiple mega-fires rage across its borders. In 2016 a raging fire forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta—88,000 people had to flee oncoming flames, the largest evacuation in Alberta’s history. The fire eventually burned more than 2,000 homes and buildings.

In recent years wildfire has had dramatic impacts across Canada.ÌęAfter smoke from the worst fire season in Canadian history poured into the Eastern United States in 2023, warned that this current year could see even more wildfire activity.

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A sharp buzzing noise in my ear jolted me to attention. I’d been content, hiking in a catatonic state with skis on my back for miles out of the Mount Whitney basin. But the mosquitos had risen before the sun, and at 4 A.M. on a late-June morning, I was breakfast.

I could have been anywhere that summer morning, but I had chosen to chase yet another day of skiing in the high peaks.

I live for winter, and every year my mood improves in November when the flakes begin to fall. Subsequently, my seasonal depression tends to set in right around mid-June, when the sun angle is high and its rays turn skiable snow into an uncomfortable three-dimensional pump track. A common refrain in the Eastern Sierra where I live is folks come for the winter and stay for the summer. But I’m four years in and that never quite clicked for me.

My summer weekends are filled with angst and indecision. Once a passionate climber, I now spend much less time on the granite peaks and domes above my home. Infrequency and atrophy have winnowed my desire to ascend steep rock and have replaced my old excitement with fear and doubt. Mountain biking in my town’s dusty and expensive bike park never quite scratches the itch of playing in the big mountains. Hiking without an objective or a technical element leaves me feeling aimless and empty. Instead, I choose to keep waxing my skis long after most of the snow has been vaporized by the summer sun. I’ll throw them in the back of my car and quest into the highest reaches of the Sierra well into July. I’m starting to think that skiing in the high peaks is all I know—that I’ve forgotten how to behave in a society that values summer. I know I’m crazy, but I just can’t stop.

What I crave is the slow plod skyward of a steep bootpack, feeling the secure crunch of crampons sinking into nĂ©vĂ©. I need to all but disappear in a massive alpine cirque, dwarfed by walls of granite and ice. Winter’s sky holds a different blue that ebbs away to a muddled June gray, and I find myself scratching around, desperately seeking a way to get it back.

So, there I found myself, kicking up dust, trying to beat back the summer blues by hauling my skis all the way up to 14,000 feet above sea level to squeeze the last drop out of winter. My fiancĂ©e Rita and I had poached camping in the Whitney Portal, usurping a spot that someone had reserved and abandoned like scrappy hermit crabs. Our alarm rang at 2 A.M. to a collective sigh of relief—neither of us had slept a wink. Our anticipation got the best of us and we frittered away much-needed shuteye in favor of visualizing the trail and the sunrise.

Fueled by Oreos and a resolute desire to hold onto spring, we packed up our tent, slurped a cup of cold coffee, and somnambulated toward the trailhead. Mount Irvine (13,786 feet) and its brother Mount Mallory (13,851 feet) tower over the town of Lone Pine. Skiing in the cirque between the pair of peaks was a fitting objective, our quixotic search for snow echoed the famous climber’s “Because it is there” aphorism. We chuckled nervously that the cirque that houses the two peaks rarely sees any traffic, and we were skiing there almost exactly 100 years after Irvine and Mallory disappeared on Mount Everest.

A beam of light broke through the oppressive cloud of mosquitoes, and through it I was able to see the sunrise gracing the summit of Lone Pine Peak with alpenglow. It was just enough motivation to shake off the bugs and continue upward.

The inexorable lengthening of days as spring turns to summer spirals my sense of loss. Each day, the fingers of snow climb higher from the basin floor. Their melt mirrors my waning ability to find inspiration, adventure, and fun. Admittedly, this is a character flaw. I can’t seem to find anything to latch onto in the summer besides skiing, though all my friends have new and different passions. The heat, the mosquitos, the endless oppressive sunshine, all dim my drive to lose myself among my home’s massive peaks. I’d benefit greatly from a support group for wayward ski mountaineers.

We arrived at , which sits 3,000 feet beneath Mount Irvine, around 7:30 A.M., trying to arrive before couloir had time to soften. The lake still had lilypads of ice floating on its surface. Rita and I sat on a granite boulder, sunning ourselves like lizards in the morning sunlight. The morning was cool in the granite basin.

Setting a skin track toward Mount Irvine’s wide apron, I felt the swelter of the sun overstaying its welcome. Sweat began to stream sunscreen into my eyes. But when I took a moment to clear them, I was able to see the gift of my surroundings. Glorious golden granite soared over lush, grassy meadows. Turquoise lakes nestled among groves of old-growth whitebark pines. And yes, all of these features will be here in two months’ time when the last of the snow melts, but what will be gone is the arresting contrast—sparkling white streaks of snow are what make these drainages so special to me.

Maybe halfway up the couloir, it became clear that it was getting too hot, too fast. Fearing the consequences of a wet avalanche, Rita and I quickly transitioned and clicked into our skis. The sun cups were deep and the skiing was, frankly, bad, but we couldn’t help but laugh as we glided through the steep golden hallway, spraying slush in our wake.

It was clear then that our ski season was officially over. These errant chutes in the high country can only stay soft for so long. Soon they’ll transition to ice and then, in their evanescent way, be gone altogether. Each weekend I say with some certainty that I’m done skiing. Winter was good, spring was better, and now I’ll have to make something new out of my summer. But when Friday rolls around, I start peeking at coverage in the high country, looking for strips of snow in the alpine that could provide a little spark of inspiration.

I want to recommit to climbing, force myself back on the sharp end of a rope and figure out how not to be scared again. I’ll take out my bike and learn to corner in deep sand—I have so much to learn and so far to progress. Next weekend I’ll make it happen.

As we made the slow slog back to the Portal I began to accept that winter’s final breath may have come and gone a few months ago, and spring was already on life support. Next weekend I’ll figure out how to be a citizen of summer. But this weekend you can find me once more at 14,000 feet tucking my crampons into my pack and staring down a narrow band of rotten snow, preparing, yet again, to drop in.

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The east face of the Matterhorn towers over the Swiss village of Zermatt. Wind hammers the peak and strips snow from its craggy buttresses. From town, the sheer wall of rock and ice looks impossible to ski. But the forbidding slope was first skied by Toni Valeruz in May of 1975, and this year, snow and weather conditions aligned for a team of athletes, mostly women, to make an attempt on the face.

Nadine Wallner, 35, a fully-certified mountain guide and two-time Freeride World Tour champion from Klösterle, Austria, had her eye on the face while hosting a ski camp to train Red Bull athletes in Zermatt. SheÌęspied a brief window between storms to climb and ski the east face on May 26 and seized the opportunity.

“It’s really unlikely to find decent conditions to ski the Matterhorn safely,” said Wallner, “the east face is usually full of rock bands and it’s rare that it filled in so well.”

Wallner, accompanied by Swiss mountain guide Ramona Volken and her friend Valentin Zufferey as well as another Freeride World Tour champion, Italian-born Arianna Tricomi, began climbing to the Hörnli Hut on May 25 to stage their descent. As they ascended toward the snow, thick clouds enveloped the “Hore” (the local, Valaisian name for the peak). The clouds concerned Wallner and her team—overcast skies act like insulation and keep the snow from refreezing, which can create wet and unstable surface conditions. The skiers were relying on a shallow refreeze to keep the snow in decent skiing condition and protect it from the hot May temperatures.

But the clouds cleared as the team of skiers ascended the eastern flank of the Matterhorn, allowing for just enough of a superficial refreeze that theyÌęfelt comfortable continuing. “We booted up the face with crampons and two axes,” Wallner said. “We were just in the bubble of the dark. When the sun rose we reached the Solvay Hut.”

The Solvay Hut, an emergency shelter built high on the Matterhorn’s northeast ridge, is the high point for most parties who ski the east face, including Wallner’s team. At 13,133 feet, it sits about 1,500 feet shy of the summit. But above the hut, near vertical rock walls guard the mountain’s peak. Parties who ski the east face begin their descent from the hut, or, in exceptional snow years, 150 feet above it. Snow never really sticks to the rock above that.

By my count, and I don’t read German, the Matterhorn has only been skied from the summit twice. Swiss mountaineer AndrĂ© “DĂ©dĂ©” AnzĂ©vui made the first descent of the north face of the Matterhorn from the summit in 1989. Then, in 2018, Italian Edmond Joyeusaz skied from the summit at the age of 60. Both skiers had to remove their skis and rappel from 800 feet below the summit past a rock band and then wrap around to the east face to ski from the Solvay Hut.

The east face, while still imposing, still only gets skied once every few years and is an extremely difficult objective. Wallner said she enjoyed easy travel on the uphill, but encountered tricky snow conditions on the descent. A recent storm system blew patches of new snow atop the stable spring snow they had hoped to ski. Those patches warmed quickly in the May sunlight and createdÌędangerous sluff. Wallner had to ski carefully to link the patches of spring corn and avoid the hot, sticky newer snow. “It was quite sketchy at some points,” she said. “You had to really watch out where you skied because those powder patches got really hot and would slide. They can definitely catch your skis.”

When asked about the steepness, Wallner parried that it all comes down to the snow quality. “If the snow is good, very steep skiing can feel not so steep. And the opposite can be true too. Bad snow makes easy skiing feel very steep and scary.” Luckily for Wallner, route finding was the least of her worries. The team was able to follow their bootpack all the way down the east face.

The team skied the face in conditions that could generously be described as subpar. I asked Wallner if she questioned any of her decision-making with the power of hindsight. “I wish we’d descended a half-an-hour earlier,” Wallner told me. “There were spin drifts from above turning into little stuff slides. When we got back to the [Hörnli] hut some larger avalanches came down from above.”

Tricky conditions on the Matterhorn of an Italian skier just a week later on June 4. Luca Berini, a 34-year-old Italian ski instructor slipped and fell over 1,000 feet to his death while skiing the east face in poor snow.

“I didn’t know him, but it’s so tragic,” said Wallner of Berini’s fall. “It makes it hard to even appreciate your own descent.”

But even in mid-June Wallner hasn’t given up skiing. The AustrianÌętold me she’s still seeking out little windows of clear weather amid summer storms that are still dropping snow in the Swiss Alps. “Even if the window is 50/50, if you don’t go you’ll never know,” she said.

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A recent story about a search-and-rescue mission in Washington State highlights an important lesson for rock climbers. When attempting your first multi-pitch route on a big wall of rock, it’s best to keep your climbing party small.

According to the Methow Valley News, on Tuesday, May 21, a group of eight climbers from Illinois and Indiana attempted to ascend a long sport climbing route on the Goat Wall in Mazama, Washington. The party started climbing at 7:30 A.M. and were still only two-thirds up the route (at the top of the seventh pitch out of 11) when the sun began to set. By the time the group called the Okanagan County Sheriff’s Office at 10:30 P.M. to initiate a rescue, it was dark.

Zach Winters, a Okanagan County Search and Rescue (OCSAR) volunteer who was familiar with the route, called members of the climbing party in Mazama to try and coach them to descend on their own. Unfortunately, the climbers lacked experience on routes that big, and they “should never have been up there,” according to another member of OCSAR. None had ever done a multi-pitch climb before, Winters said to the

Winters and two others arrived on the scene around midnight and began to help, but the weather then took a turn for the worse. Spring conditionsÌęin the North Cascades can be unpredictable, even in late May. A storm rolled into MazamaÌęas rain turned to heavy, slushy snow, forcing the climbers to take shelter in a small cave near the ledge on which they were stranded.

Meanwhile, rescuers arrived at the top of the Goat Wall via an access road with food and supplies and began fixing ropes to descend to the marooned party. Snow and ice jammed the ascending devices of the OCSAR members, slowing their progress as they made their way up the climbing route.

Rescuers helped six of the climbers rappel more than 800 feet to the ground. Two party members didn’t feel comfortable descending, so the SAR team used a pulley system to haul them up to the top of the route.

Winters and one of the two climbers were tethered together for the ascent, according to the Methow Valley News. It was a long and difficult process to haul them the remaining 600 feet—at times, they were simply dangling in space, Winter said.

The mission stretched overnight, through the morning, and into the next afternoon. It was not until 5:30 P.M. on Wednesday, May 22—a full 34 hours after the climbers started the route—that all eight were safely on solid ground, said OCSAR coordinator Rick Balam.

What We Can Learn from this Debacle?

I’m well versed in the quixotic nature of planning a destination climbing trip from the Midwest. I went to college in Illinois, and as a newer climber I learned many skills on by reading books and advice on the Internet. I used what little free time I had during the winter to test those skills on big routes out west. I read Chris MacNamara’s How to Big Wall Climb my freshman year and spent a few weeks climbing ropes strung over Chicago lamp posts and learning to build haul systems before driving to Zion National Park to aid climb a few big walls.

So, when I read that this party had “spent a year researching the Goat Wall,” before actually attempting it, I partially understood their predicament. But just looking over a route on a few times isn’t actually preparation. There are ways to practice big-wall skills in a climbing gym or at small crags prior to your ascent.

I report on a lot of SAR calls (and recently have made a few to help other parties in the field) and this Mazama debacle is one of the weirdest rescue stories I’ve ever heard. There are a few important lessons to glean from it.

The biggest one is to keep group size small when tackling a big climb for the first time. Eight people was far too many for an attempt of this size.ÌęDetails are fuzzy on exactly what rope systems the party used, but even if it was four teams of two (which would probably be the most efficient way to climb a moderate, safely-bolted sport climb such as the Prime Rib route on the Goat Wall) or if they stacked more than two people per rope. But in any case, if you’re climbing at or above your limit, take two partners maximum.

The next lesson is about weather. The North Cascades often experience snow and rain in Late May, yet this party still attempted a huge multi-pitch climb during this window. While the snow wasn’t the cause of their rescue, the party wasn’t quick enough on the route to nail their weather window. That resulted in a complicated rescue. A smarter choice would have been to push the attempt to later in the season.

And finally, choosing the right route for a multi-pitch newbie is crucial. This group chose a 11-pitch route that is 1,500 vertical feet—that’s probably far too difficult a rock to learn how to do a multi-pitch climb. This is a totally different skill set from cragging or gym climbing. Learning to be efficient at belay changeovers is a vital skill when you have to do it 11 times. Just an extra ten minutes fumbling at each belay will cost you around two hours over the course of the whole route. Find a two pitch route to dial in your skills.

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