Crows Tom Grant and Enrico Mosetti joined with Jesper Peterson and Ben Briggs to explore the shapes of the Denali in Alaska. Tom recalls this particular journey on this mythical mountain, a wonderful experience with a terrible ending.
In May of this year, I gathered three of my most trusted ski buddies for a journey to Alaska where we wanted to see if our expertise from skiing steep lines in the Alps and around the world could be applied to Alaska biggest lines. Our first trip to the Central Alaska Range was a humbling experience where reward was mixed with frustration and where we almost lost one of our team.
2018 didn’t start off well for me. At the beginning of what was to be an epic winter I tore my ACL. It was the first major injury I’d sustained since skiing almost full time over 10 years. And I didn’t take it very well. My good ski buddy and prolific steep skier Jesper Peterson had been through the same grueling recovery process the year before. Jesper’s support and encouragement was a big moral boost during my rehab and when he proposed a trip together to Alaska for the following spring, I knew I was in. We invited Ben Briggs and Enrico Mosetti to round off an experienced team.
Tom Grant
I think travel to uncomfortable places is important in order to keep growing as an athlete and a person. The Central Alaska Range was certainly the right place to take all four of us outside our comfort zones. Denali is a mind blowingly huge mountain renowned for its extreme cold, harsh weather and severely thin air. Flying in from the remote outpost of Talkeetna, our first glimpses of Denali filled us with awe and trepidation. It’s 3,000 meter south face is a well-known ski mountaineering challenge and is one of the very biggest steep ski lines in the world, cutting through an alpine face of mythical stature. We decided it would be on the table as an option. Our other plan involved attempting a very complex but compelling looking line on the unskied north side of Mt. Hunter, which is conveniently in plain sight directly above basecamp.
Tom Grant
We arrived in basecamp and fried some eggs for lunch while staring at Hunter and to finally deciding where we were going to focus on. The line on Hunter looked simply too dangerous and conditions were worse than what we had seen in photos from previous years. We decided to load our sleds with two weeks’ worth of supplies and start the long slog up Denali, hauling our heavy sleds up the mountain for three days.
Tom Grant
After setting ourselves up at 14k camp positioned high on Denali we waited out a couple of stormy days passing the time playing chess. It was bitterly cold at first, a deep and raw cold in the evening and before the first rays of sun hit the camp. I wondered if my holiday time would have been better spent somewhere a little warmer where we could actually do some skiing. On the first day of good weather we headed up the classic Orient Express couloir. Jesper and I pushed our bodies hard to get up to 5,800m only five days after arriving at basecamp. The frustration of the previous days was soon ironed out by the intense physical exertion it took to boot up 1,000m at that altitude and then the bliss of a few good powder turns coming back into camp.
Tom Grant
The cold and high winds continued and I began wondering if my first trip to Denali would be my last. The stable weather we were counting on never came and the enormity and logistical challenges of skiing the South Face weighed heavily on us. We knew it would be a long shot to pull off. Our patience and food supplies began to run thin. At last it seemed as if our window had come and the four of us packed for a three-day roundtrip to attempt the South Face. Moving up the mountain I instinctively felt our bags were too heavy and we weren’t moving fast enough. The wind whipped up well beyond what was forecast, and we ground to a halt.
Tom Grant
Ben and Enrico felt the time had come to bail and move back down to basecamp while Jesper and I stayed up one more day with the intention of at least taking our skis to the summit and skiing the classic Messner Couloir. This time the weather turned out better than predicted with summit temperatures a relatively balmy -25 degree Celsius. It felt a joy to move at a good speed and with a lighter pack. Some altitude induced pain was nothing compared to the intense pleasure of pushing up the mountain at a decent pace. Jesper and I finally peered into the depths of the South Face as we neared the summit. We were too late in the day to ski it and the weather wasn’t stable enough. The view into the South Face was almost nauseating, it was of a scale like nothing I’d seen before. My ambition to ski it was there but I knew it wasn’t the time for it.
Tom Grant
Arriving on the summit I was alone for twenty minutes in near perfect weather. It was a powerful moment to be there alone, and then joined by Jesper. As we stepped into our skis atop North America’s highest mountain, it felt good to share and savour the moment with such a trusted ski partner. After making a few fast powder turns straight off the summit, we entered the Messner Couloir in mesmerizing evening light. To be in Alaska and on Denali was a challenge and a new experience for us. But skiing the Messner, one of North America’s biggest and most classic steep lines was trivial. As we skied back into camp we were amused to be welcomed by whoops and applause from the dozens of other climbers and skiers camped out there who had watched our descent.
Tom Grant
Jesper and I were pleased with finally having achieved some success. Yet we also felt slightly cheated that we had not skied anything that really challenged us. We wanted to take our niche steep skiing skillset and apply it to these incredibly big and beautiful mountains. Back in basecamp we were reunited with Ben and Enrico and planned for one last big line.
Tom Grant
The 1,000m West Face of Kalhiltna Queen was an obvious target. First skied in 2010 by a French team, it is a stunningly beautiful and technical ski objective. Holed up back in basecamp during two days of sleet and blizzards, we rested up and waited. On the third day, with Enrico and Jesper – Ben had decided not to come – we left early for the Kalhiltna Queen. Cramponing up the main couloir of the face at a relatively low 3,000m above sea level, it felt as though I had boot packing super-powers.
Tom Grant
As we climbed up higher following airy ridges and spines, I was in rapture at the raw beauty of the place. I felt we were surely going to be ending the trip on a high. Finding a way to the summit through some very exposed terrain with rocks and ice never far under the snow, we planned our descent precisely according to where we placed the boot pack. I had an unshakeable confidence that I could safely ski the line without using the rope.
Tom Grant
The skiing from the upper slopes was as engaging and demanding as any descent I’d ever done. Picking a line onto 55 degree spines overhanging an 800m drop I was totally in the zone making turns with the joy of knowing I was beyond any risk of falling, at least not from a technical mistake. It was what we were there for and we were living out a rare and perfect moment.
Jesper Peterson
Halfway down, on the steep bank of a small choke in the couloir I stopped immediately when I instinctively felt it wasn’t safe to make another turn. A small 10cm deep slab broke off at my ski tips. Not sensing any greater danger, I waited as Jesper skied down to me. To my alarm he skied faster than I expected coming in straight below where I had stopped. A small but much deeper slab instantly broke off around his skis. Within less than a second the slab had pushed him backwards into an ice runnel and then rocks.
Jesper Peterson
Moments later he was gone, out of sight having accelerated at an incredible speed down the couloir. I suppressed a rising panic that in all likelihood Jesper was either dead or seriously injured and also some relief that it wasn’t me. I immediately got out my InReach and hit the emergency SOS button. I prayed it worked and then told Enrico to ski carefully behind me and collect Jesper’s skis. Fear and stress flooded my body as I skied as fast as possible to get to Jesper. As I was descending it was with huge relief that I saw a distant figure below stumbling around the debris from the small avalanche. I was also afraid of what I would find. Arriving at Jesper I found him badly beaten up, but seemingly without any life-threatening injuries. It was awful to see him in such a state, totally disorientated and in a lot of pain.
Enrico soon came down to us. He tended to Jesper while I raced back to basecamp to round up a rescue party and to see if he could be flown out. I sprinted through basecamp and to our tents to grab Ben. Together we skinned up the glacier as fast as we could with a sleeping bag and stove to warm Jesper. A team of rescue volunteers joined us and the heli eventually made it in through a break in the cloud cover to fly Jesper away.
Tom Grant
Ben, Enrico and I flew off the glacier the following day and back to civilization. Jesper spent a few days in hospital near Anchorage before getting flown back to Sweden. He sustained a broken neck and ribs but very luckily nothing life changing.
I have an instinctive urge to seek out adventure and risk, yet this urge has been tempered over time with the numbing reality of losing some good friends in the mountains. Experience and skill can count for a lot but no matter how much I rationalize with myself the uncomfortable reality is sometimes so does luck.
Things happen fast in the mountains and can go wrong very fast. So often we rely on intuition to make split second decisions that can keep us safe. As skiers this can tell us where to turn, where not to turn, where the snow is safe, where it might be dangerous. But it is not full-proof. All we can do is try our best to be humble, self-aware and therefore always be learning. And to keep questioning what it is we are doing and why we are doing it.
I left Alaska with satisfyingly strong experiences that tested my resolve and patience. I was pleased that we’d pushed to new altitudes, learnt how to deal with the cold and made turns on some incredibly beautiful and exposed slopes. Jesper still faces a lengthy recovery from a serious injury, but he will recover. No one needs reminding of how easily it could have been different. The four of us all returned home, and we returned still as friends. That makes it at least a partially successful trip.
