Backcountry.com Newsletter Articles

In September 2007, Backcountry.com’s second-ever employee, Bob Merrill, took a six-week leave of absence and set off for Nepal’s Himalayas to ski, in his words, some “big-ass mountains.” He and two partners flew into Kathmandu and prepared for an expedition to Nangpa La, a high divide near 26,906-foot Cho Oyu and surrounded by 6,000- and 7,000-meter peaks.

They worked with Everest climbers Apa Sherpa and Lhakpa Sherpa who arranged for travel via yak with cook and porter teams to Nangpa La. They gained 1,500 feet of vertical a day as they walked, which allowed them to acclimatize. About eight days later, they arrived at the high divide, which is near the border with Tibet, and set up base camp at 17,900 feet.

After the yak team left, Merrill and his group spent 18 days racking up first ascents and descents, fulfilling a lifelong dream to yo-yo the biggest mountains in the world. Eventually, the yak team returned to fetch them, and they made their way back to where the air is thicker.

"The skiing was exceptional," says Merrill. "The snow was the creamiest, silkiest corn I've ever been on in my life." He thinks the equatorial sun at such a high altitude must cause such perfect, peel-away corn. His most memorable free-heel first descent was down 21,650-foot Friendship Peak-he spent seven hours climbing this mountain for a 55-minute, 4,500-foot trip down.

Except for road rash he got during a moped accident in Thailand, Merrill returned from his journey unscathed. “Everyone should do it once,” says a still-amped Merrill about his journey. Yet, even with his decades of experience skiing and climbing mountains, it’s a difficult journey, he adds. “To go ski there, you can’t do it casually. It takes an incredible amount of work,” he explains. “But it was amazing.”

Does exploring Nepal’s 1,300+ peaks higher than 6,000 meters (19,685+ feet)—many of which haven’t been climbed let alone skied—sound like your kind of adventure? Before you pack your bags and jump on a plane with your touring gear, read our Ten Reasons Not to Ski Mountaineer in the Himalayas. And if you’re confident enough to ignore our advice and follow in Merrill’s kick-steps and ski tracks, we leave you with some parting words of wisdom.

Ten Reasons Not to Ski Mountaineer in the Himalayas

10. Schlepping Equipment and Gear. “With Nepal Airlines’ 44-pound baggage limit, you best be pretty serious about making turns,” says Tim Kelley, Dynafit sales director and ski mountaineer who has climbed (but not skied) in the Himalayas. “It’s hard enough standing in line waiting to board the plane in the 100-degree Bangkok airport wearing a down jacket and plastic boots, with all of your climbing gear in your carry-on; I can’t imagine having to have a ski helmet on as well.”

9. Civil Unrest. The U.S. Department of State has issued a travel warning for Nepal. In September, three near-simultaneous blasts in Kathmandu killed three and injured dozens of people. The Chinese side of Nangpa La has seen violence as well. (Pakistan and Kashmir aren’t exactly models of peace and serenity either.)

8. You Have to Quit Your Day Job. Unless you can con your way into a leave of absence, you might have to take a permanent vacation from your workplace. To get to the goods (snow line is at 17,500 feet), you have a one- to two-week approach ahead of you. “If you were lucky, you might finally get one run in 17 days’ time if you walked in,” says ski mountaineer Craig Calonica, director and guide for Himalayan Heli Ski Guides (HHSG). “Which is fine, and we [HHSG guides] have all done that, but you’re looking at a minimum [of] six weeks to do anything worthwhile.”

7. Crappy Snow. All your planning and the bags of money spent will be for naught if the Himalayas have a drought year. You could go to the exceptionally high peaks, as they always have snow and ice with glaciers surrounding them, but the glaciers present their own dangers. Such as bottomless crevasses. And besides, the snow isn’t all that. Laura Bakos, the first woman to ski an 8,000-meter peak, described Cho Oyu’s summit as windblown and crusted—from what we hear, such conditions are common.

6. Too Much Snow. In late September of this year, the Himalayas experienced several large dumps— Basti Haag and Beni Bohm of Team Dynafit reported several feet of snow over eight days. The members of Team Dynafit, who attempted a speedy summit and ski descent of 26,758-foot Manaslu (the eighth highest in the world) had to take two-hour shoveling shifts during a late-September storm to keep base camp tents from being buried, and still, the kitchen tent collapsed. (After continued bad weather in October, Team Dynafit left for home.) Oh, and did we mention avalanches? They can rip 4,000 feet down a steep mountain face and make you disappear. See number 5.

5. Avalanches. Arguably the finest alpinist in the world died in a slab avalanche during a bid on 26,289-foot Shishapangma. Had Alex Lowe and his team succeeded in summiting and skiing this 8,000-meter peak in 1999, they would have been the first Americans to do so. Instead, the bodies of Lowe and one of his climbing partners, Dave Bridges, were never recovered.

4. Decades of Preparation. You have to rack up several seasons of mountaineering on high peaks like Rainier, Aconcagua, Denali, or Mexican volcanoes. You need knowledge of how to travel across crevasses and ice climb. You need to be an expert skier. “Give respect to the process and the mountains,” says Kit DesLauriers, the first woman to climb and ski the seven summits. “It’s a learning curve that can’t be artificially shortened, so once you are finally ready, you will know it.”

3. Altitude Sickness. You can be in the best shape of your life, but if you’re not acclimated, you’re gonna get zapped by the altitude. Fredrick Ericsson, a seasoned ski mountaineer making a bid on 26,795-foot Dhaulagiri this October, suffered from wicked altitude headaches. But there are worse consequences than vise-like headaches. Many mountaineers succumb to high altitude pulmonary or cerebral edema, both of which can be fatal.

2. No Organized Guides. With the correct high-altitude résumé and a good chunk of change, several guide services will take you up Mount Everest (some outfitters requiring more effort than others). But only one guide service, Adventure Consultants based in New Zealand, responded to Backcountry.com to say that it’d organize a private trip for someone. So, you’re on your own to find a local expedition team complete with yaks, porters, and guide—which DesLauriers thinks is appropriate. “It is such a small niche of people who have the travel and skiing skills and personal experience to pull off a ski trip to the Himalayas, and to these people I say that they can figure this stuff out.”

1. PPPD: Prolonged Pain and Possible Death. We thought we’d drill this home one more time—avalanche danger is extreme and altitude sickness is nearly certain. We don’t have a vendetta against the Nepali Ministry of Tourism or anything. We’re just telling it like it is.

If you have decades of experience climbing high peaks, navigating glaciers, and skiing gnarly terrain, then perhaps you have what it takes to follow in Backcountry Bob’s footsteps. So for the select few, we leave you with the one reason to risk your life—a reason that reportedly hung in Alex Lowe’s office:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. – Helen Keller, 1957