Kristina Ciari does things in style. When she climbed Mount Rainier in 2013, she saved herself the effort of hoofing it back down the mountain. Instead, she stepped into her skis and bombed down the tallest volcano in Washington state. While wearing a pink tutu.
Ciari, the membership and marketing director for The Mountaineers, has been skiing since she was 3. When she isn’t at work, her enthusiasm for skiing keeps her looking for snow all year.
She’s not alone. Ciari, along with other ski enthusiasts, keeps track of her trips on Turns All Year, a website devoted to backcountry skiing and snowboarding.
Skiers and snowboarders use the site to track how long they’ve been skiing, post trip reports and more.
This summer has been a particular challenge for those hoping to find turns. With snow levels so low, people who hanker for a rush have to walk farther and climb higher to get it.
Ciari has skied at least once a month for 46 consecutive months. She’s climbed and skied Glacier Peak, Mount Shasta, Mount Adams, Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood.
And the pink tutu? It provides more than style and whimsy. It offers a bit of safety by making her easy to see. If she’s cold, she can sit on it. If she falls, it keeps snow out of her jacket. It also breaks the ice, figuratively speaking. She’s had many conversations started by the tutu.
“I think that skiing in a tutu makes it even more fun because it’s this ridiculous irreverence,” she said. “There’s like 14 good reasons to ski in a tutu and not one good reason not to.”
Jason Hummel, an outdoor photographer, started backcountry skiing with his family when he was 5. When he was a teenager, he started tracking months of consecutive skiing. Along with his twin brother, his frequent skiing partner, he’s up to 202 months.
“I was already skiing nine to 10 months a year,” he said. “It wasn’t much of a stretch to add in another month.”
He said he’s seen conditions change dramatically in his lifetime.
“It’s kind of shocking to see the glaciers retreat over the years, especially in a place like Mount Rainier that I’m very familiar with,” he said.
While Hummel has managed to get in some good skiing this summer, it hasn’t been easy.
“I’ve done trips for weeks at a time in June where I hardly touch the dirt, and those were impossible this year,” he said. “That was kind of shocking, just to see how warm this year has been, it’s not just that we’ve had a lack of snow.”
To an outsider, backcountry skiing in the summer looks a bit absurd. Why would you strap your skis and boots on your back, just to get a few turns on snow?
“If you just do it for the skiing, it’s kind of silly,” said Mitch Pittman, an outdoor enthusiast who has 21 months of continuous skiing. “But if you’re going to be at these places anyways, you might as well ski down.”
Ciari said that, before she started backcountry skiing, it didn’t make much sense to her. But when she tried it, she understood.
“It’s hard to explain until you actually do it. There’s something that’s so much more rewarding about taking that turn when you know that you have hiked for an hour to ski for, I’m not kidding, two minutes. It makes everything so much sweeter,” she said. “And the places you get to go, with the lack of other people around. I’ve spent days with just my ski partners, and it’s phenomenal.”
Backcountry skiing has also gotten her to places she would have never gone before.
“I only started mountaineering so that I could ski down bigger lines,” she said.
Theresa Sippel, 30, of Seattle, has been skiing since she was 2. She is on her 57th month of consecutive skiing. She often skis with Ciari. They met at 9,000 feet on Mount Hood. They get out together a lot, Ciari in her pink tutu and Sippel in a turquoise one.
Sippel said this summer has been a challenging one to get in turns. She and Ciari headed down to Mount Hood at the end of July. They skied for two days to get in their turns for both July and August. It turned out to be the last weekend the resort was open. It closed five weeks early because of poor snow conditions.
And things will get worse before they get better. Ciara said she’s not really excited about skiing in September and October this year. Finding snow is going to be a challenge.
Pittman started backcountry skiing after a trip up to Camp Muir at Mount Rainier.
He was pretty much the only person hiking down.
“I was like, ‘Something is wrong here,’” he said.
So, he took up backcountry skiing and it opened a whole new world to him.
Pittman had skied before, but all standard downhill, inbound stuff. He didn’t have gear, which actually gave him something of an advantage. He had to buy all his gear, but he wasn’t shelling out for a second, different set. For someone accustomed to standard inbound skiing, it can be discouraging to realize how much new gear is necessary to ski in the backcountry.
The gear for backcountry skiing is specialized, and the costs add up fast. Ciara says it’s easy to spend $3,000 getting outfitted to ski safely.
There are specialized skis, bindings and boots. You need boots and bindings that allow you to lift your heel for uphill sections. You need skins, which allow you to ski uphill without sliding backward. Then there are avalanche beacons, shovels and probes. You need a pack that can carry skis while you’re hiking and lighter-weight clothing because you’re so active the whole time.
Pittman, though, thinks it’s worth it.
“I like to think you defray the cost because you don’t have to buy lift tickets and you get to ski all year,” he said.
With the low snow conditions and retreating glaciers, skiers are having to work harder to ski year-round.
Still, while it’s challenging, it’s actually possible to ski all year in the Northwest, and that’s something skiers don’t take for granted.
This year, Pittman skied Mount Adams. He was able to get 3,000 uninterrupted feet of skiing — in July.
“We are so lucky to live in a part of the world where you can ski all year,” he said.
Be safe
Backcountry skiing is inherently risky. The risk of avalanche, combined with being far from any rescuers, means backcountry skiers need a lot of knowledge.
The Mountaineers, www.mountaineers.org, offer courses on avalanche safety and backcountry skiing, in Everett, Seattle, the eastside and Meany Lodge on I-90. For classes specifically on avalanche safety, check out the Northwest Avalanche Center, www.nwac.us.
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