You've heard of skiers and you've heard of mountaineers, but a story at Outside looks at the much smaller subset of ski mountaineers. More specifically, it looks at what amounts to this community's holy grail—a route known as the Hornbein Couloir on the north face of Mount Everest. Climbers have conquered the dangerous route—though the number is less than a dozen—but no skier has done so. A description by Outside's Matt Cote helps explain why:
- It's "a 1,500-vertical-foot gully whose maw opens just 1,000 feet below the peak's summit, and then spills mercilessly onto the 5,500-foot slope beneath. The narrow gully teeters between 45 and 60 degrees in steepness, bends gently in the middle, and then narrows to about the width of a standing human body." This is based on a description by American Thomas Hornbein, who became the first to ascend it in 1963.
It may sound menacing, but ski mountaineers look at all of the above and see a path down. Nobody has managed it yet, leaving it in the realm of a "fantasy ski descent," writes Cote. There have been a few notable attempts, however, including that of Jean Troillet and Dominique Perret of Switzerland, who tried and failed in 1996. In 2002, a French snowboarder named Marco Siffredi—who'd made it down the north face on a different route the previous year—died in his attempt on the Hornbein, and his body has never been found. Read the full story, which details the technical challenges involved, as well as the need for just-so weather ("enough snow to fill the Hornbein, but not wipe out the face below it").
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