Ski the Fourteeners

Lou Dawson is the first person to have skied down all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. He finished his project in 1991. Below, please enjoy his list, and a few comments. (Dawson has also skied most of the the fourteeners on many other occasions, including numerous first descents of routes, hence this is a “partial list” of Dawson’s descents, which actually number in the hundreds.)

Peaks marked with an asterisk are his known first summit ski-descents of six peaks: Little Bear Peak, Crestone Peak, Capitol Peak, La Plata Peak, South Maroon Peak, Snowmass Mountain. As far as Dawson could ascertain, all remaining peaks had been skied at one time or another before he got to them. Some many times, some only once, some a handful of times.

Though Dawson has made many fourteener ski descents during times of thin snowpack, he did not count such descents if they were partial or spotty to any significant degree, instead, he returned and repeated them until he felt good about claiming them as one of his 54 descents.

Even after completing his project, Dawson continued to descend Fourteeners from the summit if at all possible, looking for better more aesthetic lines — often finding them — and writing about them on WildSnow.com and elsewhere.

(While Dawson was the first person ever to ski all 54 fourteeners, many had already been skied. He did have the fortune, however, of being the first to ski several—those are marked with an asterisk on the peak name in the above list.)

It should be noted that while there is no true "official" USGS definition of these 54 peaks being the "fourteeners," common wisdom holds that they are. To lock his claim as the first to ski all of Colorado’s highest, Dawson also skied many additional high peaks, including North Mount Eolus, Challenger, and North Mount Massive, many unnamed highpoints, and scores of the states high 13,000 foot peaks.

Dawson took great care to ski these peaks as completely as possible, with some descents taking many tries to find safe, skiable snow from the summit. All but a handful of the Colorado fourteeners are historically skiable from the exact summit — during normal snow conditions a few require starting literally a few feet below a rocky summit block or cliff, and Wetterhorn Peak’s start is at the Ship’s Prow rock outcrop and "Keyhole" feature about 150 feet below the summit, (as of spring 2007 part of the upper portion has been skied, albeit combined with downclimbing rocks on skis.)

As for what defines a ski descent of a fourteener, Dawson says that for his public project that was a critical factor, as he wanted to stay in line with traditional mountaineering standards and be "honest" about his accomplishment of a mountaineering first.

For his project (and for subsequent projects) Dawson defines a ski descent of a fourteener as skiing "the best (most often the longest) continuous descent available on an average snow accumulation year, almost always from the exact summit, with the exception being the few fourteeners (such as Wetterhorn and El Diente) that have rocky summit blocks or boulder caps that were never known to be in skiable condition prior to the project. "

"Since you’re skiing natural snow, some descents might have gaps where you remove your skis and move a few feet across rock or tundra. Again, if you’re up there on an average snow year with decent coverage, such maneuvers are legit so long as they are not excessive. But, and this is the big BUT, if I’m on a peak with bad coverage because it’s too early in the year or a drought, and I have to connect snow patches that would otherwise touch each other, then I don’t count it as a descent of the peak. Instead, I go back again and again ’till I get it right. To me this is a critical part of my standards, because doing otherwise would allow me a sort of ‘post modern’ style of ski mountaineering wherein I could claim a descent of a peak even if I skied a few hundred feet of snow on the thing in the middle of summer. I don’t think people would buy that, and it just wouldn’t feel good."

More, Dawson says that he’s pretty strict with himself about his meaning of the word summit "On most of the peaks I actually stood on my skis on or next to the summit cairn before I took off," says Dawson, "and the others I claimed as ‘exact summit’ starts involved touching the summit cairn with a hand or ski pole before launching, and of course I climbed to the exact summit of every peak as that’s an important component of claiming a ski descent. In ski mountaineering tradition, one usually doesn’t say they skied a peak unless they climb it to the summit — whether you ski from the exact summit or not — so I stuck with that standard as well. (Note, "reverse" climbs of Pikes Peak and Mount Evans were okay according to my standards — I drove to the top of those, skied, then climbed back up, and believe that’s a totally legit way of doing those peaks as it honors Colorado tradition and adds a fun wrinkle to the chore of skiing all 54.) "

"Perhaps what’s most important to me is qualifying my claims based on those who came before me," Dawson continues, "Most of the fourteeners had been skied in good style from the summit before I got serious about my project, and I knew about most of those descents. The last thing I’d do is say I skied a peak if my style deviated much from that of some past guy who did the known first.

"For example, Fritz Stammberger did the first descent of North Maroon Peak in 1971. Fritz skied a continuous line from the summit, so for my descent I made sure I started from the top and stayed on snow the whole way down, even though I used a different route than Fritz. Another example is Longs Peak. Before I got there it had been skied twice from the summit, via the North Face. During several of my attempts I could have skied Longs from lower down below the summit, but there was no way I was going to say I ‘skied’ Longs peak unless my style matched (or exceeded) the style of the two other summit descents that came before me."

Dawson continues: "By the same token, I realize the limitations of gear and vision that extreme skiers have worked under over the past, so I’m not going to chest pound if I found a better line than the guy who did what’s obviously the first descent of a peak. All sports involve a progression of skill (and in this case of skiing, gear). Each generation improves on the last — while respecting the accomplishments of those who came before. For example, ski mountaineers eventually figured out several ways to ski El Diente Peak from the exact summit."

Again, as a rule nearly all Colorado fourteeners are skiable from the summit down snow routes that are beautifully long and continuous, during average snow years. Surprisingly, the harder looking more improbable fourteeners are all skiable from the exact summit, such as Capitol Peak, Pyramid Peak, Maroon Bells, Longs Peak, Crestone Peak, and Crestone Needle.

A Sampling of Dawson's Posts from WildSnow.com

• 
  BASKET WEAVER - EARLY FIRST DESCENT ON COLORAD'S PYRAMID PEAK
• 
  BEYOND THE GRAND — BILL BRIGGS BIOGRAPHY
• 
  AVALANCHE DECISIONS - WHEN IT'S ALL ON YOU
• 
  ALPHA ANGLE — HOW FAR CAN THAT AVALANCHE GO?
• 
  VINERSA SKI BINDING — Added to Museum
• 
  STYLE REVISITED - ART OF THE SKI LINE 2.0
• 
  HISTORY - RAMER ECHO AVALANCHE TRANSCEIVER
• 
  VELCRO SKIS AND A BREEZE — Skiing the Sangre de Cristo Crestones
• 
  SACRED GIFTS OF THE BACKCOUNTRY
• 
  WAGER WITH THE WIND — BOOK REVIEW