Colorado Quest
By Peter KraySki the 14’ers by Chris Davenport & Art Burrows. (Capitol Peak Publishing, 2007, Hardback. ISBN: 978-0-9792644-2-9. $49.95).
It’s been suggested that Chris Davenport’s name may forever be followed by the statement, “the first person to climb and ski from the summit of all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks in a single year.” Davenport is only the second person ever to accomplish the feat; Lou Dawson, author of Wild Snow and a small library of excellent guide books to the Colorado High Country, took 13 years to do it first, finishing in 1990. That Davenport was able to finish in a single year, without avalanche, frostbite or injury — often while establishing bold new lines down some of the most exposed cliff-studded faces in all of the Rockies — is a testament to his skill, good planning and good weather. It may also herald a new era in the history of U.S. ski mountaineers.
With Ski the 14’ers, a coffee-table-sized Technicolor collage of giant gorgeous peaks and skiers like astronauts at the edge of the world recently released to celebrate his feat, Davenport has helped re-tie a thread that big-mountain skiing began more than 30 years ago. When the impossibly handsome German expatriate and Aspen printer Fritz Stammberger first did the unthinkable and skied North Maroon Peak’s 50-degree north face on June 24 of 1971, (just eight days after Bill Briggs’ historic first descent of Wyoming’s Grand Teton), then Chris Landry willed himself down the skyscraper-steep slope of Pyramid Peak in May of 1978, Colorado seemed firmly established as the center of U.S. ski alpinism. But at least in Landry’s case, that initial descent wasn’t repeated until Davenport re-skied the line in April of 2006, twenty-eight years later. Perhaps coinciding with an in-bounds focus on timeshares, high-speed chairs and better grooming at many Colorado resorts, the focus of ski mountaineering shifted to Jackson Hole, Montana and the undisputed awesomeness of Alaska where helicopters, a bomber maritime snowpack and thousands of virgin chutes and steeps created a cowabunga schuss scene equal to surfing’s North Shore.
Back in the Columbine state, where Colorado’s 14’ers overflow all summer with mountain flowers and sky-eyed peak-baggers, the oft-photographed mountains remain as empty and cold as forbidden fortresses all winter. Even Dawson’s original achievement was accomplished almost entirely on the sun-shaped snow conditions of late spring and early summer, which is what makes a large part of Davenport’s descents so spectacular — more than half were recorded in December, January, February and March, when the mountains are alive with wild snow.
In the introduction, “Dav” states one of his goals in starting the adventure was to remind people how easy it is to access the 14’ers even during the short, cold days of December. “In climbing and skiing all 54 Colorado fourteeners in less than one year,” he writes, “I saw exactly four other people — an amazing fact given the popularity of these peaks in the summer.” And the backstage sight of those gargantuan granite faces in the winter looms over every gorgeous glazed page here. Familiar as a mother’s face to most summer climbers, in their winter guise, the 14’ers look foreign and tantalizingly terrible. It’s precisely that unfamiliarity of snow-draped flanks that makes many of the photos in Ski the 14’ers look as if they could have just as easily been shot in the Andes or the Himalaya.
And make no mistake, this is first and foremost a book by photographers. Seven professional action sports photogs participated over the course of the campaign, providing an even range of styles that reflect the ever-changing cast of supporting skiers. Davenport himself adds several POV images where he is out on a peak all alone, obviously depicting for the reader the one-way consequences of a misstep or fall. Together the images form a visually stunning storyline in dozens of eye-popping essays of awe-inspiring mountains, pure winter landscapes, world-class skiing and slopes so steep as to inspire bed-wetting fear.
Davenport provides some small passages of visceral writing too, particularly in regards to the breathtaking descent of Pyramid Peak and an incredible new route on Capitol Peak with Neil Beidleman where Davenport writes, “This was the point of no return. Do we push forward into the unknown on a part of the mountain where no one has ever set foot, even in summer? Or do we put our crampons on and climb back out to the Knife Edge Ridge? You know the answer. We looked at each other and quietly said, ‘Go’.”
For anyone who followed this adventure as it unfolded online at skithe14ers.com, the book could have easily added more insight about the education Davenport gained over the course of his year-long climb and ski. A former World Extreme Skiing champion with cover-boy good looks, Davenport has built a crowd-friendly career as an announcer at the X Games and World Cup ski events. But on his blog, particularly in regards to the increasing perspective he seemed to gain with each new peak and each new frozen hike in the dark and cold, an equally compelling storyline developed in his discovery of the mental, physical and even spiritual commitment it takes to become a top-class ski mountaineer. Like a kind of “cliff” notes or director’s cut, the website serves as an even deeper companion piece for those that want to augment the beautiful visual evidence of the successful man-in-the-mountains quest portrayed here.
