Shishapangma, Skiing the Highline: The Account of the First American Ski Descent from an 8000-Meter Peak

By Michael Marolt

In May 2000, a small team of Aspen, Colorado-based sportsmen set out to climb and ski one of the world's highest peaks. Shishapangma, Skiing the Highline: The Account of the First American Ski Descent from an 8000-Meter Peak is the gripping true story of determination and grit in which author Mike Marolt recounts pushing the edge of extreme sports with his twin, Steve, and lifelong buddy Jim Gile. Together, they reached the pinnacle of their progression from childhood climbing and skiing to conquering the highest peaks in the world. In Shishapangma, Skiing the Highline, the mountaineering trio overcome overwhelming odds and threats to their own well-being as they successfully climb and ski Shishipangma, the fourteenth-highest mountain in the world, in what would lay the foundation for a trio that became arguably the most accomplished high altitude skiers in history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662941894

Book preview

Chapter 1

July 10, 1997

As I stepped off the tent platform and connected my ascender to the fixed line, the steepness of the smooth, hard snow caught my attention. I double-checked my crampon bindings and straps and tugged at my harness belt, making sure it was doubled back through the buckle. This was no place for a slip. I awkwardly sidestepped down the slope, carefully balancing on my ice ax in my upper hand and my ski pole in my lower hand. It was only a few steps, but it was early, and I was stiff and tired from hauling loads the day before, then suffering through a miserable night at just less than 22,000 feet on Broad Peak in Pakistan. In addition to the time and exertion just to get there, we also spent a few hours chipping out a flat platform in the snow and ice on the steep slope. To make matters worse, our stove was not working well, and the lukewarm swill that was supposed to be hot coffee didn’t seem to have much potency—I needed a hot brew spiked with caffeine to jump-start my body. A cup of hot oatmeal was not even attempted. I was not feeling great or happy.

I let my ski pole dangle from my wrist as I reached down to pick up my ascender, a ratcheting device that slides up a rope but not back down. The ascender was tied to a cord that was then tied to my harness. The rope fit neatly into the device, and with a click of a spring that held the ratchet teeth against the rope, I was safely on belay. I threaded my ice ax between my pack and my back to store it and with a ski pole in the other hand, proceeded onward up the rope to the next camp.

With each step, the exertion of moving at high altitude on the steep slope increased my breathing and circulation. With the safety of the fixed line, I was able to get into a trance-like state, finding a rhythm with the components of movement: step, slide the device up, plant the pole, repeat. My rhythm was disrupted only at anchor points, where progress stopped until I removed the ascender from below the anchor and reattached it above. At these points, I could rest a few moments and take in the views. Spectacular was an understatement!

But as magnificent as the views were, they were not the primary thoughts racing through either my mind or my identical twin brother Steve’s. The steep, glassy smooth snow slopes made for an easier line of ascent, but our thoughts constantly struck us with pangs of regret. Broad Peak was our first attempt at climbing an 8,000-meter peak.

***

During the past eight years, we’d undertaken expeditions to Alaska, Canada, and South America, and we’d used skis as not only tools to access the peaks but also to ski new places in remote areas. The thought of skiing an 8,000-meter peak on our first major Himalaya trip was really out there, as far as we were concerned.

The altitude above our previous high point—which was just over 20,000 feet—was so intimidating that the thought of just carrying skis above that seemed far-fetched. This was influenced by a host of experts who warned us, No way, do not even think of taking skis to that peak! Even if there is any skiing, you guys don’t have the experience to take it on, and "… but there is no skiing, trust me."

We would spend the next 30 years hearing experts tell us there’s no skiing on that peak for almost every peak we attempted to ski. Here on these incredible slopes, for the first time, we realized the error in our judgment, as well as the errors of our expert friends. We not only found we performed well at these altitudes; we found ourselves concentrating more on where we could be skiing than on the task at hand. Ironically, despite not having any ski gear, skiing became a focal point of the discussions.

Along with Steve and me, our lifelong buddy, Jim Gile, was part of our team. Jim Gile is a short, stocky guy built for speed. In his youth, he was the fastest kid in the school and one of the fastest in the state. That he gravitated toward the endurance plod of climbing high peaks later in life flew in the face of his complete loathing of that sort of activity. But as we started to climb together long after our days of youth, his meticulous ability to plan, cause, and effect stemming from his mathematics degree made planning an adventure enticing for him. As we graduated to bigger and bigger expeditions, Jim became the mountain planner. He researched the mountains, routes, and quantities of food and fuel to a tee. Jim always maintained a positive attitude on trips as long as he was moving. When he was tent-bound, however, he tended to dwell on home life.

Jim is a man of few words, speaks only when he has to, and inactivity made him so quiet in contemplation of everything other than climbing that we often worried about his mental state. But a blue sky and being on the trail brought out his sharp wit and enthusiasm, which Steve and I appreciated. Jim cemented his place in what would later become known as The Three Amigos—Steve, Jim, and me. On Broad Peak, however, Jim’s interest was purely and simply climbing. He loved to ski, but he did not have the passion that Steve and I did for the sport. While growing up, Jim was usually playing hockey when Steve and I were out skiing, chasing the dream of being ski racers. Jim looked at skiing the high altitudes on marginal snow with unspoken trepidation. Bluntly, Jim had little desire to ski, let alone talk about the subject.

***

On Broad Peak, Ed Viesturs and his climbing partner, Viekka Gustafsson, joined us. The two were well accomplished in the world of high-altitude climbing.

It was only by a stroke of luck that we were climbing with Ed and Viekka. Ed had called us long before the trip. Ed and Viekka had spent the previous spring on Everest, where they successfully climbed the peak sans oxygen. But due to poor timing, they’d missed the window to apply for a permit to the Karakorum, specifically Broad Peak. Ed learned through the Pakistan department of mountaineering that there was another US expedition slated for Broad Peak, and they encouraged him to reach out to us to take the two remaining spots we had not filled. We needed funding, and Ed, arguably the first professional mountaineer in America, had sponsors that would pay whatever the cost to get on your permit. This actually was the last missing piece of the puzzle for us to be able to afford the trip. So it all worked out.

On the mountain, however, the talk of skiing got to be too much for Ed. It was also clear that Jim was not in the mood to suffer through our excitement of skiing, considering our skis were several thousand miles away in summer storage. One fine afternoon at base camp, the issue came to a head. Ed was exacerbated to the point of frustration over the seemingly endless discussion about skiing between Steve and me. He stood up.

I can’t take it any longer, he said. We get that you guys are skiers, and it sucks for you to not have your skis. But my God, you need to concentrate on climbing this peak and stop talking about what can’t happen here on this trip!

He stomped out of the tent but regained his composure when he heard our young-gun laughter and taunts.

Jeez, chill out, dude, someone said. Ed came back in.

Sorry! Ed said. But here is what I think. You guys are so clearly passionate about skiing it’s ridiculous. I respect that. What I think you need to do is plan another 8,000-meter peak trip. Shishapangma would be ideal. You need to plan that trip, take your skis, and go do it. You guys are never going to be satisfied until you try. I seriously doubt you can carry skis that high, but what do I know?

Steve and I looked at each other. Even Jim was excited about the idea. Steve and I didn’t talk among the group about skiing on Broad Peak for the rest of the trip, but without question, the present expedition became a training program for larger dreams. We started planning the trip with Ed’s help. And while Steve and I didn’t talk about skiing per se, the general question up higher was whispered back and forth between us: How you feeling? Do you think you could be carrying a pair of skis right now? The answer was always a solid and consistent, Hell, yes!

Away from the team, Steve and I were able to share our ideas on skiing the high peaks and to also commiserate on the sad fact that we should have been there with skis.

***

Steve is my identical twin brother, and from the get-go, he and I shared a passion for adventure. As kids, we were constantly bundling up to head outside in the worst possible conditions. We had a copy of Americans on Everest that Jim Whittaker, the first American to climb Mount Everest, had given my father, and even before we could read, we devoured the book—spending hours staring at the photos. That was what we wanted to do. Even at an early age, we realized we had a knack for endurance. We were resoundingly the slowest sprinters on the playground, but starting in the fifth grade with the middle school marathon, a three-mile loop that everyone was encouraged to run, distance was the equalizer. In short, we could run distance well beyond the norm.

We gravitated more toward team sports like baseball and football, where simple hard work made us competitive, but I have often thought we should have been encouraged to run long distance on the cross country or the track teams. Nonetheless, when we did get a chance to run long and hard, we did.

By high school, we bailed on football more or less because, being as slow as we were, and not possessing great size or strength, we got our jocks handed to us—if not by the play, then on a daily basis. Bruises and gashes in our arms and legs made football a dreaded activity and despite the popularity it generated for us at school, we grew to hate playing the sport. We reverted to dryland training for ski racing after school, where the game was soccer and lots of endurance work. Here we were introduced to speed hiking, a grueling type of trail running that took us straight up the ski trails, and, when we got to the top, straight down. We did better than most of the other kids, and we realized we had a gift for climbing, if not the mountains, then hills. Then Dad introduced us to hiking in the backcountry as a way of training for skiing after the lifts closed.

Once we had drivers’ licenses, we fixed up an old Willys Jeep and there was no stopping us. We gravitated toward climbing and skiing primarily for the skiing with the justification that the more miles we got, the faster we’d be on skis. That meant heading to the high peaks of the Elk Mountains in the Colorado Rockies, our backyard. There, during the fall months before the lifts opened, there was snow. Then, after the lifts closed in the spring, we found ourselves in the same places again, climbing to ski.

We still loved team sports, and as we became teenagers, we were encouraged to hit the weights, primarily by our baseball coaches. We had a passion early on for playing the game, and even more than skiing, baseball was where it was at for us. The beauty was we could play ball all summer and ski all winter; an ultimate decision as to what we wanted to do could wait. But despite the endurance and, ultimately, the strength and size we did pack on, reality has a way of making a young person’s decisions more often than he would like.

Although I would go on to play Division I baseball in college, it was clear I was not going to be a professional ball player or a ski racer, which was part of the family tradition—my dad and uncles were all Olympic ski racers. But the desires of youth would have a benefit that we would carry with us the rest of our lives.

Steve and I weren’t even on par with Jim, who everyone thought would play pro hockey or something. But the endless days of training would become a passion for us. Although Jim lacked the size to play anything at a professional level, he developed an insane work ethic. (He did play Division I hockey. Something that he and I shared with great pride was the fact that we made it onto Division I teams, something that in small-town Aspen, Colorado, was fairly unheard of.)

With regards to Steve, in college he (we) grew. He had a blend of raw power which translated to size, and he combined it with endurance training to make him a 190-pound gnarly ball of long legs and arms with a motor that seemed to excel at altitude. Steve didn’t make the college baseball team, but I have vivid memories of sitting in the bullpen at St. Mary’s College of California, catching glimpses of Steve up on the nearby hills running or riding his mountain bike. Steve was becoming an endurance machine while I was not. After college, we both trained fanatically, but those years gave him an advantage that to this day I have never been able to catch up to. Whether it’s a mountain bike ride, a run in the mountains, or a climb on a high peak, I am always, as they say, close enough to hear him fart, but never able to return the favor.

On Broad Peak, in the privacy of our tents, out of ear range of the other climbers, Steve and I found ourselves constantly discussing skiing the high peaks. From the moment Ed spoke about Shishapangma, Broad Peak became a training exercise for that mountain. Steve, Jim, and I found that our base training gave us the ability to not just survive high altitude but thrive. Where other climbers were wincing in pain and slowing down drastically, we had the ability to keep going, if not excel. We welcomed the intense hypoxic delirium everyone experiences at altitude not as something that made us sick, but something that empowered us with a euphoric, drug-like high. We found we could not do technical thought processes such as calculus, but we could concentrate fully and intensely on what we were there to do, namely climb. We knew that high-altitude climbing was not only what we wanted to do, but that we were probably good at it.

But more importantly, the gnawing loss of not having ski gear was replaced with a hunger to try skiing at altitude, and it fueled our desire and confidence to want to try. We obviously never made a single ski turn on Broad Peak, but what we did experience was enough to allow us to plan for another 8,000-meter peak with a full intention of making it a pure ski expedition—which in turn became the foundation of all expeditions for the rest of our careers.

Chapter 2

After Broad Peak, life continued as it had. Both Steve and I were certified public accountants with our own small practices. We had started our careers working for the man, but we realized we needed to work for ourselves given our desires to climb and ski in exotic places. For me, after a dozen or so expeditions and as many new employers, I realized I was skating on thin ice with regards to work. The people signing my paychecks didn’t have the patience for my absences, yet I had to earn a living.

We knew if we worked hard on our own, we could get all the work done and then schedule long vacations to accommodate our ski mountaineering ambitions. Jim was working for a pharmaceutical company in Denver as a computer programmer and he did not have as much freedom. He had vacation time saved up, but he had to request time off well in advance. Jim also had a new wife and baby by this time, which took up a great deal of his attention. Steve and I, however, were pretty much free to do whatever we liked.

Being in our early thirties, Steve and I had girlfriends, but our lives were far from encumbered with the typical demands of adulthood. By this time, Steve had established a client base that supported his lifestyle and career. He embraced the freedom that came with being his own boss. I was finding my career a bit stunted compared to his. I was employed by a real estate company as their financial officer, and I worked out a trade with them: they took a cut of my salary, and I used my office in their business to both manage their accounting and to take on my own clients. After Broad Peak, I finally managed to pass the CPA exam, something Steve had accomplished several years before. This was a boost to my career, and it also allowed me to raise my hourly rate, which generated more financial freedom. So, while neither Steve nor I were set financially, our careers as CPAs did allow us to eke out a living and to follow our passion.

This career success helped my mental state in other ways. I had been dating a lady for several years by this time. She was a vice president at a local bank, and she was financially well off. I had been dating her long enough to the point that we were living together. Just before heading off to Broad Peak, Steve had purchased my half of a condo that we owned together. I put that money into my girlfriend’s condo and found myself with a domestic partner of sorts.

This was a bit of a stress given my Catholic upbringing, and it was not at all appreciated by my parents. They never shunned me, but they did warn me about shacking up together. They also adored my girlfriend, which helped. Times being what they were, trying to live in the expensive environment of Aspen, Colorado, I justified the decision based on being in love and convenience—both valid and true. So, after 60 days in a tent on Broad Peak contemplating it all, over dinner, I suddenly found myself at a pizza restaurant with the words rolling off my tongue: Will you marry me?

The difficult part is that as they rolled off, I knew I was not going to marry