In August on K2, as the sun rose over the Karakoram Range, Watson and his team worked upward on the face. They kicked steps and adjusted oxygen masks. Watson had a ski pole in one hand, its handle outfitted with an ice ax blade for grip.

The group climbed for hours, pushing past 27,400 feet. No one had yet made the top of K2 in 2009. By noon, Watson and his team were realizing they might not see the summit either.

Chest-deep snow made progress similar to “swimming uphill,” Watson said.

At 2:30pm, encrusted with ice and exhausted, Watson looked down the mountain to see a climbing partner put a gloved hand to his throat, slicing it sideways in signal…

For the rest of the story, click over and keep reading at Gear Junkie.com, and check out the photo gallery from K2 as well.

Here’s a link to the article as well, and make sure to visit Dave’s new site with photos and stories: www.k2tracks.com.

Waves and Winter
by Brian Mohr and Emily Johnson

Our thoughts often go to the deepest, fluffiest powder days when we watch the tops of breaking waves get blown back to sea by a strong offshore breeze. Maybe the wind reminds us of Old Man Winter’s legendary howl and roar. Or perhaps surfing among these waves – floating in that fluid ocean as the spray of peeling waves rains on our heads – gives us the same feelings we have when gliding in a snowstorm down a powder-coated mountainside.

Ultimately, it is the simple beauty witnessed on both occasions that makes the connection for us. Be it the the wind-blown spray of breaking waves or the billowing clouds of snow behind the descending skier/rider, there is something undeniably surreal and powerful and spectacular going on here…

Here’s to a fun fall surf season…and an snowy winter ahead!

Brian and Emily
Moretown, VT
www.EmberPhoto.com

Skiing Elbert
by Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

It’s been over a month now since we climbed and skied Colorado’s highest 14er, Mount Elbert, a peak Emily and I hadn’t skied since the late 90s when we still lived in Colorado. Elbert’s north facing drainage is a classic and relatively straight-forward descent, and it tends to hold a long, skiable line well into July. So back in late June, while traveling the scenic route from the Front Range to a wedding in Paonia, we couldn’t resist the idea of skiing Elbert again. Driving through Leadville at sunrise, we scouted Elbert’s north side from a distance. It appeared that there was just barely enough snow to string together a solid descent from the very summit, down along the summit ridge, and over into the depths of the mountain’s north facing drainage.

With sneakers on our feet and our skis on our backs, we cruised up the mountain via the well-worn trail that climbs away from Half Moon Creek, and by late morning, we were on the summit. We figured we had at least an hour to spare before thunderstorms would become a threat, so we soaked up the clear views across the heart of Colorado’s mountain country.

A sandwich and then a few passing rain drops had us swapping sneakers for ski boots, and for the next thirty minutes, we savored what would turn out to be our last ski descent of the season. Incredibly, the snow burned out along only one 50m stretch below the summit ridge, and we were able to ski a beautiful line nearly to treeline.

Think snow.

-Brian

Hello all, The expedition is over. The team is in Skardu after the trek out over the Gondogoro La. George, Dave and Ali are sorting and repacking gear in the summer heat. Overall the expedition was very successful, all survived without serious injury.

This summer no one reached the summit of K2. Dave made it the highest on the mountain during the Aug 4 summit push. He and Mingma Sherpa fixed the bottleneck (finished by 9:30am), Louis R (Canada) led the traverse and Dave took over breaking trail with Vassily (Kazakh) belaying. The snow was chest deep, unconsolidated sugar. The slope angle was 45+ and progress was slowed to 20m per hour. At 2:30pm the choice was made to descend. The climbers started down from above the bottleneck with a height of 8350-8400 reached.

Dave downclimbed the rock step below the serac into the bottleneck. While clipped into the rope he took off his crampons and overboots, put on the skis, changed his frozen gloves, loaded the pack, adjusted the length of the ski poles, then dropped in.

He skied the bottleneck to the shoulder and then down to Camp4. The team slept another night at camp4. It was a difficult night with 1 sleeping bag for 3 climbers and super cold temps at nearly 8000m.

In the morning Dave skied to camp3 while George and Ali downclimbed and rapelled. They all decended (rappel/downclimb) the Black Pyramid together to camp2. The team packed up camp and rapelled the House Chimney. Dave then skied from the base of the Chimney down to ABC while George and Ali downclimbed. The team was in Base Camp that
afternoon.

While in base camp, the team regularly talked with Austrian speed climber Christian Stangl, who is a friend of Hans Kammerlander.

Was this the first descent of the bottleneck? Is there proof otherwise?

To read the rest of Dave’s updates, visit EverestNews.com and scroll down to the earlier posts. We at Karhu would like to say how proud we are of Dave’s accomplishments, and to have him safe and sound after such an incredible adventure!

Sweetgrass Productions – Signatures

Sweetgrass is coming off last year’s Hand Cut film, and looking good with Signatures. Karhu athletes JT Robinson and Lorenzo Worster traveled to Japan to film with Sweetgrass this winter, and the result looks amazing. Don’t miss out when Signatures comes through your mountain town this fall!

Kootenay ColdSmoke Powder Fest 09 from ARC’TERYX on Vimeo.