“Soaring from the Alaskan coastline to an impressive 18,008 feet (5,488 meters), Mount St. Elias’ massive vertical dwarfs even Mount Everest, which is only 11,428 feet (3,483 meters) from summit to base camp. Due to its remote location and notoriously heinous weather, it rarely makes media headlines. Its imposing mass is mostly obscured by clouds that roll in from the Pacific Ocean and rarely attempted. Just making the summit is a true test of endurance. Attempting to descend on skis, some would say, is utter madness.” [Red Bull]

May 2007 a team of skiers and film makers were heading towards Mount St. Elias on Tyndall Glacier where nighttime temperature can drop down to -40 Celsius degrees. “You crash, you’re dead“, said one of the team members referring to skiing the 65-degree section of St. Elias. Axel Naglich was attempting to ski the longest ski descent ever, and he knew it is dangerous up there.

Skiing the entire mountain face of St. Elias means continues 18,008-foot (5,488 meters) vertical slope. As a comparison for us Europeans the highest peak in Europe is Mont Blanc (4,811 meters), but skiing from the top of Mont Blanc down to Chamonix valley makes only 3761 meters because the altitude of Chamonix vallee is 1050 meters. So skiing mount St. Elias means a longer descent than from the the top of Mont Blanc down to sea level.

Who is Axel Naglich?

Full-time architect Alex Naglich is nervous. “I promise, I will survive“, he says. Weather can be extremely bad in St. Elieas, and may be that is the reason why the mountain is also called the “man eater”.

Photocredit: (c)Günther Göberl/Red Bull Photofiles

Axel Naglich is a tough guy. This 41 years old Austrian has done many impressive descents, and he has toured also some competitions. Even though Axel was a new name to me, I was impressed with what he did with his team in St. Elias.

Time to do the longest ski descent ever

In April 2002, Aaron Martin and Reed Sanders were part of a four-person team dropped on the mountain during an encouraging weather window. Within days, they had summited the peak and were preparing to descend. Their success was short-lived. A few turns below the summit, both began an irreversible tumble. Their bodies have never been recovered from Elias’ upper slopes.

Hold on, why did we write about this descent if it was done already years ago? Well, I got en email from Red Bull, and in one story they discussed about this attempt. Why? Because there is a film coming out next month, so it was a promotion.

Anyhow, I got interested and started studying what actually happened.

There has been a lot of discussion about Axel Naglich and his attempt on ski the longest descent ever. For some time people understood that he did really ski from the top down to sea level, but this is wrong. In fact the team did it in two parts and partly by using a helicopter. Lou Dawson discussed with Naglich and Johnston, and here a short excerpt from Lou’s WildSnow blog.

Photocredit: (c)Vitek Ludvik/Red Bull Photofiles

“During the May trip they did ski from the Hayden shoulder down to about 800 vertical feet above sea level, a huge descent in its own right and in a sense “down to the sea,” but not exactly to the tide line. After that, Naglich returned later in the summer, climbed the peak, and did ski a new route from the summit down to Hayden, where they were picked up by bush plane as most climbers are.”

Axel Naglich and his team did something hardcore that yielded several accomplishments, but this during this expedition nobody really skied from the top of St. Elias down to sea-level.

Photocredit: (c)Günther Göberl/Red Bull Photofiles

So who did?

Lorne Glick along with James Bracken and Andy Ward, did the first ski descent of Mount St. Elias back in 2000, along with a second ascent of the Mira Face route. Axel Naglich also knows this and gives all the respect to Lorne Glick’s team as mentioned in this excerpt from Lou Dawson’s WildSnow.

“Sorry for creating a mess in Mt. St. Elias climbing and skiing history. We didn’t plan to claim the first ski descent of Mt. St. Elias. We knew that this group did it in the year 2000 and we knew about Mira Face which has been skied by Mr. Glick too (couldn’t believe he waited for 3 weeks on the face for conditions, that’s hardcore!!!). As we know the mountain a little better now I just can say congratulations to the guys who did the first ski descent of the summit. I would never want to take this accomplishment away from them.”

Axel Naglich and Peter Ressmann seizing the summit

May be the reason behind this confuse is related to Red Bull’s marketing hype. Certainly I don’t know the details, but I believe the whole story was misunderstood by Red Bull people. When using misleading information in their articles, the confusing story was born.

What did we learn from the story of longest ski descent ever?

People have posted aggressive and sometimes rude comments in various discussion forums of Axel Naglich and his expedition, and no wonder because many active ski mountaineers want true stories. Thanks Lou Dawson for figuring out the truth and communicating it to all of us.

When Reinhold Messner talked about “murdering the impossible”, he was talking about using technology and siege tactics to bring mountaineering objectives down to a lower level. These guys did all that, and took it one step further by not even doing a coherent descent, and then spinning it to make it sound like they did.

– Anonymous reader in TGR discussion forum

Photocredit: (c)Beat Kammerlander/Red Bull Photofiles

Although the story of Axel Naglich’s expedition and the longest ski descent ever was misunderstood, both teams did amazing things in Mount St. Elias. Climbing this aggressive mountain is already a big thing, and skiing in those conditions is something that most of us can’t even imagine. Reader named “Mark” puts it very well in WildSnow comments:

“Simply surviving all that St. Elias dishes out is a huge feat. Skiing it is almost unthinkable. Massive kudos on a phenomenal ski mountaineering piece of history”.

Photocredit: (c)Vitek Ludvik/Red Bull Photofiles

Yeah. Both stories are amazing.