St Elias Mountains, Yukon, Canada - 1999

I never imagined that I’d be filmed with my pants round my ankles for my debut on BBC2. Fortunately, the grandeur of the Kaskawulsh glacier and the wind driven spindrift, dwarf my pink bits, and my excuse for seeming so wanton is that I thought I was alone at the time. As I climbed back up the sloping moraine to our camp I spotted the camera and a sheepish looking Producer, who interrupted my protest with “Trust me, it looks great”. Nothing is sacred in pursuit of a good film.

The St. Elias Mountain Range forms the border of Alaska and Canadian Yukon and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Situated in Kluane National Park (22,000sq km) it contains the most extensive non-polar ice field in the world and several peaks over 5000m. The highest of which, Mt Logan, at 5959m has a vertical rise of 3800m out of the Seward Glacier.

This wilderness is not the sort of place that I would choose for a free heel ski tour and when Producer Richard Else asked me if I would go there with Vaila Macdonald, an extreme alpine skier, to make a documentary for the BBC Wild Climbs series, I figured that in the company of a safety team, led by the mountaineer Brian Hall, we could perhaps survive.

The weather in this region, at 61’N, due to its size, rugged terrain and proximity to the Gulf of Alaska (Pacific Ocean) is unpredictable and extreme storms are common. Access into the range is either by fixed wing aircraft or helicopter and firmly regulated by The Kluane National Park. There is a policy low impact mountaineering practises, carrying out what you carried in - except for faeces - they may be deposited in a deep crevasse. Another policy is of self-rescue capability - that could mean walking out through 50km of glaciated terrain and another 50km through bear country - just as they are waking from hibernation and ravenous.

Kitted out by Mountain Equipment for temperatures that can reach -50C and having signed the disclaimer at the Park Office in Haynes Junction we waited for the weather to improve. We had organised food and fuel (with 10 days extra in the event of being stranded) so I had time to mull over how ghastly it must have been for the Klondike gold diggers. We had planned to go to Pinnacle Peak region but as the days passed and time was running out we decided to helicopter into the Kaskawulch glacier - flying out from Silver City Airstrip.

Silver City sounds grand, and did once live up to its name, now it is just a gravelled strip, some barrels of fuel and a couple of huts. The logistics of flying in, with enough fuel supplies for the first group, in the event that the weather deteriorated before a second load could be dropped, had to be planned with meticulous detail. I didn’t envy Brian’s job of mediating between what the film crew wanted and what was realistic in terms of safety. Suddenly there was a brief fine weather window and we were lifted over a seemingly endless landscape of pristine mountains and glaciers.


When the helicopter left us, the silence and enormity of the wilderness filled me with awe. I was alone in the middle of nowhere with Canadian Guide Grant Statham. Miles and miles of glacier stretching in either direction with a subsidiary glacier at right angles disappearing into infinity with inviting peaks all around. What a playground. We were perched on a rocky moraine close to where the two glaciers joined. A safe place to pitch camp, well away from the danger of avalanches and after probing the area it was evident that there were no large crevasses either. The weather held and the helicopter returned with more gear and people. We erected tents, dug a latrine down on the glacier and built a communal igloo, stocked it with duty free, CD player and had our first drink in the ‘igloo pub’.

Vaila and I cooked fresh food and settled down for our first night. It was a cold one, -20’C inside our tent; I gave thanks for my Mountain Equipment sleeping bag. I wasn’t alone in enjoying the warmth. Everything that would freeze or needed drying was jammed in with me, inner boots, wet wipes, face cream, socks, gloves, sun cream, lip salve and skins for walking uphill on our skis. The adhesive would stick better to the skis if it were warm. We had pee bottles handy so we didn’t have to go outside during the night. It was still light at 10.00pm and in April dawn comes early at this latitude but with the sleeping bag closed tightly there was just a tiny hole for ventilation and it was cosy and dark inside.

The next morning it was time to explore the area. We had backpacks loaded with crevasse rescue gear, ice axe, Life-Link safety equipment (shovel, probe,), so all that was left to do was rope up. Our avalanche transceivers were strapped close to our bodies, tests completed. Vaila carried the radio. We were wired for sound, the mike was sensitive even to our heartbeat. There was nothing private here, and yet the moment we started moving out onto the expanse of glacier, alert and looking for telltale depressions, our focus went onto what we were doing, the microphone and camera were forgotten and our adventure had begun.

It was some comfort to know that there was a safety team of four mountain guides with experience in the highest mountains in the world. However, earlier, when I had expressed my relief to chief safety officer Brian Hall he replied, “Well, there’s one guide to look after the Producer, one for the Cameraman, one for the Producer’s assistant and I will be keeping an overall view. You girls must act as if you are on your own, you make all the decisions regarding your destination, route finding and safety, so don’t ask us for answers, this is your programme, your adventure. We will only intervene if it looks as if your lives are in danger. We’re here to keep the film crew alive in an environment that isn’t their natural playground. It is yours, go and play, go and do your thing.”

Vaila and I had skied and socialised before but had never been on an expedition together, how would we get on in the confines of a small tent and work together in a dangerous environment? I knew she was an excellent skier, experienced at high altitude, fit and game for an adventure. I figured if she trusted me to be strong enough at 50 then I could trust her at a mere 32.

When we reached the lower slopes of the mountain we had decided to climb, we dug a snow pit to check the cohesion of the snow pack. Dismayed to find depth hoar and sugary crystals in the lower layers we agreed that there was a definite avalanche risk. However, the slope was still intact and had been for some time, so we decided to give it a go. We skinned up whilst the film crew got set up and started getting some skiing shots in the can. There was a covering of powder snow on a firm base. It was excellent skiing and thrilling to know that no one had ever made turns here before.

The next couple of days we continued to explore the area with a view to making a first ascent of a summit and giving it a name. A wild storm came in battering our camp and forcing us to the confines of our tent. When at last it abated and we set off at dawn for our summit attempt, large cornices spoke volumes about the avalanche danger. We chose a route up a ridgeline so we could make some headway safely. When the ridge ended and we had to cross an open slope we both sensed we were in greater danger than before and decided to retreat. Our lives were more precious than making a film. At that moment there was a loud roaring from the adjacent slope and a full depth avalanche poured out onto the glacier. Our hopes of making the summit and naming it after Neil Munro, a friend who had died in an avalanche in the Alps only a week before, were dashed. He wouldn’t have thanked us for dying in an attempt. Our adventure was over - but you can’t come to a wilderness like this and expect to achieve anything other than survival.