KIT DESLAURIERS

Kit Deslauriers

“If anything went wrong, there was no way that a rescue could get to us that day, and there was a storm moving in the next day,” remembers ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers.

DesLauriers and her team were ten hours into their ascent of Mount Chamberlin in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), 300 miles from the nearest airport. The snow was unconsolidated, making them sink to their bellies with every step. Loose rocks threatened them from above. They were highly exposed, and they weren’t even sure if the ridge they were on led to the summit.

“We were so far deep in this remote place—which is exactly what I asked for,” she says.

The climb was part of a two-week expedition in spring 2014, during which DesLauriers teamed up with Ph.D. glaciologist Matt Nolan of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, photographer Andy Bardon, and alpinist Don Carpenter to meld science with adventure. The team had three goals: to climb and ski Mount Isto and Mount Chamberlin carrying a ten-pound differential GPS unit the size of a 20-liter backpack; to determine which of the two mountains is the highest in the ANWR; and to test the accuracy of a new method of measuring glacial retreat.

DesLauriers, who grew up Nordic skiing in farmers’ fields in New England, is widely regarded as one of the best ski mountaineers in the world. In 2006, the East Coast native became the first person to ski down the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on each continent). In 2010, DesLauriers made her first trip to the ANWR to make the first known ascent of Mount Isto and ski out across the coastal plain.

“It was not an environmental or politically based expedition; it was pure exploration. I wanted to go someplace really deep that would feed that need for the wilderness in me,” DesLauriers explains.

A chance encounter on that first trip to the Arctic set her on a new course for a different breed of adventure. She met Nolan waiting on the gravel airstrip for their respective flights into ANWR. DesLauriers asked him what she could expect to see in terms of climate change.

“He put this Ph.D. dissertation into a few minutes,” DesLauriers remembers. “I was captivated. I loved the way that he could distill that down for us. We kept in touch, and he asked me to come back and help him at his research station for another project.”

DesLauriers returned in 2012 to assist Nolan with his research on the McCall Glacier. The ice-radar technology Nolan used at the time to measure the thickness of the glaciers required that someone remain on the ground to collect data. Not a climber himself, he needed experienced mountaineers to collect measurements for him on hard-to-reach glaciers in harsh conditions, with temperatures as cold as minus 40ºF. DesLauriers and her team, including skier Kasha Rigby and photographer Ace Kvale, made it to the designated sites and attempted to collect the data, but the technology proved too complex for the nonscientists.

“I'm not sure if we stepped on the antennae or what,” DesLauriers jokes, “but I don't think he ever got any good data from us, hard as we tried. That just fed his continued quest to try and find a better way to measure the glaciers up there.”

Nolan returned to the Lower 48, got his pilot’s license, and developed a method of measuring glaciers from the air—a form of aerial photogrammetry—that would eliminate the need for climbers on the ground. This past year, DesLauriers returned to help him confirm the accuracy of his method by using the differential GPS, a trusted device in the scientific community, to measure the location and elevation of particular points that Nolan could then compare to the results he got using his new method.

“We can now make much better maps with much lower cost equipment much more quickly,” says Nolan. “We can measure changes as small as a few centimeters, whether due to glacier change, coastal erosion, permafrost melt, or river scour.”

The team also succeeded in climbing and skiing both mountains. Because their scientific measurements on the summits produced less than four inches of variability to the airborne method, they were able to confirm both the accuracy of the airborne method as well as establish that Mount Isto is over seventy feet higher than Mount Chamberlin, which was previously thought to be the highest mountain in the U.S. Arctic. In doing so, DesLauriers demonstrated the possibilities when adventurers and scientists team up together.

“In terms of being conclusive about peak elevations, there is no substitute for sticking a GPS on top,” says Nolan. “Personally, I would not have gone there.”