In order to cover an average of 8,000 vertical feet a day, Mark and Janelle Smiley had to do a lot of this. Red Bull photo.
Last weekend, a group of ski mountaineers achieved something truly remarkable: A 36-day traverse of the Alps from East to West, all of it human powered. The stats: 294,000 vertical feet, 1,076 miles, 0 rest days.
Among the group of seven skiers were Jackson, Wyoming's own Mark and Janelle Smiley. The couple are both highly experienced mountain guides, guiding international trips to destinations like the Chugach or Chilean volcanoes. This year, the two decided to try something a little different, and test their skills and willpower to complete the hardest ski mountaineering traverse they had ever seen. Janelle was the only woman to complete the event, after Nuria Picas and Tamara Lunger dropped out.
Currently, Mark and Janelle are hanging out on the beach in Nice, France, resting their bodies and minds. TGR got a chance to catch up with the two and hear firsthand what it took to finish their hardest ski mission yet.
TGR: Where did the idea to repeat the 1971 trip come from?
JS/MS: The idea to repeat 1971 trip came from a guy named Heli Putz. He is an Austrian mountain guide that has been working with Red Bull over the years on crazy ideas like this. He had always wanted to do the traverse himself, but now that he’s in his fifties, he realized that it probably was not going to happen for him.
So, instead, he assembled a crew of international athletes to take on the challenge.
Janelle Smiley negotiates a rock passage during the Traverse. Red Bull photo.
When you decided to join, did you feel like you were already prepared, or did you start any sort of specialized training?
MS: I knew this would be the biggest physical undertaking I had ever done by a factor of five, so we notched up our training to meet the challenge.
One of our friends is a trainer guru and he said we needed a ton of ski volume. Speed work or interval work was not really appropriate for this type of activity, but rather just getting hours and hours and miles and miles on our feet. So that’s what we did in the Tetons. Janelle also continued working with her local strength coach, Chris Butler.
Living in the Tetons, what did that training look like?
JS/MS: Unfortunately, our snowpack this year did not allow for going to the higher peaks throughout the season, so we found ourselves on Snow King, Teton Pass and the lower peaks of the park almost daily.
Doing three laps on Snow King became standard, or two laps on Taylor, the Middle Teton and the South Teton in a day. In general, the vertical feet were easy to get but the average number of linear miles was a little bit harder, so we hiked out to cascade Canyon or did different ridgeline traverses and tried to get creative in order to keep things interesting. Here in the Tetons that’s pretty easy to do.
Mark Smiley channels his inner grizzled mountain guide during one of the many long walks the team encountered. Red Bull photo.
Have you ever done something of this magnitude before?
JS/MS: No, not even close!
During the Alps Traverse our daily average stats were 8,167 feet vertical ascending, 29 linear miles in 10 hours. We did a total of 294,000 vertical feet up and 1,076 miles. The closest expedition that compares was a 27-day trip we did to climb Mount Huntington and Denali. That expedition was way less vertical feet, way less linear miles, and way more rest days, of which we had zero on this 36-day mission.
It sounds like you didn’t know too many of the other skiers, was it hard to form a team?
JS/MS: We had only met the other teammates during a pre-expedition meeting in Austria two months prior.
Of course, you can Google stalk anyone these days which we did to a small degree. The results of those searches made us realize that the other teammates were very accomplished and very driven. We were both nervous about having seven cooks in the kitchen as opposed to one defined leader and six followers.
The biggest struggle with the team was that four of the teammates spoke German and Janelle myself and Nuria Picas don’t. Anytime the Austrians and Germans would start speaking German it was really frustrating because we had no idea what they were discussing, and we felt like house pets just sitting there listening until they switched back to English. They would discuss for 4-5 minutes and then give a one sentence English recap of what had been said.
The best part of skiing in Europe includes staying in historical huts like this. Red Bull photo.
How does this kind of thing compare with more conventional expeditions, like climbing a huge peak in a remote corner of the world?
JS/MS: In a conventional expedition, everyone speaks the same language, everyone gets on the same page on how they want to do the objective and there isn’t a film crew following you around 24/7.
You also get to pick your teammates and you select people with similar ability levels, risk tolerance and experience. We didn’t have those options, which led to some controversy on a number of fronts: How big a “normal” day would be; what avalanche terrain was safe enough; and simple encouragement and support throughout the day.
So, what's next?
JS/MS: We would like to become first time home owners in Jackson. Anyone that would find joy by selling your vacation home way below market value to us, we will be your personal mountain/adventure guides for years!
About The Author
stash member Max Ritter
I manage digital content here at TGR, run our gear testing program, and am stoked to be living the dream in the Tetons.