By "up there," he means at about 13,000 feet on Vinson Massif. Just
a day before they were to head for the summit, Kit and Rob got
stuck in a sudden, brutal storm, with winds exceeding 70 miles per
hour and temperatures plunging to at least 50 below zero.
DesLauriers can tell you all about nearly running out of supplies,
about the storm stopping just in time to allow them to get to the
summit before having to abandon the climb. She can tell you all of
that. But you're not going to really understand it, because unless
you've been there, done that, you probably don't know that under
such conditions, Vinson Massif isn't just difficult and dangerous;
it's otherworldly. Toss some water into the air there, and it will
instantly crystallize. You'll never see water turn to ice in midair
while schussing down the slopes in Jackson Hole.
Which is one of the reasons DesLauriers set out on her Seven
Summits adventure. She wanted to see things she couldn't see at
home in Jackson Hole, things she hadn't seen while growing up and
moving with her parents from
Westport,
Massachusetts, to Long
Island,
New York. By the time she visited Telluride with her family
during a ski vacation, she was already an avid skier, having fallen
in love with the sport on her very first downhill run at the age of
14. DesLauriers decided to move to Telluride on her own in 1991,
and when she wasn't
skiing, she was hiking. When she wasn't hiking
or skiing, she was volunteering for her county's search and rescue
teams or working as a stonemason. Yes, a stonemason. One imagines
she could crush walnuts with her back muscles.
She has even modeled for sports-apparel and sports-equipment
companies. That led to a 1999 expedition in Siberia, where she met
Rob DesLauriers while he was making a mountaineering film on Mount
Belukha. "I was the talent," she says. The two married, settled in
Jackson Hole, and immediately set upon opening Teton Mountain
Lodge, which Rob runs. After three years of hard labor, they left
on vacation. Whoa.
Hockey stop. Actually, she prefers not to refer
to it as a vacation.