Before ski mountaineering reached the world stage, one climber found grit, grace, and frostbite on a lonely peak in western China.
Story and Photography by John Quillen
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2026)
It was 2011 and I found myself in the heart of Beijing with my buddy, Brian Moran, ready to take on my first ski mountaineering experience. Brian and I had been traveling the world chasing lesser-known peaks at the time, and like true mountaineers, we did what we needed to do to keep ourselves moving. We slept on airport floors, hitchhiked through South America and parts of Russia, and hiked through villages I couldn’t even point out on a map anymore. In this moment, we had somehow finagled a flight all the way to the other end of Mongolia, one place my pilot friend’s buddy passes couldn’t get us.
We landed in the heart of Uyghur territory in a place called Kashgar, the start of the ancient Silk Road. But our road was anything but silky as we loaded gear onto camels and hiked up to our first base camp. Chinese authorities pointed machine guns at us and not so hospitable nomadic shepherds prowled nearby. I figured anything after all this would be a piece of cake.
Muztagh Ata, the second highest peak on the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, loomed above us. We met other teams that were being fully guided by their own Sherpa. We, on the other hand, would be using a base camp service and nothing else; Anything above that was on our own, alpine style. So, after a couple of days, I strapped skis on my back and Brian strapped snowshoes to his and we began the climb to camp one. From our beautiful ledge, we basked in the shadow of mighty Kongur and the tip of K2 across the Pakistan border as we set off.
At 17,000 feet, our real work commenced. The next morning, I put skins on my mountaineering skis, allowing me to travel uphill without losing ground. Skinning up a mountain is great exercise; it’s like being on an incline treadmill. I would periodically pass Brian floundering in knee deep snow with his snowshoes and sharing some certain derogatory phrase. In hindsight, we should have probably been roped up. Don’t tell Brian I said that.
Muztagh Ata was being kind to us for now. We reached what I estimate to be 19,000 feet when I stripped the skins off and began the most beautiful ski descent you’ve ever seen. The powder was perfect, and I made textbook parallels all the way back to camp one in record time. This was a lot of fun.
Having properly acclimatized, we dropped back down to base camp to wait for the next weather window for our summit. There we joined the other guided folks and sat around the mess tent. Someone had commandeered camels to fetch beer from down in Kashgar. We were looking forward to the summit push.
It got quite a bit colder here in this high desert. The sheep that would wake me up in my solo base camp tent had fled to warmer pastures. But up we went. The beautiful powder I had experienced in our first accent was this time bullet ice. My skins had trouble grabbing on to this slick surface as we worked to get to camp two, but we slogged back up anyway, ready for what would be next. When we arrived, we ripped out our tent and prepared to dig our platform when we realized someone forgot a shovel. The wind whipped as the temperature plummeted.
Excavating with our hands mostly, we leveled out enough of a site for an uncomfortable night together, just shy of 20,000 feet. In our cramped quarters we discussed the next day’s plan. Something told Brian he needed to descend. It was his pilot instinct. He also knew there was no talking me out of the summit push. So early the next morning we parted ways; him down and me up. Several of the guided folks were camping near us, and so together we started an uphill progression. Within three hours, most of them had turned back. It was single digit cold here above 22,000 feet. My digits were losing sensation. Still, I resumed my rhythmic gliding and uphill poling, confident the movement would restore blood flow to those extremities.
The summit of this peak is 24,747 feet. And after a nine-hour push, I made it to the top of this wind-blown precipice. But it was a short-lived celebration.
On any other mountain I would have already been sucking oxygen from a heavy bottle. I knew that having that gas would probably have saved me from the inevitable. I was alone and cold. All my shrinking brain could think about was stripping off the skins and skiing the hell down out of here. But when I tried to make my first turn on this solid ice, nothing happened. No edges would have any purchase here. It was going to be a long descent. I didn’t want to wind up a grease spot on the Pakistan border.
Clearing camp two turned out to be a bigger chore than I anticipated. My frostbitten hands would not allow me to dig out the guide lines from the frozen snow. So, I cut them with a knife and shoved everything into my pack. I fell about three more times on the ice and gave up the whole notion of skiing and strapped them to my pack. Now with another 15 pounds on my back, I plunged down hill in crampons. I knew I was in trouble. Both my hands and one of my feet were frozen. One time I plunged so deeply I lost a crampon.
Eventually it was night, the only light came from the stars that had now lit up the western China sky. I was alone on a mountain high up in the western Pamir range. Despite my situation, I had one of those divine moments of inner peace that is almost indescribable; The good Lord let me know that I was going to be okay. Despite my frozen extremities, I made it back to camp one. I was on empty, but I made it.
Thanks to the attentive folks at the University of Tennessee Medical Center when I eventually made it back to the States some eight days later, I spent several sessions in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I’m thankful to Dr. Bielak for advocating with my insurance company on my behalf. It probably saved my fingers.
Experience is that thing you get after you need it. And I racked up plenty on that adventure. Ski mountaineering will for the first time be part of the Winter Olympics this year. And I have to say: I’ll put my experience up against these Olympians any day.
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