Off-Piste Adventures: Fifty Years of Skiing

In the years from 1970 to 2000, Pat Morrow used skis as his principal adventure tools while exploring his backyard in the Canadian Rockies and interior ranges of B.C., and faraway lands. And continues to this day.

The stills and video clips in the show feature skiing off the top of Canada’s highest peak (x 2), traversing Denali on skis, making the first ski descent of Antarctica’s highest peak, a peak in the Chilean Andes the height of Mt Robson, several trips to Russia (the Caucasus and Kamchatka) and quaffing the pristine powder, and sake, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido a decade before it was mobbed by commercial groups. 

And my all-time fave expedition: “In 1981 Morrow and his companions spent nine days ‘skinning’ to the top of 7,500m Mt Muztagata in the Chinese Pamir, just shy of the altitude of the South Col on Everest. He inadvertently cranked the world’s highest telemark turns that day. With time to spare at the end, Morrow and (Kiwi) Gallagher hitched a ride down valley in a Liberation Army truck to ski exquisitely-formed 300 m high sand dunes they had spied on the bus ride to the mountain.”