Kit Katzenbach DesLauries
By Corinne Platt Rikkers
When she lived in Telluride, Kit Katzenbach was known as a rippin’ skier, talented stone mason, committed search and rescue member and all-around beauty. She is now Kit DesLauriers, two-time women’s free-skiing champion and extreme mountain skier. It was during her years in Telluride, as she developed a passion for skiing and began to dream of bigger, more serious ski descents, that she adopted the adage: “Don’t let your dreams be dreams.”
On October 18, 2006, DesLauriers—along with husband Rob DesLauriers and friend Jimmy Chin—summitted Mount Everest via the South Col and skied from the top of the world. This historical descent earned DesLauriers the honor of becoming the first person to ski from the tops of all seven summits, the highest point on each of the seven continents, and the first woman and American to ski from the summit of Mount Everest.
Technically, the team did not make an all-ski descent of Everest. As reported on www.wildsnow.com: “It is clear that Kit actually traveled quite some distance on foot, i.e., 2,700 vertical feet in crampons down the south-east ridge. This does not qualify as a ski descent of Everest.” Regardless of semantics, DesLauriers, Rob and Chin skied 5,000 feet down Everest’s Lhotse Face in conditions where DesLauriers repeated a mantra with every turn: “Like Your Life Depends On It.” Instead of snow, they skied on 45- to 50-degree shiny blue and white ice. “I couldn’t even penetrate my ice axe more than an inch into most of the Lhotse Face,” DesLauriers said on www.bergadventures.com shortly after the descent.
In addition to the seven summits record and free-skiing championships, DesLauriers holds many titles: first American woman to climb and ski Mt. McKinley in Alaska, first woman to ski the north side of Mount Elbrus in Russia, first woman to ski Mount Aspiring in New Zealand, and third woman to climb and ski the Grand Teton in Wyoming. She vows she did not endeavor to set records: “I truly don’t feel like what I’ve accomplished is a step up from what I’ve been doing all along. I feel like I’ve been continuing along this path, and I just happen to be 37 years old now instead of 25, and this is where the path has taken me.”
That path crossed into Telluride on a family ski vacation as a teenager, shortly after she learned to ski back East. She returned to Telluride during the summers, and the day she graduated from the University of Arizona she packed her truck and moved to town. “That first winter in 1991 was difficult. I lived in the back of my truck at the bottom of the Oak Street Lift. I was disenchanted with…making a living in Telluride.” For work, she slung pizza at Eddie’s, endured the wrath of Tony Clinco at The Powder House, and worked retail at Paragon Sports. But those were formative years, and she credits her growth as an individual and an athlete to the spirited souls she met. “I was exposed to a lot of people who took the time to check in with themselves and did what they wanted to, irrespective of social norms.”
The San Juans proved an excellent place to cut her teeth in the backcountry. “I used to look around and think, ‘Wow, I’d like to be able to ski well enough to ski that,’” she says. And summer months were spent mountain biking and climbing. She recalls one especially memorable mountain bike ride on the Hermosa Creek Trail from Telluride to Durango. “It was full on with our sleeping bags strapped to the backs of our bikes. We rode to Durango, slept by the river and rode back the next day.” Those were the adventures that fueled the friendships and endurance that inspired her to greater heights.
Soon, opportunities to travel arose. In 1999, on an expedition to Siberia’s Mt. Belukha, DesLauriers met Rob, a legendary skier in his own right. In a not-so-past life, he was a sponsored North Face athlete, featured in 13 Warren Miller films and voted one of the 25 best skiers in the world. “When we met, we knew that we were meant to be together,” says DesLauriers. The two married in October of 2000 outside of Telluride and promptly moved north to Driggs, Idaho, and later to Jackson Hole.
“I moved to Jackson,” DesLauriers explains, “and as I’m driving into the valley, I see this beautiful couloir. I find out that it is Ford Couloir on the Grand Teton…. I thought to myself, ‘Someday I want to do that.’” She skied it the next spring with Rob. Though he isn’t in the spotlight anymore, Rob has shared most of the seven summits and ski descents. Of their partnership, she points out, “…you have to completely trust your climbing and skiing partner. When you’re married, that part is already done.”
What does one do after skiing Mount Everest? “If I was just going for the seven summits, I’d be done,” she says. “But that’s not my style. I don’t plan on ever hanging up my skis.” As a professional athlete with North Face, DesLauriers is proposing expeditions in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska and a few unspecified objectives in the Teton Range.
To return alive from expeditions, DesLauriers says she learned to let go of fear. She thanks meditation and yoga for that and reveals that she spends a lot of time confirming her feelings. “I keep going back to what feels right in my heart,” she says of her dream to ski more peaks. “It is not about having huge goals.” What it’s really about, she says, is “continuing to check in with what I want to do and then going for it, instead of backing away and saying, ‘What if?’”
