What did Austin Porzak do on the First Flatiron, how did he do it and what happened to the climbers on the route?
Those questions have surfaced in the climbing and skiing worlds since March 1, when Porzak and his partner Alex Krull claimed the first ski descent of the First Flatiron, Boulder’s iconic landmark. Their accomplishment sparked quite a bit of controversy on social media and online forums that has ranged from excitement to speculation to outright criticism from the outdoor community.
What has remained a mystery, though, is exactly how the pair conducted the descent, and whether it was quite as extreme as many believe. Janelle Huelsman, girlfriend of the professional photographer in Porzak’s crew, posted on Instagram that it was “the most epic thing I’ve witnessed to date.”
That may depend on how you define “epic.” Extensive interviews with Porzak, three climbers who were on the route that day and steep skiing experts paint a different picture.
Porzak is a Boulder native who was destined to have an affinity for the mountains since birth. He grew up skiing and traveling the world on mountaineering expeditions with his father, including Mt. Makalu and Mt. Everest, where he became the youngest American to traverse these two 100+ mile treks. After college, he spent a decade in Vail focusing on his skiing career. He’s sponsored by a handful of companies, has climbed and skied 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks and completed the first solo ski descent of Crestone Needle in 2010. After completing the second ski descent of 1911 Gully on the Third Flatiron in 2010, he spent five years planning and waiting for the perfect conditions on the First Flatiron via the Silk Road route. Porzak achieved his dreams of completing the first descent earlier this month and watched as the pandering headlines rolled in.
What exactly is a first descent, how do you go about planning one and when do you have the right to claim it?
“I don’t cover any first descent information in my guidebook because to me, first descent info is all about ego. I feel like when you’re getting in the backcountry, you need to check your ego at the trailhead,” said Fritz Sperry, professional skier and author of three backcountry skiing guidebooks. “Making a first descent is a heuristic trap. It creates this goal that can cloud judgment and decision-making.”
According to Porzak, this is something he had been planning for years, something that was close to his heart and not a publicity stunt as many would think. “It would have been a stunt if I skied it in a clown suit,” he said in a Mountain Project forum.
The fact that he recruited a professional photographer before making his attempt hints that he did have intentions for some sort of publicity. This is not unusual for up-and-coming skiers trying to make it big in the industry. Making a living as a professional athlete is extremely difficult, and the pressure to make first descents, grab headlines and produce badass photos for sponsors is certainly a driving factor.
<ED’S NOTE: Photographer Dan Sohner told EO: “I was not recruited. A friend of mine called me out on Instagram the night before and I asked to go. I felt I was going to be a burden, but Austin was going to go out and ski this line with or without me. We didn’t even know if it would go when we got there.”>
It’s debatable to condemn Porzak for following suit of many athletes before him, but the real issue is the fact that he was putting other’s safety at risk in the process. According to Phillip Yates, Boulder open space and mountain parks spokesman, alpine skiing and snowboarding with fixed heels is banned on city open space land. Even if Porzak didn’t break any rules when he free-heel skied down on telemark skis, everyone knows that the First Flatiron is for climbing, not skiing.
Silk Road, the line Porzak descended, is a mixed climbing route that rarely comes in unless the Front Range receives certain conditions for the ice to form, which it did the day he chose to complete his project. So it’s no surprise that on a Sunday, in a town notorious for its passionate climbing community, Porzak’s team was not alone on the route. In fact, two parties of two were climbing that day and no one was expecting what happened next.
“We were alone on the approach, so we were really confused at first when a photographer hiked up from the bottom and yelled to us that there were going to be skiers coming down,” said Angela Tomczik, an experienced climber who was ascending in the middle of the gully with her partner. “There was thin ice and little protection where we were, so it was definitely nerve-wracking knowing there were people coming down over us.”
Often, skiers or climbers would spot fresh tracks in the backcountry, letting them know to be cautious of parties above them, but in this case, Porzak’s crew used a different route to reach the top. “I knew the snow would be thin and had to be skied on belay, so I made the call to drop from the top and not disturb the thin snow,” Porzak said in an email.
Porzak’s team began to knock snow and ice down onto Tomczik as she was leading, so she yelled up to ask Porzak to wait until she could build an anchor. “They were completely respectful of waiting and were trying to do their best not to jeopardize our safety,” said Tomczik.
Porzak and Krull descended on belay, meaning they were tied into a top rope as they skied down. This is a common method used by skiers faced with 60-degree lines because a fall at that angle could be fatal. When Tomczik and her partner were able to anchor into a tree, they were met by another party of two who were climbing below them. They waited there for Porzak, Krull and Dan Sohner, the professional photographer that was in their party, to descend. At that point, there were seven people on the ledge.
“We did get our ropes tangled briefly with Austin’s party, but they listened to what we were telling them to do since they were kinda newbies with ropes,” said Colin Simon, an experienced alpinist who was on the route at the time. This sentiment was echoed by his climbing partner David Lee.
“They kept asking where the next anchor was and I had to explain that there were no fixed anchors, just a handful of trees,” said Lee. “Then they were asking about distances from there to the ground, so we gave them ideas for how far things were. I would say they were a bit underprepared or prepared in the wrong ways. Just overall they didn’t have it all together.”
Eventually, Simon and Lee moved past everyone to continue the route. After waiting for an appropriate amount of space to climb under them, Tomczik’s partner started leading the next pitch, leaving her at the belay station with Sohner and Krull to watch Porzak finish the descent.
“I don’t know if ‘lowered’ is the right word because Austin said that he was sidestepping, but he was holding onto a tensioned rope with his hand. There were a couple times I saw Austin ask for a little bit of slack so he could do some jump turns for the camera. He just grabbed three to five feet of slack and then quickly jumped as Dan took photos,” she said. “From my knowledge the only part he actually skied was after the route had ended, so before you would put on your climbing shoes between the base of the Flatiron and the bridge. He said in the article that he got belayed down three 60-meter sections and then unroped, but the route is less than 180 meters total, so I don’t know what he really did without a rope.”
She noticed that they didn’t plan ahead as to how they were getting down.
“They ran out of rope and ended up in a situation where they couldn’t retrieve the ropes themselves. They had to fix the line to the tree. They had two ropes tied together and lowered all the way down to the base. They had some climbers that started climbing the route after they got down to retrieve their rope for them, otherwise their rope was going to be stuck. They had to do a knot pass. The only person who had to do this was the photographer because Alex got lowered down as well.”
“It was a questionable ski,” said Lee.
“There was a lot of talk and not a lot of showing for it. There definitely was not much slack. They’d call out three feet and make a turn and then call out three more feet and make a turn. They were so slow. It probably took ten minutes to ski a hundred feet. I didn’t really want to bash them because they were perfectly nice. The thing that annoys me is that when I see these articles that they’re in and I see these posts and comments where they just embellished the truth so much. It’s like, c’mon dude, get over yourself. Stop trying to build this up to be something more than this is. You went out on a crappy day in crappy conditions and scratched around on some rock and now you’re trying to hype it up like some big deal.”
<ED’S NOTE: Since publication, Sohner has emailed us to disagree with the climber’s account. He says, “The minute we saw the climbers we made contact with them and both parties set anchors. They were very cool about trying to figure out the best way for everyone to accomplish their goals. At our final belay, we briefly discussed how our team would get back to the ground, as we had decided to ski climber’s left of the Silk Road route. This meant that we had to change our plan a bit and resulted in a situation where we had 2 60m lines tied together to make one 120m line. We had discussed several ways of getting these ropes back, including having the climbers above us rap back in and untie them, but in the end, another party offered to untie the line once we were down. One could easily chalk this up to inexperience. Had I not been up there, I would have done the same, but we had left the Silk Road, adjusted our plans and favored a safe descent over any future work we would incur in retrieving our gear.”>
When Bill Wright and Stephen Griebel completed the first descent of 1911 Gully on the Third Flatiron back in 2007, the pair admitted that they pulled a “unique” and “crazy” stunt, claiming that the photos of their feat made it look far more harrowing than it actually was. “I hate to confess it, but it wasn’t super steep or super extreme or anything,” said Griebel in a Daily Camera article.
Now, compare that with Porzak’s Daily Camera article where he stated, “I made it down in one piece.” So even though he figured out how to do this descent on a level of safety that was acceptable for him, it seems that his overall goal was to receive attention and not just for the adventure itself.
“I think in this circumstance we were there before he was and he was jeopardizing our safety more than we were jeopardizing his,” said Tomczik. “I think the only reason people are looking at it as a risky activity is because he talked it up. I think that any strong skier could have done what he did and it would have been looked at as a publicity stunt, but since he’s a pro skier and he posted a lot on the internet about how hard it is, he made everyone think it was a big deal. The most slack he had in the rope at any given time was about five feet, so I can’t really imagine a situation where it was too dangerous for him.”
Skiing the First Flatiron is a novel idea, but even Porzak admitted that he wouldn’t do it again.
“I really wouldn’t recommend this [to other skiers] unless they’re really prepared for something like this,” said Porzak. “It is dangerous and it was a project that I researched for a long long time. I would tell them to take the proper steps to get ready for something like this. Don’t just go into it. We were really prepared. We had tons of safety equipment. We were incredibly prepared for this.”
So does Porzak have right to claim the first descent? According to Sperry, yes.
“There are different levels to the claim. The next level of the progression would be full free,” Sperry said. “Everyone has their own level of risk acceptance and that’s for each person to decide. That’s the great thing about the mountains is the freedom that they provide. Some people are willing to risk it all and some people aren’t. Everybody gets their own level of rush out of whatever it is they do and how they do it.”
You can watch the GoPro footage of Porzak’s descent and decide for yourself.
