Athletes - Here's Our Short List
For most of his climbing career, Peter Croft has concentrated on big-rock routes. Peter is celebrated by his climbing and mountaineering peers for numerous achievements, however a favorite being his history-making free solo ascent of the Astroman on Washington Column in Yosemite.
Peter began climbing in Canada, where he grew up, and inevitably gravitated to Yosemite Valley, where, after climbing the biggest cliffs there, he began to do link-ups of two or more big walls in a single day. This led to his present neurosis: big traverses and link-ups in the High Sierra.
Peter sometimes writes about his adventures in various climbing magazines and, in between climbs, logs serious couch-time watching television with his wife, Karine, and Pee Wee, their dog.
Ingrid Backstrom grew up in Seattle, Washington, where she spent her winters skiing and her summers backpacking with her parents and two younger brothers.After graduating from Whitman College, she moved to Squaw Valley, California, to put in what she thought would be a year-long stint as a ski bum. However, it only took a few freeskiing contests for Ingrid to realize that she had found her niche.
Since then, she placed top three in 13 of 16 freeskiing contests, has been awarded Breakthrough Performance in 2005, 5-time Best Female Performance, and 8-time Reader Poll winner for her roles in 9 Matchstick Productions films at the annual Powder Magazine Video Awards. She has also appeared in the 2007 documentary Steep and 2011’s All.I.Can by Sherpas Cinema. Her travels with The North Face have allowed her to make first descents in Baffin Island, Greenland, and 20,000ft Reddomaine Peak in China, as well as a recent ski descent of Denali. She was recently named one of 50 most influential action sports athletes in 2013 by ESPN.
Heidi Wirtz is one of the country’s few prominent female adventure climbers for near 20 years taking her to such places as Nepal, Morocco, Jordan, Siberia, Tasmania, Czech Republic, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, South America, Canada etc.
Heidi has pioneered new routes up unclimbed big walls and mountains and pushed the limits of female exploration. She is known in the United States as “Heidi Almighty” for her bold and technical climbing as well as speed ascents in Yosemite Valley.
Heidi is also known for her philanthropic work as co-founder of Girls Education International, and co-founder of Earth Play Retreats with a mission is to inspire and empower people from all walks of life to find deeper awareness and follow their dreams.
While continually raising the bar for her personal performance and for women’s climbing in general, Heidi envisions a broader view for her role in the sport in the years ahead, hoping to do more work with people in need around the world and create opportunities to “give back, help and inspire.”
After graduating from Middlebury College in 1993, Mark Synnott had no idea where he was going or what he would do for work. He just knew he wanted to climb. He ended up finding work as a carpenter, since it was conducive to a transient lifestyle. (“Build a house, climb a wall. Build a house, climb a mountain.”) Then, in 1996, Mark spent 39 days living on the side of the 4,700-foot north face of Polar Sun Spire, a rock tower rising from a frozen fjord in Canada’s Baffin Island. The ascent changed his life and started him on his quest to climb some of the biggest walls on the planet.
Today, still at it on the big walls of the world, Mark is a guide, an adventure journalist, and one of the most entertaining story tellers alive.
Kasha Rigby has skied since she could walk and began telemark skiing as a teenager. Her passion for skiing and traveling has been the driving force behind most of her adult life. She began traveling at age 19, leaving college to explore Africa. She then headed to Colorado, where she became involved in telemark racing and extreme-skiing competitions. After winning the World Extreme Championships in Alaska, Kasha joined The North Face Team in 1995 and has since brought her skis all over the U.S., Canada, South America, New Zealand, Russia, Asia, Europe, India and even the Middle East, skiing first descents of some of the world’s most revered peaks, including the Five Holy Peaks in Mongolia.
As she continues to ski around the world, Kasha has found time to star in an Alaska reality show chosen for what she’s known best for – As conditions worsen in any situation, Kasha seems to stay the calmest with a constant positive spin.
David Carrier Porcheron, commonly known as DCP, has been snowboarding for 20 years. He has starred in films by Kingpin, Treetop, The Gathering Collective and Mack Dawg Productions. In addition, DCP has been featured on the Weather Channel’s popular show, “Epic Conditions.”
Though filming is his primary focus, DCP still enjoys competition. He took third place in the 2008 Natural Selection at Jackson Hole. Canadian-born DCP splits his time between Squamish, British Columbia, Vail, Colorado, and Costa Rica, with his wife and daughter.
An avid surfer, DCP also skateboards and mountain bikes. Inspired by deep powder, big cliffs and bluebird powder days with the backcountry to himself, he takes his love of snow and outdoors and translates his passion to the environment. Committed to preserving the places he, his friends and family enjoy, DCP works to plant trees and off-set carbon footprints.
She is the first woman to climb two 8,000m peaks in 24 hours (Everest and Lhotse). She’s also skied from the Himalayan summit of Cho Oyu in Tibet and climbed and skied several high peaks in Bolivia and Argentina. Elsewhere, Hilaree has cut turns on remote volcanoes in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Lebanon, as well as many first descents in the tight couloirs of Baffin Island.
Born and raised in the Northwest, Hilaree began skiing at age 3 at Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Eventually she moved to the Chamonix Valley of France where she learned most of what she needed to know in order to take her skiing skills to the next level- ski mountaineering.
In addition to her work for The North Face, Hilaree is a mother to two young boys, and although they have changed her life dramatically, her passion for the mountains has not abated. She lives with her family in Telluride, Colorado and finds her sanity in the beautiful San Juan Mountains.
