Zoe Hart

Home Base: Chamonix, France

Current Quiver: Jil and Bertha

Recent Accomplishments: First female ski descent of Workman Peak (5885m), Karakoram, Pakistan on the Chasing Glaciers tour. Certified as an international mountain guide for ski mountaineering, alpine and rock climbing.

Recent Media: First female ski descent in Pakistan for Chasing Glaciers, a global warming photo and film project.

Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I have no stories or family photo albums of me on skis from the time I could walk. Instead, I had to battle the forces of gravity as a tall, lanky adult after graduating from Boston College with a degree in English literature in 2000. I moved out to Washington state to start what I had no idea would become my career as a mountain guide. From my co-workers I heard stories about a town called Chamonix in France with mountains and skiing, and I remembered at least the basics of French from years of painful language classes. So I bought a pair of telemark skis and a plane ticket and decided to learn to ski. I spent the first two weeks falling down the slopes in white-outs with no idea of my surroundings. Finally the skis cleared and took my breath away.

The learning curve was quick and at times harsh. My second week on skis I skied 40-degree pitches off the Aguille du Midi (an extreme playground of glaciers at the foot of Mont Blanc). On my first ski tour a few days later, kick turns were yet not an option, so falling over and rolling the other direction was the best compromise. Two months later, I skied the Cosmiques Couloir, a 45-50-degree couloir with little chance of walking away from a fall.

Seven years later, I call Chamonix my home and work as an international mountain guide on skis, alpine and rock. Last year I made the transition from telemark to alpine touring (AT) on my Jils and loved it. I spend powder days skiing lift access on my Berthas around the Chamonix Valley and the sunny days touring throughout France, Italy and Switzerland.

In June this year, along with Alison Gannett, I strapped my skis on in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan just below 20,000 feet, and we accomplished the first female ski descent of Workman Peak. Skiing for me is a vehicle to the untouched and the remote, and working for my turns is a small piece of heaven. Whether it’s parking my car at the top of Red Mountain Pass in Colorado’s San Juans, flying into a glacier in Alaska, running away from the crowded ski areas of the Alps, or packing my skis miles and miles up the glaciers of the Karakoram to find snow, the adventures never cease to amaze me.