Berghaus athlete Julia Pickering has become the first person to make a snowboard ascent and descent of Mount Bear in Alaska. The exploratory snowboard-mountaineer and adventurer reached the summit after several days on the mountain, as temperatures dropped to -45 degrees Celsius.
“This was a really tough but rewarding trip, packed with aviation incidents, frostbite, crevasse falls and a six-day storm’, commented Julia. ‘Snow conditions were really difficult on the mountain, but well worth it for the fantastic ride back down”.
The trip, funded by Berghaus to test out a new line of cold winter gear, saw Julia use a specialist split-board which can be used to ascend mountains. She started to plan the expedition after spotting the mountain on a previous trip to the region, along with adventure film company 2XS who will turn Pickering’s Mount Bear expedition into a film of the same name, due for release later this year.
Originally from Cumbria, Pickering was also the first women to climb and snowboard down the three highest peaks in the Arctic Circle. Julia said: ‘I think my passion for sliding on snow developed from a very snowy trip to Aviemore when I was six. Cold snowy places in the Arctic and Alaska became an endless source of fascination for me. But there was a desire to get still further away from the pistes and deeper into the mountains’.
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