Behind Every Skier is a Badass Mom

I shunt open the split-level door of the Tasman Saddle Hut and heave a duffel inside. The dark green paint is fractured, the thick wood dinted and chipped from years of repeated burials and abusive weather. There is a strange parallel to my mother’s face, one elegantly refined by the passing years, finely etched by storms and home to many a story. Dropping my kit on a bunk, I peer out the window, out over the Tasman Glacier to Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest peak. The unlined and unheated hut is like a boxy submarine, stranded high on a rock buttress that cleaves a frozen sea in two.

When I first mentioned the idea of skiing Elie de Beaumont together, Ellen’s eyes lit up with an endearingly earnest, “Oh, yes please!” We set a vague date of “Spring 2023” and Ellen, a tenacious and spry seventy-year-old, immediately got to work. In addition to her standard excessive laps of Treble Cone, she built up her stamina with lengthy hikes and ski tours over the mankiest of NZ’s recent winters.

I had serious plans for that spring. I was on a quest to climb and ski all 24 of New Zealand’s 3000-meter peaks for a multi-year film project—an outrageous process that all began with Caroline. The 2000-meter Caroline Face of Aoraki was once one of the last great un-skied faces and my self-proclaimed high-water mark. Completing the second ever ski descent with Will Rowland and Joe Collinson in 2021 set a precedential tremor through my life. It’s highly exposed and frequently bombarded with avalanches and ice fall, with two large rappels off unstable serac features. On that trip, I had hidden my intentions from my parents, so sure was I of their disapproval. Upon re-entry to the real world, the first message I opened was a photo of my father, bent over a book, counting the dead they knew on Aoraki.

This descent monumentally shifted my perception of the Southern Alps and my place in them. I no longer wanted to repeat what had been done; I wanted to discover what I was truly capable of in that blurry arena between skiing and alpinism. But even as I plotted and schemed, in some hidden corner of whatever I was, a little escape door blew open—a quiet but insistent voice that asked, “When will it be enough?”

Ellen first met my father, Ron, skiing at Ōhau ski field. They were recent converts to skiing and both in their twenties. Soon they spent every weekend together, climbing and skiing, no matter the conditions. In 1978, with next to no information, they puddle hopped across the Pacific, from New Zealand to Fiji and on to Easter Island, before finally landing in Santiago, Chile to tackle the high-altitude peaks of the Andes. Though humble, conservative alpinists, they climbed many of New Zealand’s great peaks: notably Tititea/Mount Aspiring, Te Horokōau/Mount Tasman and Malte Brun, plus a Grand Traverse of the mile long summit ridge of Aoraki. All peaks, except the Grand Traverse, that I have skied. But Ellen had missed out on Ron’s ascent of the 3,109-meter Elie de Beaumont, a sprawling, heavily glaciated peak at the head of the Tasman Glacier that straddles the island divide between east and west.

October 30, 2023. Tasman Saddle Hut. A wooden, dimly lit dining table strewn with half empty mugs and assorted snacks. Steam rises from a bubbling stove and a bent French press glumly awaits an imminent scalding.

Sam: Ellen, pass the cream would you… thank you kindly. Growing up on the coast in Dunedin, what was it that first attracted you to the mountains?”

Ellen: About the age of 10, I went on a family holiday to Aoraki. We were doing little day walks, and I just went wow, this is amazing! I was hooked.

Sam: Funny that it’s a casual holiday decision that becomes such a pivotal causal event. Your parents take you to Mount Cook, which opens the portal for you to step through, taking your unborn children with you.

Ellen: [My parents] Hazel and OB always liked the aesthetics of mountains, but to observe it from a safe distance. Or as art framed on the wall. Hazel has always lamented that trip: ‘If we'd actually known what would happen to you, we’d never have taken you to Mount Cook.’

Sam: And they were horrified by what you're doing?

Ellen: The disapproval was subtle at first, but when Hazel read about that incident on Mount Sealy in the newspaper, she phoned me up and was less than pleased.

Sam: Which debacle was that again?

Ellen: When the rockfall knocked your father out and fractured his eye socket. The wind was too strong for a heli-evacuation and he was half blinded and non-verbal but would roughly do what he was told. One of us moved his hands and the other moved his feet and we got him out of there.

Sam: ...And now you're horrified by what I'm doing. The circle repeats. I’ve often had you in the back of my mind, thinking, ‘Oh god, what would mother think of this situation we’ve got ourselves into.’

Ellen: I envy some of the other parents, who don’t really understand the mountains. “Oh isn’t it marvellous! They’re so clever and they’ve got everything under control.” And I just think ‘Really? That’s nice you think that.’

Sam: Whereas you have an all too intimate knowledge of how uncontrolled things are.

Ellen: You have to understand there are things beyond your control, to decide whether you can mitigate the issues or accept that you have to retreat. But I think our motivation for taking you outdoors was to take you back to places we thought were magic. Like Tasman Saddle Hut. I think that's incredible, to be able to share that experience and have a beautiful day together in the mountains.

Sam: It can be wonderful just being here, without pushing yourself hard. It’s such a different experience when you're dealing with risks that you just cannot mitigate. Will said he'd ski the Caroline Face again.

Ellen: Did he? I don't know about that young man. He's got a problem. (Laughs.)

Sam: And his mum's like, "That's lovely dear."

Ellen: Oh, so she's one of those? Oh, I wish.

In 1999, a family ski touring trip around the Tasman Glacier area introduced me to glacial life, astride a borrowed pair of mother’s claptrap Spalding skis—a rare find from the famous basketball manufacturer. We were roped up, clad with all manner of aged equipment and patiently instructed. I cursed my way up the Murchison headwall, frustrated by a lack of strength or ability. And likely unappreciative of the immense parental efforts it took corralling a walking liability through such a hostile environment. I was thirteen years old. My sunburnt nose was the consistency of peanut butter, my dreams littered with visions of alpine glory.

Twenty-four years later, Ellen and I tread out the door and onto the predawn moonscape, skis quietly shuffling as we slide under the rolling bulk of Hochstetter Dome. The descending full moon lightly caresses the south ridge of Mount Green. We skin onto the Anna Glacier and set a zig zagging track toward Elie de Beaumont.

Moon down and sunup, our shadows stalk ahead of us, monstrous gangly caricatures distorted by the first rays of golden light. With eight hundred meters of vert remaining, I keep the pace social, leaving us free to discuss the handsome surroundings and trade anecdotes. We skin over a bridge above an open crevasse, and I recall a creative technique from my parents storied past. Ellen, being shorter of stride, would be left tied-in on one side as Ron jumped across the slot with the other end of the rope. Once set, Ellen would leap as best she could as Ron placed a hopefully well-timed yank on the rope, to assist her flight across the void. Gratefully, we avoid such questionable behaviour, and skin on.

Once of decision-making age, my parents never pressured or pushed me. The opportunity to learn was always there, but the motivation had to come from my own desire. Lessons learned the hard way often seem to permeate deeper into future decision making. But Ellen and Ron were always there in the background, with a tacit understanding of what I was discovering in the mountains. A rope in hand and quietly ready should a tug from the abyss be required.

I made it through my teens comparatively unscathed, with a few broken bones and concussions, but nothing too major. The big hits began once I became a paid professional at 26. While training for the 2014 Freeskiing World Tour Final in Verbier, Switzerland and sitting second overall, I crashed heavily through rocks. I was airlifted to the hospital, where the doctor cheerfully diagnosed my back as not broken, but said the degenerated vertebra resembled that of a 65-year-old. The global hospital bills kept coming. I tore my pectoral muscle in Sweden, had a still-unexplained tonic-clonic seizure at an Italian beach wedding, and while filming with TGR in Austria, I fell off a cliff onto rocks, causing another seizure. I write these lines while rehabbing a ruptured Achilles Tendon. But I still consider myself fortunate to be operational. Competing in Tignes, France, in 2007, I picked my line with a teenage Swiss competitor. In the contest, I crashed and recovered myself; from the same position, he fell to his death. His was the first death. My hands shake at the memory of my near misses, and at the number of friends and colleagues who have died in the field. I write out their names on a scrap of paper from time to time, to carry them with me. Sometimes the names come easily; but often they do not.

Above us a short gully leads through a band of ice seracs, so crampons and axes out, I start kicking steps. I pull over a short ice bulge and wait, pulling in the rope as Ellen wrestles her way higher. The route wanders between ice features, before breaking up a mellow slope to the summit ridge. We pause and I point out my previous descent on the West Peak of Elie de Beaumont from a few winters ago: a steep line snaking between seracs that vanishes into a sea of clouds.

The effect my penchant for steep lines has on Ellen is palpable, her valid fears compounded by her intimate knowledge of the risks involved.

Ellen: “It’s very much a conflicted, double emotion. I have a deep respect for the required skill set and appreciate that love of movement through a stunning environment. But that you survive any of these lines is a pleasant surprise.”

Sam: “Yeah that’s real tiger country alright. What benefits do you think risk brings to life?”

Ellen: “I think it puts a different lens on everyday activity and changes your perspective of being alive in a beautiful environment. It also heightens your appreciation of everyday life.”

Sam: Do you ever wish I'd been a schoolteacher or…?

Ellen: A Librarian! You could be a bit radical, being a librarian. You’d need a nice brown V-neck jumper.

Sam: With a precisely trimmed, dewey-decimal-system moustache.

Ellen: And cucumber sandwiches for lunch.

Sam: Would you put the lid back on Pandora’s Box if you could?

Ellen: Well yes, my emotional self would like to, to keep you safe. But my adult self must step back and let you make your own decisions, with a slight tinge of guilt for setting it in motion. But I do think you were always destined to find that yourself.

I’m not so sure—unsure that I’m completely free to choose which direction I will take, or whether my responses are governed by my accumulated experiences. But I’m more accepting of that uncertainty, and of this conflicted, internal debate between my lofty ambitions and a keenly felt duty to return home safe to my loved ones.

From our vantage, the ridge rises in two steps, intricately detailed in rime ice and unskiable. Dumping skis off the packs, we go over our options. It has already been an amazing outing and I don’t want to push Ellen too hard. But as we chat, her gritty determination shines through; she wants that summit. Amused by the role reversal, we push on up the ridge, my hand clutching a short rope leash to negate any septuagenarian slips. But Ellen, surefooted as ever in her crampons, kicks on towards the broad peak.

Cresting out on the high point, we follow the horizon full circle. A perfect day made especially poignant by being able to share it with the woman who first led me into the mountains. Cresting out on the high point, we follow the horizon full circle. A perfect day made especially poignant by being able to share it with the woman who first led me into the mountains.

It’s an incredibly special feeling, sharing in Ellen’s return to her mountaineering roots—to move together, to rely on each other in an environment so tightly woven throughout our family history. I haven’t found all the answers I sought, but I made strides towards a deeper understanding of Ellen, as her own complex and evolving person, outside her role as a Mother. And in doing so, I’ve attained a better grasp on the foundations of my own life.

I am grateful to have a mother who continues to lead by example, to stay true to herself, and continues to answer the still-present call to adventure. Ellen’s quietly strong values refuse to bow to age or societal norms and I’m proud of the similar values she has instilled in me. We are joined by so much more than just rope and blood. But only halfway home.

We carefully meander back down to our stashed kit, finally click into our skis, and drop in. The wind affected snow soon transforms into frozen, wrinkled bed sheets. But Ellen keeps her skiing tidy and bounces along, obviously enjoying our picturesque position. An improved second pitch of dust on crust leads to an awkward, belayed rope-lower between seracs to clear that main hazard. Rolling back down the Anna glacier we find sheltered powder, which Ellen happily dances down, deftly weaving her own way between the slots and down into the flats before we set a slow skin back to the hut. 

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