A Desire to Inspire

Former U.S. Ski Team Member, Keely Kelleher changes the narrative of backcountry skiing for young women

By Stio

January 29^th, 2018

Words by Keely Kelleher and Photography by Crystal Sagan

In my life I never set out to be on a remote ridgeline in Iceland’s backcountry coaching eight teenage girls through a whiteout. The fog had come in quick and settled on our group like cement. I could no longer see the good ship Arktika we had skinned away from earlier that morning. An uneasy feeling came over me, like one you get when standing on the edge of a cliff.

In my previous life I was a committed ‘gate chaser.’ I dedicated everything to ski racing and had the battle wounds to show it – seven surgeries on my right leg, and a broken body and bank account. In 2010 I retired from the U.S. Ski Team and the World Cup. The first year after I became inconsolably depressed. What was I going to do with my life now? My life was ski racing and who am I without it? I was lost, had zero self-worth, and was vulnerable, not surprising feelings of most professional athletes who end their sport.

"In 2010 I retired from the U.S. Ski Team and the world cup...I became inconsolably depressed. What was I going to do with my life now?"

Things turned around in 2011 when I founded an all girls ski racing camp, the first of it’s kind in North America. I shaped the camp into exactly what I would have wanted growing up –all female coaches who came from Olympic, U.S. Ski Team, NCAA and experienced backgrounds in skiing. My mission was to change the coaching industry. The idea was to give girls female coaches – an industry that historically has been male dominated –to fulfill the camp mission to empower, inspire, educate, and connect the next generation of girls in skiing.

Coincidentally, as the camp was bringing me out of my depressed state so was something else –backcountry skiing. I found a new zeal in my sport. I loved exploring the mountains with my friends outside of resort boundaries and the boundaries of a racecourse. I felt freedom and sense of happiness for the first time since racing had ended.

Of course this meant that I had to learn everything I could about traveling in backcountry terrain. I immersed myself in avalanche courses and reports, skied outside resorts every chance I got, and made new friends with far more experience than me. By this time my race camps were booming. From 2011 – 2015 they had grown eleven times their initial size. Since the race camps were so successful I asked myself “why not a backcountry ski camp for girls?” My goal was to change the industry by providing girls with female role models only this time it would be in the backcountry.

In 2014 I moved to Jackson, WY and met Lindsay Mann, a race coach for the Jackson Hole Ski Club and a mountain guide. Lindsay had guided trips from Mt. Rainer in Washington to Denali in Alaska. The first time I skied in the Tetons with Lindsay she donned a denim vest and packed fried chicken and Cheetos she generously shared with the group. Besides her awesome snack and fashion choices Lindsay was a calculated, experienced, and an aware backcountry partner. I knew she was the missing link in my vision for a ski camp that’s goal was to empower teen girls to feel comfortable backcountry skiing by using female guides – again a guide industry historically dominated by men.

We ran backcountry camps in Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains at the Bell Lake Yurt for three years. Our trip to Iceland was a result of positive experiences at the yurt camps. We coached teenage girls through the basics of skinning and “how to pack your bag”, to more complicated skills, like route management, companion rescue, leading skin tracks, and group dynamics.

All of our work in Montana brought us to the whiteout on the remote ridgeline in Iceland.

Lindsay pulled out her compass, GPS, and route plan we had made with our boat captain, Sigurdur “Siggi” Jonsson the night before. Our objective was to gain the ridge of Snvinafell Peak from the Hesteyrarfjord, traverse it, and descend one fjord south to the Veiðileysufjörður where Siggi’s sailboat would be waiting for us. Lindsay had a fixed point on the GPS where we knew descending wouldn’t be an issue; an open, moderately steep, south east facing slope. The hazard we faced were ridge line drop offs we could not see through such dense fog.

We moved together, deliberately and as one unit, just as we had practiced during their first time skinning to the yurt in Montana. After an hour of skinning in the milk jug we had reached our GPS point. As a group we decided that I would ski first and radio up a report. I side slipped down five feet and disappeared into the fog. The surface felt smooth underneath, a good sign, almost surfy. I still couldn’t see anything and just as I felt my morning’s breakfast about to come up from the vertigo effect the fog lifted. Our south east facing slope of choice with Icelandic corn all the way to the boat. My spirits lifted with the fog. I could see Siggi! I radioed to Lindsay, “The fog lifts half way down, ski slow until it lifts, and then have fun!” We did just that and the girls sliced through Icelandic corn all the way to the ocean’s shore.

Now, for the past year, I’ve reflected on the day in the fog and have thought that from an outsider’s perspective this could have been seen as too much risk. I’ve had, acquaintances, strangers, friends and family, men and women say things to me like, “Keely, all that risk and responsibility with teenage girls, aren’t you scared?”

But I see it differently, because in the fog I realized Lindsay and I were doing three things that day. We were working together, calling upon our resilience, and finding confidence in our own decisions as a team in the mountains. These are valuable life lessons we know the girls will take into their own young backcountry careers. And more importantly, if we give girls positive representation of women in the mountains now, we will have given them the tools they need to handle and assess not just backcountry travel but empower them throughout the rest of their lives.