Pro Guiding Service - Shades of Gray

"Do YOU call yourself a climber or a skier?"

It's a question many who meet Andrew McLean of Park City, Utah eventually try to answer. And it's a question without a decisive answer.

When I toss the question to McLean, 37, he ruminates a moment and tosses it back shrouded in half-logic. "My climbing friends think I'm a skier and my skiing friends think I'm a climber. Guess that makes me half and half."

That sums up the gray zone in which McLean operates. And in the Wasatch Mountains, where McLean operates, he has made a name for himself skiing routes that are more likely to have been ascended with crampons, axe, and ropes than descended with 185 cm planks.

He's compiled his descents, as well as other classic steep lines of the region in a guidebook titled, The Chuting Gallery: A Guide to Steep Skiing in the Wasatch Mountains. Besides being laced with bent humor (e.g. "Disclaimer: The fact that this is a guidebook does not mean that you should take it seriously....no one in their right mind would ski this stuff...you shouldn't either"), this is the country's first book to concentrate solely on steep lines. The mellower lines within it fall away at about 40 degrees, the real nightmares at 62-degrees.

Not only is The Chuting Gallery unique in focus, it is the first American ski guide that uses (and justifiably needs) an objective rating system that goes WAY beyond the vague adjectives of most ski guides.

Now immersed in the kind of love-it-or-hate-it controversy that arose when rock climbs were first rated, McLean uses an open-ended system that builds upon and improves upon the European S System. In his system, there are currently 21 levels of difficulty between S0 (a golf course) and S7+ (60 degree slopes with obstacles that ensure death in the event of a fall).

Although all this makes McLean sound like a skier's skier, his interest in the mountains is anything but one dimensional. For starters, the approach to many of McLean's descents are mainly about climbing--and in this craft he is no novice. He has climbed high peaks around North America, including Denali, (which, he has skied off twice--once down the Messner Couloir, once down the Orient Express), the Grand Teton (where he made the first ski descent of the Enclosure and where he has also skied the Ford-Stettner), and Mt. Rainier (on which he made the first ski descent of the Mowich Face). On rock, he onsights 5.11s, redpoints 5.12s, and has completed about a dozen big-wall climbs.

His climbing know-how and his knowledge of ropework and anchors play into the upper end of his ski game, and it is here that the boundaries between climbing and skiing become particularly gray. A sizable percentage of his descents require climbing aid: a rappel into a couloir, a rappel over a heinous discontinuity partway down a chute, or a rope for belayed turns on a 65-degree pitch.

For his belayed skiing, McLean has developed his own rope handling techniques with twin ropes (one 9 mm, one 8 mm) and harness modifications that load the back of a falling skier's waist strap (this keeps the skier from being spun around when the harness loads up). In McLean's system, the lead skier descends 60 meters with a loose-running top belay. Then, with the tied-together ropes running through the anchor to which the belayer had been attached, the second descends 60 meters, also with the security of a top rope.

McLean openly admits his belayed descents are as much stunt as skiing, but rather than turning gray (or getting killed) sideslipping down a 65-degree crux, he prefers trying to cut turns on the super steeps (and not dying for those attempts). "It's a kick skiing by roped climbing teams... and it's fun to see how much you can stick an edge into even if you do end up dangling foolishly from a top rope."

Skiers as a group live with the stigma that they're married to the free rides of chairlifts, and, therefore, to the slopes within striking range of ski areas. While McLean did cut his teeth on the downhill slopes, raced as a kid, and coached racers as a young adult, when clod in randonnee bindings or crampons he's capable of logging as much vertical by leg power as the average recreational skier logs by lift power.

Alex Lowe is legendary for packing into a day what normal mortals require three to accomplish and when Lowe visits Utah, McLean is one of his mainstays for company. Years ago when Lowe lived in Salt Lake City, he and McLean were the primary players in a twisted group called The Dawn Patrol. Two or three times per winter week, the patrollers would meet at 3:00 a.m., climb a peak by headlight, and by the dim light of dawn ski down a steep gully or avalanche chute. Lowe says one of the more satisfying parts of those outings was "thundering in the front door at Black Diamond where Andrew and I both worked just as the clock stuck eight...we'd skied another chute, lived a little more life than the rest of humanity..."

Lowe has moved on, but McLean continues to work at Black Diamond. With a degree in industrial design, he designs hardware. Products stamped with McLean's signature include aid-climbing pieces like the Pecker; rock-climbing tools like the single-stem Camalot; and carabiners like the Fin, Highwire, and Livewire.

There's some ski-related hardware to his credit as well. The most representative, the Whippet, is a tool made in the very image of its maker. It's a wicked piece of weaponry, laser cut from Cro-Moly steel, whose droop and stiletto-like blade give it the appearance of a serious ice-climbing tool. Except it has no shaft. The head of this axe snaps into the handle of a Black Diamond ski pole and is designed to aid climbers who are kicking their way up a steep couloir and arrest skiers who lose the edge skiing back down. When you look at the Whippet, you can't help but ask the question: Is this a tool for climbers or skiers?