“Christina calls last drop on Vent Shaft, the classic northwest-facing couloir off Avalanche Peak in Rogers Pass, BC.” Photo: Fred Marmsater The same spring she notched the first descent of Mount Nelson with McIntosh, the pair also skied a first descent on the south face of British Columbia’s Mount Dunkirk with fellow Kootenaian Nick McNutt, and she was the first person to ski the Gold Card Couloir between British Columbia’s Mount Burnham and Mount Grady with Andrew McNab and Brette Harrington, the latter of whom has since become one of her favorite mountain partners. Lustenberger originally put her name on the proverbial big mountain board after a 2018 first descent of Black Friar, a stunning couloir in the Adamants. And in 2020, she skied the South Face of Mount McDonald on Rogers Pass with Andrew McNab, a line with three stout ice pitches in the middle that locals had been look-ing at for years, and she’d been thinking about for nearly a decade. At a time when not much terrain remains unskied, Lusten-berger is finessing her way through lines that no one has success-fully attempted. She says a lot of it comes from her patience, her planning skills and her capacity to suffer—which is probably all true—but it’s also a testament to her skills as a skier, and the way she calculates risk. “There are so many different complexities that weigh on you,” she says. Despite the weight of that risk, there’s a huge amount of joy in how she approaches a pitch and how she makes it look easy in the process—seemingly cool on sketchy ascents and then skiing butter-smooth through steep couloirs, making the same angled turns she once made on the race hill. It’s a thrill to watch and lends itself particularly well to the silver screen. But what may look graceful from a theater seat is anything but. Navigating the male-dominated, achievement-obsessed world of out-door sports—and more specifically high-level backcountry skiin—is Lustenberger’s precarious constant, is a skill that requires as much forethought and planning as it does strength. She’s still figuring out the balance of risk and reward, how hard to push, and how to stake her own place as an athlete—particularly as a female athlete. She says it’s hard to come off as strong and powerful without being perceived as aggressive, and she’s learning to advocate for herself in the mountains and in sponsorship negotiations. “The more strong and powerful you are, you can come off as an aggro bitch—it’s such a fine line to walk,” she says. “In some ways it’s probably silenced my word more; I try to be strong rather than talk strong.” She says she wants to let her actions speak for her and credits her ski partners with helping her feel it out. She’s well-supported by both the good crew of skiers in Revelstoke, where she’s based, and her teammates from The North Face, such as Harrington and the late Hilaree Nelson, who she says will always be one of her biggest role models. Christina Lustenberger 049
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 2: Page 49
