lusti, Mac, The Moms & The Mountain
Lives of far-off adventure have become full-time careers for Invermere’s Christina Lustenberger and Ian McIntosh. But a backyard expedition in 2021 — in plain sight of their hometown family and friends — still stands as an all-time achievement for both professional skiers. Two childhood friends reflect on a daydream turned dream day.
First tracks — A bird’s-eye view of first-descent turns. Bruno Long Photo
Ann McIntosh still wonders why her son, a world-travelled big mountain skier, base jumper, and bonafide guiding pro, struggled so much in the 1990s classrooms of his Columbia Valley youth.
But Ian McIntosh is quick to place blame where he believes it belongs.
His avoidance of status-quo life. Twenty years of audacious plans for high stakes expedition, ideally on someone else’s dime. Maybe even the misadventures and crashes — including one so brutal it made Good Morning America’s newscast. The 42-year-old points the finger for the whole shebang, misspent grade school years included, at his mom and dad.
“I blame my lifestyle single-handedly on my parents,” laughs the husband and father of two. “If they’re worried about me,” McIntosh concludes, “it’s their fault.”
Like countless Kootenay kids, including his long-time schoolmate and fellow pro big mountain skier Christina Lustenberger, McIntosh was plunked into weekend glacier hikes, lake life, and ski lessons at a young age by parents with deep ties to their backyard bounties.
Time earmarked for studies was regularly squandered, often with a mere glance out the window of Invermere’s J.A. Laird Middle School — where the westward view of grassland, forest, and arid canyon arcs towards a skyline of Purcell Range peaks, punctuated by Mt. Nelson, a 3,313 metre (10,867 foot) sentinel visible throughout the valley.
“And therein lies the problem,” says Ann. “Ian just didn’t want to be in the classroom.”
A scholar, he wasn’t. A storyteller, he was.
Mom recalls a back-to-school day when young Ian presented a descriptive essay about his previous summer’s shenanigans, in front of new classmates.
“So he goes in and reads pages and pages about the summer,” Ann says. “But then, he had to hand it in.”
“The pages were all blank.”
Nearly 30 years later, McIntosh and Lustenberger, age 40, are experts in the pursuit of adventure and maverick storytelling. Where remote travel chronicle and alpine journal pages are empty, they’ve seen opportunity. And both earned livings at it. The pair are members of the prestigious global athlete team sponsored by The North Face brand: a dream team that includes luminaries like pioneer extreme skier Scot Schmidt, free climber Alex Honnold, and Himalayan guide Dawa Yangzum Sherpa. Eclipsing its popularity amongst the global adventurer caste, the label’s ubiquitous puffy down jacket was noted by Vogue last year as “a reliable go-to amongst the fashionable set,” paraded on stage and luxury shopping strolls by A-listers in the Ariana Grande/Adam Sandler realm.
For buddies and followers of the pair — more often known to friends and family as Lusti and Mac — their individual accomplishments are admired, likely revered.
By age 11, Lustenberger was representing Canada as a ski racer.
“Oh yeah, she was a real ripper,” McIntosh recalls. “A force to be reckoned with.” (But, adds her mom Jane, the kid wasn’t studious either, preferring to “hang outside upside down in a tree” rather than obey teachers and do homework.)
By age 21, Lustenberger ranked in the world giant slalom top 30, competing in the 2006 Torino Olympic Winter Games before moving to ski mountaineering and guiding, after five knee surgeries abbreviated her racing career. Since then she’s notched numerous first descents, recently completing a two-year project in Northern Pakistan before moving on to an assignment in the New Zealand Alps.
Lines and Lineage- Lustenberger and McIntosh are members of The North Face global athlete team. The pair grew up together. Both sets of parents were friends, and even co-workers from time-to-time, for over 30 years. Pictured right are Mac and Lusti at the top of a run marking what she considered the best day of her life. - Ian McIntosh Photo
McIntosh’s bio notes exploits from “the fjords of Norway to Yosemite's Half Dome,” including 100 BASE jumps — where athletes leap from towers, skyscrapers, or cliffs using a parachute to land. Some of McIntosh’s jumps of faith are made wearing a wingsuit, a webbing-sleeved jumpsuit that enables folks to soar free for numerous kilometres to, literally, fly.
Inarguably though, the Invermere skier’s claim to fame is a 1,600-foot crash in Alaska while filming in 2015.
“I wish something else popped up when you Googled my name,” McIntosh laughs, on the phone from his home in Pemberton, B.C.
Viral within days, the footage made CNN, Fox News, CBC, and 30 other global networks.
Of all their alpine accomplishments, though, the two consider their 2021 first descent of Mt. Nelson — the peak that poked the blue skies of their childhood daydreams — a career highlight.
Just eight kilometres from their hometown slopes at Panorama Resort, albeit it postcard-pretty, Mt. Nelson was in fact named in honour of the admiral who led a horrible 18th century war in the ink-black Atlantic. It’s renowned amongst serious summertime mountain hikers for fall-and-perish exposure and, for decades, deemed a super-steep and un-skiable shark tank of rock shard, deathly chutes, and cliff band.
But, so sweetly scripted, the first-descent story pitch earned North Face approval. On March 4, after days of reconnaissance and weather watching, the pair left town at midnight, along with a crew including cinematographers and a local guide.
“I heard her drive away,” Jane recalls, “and I didn’t sleep all night.”
Starting under the stars at 1:45 a.m., they laboured up and up, reaching Nelson’s peak at 8:45. a.m. After a few fleeting minutes at the top, with the sun rising higher and snow stability worsening, they anchored off a rock and rappelled down into a vertiginous but side-slippable slope, re-roped to rappel over a second cliff band, and just as the massif’s face began to dangerously warm, skied out, whooping into the bowl far below.
Nelson Rockandfalla - Located 23 kilometres west of Invermere, Mt. Nelson’s 3,313 metre (10,867 foot) peak is regularly summitted in summer, but its face had never before been skied, until March of 2021. Ian McIntosh Photo
Lustenberger’s first text was to her mom. She was already in the ski shop with her husband Peter, who’d been watching the descent through a telescope, celebrating with schnapps.
Reflecting on the Mt. Nelson spectacle three years later, Mac’s mom Ann says she doesn’t think any mother would want their kid to do what Ian and Christina do.
Jane Lustenberger agrees.
“I still get butterflies when I ski and look over at Mt. Nelson,” she says. “How would anyone ski that, nevertheless my little girl?”
Even after careers of 20-plus years, both skiers have greater aspirations still in mind. More triumphs. More tumbles. And more worry for the moms.
But of the two daydreaming kids who years ago turned their classroom gaze from books towards windows out to the wild and very real world, Ann concludes she’d change nothing.
“If you take away drive, and you take away passion,” she says, “there’s not much left.”
~ Darren Davidson
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Winter 2024/25 edition: