Anna Migl, Special to The Denver Post Jon Kedrowski skis off the summit of 14,265-foot Castle Peak on Mar. 8, 2016, marking his 13th ski descent of a fourteener in 2016.

Scott Benge, Special to The Denver Post Jon Kedrowski descends Longs Peak toward Keplinger's Couloir on June 3, his 56th fourteener of 2016.

Scott Benge, Special to The Denver Post Jon Kedrowski rests atop Longs Peak on June 3, his 56th fourteener of 2016.



Scott Benge, Special to The Denver Post Jon Kedrowski descends Longs Peak on June 3, his 56th fourteener of 2016.

Jon Kedrowski already set a record for sleeping atop all the Colorado fourteeners in 2011. Now he’s one peak shy of skiing from the top of all 54 of the state’s highest peaks in record time.

If the 37-year-old Vail adventurer can ski from the precipitous summit of Capitol Peak in the rugged Elk Range before the snow melts, he will shave more than five months off the record for climbing and skiing all of the state’s fourteeners. Kedrowski has skied 53 of the official 54 peaks higher than 14,000 feet in Colorado since Jan. 4, including 33 summits in April and May alone.

Last year he was on Mount Everest when a devastating earthquake rattled Nepal, killing thousands. He wasn’t ready to go back this year.

“But I wanted to do something big this spring,” said the Eagle Valley High School graduate, who reached the summit of Everest in 2012. “I was hoping for good spring snow in April and May, and we got it good this year.”

Skiing from the summit of the state’s fourteeners is a dicey endeavor, navigating a thin line between spring snowpack and avalanche-prone winter. When conditions align — good weather with cold nights interrupted by big snowstorms — the Colorado ski mountaineering community celebrates with a surge of ski descents.

Kedrowski was pacing himself in the winter, tackling the easier peaks, like those in the Collegiate Range, in January and February. His plan was to be poised for an aggressive push should the spring prove snowy. It did, and he attacked.

He skied four fourteeners in southern Colorado’s remote Chicago Basin on May 24 and another four on April 7. While at the Telluride Film Festival a few days later, he awoke early to bluebird skies and climbed Wilson Peak, El Diente Peak and Mount Wilson in one push. He randomly hooked up with other groups that day on two of the peaks.

“The ski mountaineering community here in Colorado is great, with lots of people who want to get out there and ski. I met so many people on the trails and on the peaks,” Kedrowski said of the rotating crew of friends and random climbers who joined him on his missions. “When you are totally worn out after doing a bunch of peaks solo, hooking up with a good crew of people definitely takes the edge off and motivates you.”

Kedrowski took four attempts to ski the daunting Pyramid Peak in the Elk Range, finally skiing from the summit on June 1. Two days later he skied from the top of Longs Peak. That June 3 descent of Longs, when paired with last year’s June 4 ski descent of Capitol Peak, means Kedrowski skied the state’s official 54 fourteeners in 364 days, two days longer than the 2007 record set by professional skier and Colorado’s preeminent ski mountaineer Chris Davenport.

Skiing them all in less than a calendar year is a monumental achievement accomplished only by Davenport and Kedrowski. Really, skiing all the fourteeners in any time is remarkable, a feat first forged by the legendary Lou Dawson after years of effort and repeated fewer than 15 times since Davenport’s 2007 record-setting quest.

Kedrowski’s pursuit of Davenport’s trophy is pushing fourteener skiing into the mainstream, said Ted Mahon, the Aspen ski instructor and photographer who was the third person to ski all of the state’s highest peaks and then joined wife Christy and Davenport in skiing the state’s highest 100 peaks.

“I think it would be cool to see this type of thing taken on by skiers each spring, maybe earning a place as another Colorado outdoor endurance feat,” Mahon said. “You can bet there are others watching and thinking that they can do this in a year. Or faster.”

Speed is today’s benchmark for mountaineering in Colorado, with dozens of endurance athletes laboring through summer sprints like the 14-peak traverse known as Nolan’s 14 and Andrew Hamilton’s record-breaking ascent of all 58 Colorado high points in less than 10 days last July.

It was only a matter of time that the warm-weather hypoxic races against the clock moved into ski mountaineering, Mahon said.

“Now that the alpine touring equipment has gotten so light, you can only wonder how fast one can actually ski all of the fourteeners. One calendar year? One spring? 54 days perhaps?” Mahon said. “I think we’re just seeing the beginning of something here.”

Kedrowski is still hoping to climb and ski Capitol Peak in the next couple of weeks. He spied the line while on Snowmass Mountain earlier this month.

“The line is in,” he said.

But the lingering high pressure and warm temperatures might not keep it skiable for long. If he can ski Capitol this month, he will make history with the swiftest ski descents of the state’s highest peaks.

“We’ll see,” said Kedrowski, whose latest book “20 Peaks in 30 Days: Skiing and Sleeping on the Summits of the Cascade Volcanoes” is a sort of sequel to “Sleeping on the Summits: Colorado Fourteener High Bivys,” which he wrote with alpinist and Fox 31 meterologist Chris Tomer.

“I tend toward caution, and I’m not afraid to wait. I always kind of put off Capitol this year for a variety of reasons,” he said. “Sometimes it just felt unsafe, especially during the storms of April and May. But really I would not trade the way this went for anything.”

Kedrowski’s 364 days skiing Colorado’s high points.

Capitol Peak 14,130 feet June 4, 2015 Snowmass Mountain 14,092 June 30, 2015 & June 5, 2016. Mount Elbert 14,440 Jan 4, 2016 Mount Yale 14,196 Jan 9, 2016 Mount Harvard 14,420 Jan 16, 2016 Quandary Peak 14,265 Jan 23, 2016 Mount Huron 14,003 Jan 28, 2016 Uncompahgre Peak 14,309 Feb 10, 2016 Wetterhorn Peak 14,015 Feb 10, 2016 Culebra Peak 14,047 Feb 12, 2016 La Plata Peak 14,336 Feb 13, 2016 Humboldt Peak 14,064 Feb 27, 2016 Mount Princeton 14,197 March 4, 2016 Castle Peak 14,265 March 8, 2016 Mount Missouri 14,067 March 11, 2016 Mount Oxford 14,153 March 11, 2016 Mount Belford 14,197 March 11, 2016 Little Bear Peak 14,037 March 19, 2016 Ellingwood Point 14,042 March 21, 2016 Blanca Peak 14,345 March 21, 2016 Mount Columbia 14,073 March 25, 2016 Mount Sherman 14,036 March 27, 2016 Challenger Point 14,081 April 2, 2016 Sunshine Peak 14,001 April 3, 2016 Redcloud Peak 14,034 April 3, 2016 Handies Peak 14,048 April 3, 2016 San Luis Peak 14,014 April 4, 2016 Mount Bross 14,172 April 7, 2016 Mount Lincoln 14,286 April 7, 2016 Mount Cameron 14,238 April 7, 2016 Mount Democrat 14,148 April 7, 2016 Mount Shavano 14,229 April 12, 2016 Mount Tabeguache 14,155 April 12, 2016 Mount Lindsey 14,042 April 13, 2016 Pikes Peak 14,115 April 20-21, 2016 (full moon ski) Mount Antero 14,269 April 21, 2016 Mount of the Holy Cross 14,005 April 22, 2016 Grays Peak 14,270 April 25, 2016 Torreys Peak 14,267 April 25, 2016 Mount Massive 14,421 May 1, 2016 Mount Evans 14,264 May 3, 2016 Mount Bierstadt 14,060 May 3, 2016 Crestone Needle 14,197 May 5, 2016 Crestone Peak 14,294 May 6, 2016 Kit Carson Mountain 14,165 May 10, 2016 North Maroon 14,014 May 19, 2016 South Maroon 14,156 May 13 & 22, 2016 Mount Eolus 14,083 May 24, 2016 North Eolus Pk 14,039 May 24, 2016 Sunlight Peak 14,059 May 24, 2016 Windom Peak 14,082 May 24, 2016 Wilson Peak 14,017 May 28, 2016 El Diente Peak 14,159 May 28, 2016 Mount Wilson 14,246 May 28, 2016 Mount Sneffels 14,150 May 31, 2016 Pyramid Peak 14,018 May 14, 21 & June 1, 2016 Longs Peak, June 3, 2016

List includes “official 54” set by Lou Dawson, Chris Davenport and Ted Mahon, the first three people to ski all the state’s fourteeners, as well optional fourteener sub-summits like Cameron, Challenger Point and North Eolus, which do not have at least 300 feet of prominence separating them from other fourteeners to identify them as independent peaks.

More details of Kedrowski’s skiing at 14erskirecord.com.