We led the first successful guided expedition up Mount Foraker in 1980. The Southeast Ridge is one of the finest alpine routes in the Alaska Range. The route involves steep snow climbing, interspersed with ice pitches and exposed, cornice ridges. All this makes for very spectacular and scenic climbing. Unfortunately, changing conditions on the route have kept us from attempting it in recent years.
In the spring of 1996 we began leading climbers up the most popular line on Mount Foraker, the Sultana or Northeast Ridge. It is a longer route than the Southeast Ridge but harbors less objective hazards. This is a challenging route with a big summit day that demands respect.
We fly into the Southeast fork of the Kahiltna Glacier and set forth across the Kahiltna proper to make our base camp at the base of 12,800’ Mount Crossen. A steep entrance gulley leads to a snowy ridge that climbs to a dramatic camp perched high above the Kahiltna Glacier. Above this camp, steeper steps of snow and ice are encountered as we climb up and over Mount Crossen to make Camp 2. The long ridge line that connects Crossen with Mount Foraker presents climbers with a mix of steep steps, wild cornices and knife-edged ridges. Summit day is a physically challenging ascent of the sublime Northeast Ridge, negotiating crevasses and continuously steep cramponing. This route should only be considered by very fit climbers with solid crampon and ice axe technique.

A dramatic and awe-inspiring feature documentary following three of the world’s greatest ski mountaineers to the Mount St. Elias in their attempt to realize the longest ski descent of the world.
Set against the backdrop of Alaska’s dangerous beauty, Mount St. Elias is about a visionary borderline experience where unparalleled physical and mental pressure pushes them to the absolute limit. They find themselves in puristic situations, in which heroism cannot easily be distinguished from folly. Situations which can only be mastered if reason is supposedly abandoned and in which courage as well as trust in their own abilities and last but not least luck are used as guidelines.

Two Austrian ski mountaineers Axel Naglich and Peter Ressmann as well as the American freeski mountaineer Jon Jonhston are facing this breathtaking challenge! A team with individual abilities, but also a team of leaders, knowing they literally cannot survive without teamwork and cooperation. Especially Axel Naglich, he unconsciously takes the role of the protagonist due to his charismatic and authentic personality and, within the permanent struggle not against nature but against himself, polarizes as a strong character.

A movie about men who accept mountains as a challenge. A process whose vision becomes a real adventure. Men who, formed by their origins, want to experience their passion as intensively as possible and above all want to survive.

Mount McKinley, also called Denali,  highest peak in North America. It is located near the centre of the Alaska Range, with two summits rising above the Denali Fault in south-central Alaska, U.S. Its official elevation figure of 20,320 feet (6,194 metres) was established in the early 1950s. Subsequent attempts to measure the mountain’s height have yielded different values. One such survey, conducted in 2010 using advanced radar technology, was made public in September 2013 and gave McKinley’s elevation as 20,237 feet (6,168 metres). However, that measurement remained unofficial.