Living Your Passion interviewed Kirsten Kremer - who has guided for Valdez Heli-Ski Guides since 1996, when Doug Coombs hired her, and has not missed a season since. She lives in Chickaloon, Alaska with her husband Tim Stephens when they are not traveling the world.
Ski guide, mountain guide and whitewater guide. EMT, Swift Water Rescue and Avalanche Level III certified. First ascents in India’s Karakoram Range. Skied off the summit of Denali. Won extreme skiing competitions. Worked safety for film productions, and the night shift on a highway project - harness, ropes, roadside cliffs, big rocks, in the dark. Paraglided off the Aiguille du Midi. Dipnets for salmon. And, as her interviewer notes, her laugh and her smile are infectious.
Did you camp, climb and ski as a kid?
I grew up in Southern California, in the Inland Empire. Our family vacationed at Lake Powell every summer for two weeks - a camper for Mom and Dad, tents for the kids once we were old enough to get kicked out of the camper. My brother and I spent a lot of time jumping off the sandstone cliffs and swimming back to the boat, pushing ourselves to jump bigger and bigger. I learned to ski when I was 16, after I bought my car, teaching myself at Mountain High, the local resort. The cliff jumping transferred to skiing - I mostly traversed from cliff to cliff.
You take partners in the mountains very seriously. Where did that come from?
I learned to climb with close friends and boyfriends, and I have always treasured the friendships you develop climbing with people you are trusting your life with. I guess that is why I am so particular about my partners and who I trust to climb with. I see a lot of questionable belay technique out there. I would not just trust everyone.
Tell us about that highway job. Hardest work you have done?
I try to work half the year, or less, to pay for adventures the other half. And yes - the highway job was the hardest blue-collar work I have ever done. We started at 8 pm and finished at 8 am, hanging on ropes, prying rocks off the cliff all night long. My hands would scream in pain when I tried to sleep during the day. But the money was good, I was working with Tim and a group of fun people, and there was real satisfaction when you got a huge chunk to dislodge and spark up the shipping containers blocking the highway.
I do quite a few ridiculous and slightly dangerous things for money. Tim and I once worked a TV show doing 12-hour shifts underground in caves and mines, walking labyrinths with night vision. But my favorite job, definitely, is guiding heli-skiing with Valdez Heli-Ski Guides. I have not missed a season in over 20 years. Might be time to stop counting, or people will think I am old.
You once got stuck in the Alaska Range for a week. What did you learn?
We were only supposed to go for one day - but it was not our first rodeo. We looked at the weather, knew we could get stuck, and brought extra food. A week was more than we expected, and the real crux was coffee. We were desperate. We dug up the National Park Service cache on the Kahiltna glacier and were horribly disappointed to find only decaf in their barrel. We had satellite communication, we got pretty soggy - but it could not have been with a better group, and I got a much-needed break from the pry bar.
How Alaska caught her
I came to Alaska in 1993, the year after I graduated from UCSB. I had been trying to become a jet fighter pilot but was allocated a co-pilot position - I was not satisfied with that, dropped out of Air Force ROTC, and sank my heart into skiing at Squaw Valley. That is where I met people who changed the way I looked at life.
The biggest change was my first trip to Alaska with Dean Conway. He was competing in the World Extremes and I tagged along as a forerunner. Getting into that helicopter and skiing down incredible untracked Alaskan lines was mind-blowing and life-changing. I was addicted, and driven to figure out how to do more of it.
“He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy - but he who catches each joy as it flies lives in eternal sunrise.”
On one of those early trips I was hitchhiking back to Anchorage and got picked up by a pilot named Dave King. We talked about heli-skiing: he told me he wanted to be a heli pilot, I told him I wanted to be a heli-ski guide. A handful of years later we both landed in Chickaloon - me a guide, Dave a pilot. Alaska is full of those serendipities. Dave died in a helicopter crash. I have been in one too; somehow we landed upside down and no one was hurt. You never know when it is your time to go.
Living simply, on purpose
I love camping. It is the one thing I can say I am actually good at. My cabin in the woods has no electricity or running water - we have an outdoor shower and the best rock-collection outhouse in the world. I have lived over 20 years in that 12-by-12-foot cabin, with propane lights and a wood stove. I do not owe money, and my bills are low. During heli season I live in my converted school bus at the Tsaina Lodge, which is a glamping upgrade: electricity, and hot showers in the lodge, for March and April. I like the balance - the serenity of cabin living mixed with the intensity of heli-skiing.
“More is more. The more we have, the more money we spend, and the more time we spend maintaining what we have. More means less time traveling, or more time working.”
She keeps two lists, she says: the Want List, and the Need List. Happiness, she has found, is generally deeper than your pockets - it comes mostly from being outside, and from being with her husband, her friends and her family. Those cost the least, yet we get so consumed with the wants and the bills that we struggle to find time for what actually makes us happy. We all have to work in some way. The goal is to find work that makes you happy.
Why the Chugach
“This planet is too incredible to miss the opportunity to be in its magical places. To me, the Chugach is truly one of the most magical places I have been. It captured my heart so many years ago and still gets me excited. My goal is to live simply, love with all my heart, and follow it to the next adventure.”
