After five years, the standing speed record for a car-to-car trip on Washington’s Mount Rainier (14,409 ft.) has been broken. On Monday, May 20, skimo racers Nick Elton and Eric Carter made the round trip in four hours, 19 minutes and 12 seconds, more than 20 minutes faster than the previous record.

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Imagine living with the rocky east face of Aiguille Blanche du Peuterey staring at you every winter. The 50-degree face drops 1350 meters from the Italian side of Blanche's 4100-meter summit, and a narrow band of snow only skied once winds among the rock. Every season it leaves you wondering when conditions and opportunity will collide, allowing for a brief window to follow in the tracks of the legendary Stefano de Benedetti and ski its slopes.

Lording high above the vast West Desert, Deseret Peak is the tallest summit in Utah's Stansbury Mountains and stands with more than 5,000 feet of prominence. But what really makes skiers salivate are Deseret’s North Couloirs—twin chutes on the summit ridge that hold snow well into summer.

The morning sun is a welcome presence, its first few rays shooting at me over the ridge to the east. I huddle against the mountain, trying to maximize my surface area for sunlight while somehow minimizing my exposure to the wind. The howling wind dies down for a moment and I revel in the sweet, sustaining crepuscular light. A spasmodic shiver runs up my spine and I wonder what force of nature had lured my zombie-like body from my warm, comfortable bed this morning. What am I doing out here? Am I here to experience the simple joy of sunlight on skin? My numb face and fingertips convince me that there must be some other reason.

Nobody likes waking up to the sound of a screeching alarm clock, but when conditions are forecasted to be as good as they were last Sunday, I’ll wake up to just about anything.

I hit Lake Ediza around dusk and set up camp on the north side of the lake. After salami, cheese, and beer, I turned in for the night. A full moon shone. I would have liked to stay up to admire it, but I needed to get an early start the next morning to summit and ski Mount Ritter, a 13,000-foot peak in the central Sierras.