Mountainfilm on Tour In Spokane to feature In-person Appearance by Christina Lustenberg and John Roskelley
Photo by John Roskelley / Nameless Tower on the left and the ski route the team took off the top of Great Trango on the right.
Mountainfilm on Tour returns to Spokane on Sept. 11 with a selection of inspiring films from the flagship Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, Colo. This year’s film tour screening, brought to town by the Jess Roskelley Foundation, will take place at Gonzaga University’s Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center.
Canadian ski mountaineer and professional skier Christina “Lusti” Lustenberger, whose team of three alpinists claimed the first ski descent off the 20,623-foot summit of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower in 2024, will make a special in-person appearance. The feat, documented in the film “Trango,” promises to be an inspiring highlight of the Mountainfilm tour stop in Spokane. The event includes a selection of other festival films featuring a range of adventure, activism and social justice themes.
Lustenberger will be joined on stage for a Q&A following the film with legendary Spokane mountaineer John Roskelley, who was part of the team of five climbers who pulled off the first ascent of the same Karakoram-region peak back in 1977. As a prelude to the film, Roskelley will also share stories, images and reflections from climbing the peak with Galen Rowell, Dennis Hennek, Kim Schmitz, and Jim Morrissey.
The film “Trango” follows the dramatic and at times emotional two-year attempt at making the first ski descent off the Great Trango Tower by Lustenberger and fellow ski mountaineer Jim Morrison. It’s an exceptional piece of visual ski-mountaineering storytelling with dramatic drone footage that gives viewers unique perspectives on the vast, extreme terrain and the mountaineering and skiing challenges posed by the otherworldly peaks. From avalanches and crevasse crossings in thin air to unpredictable snow conditions and weather, the filmmakers capture the big mountain hazards and raw risk that the climbers turned skiers endured.
The first attempt by Lustenberger and Morrison with Nick McNutt in 2023 was thwarted by poor conditions and altitude sickness. Lustenberger and Morrison returned in 2024 with Chantel Astorga to finally reach the top on May 9, where the team unfurled a Protect Our Winters banner before transitioning for the top-of-the-world ski descent of Great Trango Tower’s West Face, a route that’s been described as some of the most challenging ski terrain on the planet.
The team’s journey to the top of Trango, which included weeks of living out of tents while waiting for the right weather window, was also a deeply emotional one, heightened by the near-constant physical challenges and risk and the extreme and harsh nature of the place. The film crew eloquently captured the expedition members’ personal reflections on grief, loss, and moving forward in pursuit of dreams, which followed the team into the mountains.
Most notably, in 2022, Morrison lost his ski mountaineering and life partner Hilaree Nelson (after experiencing the crushing loss of his wife and two children in a plane crash in 2011). Nelson was swept away by an avalanche and killed while the pair were skiing together from the summit of Manaslu, and the shadow of that recent tragedy can be felt throughout the film. Lustenberger, at times, also grapples with nagging unease stemming from the enormity of the undertaking and even shame at exposing so many people to so much risk. The 45-minute film is a showcase of the strength and skill necessary to pull off such expeditions, but also the essential role of trust and support among teammates to keep moving forward in the face of suffering, both physical and of the heart.
That indispensable act of putting trust in your fellow climbers or skiers is one thing that hasn’t changed much in the mountaineering world in the nearly 50 years since Roskelley’s team first scaled Trango. “I can’t say that in 1977 any of us even dreamed of skiing off the top of Great Trango Tower,” Roskelley reflects. Extreme athletes who take on ski-mountaineering projects on remote, difficult, high-altitude peaks like Great Trango Tower prepare physically and mentally for years, he notes, yet the inherent risk is still immense even with advancements in equipment design and weather-forecasting technology. “If you cross a tip, choose the wrong line, hit a small rock sticking out of the ice, death is imminent. All of them understood the consequences of a mistake,” adds Roskelley.
Photo by Galen Rowell / The 1977 first-ascent route up the southeast face with Nameless Tower on the right.
In the final moments of the film, Lustenberger confronts the question that many of us who watch films like “Trango” wind up asking: What drives athletes to risk their lives on such big mountain challenges? “I thought about this a lot,” Lustenberger says. “And it’s the only place where you’re so alive but also the closest to death. To be found is to be in these places.” Those last words in the film, she says, sum up what drives her to continue to take on such truly wild challenges in the face of so much peril. “When you completely find your place—it can be a moment or anything—and yet not feel lost and to feel like you’re just in the right place, the right time in the universe. That is just like those pinch-me moments.”
Watching the stunning production of the film “Trango” on a big screen will be a treat for any skier, snowboarder, or climber of mountains of any size. “The film has spectacular videography from the DJI drones, as well as GoPro footage from the skiers,” notes Roskelley. “You’ll be at the edge of your seat and wondering, like I did, what were they thinking standing on the very summit of Great Trango Tower just prior to turning their skis and beginning a journey that might not end well. Fortunately, Christina will be there to answer this question.”
The crossing paths of Roskelley and Lustenberger in person at the showing of this film to share stories from their incredible adventures is a unique alignment of the mountaineering world stars. Anyone in the Inland Northwest who has ever dared or dreamed of hiking, climbing, skiing or snowboarding big mountains won’t want to miss it. The Spokane Mountainfilm on Tour event starts at 6:30 p.m., with doors opening at 5:30 p.m. with a silent auction. This event is a fundraiser for the Jess Roskelley Foundation, which provides artificial climbing features in public parks around the Spokane region. The foundation works to promote public projects and outdoor activities that were a defining force in the life of Jess Roskelley, while preserving his legacy as a lifelong Spokane native and elite international alpinist. Tickets are available at Jessroskelleyfoundation.com.
