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XX Factor Skiers
Ski Mountaineer Telluride, Colorado WHY SHE RULES: Hilaree O'Neill once scouted powder stashes from the cracked leather seat of a standard double chairlift. That was before a ski-bumming stint in Chamonix, where the Seattle native discovered climbing skins and a talent that has transformed her into an elite ski mountaineer and an Alaska heli-skiing guide. "In seven years I've gone from 'Crampons? What are those?' to guiding in unskied regions of Mongolia," says O'Neill. A North Face-sponsored athlete since 1999, O'Neill has claimed first tracks in unmapped regions of China, Lebanon, and Tibet, and in 2002 she fronted the first ski expedition to eastern Mongolia's Five Holy Peaks. "There were no maps, no photos, no nothing," she says of her trip up and down the 15,000-foot towers on the China-Russia border. "You didn't even consider freaking out." As the only female on the nine-guide team at Dean Cummings's Valdez, Alaska-based H2O Heli Guides, O'Neill leads (mostly male) clients down open bowls and unnamed peaks in the 7,000-foot Chugach Mountains. She also runs weeklong Chicks in the Chugach heli-skiing camps, designed to teach women to feel as comfortable ripping through the backcountry as she does. SAYS WHO: "Hilaree has an unmatched, easygoing attitude, mental and physical toughness, and endurance," says Cummings, 38, former world extreme-skiing champion. "She's opening doors for women to build careers in mountaineering." STRONGEST BODY PART: Stomach lining. In Mongolia, O'Neill and her team subsisted for 14 days on goat fat, horse meat, and other local delicacies. "We ate boiled marmot—with no salt," she laments. "It would have been so much better with salt." FORWARD SPIN: O'Neill will climb and ski Myanmar's 19,296-foot Hkakabo Razi, near the China-India border, in fall 2004. "It's only been climbed once, by a Japanese mountaineer who said it was harder than Everest," says O'Neill. "Who knows if we can ski it, but we might as well try." —TRACY ROSS
Big-Mountain Freeskier Jackson, Wyoming WHY SHE RULES: Charlotte Moats is a double-shifter, juggling an old-school Ivy League education and a new-school freeskiing career. "It keeps me honest," she says. "Neither world on its own is that significant." Put them together, though, and you've got a downhill firecracker with brawn and brains. In addition to her spot on Dartmouth's dean's list, the senior geography major can claim six first descents in Alaska's Chugach Mountains, the 2002 World Endurance Skiing Champion title, first place at the 2000 Canadian Freeskiing Championships, and a gold medal in slalom from the 1995 Junior Olympics. Not to mention a promising ski-flick career, which includes appearances in Warren Miller's 2002 Storm and Teton Gravity
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