Remembering Kasha Rigby

In mid-February, renowned adventure skier Kasha Rigby (54) was killed in an avalanche in Kosovo. David J Rothman, who has covered the ski scene for decades, has this remembrance.

My phone tells me that the last time I saw Kasha Rigby was on March 28, 2014. I can’t believe it was that long ago, but there is the time stamp, cold and impersonal, on the two photos I took of her at Snowbird that day. Perhaps I remembered it as more recent because of the tricks time plays, but perhaps it was more that every time I saw her, she was so vivid and charming and beautiful that the memory has stayed vibrant.

In the first picture, she is standing at the top of the tram, wearing an orange parka and a big smile…with a bottle of red wine in her oversized right pocket. It was almost 4:00, so we had caught the last tram. I’d run into her by chance and remember how happy I was to see her, as we hadn’t been in touch for many years.

I had first met Kasha when I lived in Crested Butte, where my wife and I moved in 1993 and raised our family. A summer or two before we moved to CB full-time—probably 1992—I was biking with some friends, Bill Miller and Shaun Steves, both strong athletes, up Baby Head Hill on our way to the old Secret Trail on Gibson’s Ridge. With trail reroutes over the years, you can still ride the upper half of Baby Head Hill—so named for the size of the stones on an old mining road—but only the upper half, on what is now called the Green Lake Trail. In those days, however, it was a steep, punishing, direct 650-foot climb with no benches, on loose dirt (with those babyheads…). A real test piece.

Shaun and Bill had, as usual, beaten me to the top and I was grinding along. The climb is steep enough that if you come off the bike, starting again is a challenge, so I was saving my energy but keeping a decent pace. At some point I became aware that someone was behind me, looked over my shoulder, and realized a young woman was gaining on me.

I was still young enough that I couldn’t use the excuse of age to rationalize getting caught, so, ever competitive if not an Olympian, I doubled down and maintained my lead to the top, although I nearly had a stroke. Thirty seconds later this obviously very fit young woman arrived with a big smile, told me how much fun it had been to climb together, and we all chatted. I noticed that Bill and Shaun were respectful.

After we had gone our separate ways—we were headed to different trails—I asked them who she was. They were incredulous that I didn’t know.

“That’s Kasha,” said Bill, shaking his head, then, with a tone that locals in CB use to indicate that the person under discussion is not just strong, but Crested Butte-strong (there’s a difference), “She can ski.”

And could she ever. In 1993, as anyone who knows American ski history lore is aware, Kasha placed 3rd in the women’s division of the US Extremes, riding telemark gear, and the rest, as they say, is history. She went on to other competitive triumphs and quickly evolved into one of the most accomplished ski mountaineers on the planet, scoring multiple first telemark and women’s descents on big peaks, including a 1995 descent of Cho Oyu, the sixth highest peak in the world at 26,906’. At this point she was already a North Face-sponsored athlete, and she spent the next decades pursuing such ambitious adventures that many of us lived vicariously through her. (You can read about some of her many expeditions and accomplishments, here, here, and here.) She became such a local celebrity in CB that it was almost impossible to have a public conversation with her. Random guys would come up, interrupt, ask her if they remembered meeting at the post office last week, and then offer to crawl through broken glass if she would just take a run with them next Tuesday. She was always polite.