An Interview with Ben Tibbetts—The Art of Ski Mountaineering

On the descent, Grand Combin SE Ridge. This image, from Ben Tibbetts, is one of many documenting his adventures in the Alps. Tibbets is a noted photographer/IFMGA Guide. Photo: Ben Tibbetts

Ben Tibbetts is an IFMGA mountain guide, photographer, author, and filmmaker based in Chamonix, France. He has climbed all 82 of the 4,000-meter (13,000 feet) peaks in the Alps. Tibbetts is also a veteran ski mountaineer, with accomplishments including a single push traverse of the Haute Route in 31 hours and a 3rd place finish in the Patrouille des Glaciers in 2014. His first book, Alpenglow, showcases photos, stories and drawings of “the finest climbs on the 4,000m peaks of the Alps.” Tibbetts’ new guidebook, the 4000m Peaks of the Alps – Volume 1: West, covers the zone from the Barre des Écrins to Grand Paradiso, across the Mont Blanc massif to the Weisshorn above Zermatt and features over 300 of his photos. We sat down in his home in Chamonix to discuss his new guidebook and what motivates his work.

Interviewed by Sophie Stuber—Chamonix, France

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Sophie Stuber: Like many people in mountain towns, you’re mixing several different professions to form a sustainable career. Could you talk about your relationship with photography, guiding, mountaineering, and writing?

BT: The balance of how much of each activity I do in any given year shifts. So I work as a guide, but as I’m not a particularly gregarious person, I find meeting new clients every three days quite stressful, whereas working with athletes who I already know, doing photo shoots for brands, or my book projects, that’s what I find most exciting. However, on a cloudy day, you can’t do a shoot. If you’re guiding, you can still get out, give someone a fun day, and pay the bills. So that’s the balance between the different jobs. Guiding is reliable, whereas photography is very inspiring and stimulating.

Ben Tibbetts is the author of the recently released 4000m Peaks of the Alps—West. Photo: bentibbetts.com

SS: And how has your work as a photographer evolved, especially in the digital age, to support this side of your career where you find the most inspiration?

BT: The market has shifted radically in the 20 years I’ve been doing this, especially the move from analog to digital, the arrival of social media, and the abundance of cameras and phones. Everyone can take a pretty good photo now. So, being valuable enough to a brand that they want to pay you to do a shoot, you’ve got to be a head above. It was probably easier, I’d say, 12 years ago than it is nowadays. There are so many really good young photographers who are willing to work for very little money because they’re trying to break into the market. It’s actually pretty complicated right now for somebody who’s been in the industry for a while, especially in mountain sports.

SS: Then where do the guidebooks come in?

BT: Over the last couple of decades, I’ve been taking an awful lot of photos of climbing routes and mountaineering adventures. It’s to the point that I’ve got over 500,000 photos in my stock library. I’ve got this massive body of photographic work, and making guidebooks seems like a good way of using this resource of information. At the same time, I want to try to push the bar a bit higher on how beautiful, accurate, and interesting a guidebook can be. I’ve done almost every route in the recent guidebook on the 4000m peaks, which is already kind of unusual for a guidebook, and then I shot all the photos and carefully drew the lines on the photos. This process makes it a very laborious, time-consuming exercise, but it means I’m proud of the end product.

Climbing along the border of Italy & Switzerland on the Dent d’Hérens (4,173m). Photo: Ben Tibbetts

The lens pulled back: Grand Combin SE Ridge. Photo: Ben Tibbetts.

SS: So, essentially, you’re motivated by contributing something to the mountaineering community?

BT: It would be nice if the guidebooks sold enough to pay for the time I put in, but that’s tangential to the drive to make these. I’m working on a whole series of guidebooks, and I started with the 4,000m peaks because I’m pretty sure that’s the one that will sell the best. There’s also a massive hole in the market. There has not been a good guidebook on the 4,000s for a while, but it’s usually what inspires most people: the biggest, highest, baddest peaks.

This endeavor is community-driven in the end. I’m passionate about the mountains. I am passionate about photography as well. I take photos even on days when I don’t know why I’m taking the photos. I can’t help myself. It’s almost like a pathological habit.

SS: Your photos seem to really center the guidebook, even if the route-finding information is incredibly useful as well; the photos and drawings are really the stars of the book.

BT: I wouldn’t be inspired to make a mercenary guidebook that includes loads of routes I’ve never done. Searching across the internet and other guidebooks and copying and pasting bits of text to put together a guidebook of routes could be a better way to make money because it would take a lot less time. So, not by design, but I’ve reverse-engineered this book. I’ve taken so many photos over the years that I have this massive body of work, and it would make sense to use this to give people more information in an inspiring format. It is detailed and accurate because I’ve actually been there and done the routes.

For me, accuracy is key as well. I get quite obsessive about the details of a photo. If I can’t remember which side of a gendarme to go around on a ridge, I’ll ask four different guides to get a consensus on which way is the best way around. In the end, I probably didn’t need to spend that time, but it annoys me if I draw the line the wrong way around something because you’ll find the route and see that I’ve got it wrong. I can’t deal with that.

Valentine Fabre skiing down the North Face of Mont Blanc. Photo: Ben Tibbetts.

SS: And you’ve climbed all 82 4,000-meter peaks, so how did you choose which routes to include in the guidebook?

BT: I only climb the routes that I think are the most inspiring, and then I’ve done all the normal routes, usually as descents from the more inspiring route. Ultimately, it’s a limited selection, but the book includes most of the routes people will climb.

SS: Since you’ve been in the Alps for quite some time, how have guiding and mountaineering changed in recent years?

BT: 10, 11, 12 years back, you could still reliably do most summer routes in August. This summer wasn’t too bad, but the previous two or three summers, August, was just scary working in the high mountains and the glaciated areas. The glaciers were exceptionally open. There was a lot of rockfall. In August and early September, I stuck to lower altitude routes without permafrost problems.

It demands guides to be more creative, step out of their habitual patterns, and pay more attention. The community of guides has to inform each other more. The terrain, conditions, and climate nowadays demand more creativity and collaboration between mountain security services and guides.

SS: So that affects the direction of your work, too, I imagine.

BT: Yeah, another direction I’m going with the book writing is working on guidebooks for lower altitude areas. It’s all very well to have guidebooks on the grand 4000m peaks, but the window to safely use those routes is reducing. It’s becoming earlier in the season—the traditional July and August window is becoming quite tricky. The main holiday season is now when the high mountains are most difficult. So, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching lower peaks and lesser-known stuff. Maybe in five or ten years, I’ll manage to put them together into guidebooks as well.

Another project I’m working on is a book about the finest bivouac camp across the Alps. The U.S. equivalent would be Washington’s fire lookout towers, that kind of thing. Except in Italy alone, 600 of these small, unguarded huts are left open year-round in the middle of nowhere. I love going to see them. I love the architecture, and I can’t help but take a lot of photos. So, over the years, I’ve accumulated thousands and thousands of photos of these things. I’m working on a volume (or series) that will be a bit more like my coffee table book, Alpenglow, but in a smaller format. It will be a mixture of stories about the adventures and the region’s history with beautiful photos and some information on how to get to these places.