“Live To Ski”—Steve Romeo, TetonAT, and the Power of Shared Information

Tipping points can be positive or negative in the extreme. Here, Brandon Wanthal tips towards positive outcomes. Photo: Simon Garcia

The flow of energy in the mountains is profound—Brandon Wanthal credits Steve Romeo and his classic site TetonAT for the better part of the rest of his life.

In 2024, mountain adventure blogs, or just climbing and backcountry skiing blogs, aren’t a new concept. Every prominent mountain region across North America has at least a handful. However, when Steve Romeo launched TetonAT.com in 2006 to document his journey seeking cutting-edge ski descents in the Tetons and other prominent North American ranges, his vision was an anomaly. Sharing beta is nothing new. Since the advent of mountaineering, climbing, and skiing, the sharing of beta was once relegated to personal journals, mountain community logbooks, and, eventually, print. With the Internet’s boom, once hard-to-access information found a broad reach. It’s not hyperbolic to claim that by sharing their adventures, a few key members of the outdoor community positively impacted the lives of millions. 

Steve Romeo grew up in Connecticut, went to college in New York, graduated in 1994, and moved to Jackson, Wyoming, to pursue his skiing passion. Like so many before him, Steve’s journey West was messianic, and his place of worship became the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, specifically the Tetons. By all accounts, Steve was as enthusiastic about snow sliding as they come. In Jackson, he worked in local gear shops, volunteered with Teton County Search and Rescue, helped organize Avalanche Awareness Nights, and was selected to the United States Ski Mountaineering team in 2006 and 2008. He ran ultramarathons to quell his summertime blues and train for ski season. As soon as the snow flew, Steve skied. 

2006 marks the tipping point—Steve’s stoke finally bubbled over—TetonAT was born. From the rock and ice climbing angle the Tetons were well documented by the impressively thorough “A Climber’s Guide to the Teton Range” by Renny Jackson and Leigh Ortenburger, which catalogs a staggering 800 or more climbing routes in the Range, but for backcountry skiing there remained a gap. Many argue the Tetons are the “birthplace of North American ski mountaineering.” Despite this reputation, a comprehensive resource for ski descents in Grand Teton National Park didn’t exist. Tom Turiano’s “Teton Skiing: A History and Guide” was the sole guidebook, and while flush with inspiring stories and plenty of useful information, the 1995 publication became antiquated with the progression of modern ski mountaineering. To learn of ski descents, especially higher-end or “off the beaten path” descents, across the Range, one had to plug into the local scene; even then, information was scarce. For an outside traveler or new resident, the Tetons might as well been surrounded by an electric fence with a padlocked gate. Unless an aspiring skier/rider wanted to piggyback the same half-dozen well-beaten skin tracks to shred tracked up easy-access objectives, voyage up a remote canyon guided by blind faith, drop half a paycheck to hire a professional guide, or spend weeks touring around to get oriented, they were in the dark. Romeo’s vision was different. 

Steve Romeo finding the goods in less extreme terrain. Photo: TetonAT

Steve cared about the power of inclusion and inspiration through the written word. By all accounts, Steve was the first to seriously breach a formidable wall of local gatekeeping tradition. Until his premature death on March 7th, 2012, in an avalanche on Ranger Peak, Steve documented hundreds of descents across the Teton Range and a good smattering in other North American ranges, New Zealand, Antarctica, South America, Mexico, and Europe. His stories weren’t the currency of pre-dawn parking lot flex sessions as hungry-for-steep-skiing groups skinned up and delved their separate ways. On the contrary, Romeo penned enthusiastic, infectious, and motivating stories promoting skiing as a tool for self-development, inspiration, and joy for anyone with the TetonAT web address. On a more practical level, his articles doubled as a beta for aspiring skiers and riders. While Romeo received severe, if not hateful pushback from select members of the local community, his blog touched thousands and inspired many ski mountaineering aspirants to chase their dreams. I’m one of those skiers. 

When I found the Tetons, I was a lost and broken soul seeking my north star. Like Steve, I came from the East Coast, Greater Boston specifically, where I learned to ski on the ice-ridden slopes of Northern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. From my first time on skis at age four to my Idaho migration at 19, I logged thousands of days skiing “snow” that even the most grateful Westerners would scoff at. My father was the sole committed skier in our family, and together, we skied first-chair to last all winter long; no excuses. Once I got my driver’s license, it was straight to fifth gear—four teenagers packed into the cab of an old Jeep Liberty, making the three-hour Vermont pilgrimage to ski bulletproof glaze in sub-zero conditions. By summer, my friends and I would pack our trunks with ice shavings from the local hockey rink, drive to the nearest hill, set up homemade PVC rails, and hone our newest tricks for winter. We would strap snow-blades to our feet and practice aerials on the trampoline. When we couldn’t get to the ski resort, we would street ski, building jumps onto urban rail features using bungee cords to gain speed. Despite my city landscape, I “lived to ski”—Romeo’s famed TetonAT mantra—in the truest iteration.

Halfway through my nineteenth year, I walked the busy streets of South Boston, high as a kite, when a half dozen undercover officers broke from the masses, guns drawn, shouting, “Get on the ground!”

By high school, while my passion for skiing and other sports was still afloat, my world unraveled. I began drowning. Precipitated by severe trauma in my early teenage years, I gravitated towards mind-altering substances like ski mountaineers seeking powder-filled couloirs. As my drug dependency evolved from alcohol and marijuana to more insidious vices, the positive elements of my life—skiing, sports, and academics—faded. 

Like many East Coast kids of the past decade, I became a statistic of the opiate epidemic. Addicted to heroin and hopelessness, by eighteen I dropped out of college, living between the streets and friend’s couches. Several overdoses, umpteenth rehabilitation centers, and legal trouble did little to stop my downward spiral. Just as a committed ski alpinist’s resolve to ski a line in good style, I was resolved to die an addict. 

Halfway through my nineteenth year, I walked the busy streets of South Boston, high as a kite, when a half dozen undercover officers broke from the masses, guns drawn, shouting, “Get on the ground!”. I watched with my face pinned to the pavement as an officer ripped open my backpack, exposing some 20,000 dollars of mismatched jewelry. Little did I know this incident would be the first day of the rest of my life.

Staring down a five-year prison sentence, smoking cigarettes, and playing cards in yet another sober home, I came to a realization. If I was to escape this vicious cycle of drug abuse, I needed new surroundings. Skiing was the sole activity that provided pure joy without the omnipresent anxieties of competition, or promise of reward. My love for skiing was the only thing I knew about myself. If I wanted a new life, I would need an immovable positive pillar. Skiing. 

Sometimes a direct message says it all. Brandon Wanthal sends love.

After a botched prosecution and pleading guilty to lesser charges, my lawyer transferred my probation to Idaho on the grounds of self-betterment and the likelihood of sobriety. Why Idaho? There’s good skiing—and while drugs still existed, dealers weren’t on every corner peddling opiates. Leading up to my trial, I applied to as many as twenty small ski resorts across the United States. Grand Targhee was the first to accept my application. Along with plentiful powder turns, I hoped the small community in Teton Valley would serve as a metaphorical retreat center—a place to clear my head.

Fast forward three years: I was off probation, suffered a brief yet severe slip from clean living after the premature loss of my father in 2017, but fortunately landed right side up. I was resolved to sobriety—my survival quite literally hinged on it—but was unsure of what a sober life would entail. I had spent the previous three years working at Targhee, and while I loved railing chairlift-assisted powder turns, that fire was waning, especially once I left booze, pot, and partying behind. 

Early into my Idaho arrival, I purchased a clunky frame-binding touring setup and sampled some of the classic Teton Pass objectives. However, I was more committed to apres ski festivities than becoming a backcountry athlete. Sober, I had a clearer lens through which to view my mountain landscape. I had hiked the Appalachian Trail as part of my sobriety journey and fostered a deep love for spending quiet time in nature. I imagined the possibilities. I stared into the open hills of untracked powder and craggy distant couloirs in Grand Teton National Park. Count me among the many who have peered east from Driggs and wondered, how exactly does anyone ski up there?

A quick internet search for ski descents in Grand Teton National Park churned up TetonAT. As a longtime, passionate writer and amateur photographer, Steve’s magnetic energy drew me in. His words were electric, the stories exciting, and the pictures inspiring. One of my favorites is Steve and Reed Finlay’s late-May descent of the coveted Northeast Ridge on Mount Moran, accomplished in classic spring Teton style, complete with jaw-dropping photos of full commitment jump turns above a deep blue Jackson Lake far below. Sure, his writing wasn’t of Steven King’s or Charles Dickens’ caliber, but the storytelling was tastefully curated and captured what I saw as the truest essence of adventure. Best of all, the accounts felt honest. When something went awry, Steve didn’t sugarcoat the tale. His article “Sliver Wreck… Happens To All Of Us!” offers a humanizing tale of an overconfident faceplant in Nez Perce’s Sliver Couloir, captured brilliantly with a helmet camera. Most ski mountaineers would have buried such a tale for fear of public scrutiny. Steve embraced the opportunity to be relatable to his audience.

Steve Romeo and the Sneaker Couloir. Photo: TetonAT

TetonAT became my bible, a roadmap for working through the lexicon of entry-level Teton ski mountaineering descents and building a list of aspirational objectives. As stated earlier, no modern guidebooks were available to supplement TetonAT. As I crafted my skillset and forged deeper into the Range, I began to shed unproductive habits. I quit cigarettes, became obsessed with fitness, and sought better nutrition to fuel mountain pursuits. I took up distance running, ran my first ultra-marathon, and did weight training during the off-season to jumpstart ski season. 

Here’s what you need to know: addiction isn’t fickle. The devil is in me. I thickened my shield against drug addiction with each successive ski descent. If I had a reason to live, something that filled my life with as much joy as ski mountaineering, I could resist reverting to the dark caverns of my youth. I found my north star.

Ever since kindergarten, I loved to write. In elementary and middle school, I wrote poetry. I loved the way words flowed together to create deeper meaning. On the Appalachian Trail, I began writing in a personal journal, and around 1000 miles, I began publishing my journal entries online. The accounts were generally haphazard. I typed from my cell phone in a damp tent whenever I caught a few bars of service at the end of a grueling hiking day. Over time, however, the stories transcended linguistics and became an encapsulating record of a transformative time. As I dove deeper into backcountry skiing and started logging descents that attracted interest from fellow skiers, I was drawn back to writing. Inspired by the light TetonAT brought to my life, I created Ten Thousand Too Far, a website dedicated to the free sharing of Teton information and inspiration. Since Steve’s tragic accident in 2006, only a handful of blogs had filled the void, usually only remaining active for a year or three, enough to hastily cover a smattering of descents, but nothing even close to as comprehensive as TetonAT. In a way, I viewed Ten Thousand Too Far as a natural progression. Writing was my therapy, photography was a creative passion, and I craved a symbiotic connection with my community. In some distant way, I hoped to carry the torch of TetonAT, the same torch that lit my path to a deeper and more meaningful life. I often tell my vertical partners that Steve Romeo “saved my life.” That’s not as much of a hyperbole as you may think.

Since its conception in 2020, Ten Thousand Too Far has amassed hundreds of thousands of views and a dedicated subscription reader base, an inertia I never imagined. While initially created with the singular intention of documenting ski mountaineering, the website has followed my foray into the realms of alpine rock and ice climbing with nearly 200 articles. While getting recognized and thanked for my work regularly, whether on the skin track, belay ledge, or standing in line at Cowboy Coffee, is flattering, the unlikely stories of people permanently transforming their lives inspired by Ten Thousand Too Far is the ultimate reward. If I’ve learned one thing through my journey of addiction recovery, it’s this: life is precious. Even if only a handful of people read my work and were left inspired to improve their lives, the thousands of hours typing are justified. I’ve received messages from strangers motivated to get sober, eat healthier, lose weight, confront mental health issues, or abandon an unfulfilling lifestyle by reading my words. I know many people who underwent similar transformations motivated by TetonAT. These anecdotes encapsulate the deepest benefits of skiing and climbing. A steep couloir can be more than heroic jump turns. A remote snow-covered peak can be more than a powder-clad face-shot haven. A hand crack can be more than sinker jams, and a frozen waterfall can be more than glorious vertical pick sticks on an ephemeral natural wonder. 

Brandon Wanthal ascends Symmetry Couloir on Symmetry Spire. Photo: Chase Krumholz

As transcending singular experiences, mountains can be moments for self-reflection, development, and permanent positive change. I aim to weave this magic into my writing and stand as an ambassador for the incredible healing modality that skiing and climbing can be—inspired by Steve Romeo and TetonAT.

Steve and I have different stories—but our commonality is simple: a love for expansive environments, daunting challenges, snow-covered landscapes, and sharing that love with our community. In Teton AT, I discovered my passion for the backcountry and, thereby, an unwavering desire to live wholly and pursue my wildest dreams. At the time of this article, I am seven and a half years sober, live in Teton Valley with my life partner, and am more motivated than ever to chase my next far-fetched experience in the vertical plane.

Steve passed nearly a decade before I made my first kick turn. Still, sometimes when I’m in the deep in the annals of Grand Teton National Park, punching a heart-pounding skin-track through three feet of powder snow, front-pointing up an icy couloir, hiking to a glacier for summer corn turns or connecting minuscule snow patches on a fifty degree hanging north face above hundreds of feet of cliffs, I like to imagine Steve is right there with me—his famed “Live To Ski” helmet sticker flashing as he commits to the next icy jump turn, dissipates into a cloud of cold smoke, or carves through a ripe batch of spring corn. Steve Romeo, TetonAT, and “Live To Ski” symbolize an undying passion, dedication, and intention I wish to emulate.