Arc of the Altai
When I was a child, raised by a high school geography teacher, my friends and I would spin a globe and point at random until the rotating sphere stopped beneath our fingers; that was, within the extent of our youthful imaginations, where we would “travel.” Given the gamut of just under 200 countries, Mongolia was a recurring destination an inordinate number of times. It was at the right latitude for a 5-year-old’s index finger. Moreover, it was exotic, unlikely and intangibly distant.
Several decades later, 24 hours of flight time, including an unofficial FKT through Istanbul’s international terminals, provided some semblance of the childlike dream of traveling “halfway around the world.” But air travel only delivered us as far as Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, known for its Buddhist monasteries and infamously less-zen traffic—a metropolis sprawling across the barren desert. Left and right-hand drive cars converge in hand-directed gridlock beneath modern skyscrapers and centuries-old temples in a cultural mosaic where East meets West, tradition meets modernity. The city was founded nearly 400 years ago as a mobile monastery; its latest incarnation is simply that of a malleable metropolis transformed to meet the cultural demands of the day.
Ulaanbaatar’s eclecticism and obscurity made it a perfectly fitting place to meet a multinational team seeking remote big mountain freeride lines in May of 2025. Elisabeth Gerritzen and Sam Anthamatten held down the Swiss freeskiing contingent. Sam has been something of a mentor to Eli in big mountain terrain, and Eli is quick to point out that she’s a mentor to Sam in social activism. She’s Swiss-French and he’s Swiss-German, a constant tongue-in-cheek battle. Sam is considered one of the best big mountain freeriders in the world, but Eli has won the Freeride World Tour—twice.
Americans Andrew Pollard and Cody Cirillo rounded out the team, two hard-chargers forged in the mountain west, with very different trajectories. Andrew spent years on the FWT developing a surfy style that makes consequential terrain at mach speeds look casual. He’s an impassioned resort skier and the only individual I’ve ever heard pontificate about the superiority of Alta, UT, (his born-and-raised home) and an unapologetic love for terrible snow conditions in the same sentence. Cody, who competed in park and freestyle events for a decade, made a sharp 180 in the past half dozen years toward human-powered adventures in far-flung locales. It was his idea to explore the freeride potential and murky history of skiing in Mongolia; it was also his idea to take the long way there.
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