Aspen local Christy Mahon’s day job is protecting the environment, but in her free time, she immerses herself in it—by climbing and skiing high peaks in Colorado and beyond.
When I reach out to Christy Mahon for photos for this story, I catch her in the midst of a mountaineering project. “I’m in Bolivia with no access to photos. Headed out of service now. Would love to talk when we’re back,” she emails me before dropping off the grid to climb 21,122-foot Illimani with her husband and mountaineering partner, Ted Mahon.
Christy grew up in Denver, earning a degree in museum studies from the University of Denver. “I was so set on Oregon, but with some family stuff going on, I decided to do one semester at DU,” she says. “I ended up loving it. I was like, wait, I can go to school and ski?” Eventually, she realized the city of Denver wasn’t close enough to the mountains. “I needed to live in the mountains,” says Christy, who moved to Aspen in 1998 to work at the Aspen Art Museum.
In 2020, Christy and Ted climbed and skied Jebel Masker in Morocco’s High Atlas mountain range. PHOTO BY TED MAHON
In 2010, she became the first woman to climb and ski all 54 of Colorado’s 14ers, a feat she did mostly with Ted, who she married in 2009. “There are a lot of women who have climbed them all, but there are only two women who have skied them all,” she says. “Where are all the women?” she says with a laugh. In 2011, Brittany Konsella, a skier from Crested Butte, became the second woman to ski all the 14ers.
Next, the Mahons teamed up with Aspen local Chris Davenport to climb and ski Colorado’s Centennials—the state’s 100 highest mountains, not one of them less than 13,800 feet. “We did most of them in only three years; it was a pretty intense project,” Christy says. Since the trio completed the challenge in 2015, no other ski mountaineers have followed in their ski tracks. “That’s kind of crazy to us—that no one else wanted to do it,” she says. Especially given that some of the Centennials are more interesting to climb than some of the 14ers. Although, admittedly, some are harder to climb, too, she says. Christy embraces Type 2 fun on the fun scale, and she’s a little mystified that not everyone else does.
This past fall, Christy and Ted summited 21,122-foot Illimani, the highest peak in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real range. PHOTO BY TED MAHON
People sometimes think the Mahons have skied all of Colorado’s 13ers. “Not even close,” she says. Colorado has 637 peaks above 13,000. “Colorado is such an amazing state!” Christy brims with positive energy and talks in exclamation points. Powered by those good vibrations, she and Ted are now making their way through the “Bicentennials” (Colorado’s 200 highest peaks). “That’s less of a project,” Christy says. “It’s just for fun.” Type 2 fun, no doubt.
As climbing partners, they’ve traveled the globe to climb peaks, including Morocco’s High Atlas mountains, Ama Dablam in the Himalayas, volcanoes in Ecuador and Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest peak. “Whether we bring skis or not depends on the mountain and the conditions,” Christy says. Given the time of year and the snow conditions, the Mahons didn’t bring skis on the Bolivia trip. To acclimatize, they climbed 17,618-foot Pequeño Alpamayo and 19,974-foot Huayna Potosí. Bolivia’s high altitude was definitely a challenge, even coming from Aspen’s relatively thin air. “At times, my heart rate was crazy high,” Christy says.
The trip’s main objective was Illimani, the highest peak in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real. On summit day, they set out at 1 a.m. “You want to get off the mountain before the glacier starts heating up and calving,” she says. Given the effects of climate change and a low snow year, there was more bulletproof ice on the route, making the climb more technical than usual. “There were more crevasses, and we were doing a lot of rope work and using crampons and ice axes,” she says. “When you have to swing your ax three times to get it into the ice, that’s pretty tiring at 20,000 feet.” They made it back to base camp by 5:30 p.m. but decided to keep going and spend the night in a hotel in La Paz. “That’s a pretty special thing about Bolivia—compared with peaks like Everest or Denali—the time needed to approach these mountains is much shorter,” Christy says. “Many of Bolivia’s peaks are only three hours outside of La Paz, but when we traveled into the mountains, it felt like we were going back three centuries in time.”
Skiing laps in the new Hero’s terrain on Aspen Mountain. PHOTO BY TED MAHON
Having spent so much time adventuring in the great outdoors and developing a connection to nature, Christy felt the environment could use more help. After about 12 years working at the Aspen Art Museum, she pivoted her focus from culture to the environment. “I knew the art world was going to be just fine without me,” she says. She went to work for the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES), where she’s been the development director for over 13 years.
Sunrise on Tarija Peak during the Mahon’s Bolivia trip last fall. PHOTO BY TED MAHON
What’s next for the high-octane couple? Their bucket list includes the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Aconcagua in the Andes. “We’ll probably head for Japan this year and do a couple backcountry volcanoes,” she says. “Nothing serious. In our community, there’s always someone better than you doing something more amazing. It’s humbling.”
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