Grange adventurer snowboards down Mount Bear in Alaska (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Grange adventurer snowboards down Mount Bear in Alaska

9:30am Thursday 7th June 2012 in News By Mike Addison, Assistant editor

A SOUTH Lakeland adventurer has become the first person to make a snow-board ascent and descent of Mount Bear in Alaska.

After several days on the rarely visited mountain, Julia Pickering, from Grange-over-Sands, reached the summit as the tempera-ture dropped to a dangerous low of -45 degrees Celsius.

She then snowboarded back down to base camp in a dramatic descent which saw her drop part way into a crevasse.

Julia is an exploratory snowboard mountaineer and adventurer, and a member of the Berghaus team of outdoor athletes.

She was the first woman to climb and snowboard down the three highest peaks in the Arctic Circle and is constantly looking for new adventures.

Julia uses a special ‘split-board’ that allows her to climb peaks before snowboarding back down routes that have often never been attempted before.

Ms Pickering spotted Mount Bear as a potential objective during a previous trip to the region and started planning a major expedition with a team including her husband, Warwick.

Having secured funding support from outdoor brand Berghaus, she set out for Alaska in late April.

She said: “This was a really tough but rewarding trip, packed with aviation, a close encounter with a moose, frostbite, crevasse falls and a six-day storm.

“There was never a dull moment. Snow conditions were really difficult and the temperature was extremely low at times. Mount Bear was a beast that we didn’t tame, but we achieved our objective and I’m stoked about that.”

The expedition was filmed by Joe Carter and Simon August of 2XS Films, an adventure film production company based in Newcastle upon Tyne. The film will be released later this year.