Forget 14ers, a Telluride woman climbed a 27er and then skied down it.
"Sometimes it's so hard that even I'm like, 'this is so for the birds,' said Hilaree Nelson with a laugh.
Even so, Nelson told 9NEWS she loves pushing herself to the limit. Just for reference: she's been an athlete for The North Face since 1999, climbed Mount Everest and regularly skied from tall peaks. Though her recent trip made history.
"Nobody has ever done it before - not in its entirety," she said. "So, I feel like a little kid. I'm like giggling and stuff!"
Nelson and her climbing partner, Jim Morrison, hiked to the 27,900-foot-high-summit of Mount Lhotse in the Himalayas and then skied 7,000 feet down. She's the first woman to do so on that peak.
The average black diamond trail is at a 30-degree angle, and the slope they began their descent on was at a 60-degree angle.
"The skiing requires all the energy, and focus, and mental acuity that you can muster," she said. "And then of course when you throw the altitude in you don't have any of that."
The wind was strong and temperatures dipped below 20 and 30 degrees. In order to survive, Nelson said she couldn't think more than 10 minutes ahead.
Life in the Himalayas is quite different than life in the Colorado mountains. When she got home, she went "fully into mom mode," she said, jumping from being alone on the mountain to making school lunches.
She got back Sunday, and catching up with her two boys was one priority. The other? Eating. A lot.
"I literally went to the store and bought like a two-pound thing of donut holes and have been eating donut holes all day," she said.
