14er Ski Ethics (Rules) by Lou Dawson:
A lot of what makes this project so difficult, is waiting for conditions to be good. There have been drought years where very few ski descents were even possible, because there was no snow off the summit. Finishers have had to wait multiple years to get Crestone Needle in skiable conditions!!! This is all part of the game. Patience is a virtue. It is not enough that you could ski the peak IF it was covered in snow, you have to wait!!! Period. End of story. It isn’t skiing a patch of snow on a mountain. It’s “skiing a peak”.For his project (and for subsequent projects) Dawson defines a ski descent of a fourteener as skiing "the best (most often the longest) continuous descent available on an average snow year, almost always from the exact summit, with the exception being the few fourteeners (such as Wetterhorn and El Diente) that have rocky summit blocks or boulder caps that were never known to be in skiable condition prior to the project. "
"Since you're skiing natural snow, some descents might have gaps where you remove your skis and move a few feet across rock or tundra. Again, if you're up there on an average snow year with decent coverage, such maneuvers are legit so long as they are not excessive. But, and this is the big BUT, if I'm on a peak with bad coverage because it's too early in the year or a drought, and I have to connect snow patches that would otherwise touch each other, then I don't count it as a descent of the peak. Instead, I go back again and again 'till I get it right. To me this is a critical part of my standards, because doing otherwise would allow me a sort of 'post modern' style of ski mountaineering wherein I could claim a descent of a peak even if I skied a few hundred feet of snow on the thing in the middle of summer. I don't think people would buy that, and it just wouldn't feel good."
So who makes the rules? Why, those who have finished the list in good form and have been recognized by their peers:
Who are those who are working hard and following the rules:
We all climb, hike and ski for our own reasons. If you do not wish to follow the community rules, by all means do your thing - but keep your list private, that way you don’t claim something that isn’t true. If you think the community doesn’t care, just search for Kedrowski’s attempt to ski all the 14ers in the fastest time, having not waited for a skiable line and also not summiting the peaks in questions. We were not amused!