Luke Smithwick

Luke Smithwick is a photographer, filmmaker, mountain guide and mountain sports athlete. He began his climbing and skiing career in the mountains of southwest Colorado climbing fourteeners and skiing the resorts of the Rockies. The Rockies brought him to Alaska where he spent ten years climbing and backcountry skiing in the Chugach, Alaska and Brooks ranges. Luke’s first trip to the Himalayas was in 2001 while on a break from completing his university degrees in archaeology and biology.

In 2010 after a climb on Denali he packed up his belongings into a storage unit in Anchorage, Alaska and moved to the Himalayas permanently. Since that August he has completed at least 8 expeditions every year in the Himalayas on his own skiing pursuits, climbing pursuits, and as a self-employed mountain guide. He founded Himalaya Alpine Guides (himalaya-alpine.com) in 2012, a brand focused on the unexplored, unclimbed and unskied terrain globally.

In November 2018 Luke completed his 68th Himalayan expedition. Many come to the Himalayas each year to climb or ski on an expedition, and some for far longer than Luke has, yet no one has moved there and fully immersed themselves in the pursuit. Welcome to the turbulent and ever-evolving pursuit of one hundred peaks higher than 6000 meters in the Himalayas while documenting along the way.