Featured Image: Sam Smoothy | Skier: Mali Noyes
Mali Noyes could easily be the hardest-working skier in the industry. A former University of Utah medical student and current oncology nurse, the Salomon athlete still manages to pursue careers both in medicine and skiing. She’s been steadily making her name in steep skiing for several years now, checking off lines from Alaska to British Columbia and back home in Utah.
Her resume is extensive, her passion is limitless, but even for Noyes, her goal this season was a lofty one. It was an idea that propagated back in 2023, and finally cemented itself this winter. In March, she set out to ski the 93 toughest lines in the Wasatch Mountains… in record time. Psychotic? Maybe. Inspirational? Certainly. And after a long chat with Noyes detailing her experience, it became clear that the skiing was perhaps the least important part of this entire accomplishment.
The Wasatch Mountains appear like a serrated wall, cascading upward out of the Salt Lake Valley. Unsurprisingly, these gargantuan structures harbor some of the most challenging skiing in the continental U.S. Over the last three decades, many of these lines have been well documented. Perhaps the most notable collection is outlined in a book titled ‘The Chuting Gallery,’ published in 1998 by skier Andrew McLean.
The steepest lines in ‘The Chuting Gallery’ stand up to any competition. That’s why checking off all of them as fast as humanly possible is an outrageous goal. “It happened during our 900-inch [snow] year in 2023,” said Noyes when pressed about the idea’s origin. “Everything was so filled in, and I started to think ‘how fast could I ski these if I put my head down and went for it?'”
Others have tried, with skiers like Noah Howell and Caroline Gliech conquering the whole book over several years amidst other projects. SLC local Mark Hammond held the established completion record at five months, and thus, Noyes knew her time to beat. While a select few of the lines include slight variations, the final number of runs she settled on was 93. Yes, 93 of the steepest chutes, couloirs and faces in the Western U.S. all skied in under five months; that was the goal.
The idea became paramount for Noyes, like an insatiable itch. It stayed with her all throughout last winter. As Utah’s snowpack never quite aligned, she chose to spend ample time exploring the peaks around Golden, British Columbia, with her boyfriend; skier, horse-kicking protester and Pit Viper aficionado Spencer Harkins. (That’s a power couple of skiing if there ever was one.)
While some would spend years preparing to attempt a project of this magnitude, Noyes said she was done waiting by the time winter rolled around in late 2024. But it wasn’t without a little motivation. “Cody [Townsend] really gave me that last push. I’m so lucky to have him as a friend and mentor. In December, we chatted and he reiterated that the conditions will never be perfect, so I should just do it. I took that to heart and set out to give it a shot this winter, no matter what,” said Noyes.
As time marched on and January ticked away, the conditions in Utah’s backcountry were far from perfect and did not improve quickly. “It was stressful,” Noyes chuckled. “We had several persistent weak layers, but luckily I was in Golden [B.C.] and got to ski a lot to start the season.” She remained optimistic and patiently waited for the Wasatch snowpack to heal.
“The best advice I got was from Greg Hill,” said Noyes. The legendary ski mountaineer told her, plain and simple, “‘Go, and if you fail, you’ll learn from it,’ is essentially what he said to me.” Hill’s advice struck a chord, and just like that, she was off. Fittingly dubbed Project Rapid Fire, Noyes started her journey to ski these 93 lines in record time on March 12, 2025.
The task quickly proved to be a foreboding beast. ‘The Chuting Gallery’ lines are littered throughout the Wasatch, on many different faces and aspects, creating a wide range of conditions. When traversing this much terrain, the mountains are always trying to kill you. There’s no way around it. But surrounded by a talented team of ski partners, including the one and only Sam Smoothy, Townsend and Harkins, Noyes used collective wisdom combined with her own intimate knowledge of the Wasatch to navigate safely.
The mental weight was substantial at the beginning, and that anxiety didn’t easily subside. “As I started the project,” Noyes recounted, “I would summit a line and immediately spiral. I was consumed by thoughts of all the other lines left to do, the changing conditions, my own safety… it wasn’t a healthy start.”
But on day 10, the crew attempted one of the more formidable lines in the collection, Medusa’s Face on Mount Olympus. Without exaggerating, this is a giant, steep rock slab. You need consistent, heavy snow for it to fill in. In other words, skiing Medusa’s Face in a timely manner is fully out of your control. Mother Nature will decide when, for a brief window in time, it’s doable.
This lack of control greatly worried Noyes. “We had four days,” she said. “We got lucky and after skiing that I felt like the initial weight was lifted, and I knew I could do it.” There were ample hard times after Medusa’s Face, but she now felt like it was all within her grasp.
“Don’t get me wrong, the ‘f*ck this’ moments were still bountiful,” Noyes said with a laugh. “I had three close [avalanche] calls in a row, and that kind of stuff can mentally break you.” She had decided early on that it was necessary to do more than one line whenever possible in a day. Of course, that carries a new set of dangers. Fatigue, changing weather, variable conditions and more are all amplified when you’re moving in the mountains for extended periods of time.
“It was so much harder than I thought,” she said, her bright tone briefly fading into a somber demeanor. “I had to learn how to push it while finding the line, all while trying to never reach the point where I didn’t want to go back out… and I knew that was a real possibility.”
That’s part of the test that comes with list-based goals in the mountains. You’re inevitably forced into less-than-ideal situations, even dangerous ones, all to keep on schedule. Noyes recounted that she and Smoothy were on Lisa Falls when an unsuspecting spring storm rolled in and dropped 10 inches of snow in two hours. Natural avalanches began to break loose as the duo made their way down in open terrain; a true nightmare scenario. “It was a bonding experience, but one that I never care to have again,” Noyes said. But cooler heads prevailed, and they made it out unscathed.
In that hardship, Noyes found one of her greatest takeaways. “It’s so cliche, but I was floored by the sense of community this brought about,” she said. “I get so much joy from these relationships, and to me, that’s the palpable beauty of skiing. Problem solving and working towards this objective with these incredible people from around the globe is something I’d never trade. They helped me become more present, and even enjoying a single turn with them would make the whole day worth it. They were there through the end.”
And with immense perseverance, the end was found. With winter holding strong in the high peaks, Mali Noyes finished all 93 lines on April 27, 2025, completing the entire list in an astounding 47 days, demolishing the previous record by three months.
Having had time to digest this maddening experience, Noyes has found a broader benefit to her project that she’s looking to share as she continues her career. “Christina Lustenberger once mentioned this and I love repeating it,” she said proudly. “Every generation of women has a job, and that is to raise the bar.”
Noyes continued, “Hilaree [Nelson] showed that women can lead expeditions. There weren’t many, if any, examples before her. And then people like Christina started recording first descents. Not just a first descent for a woman, but a first descent. That’s what I’m most proud of here: this isn’t the fastest time for a woman. There’s no asterisk, it’s just the fastest time. Period. I’m excited that this is another notch showing that women belong at the highest level of skiing, and I can’t wait to see how the next generation takes it even further.”
Taking it further than Noyes is certainly going to be an immense challenge. That’s because her passion for skiing is just a mirror for her passion towards life. For example, near the end of our talk, the oncology nurse remarked on how she was looking forward to picking up more shifts soon, and how she misses the inspiration she gains from her patients and the reward of helping them. This is someone who looks to be better in every aspect of life.
Selfless, dedicated and aspirational, Mali Noyes is indeed a shining light in a ski industry consumed by clicks and dedicated to the next trending thing. She’s blazing her own trail in the most authentic way possible. That being said, she’s absolutely right; some young woman will eventually push the boundary further, and you better believe Noyes will be there cheering her on when that day comes.
Stay tuned this fall as Noyes will be dropping an in-depth series about Project Rapid Fire on her YouTube channel.
