Earlier this season, Laura Bakos joined three other mountaineers based in Telluride, Colorado, on an expedition to Cho Oyu (8201m/26,906ft), the world's sixth highest peak. After weeks of preparation and a four-day summit push, Bakos and team leader Charlie Fowler topped out on Cho Oyu's summit plateau.

After spending some time on the summit enjoying the view of nearby Mount Everest, Fowler descended on foot, while Bakos clicked in and descended on skis, becoming the first woman to ski from the summit of an 8000-meter peak. We spoke with Bakos about the expedition and her record-setting descent.

MountainZone.com: Was this your first trip to the Himalaya?

Laura Bakos: It was my first trip. Before that I climbed Denali in '96 and Aconcagua in '98, but I didn't ski either one of those. It was actually Charlie's idea to ski Cho Oyu. He got in touch with Andy Sawyer and Jim Miller about skiing, and I had talked with them about climbing, so I said, 'Hey I'm coming, too. If you guys are bringing skis, I'm bringing them.'

So it was just kind of a last minute; we put the trip together in about a month and a half, two months. It was the four of us, all from the Telluride area. I was the only girl. None of the others had been there but Charlie. Charlie has been there multiple times; he guides there—I think he spends more time there than he spends in Telluride. This was his first 8000-meter peak.

MountainZone.com: What was your itinerary?

Bakos: We left August 23 from Denver to Kathmandu, spent a few days there and continued on August 29th. We worked with Asian Trekking Company — the only wholly Sherpa-owned trekking company in Nepal. We arrived at Chinese Base Camp (18,500ft) around September 6th and summited on September 24th without Sherpas or oxygen, carrying our own gear and skis and all that fun stuff.

MountainZone.com: Now for the big question: What was it like skiing from 8000 meters?

Bakos: It was not your ideal skiing conditions. The summit plateau on Cho Oyu is rather large, and it was wind-blown, crusted, pocked out; it was horrible up on the top. Coming off that, there was one hill that was really nice, actually, it was the only fun skiing. It's the first hill you come off from the summit plateau and you hit it, but still, I kept starting fracture lines and having to worry about avalanches. I set off a couple of little avalanches just above Camp III when I was coming into there. I was the only one skiing at that point.

MountainZone.com: How did the others do?

Bakos: Charlie and I were the only two who ended up summiting. The other two guys succumbed to the altitude sickness thing. Andy must have eaten something early on and just couldn't get over it. So he didn't go much above Camp I, and then Jim went to Camp III with us and then turned around. It was Charlie and I on the summit, and so Charlie walked down and I skied down.

MountainZone.com: Charlie didn't bring skis?

Bakos: Charlie doesn't ski; Charlie just comes up with the really good ideas. He came up with the original idea, and then obviously everybody else was excited about it. We didn't hear about the Marolts having skied Shishapangma until just before we left.

MountainZone.com: So, the "nice snow" that you described earlier, how long did those decent conditions last?

Bakos: Not long. That one hill off the summit was pretty nice, and then after that I was looking out for avalanches and fracture lines and breaking through crust to who-knows-what underneath. It was just really horrible, looking out for crevasses and stuff, skiing, trying to stay near the boot track and at the same time trying to stay far enough away from it that I wasn't going to kick anything down on anybody. It was just a lot of hard work and not really good breathing, obviously.

MountainZone.com: How much time did it take you to get down?

Bakos: I went from the summit to Camp III the first day, spent the night at Camp III, then went from III to I and hiked out from there. There's no snow below Camp I.

MountainZone.com: What were the best parts the trip?

Bakos: I don't know. The whole thing was amazing. I had never been there before. Seeing Everest from the summit —before we went up there, everybody was like, 'you're on the top, and it's this huge plateau, but you know you're there when you look across and see Everest hanging out' — that was pretty wild.

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