Craig Calonica

Craig Calonica is a mountain climber and skier from the United States.

History
Craig Calonica used to race with the US Ski Team in the mid-1970s, but retired from international speed skiing in 1987. He then began climbing big walls in Yosemite National Park. While living in nearby Lake Tahoe (in California’s high Sierras) he became a mountain adventure racer.

Calonica was a member of the 1981 expedition to circumambulate Everest, his was the first team that trekked, skiied, and mountaineered round the peak in both Tibet and Nepal.

In 1997 he was set to webcast an attempt to ski down Everest’s North Face while a Canadian documentary filmmaker, Peter Chrzanowski, recorded it. The attempt failed and the webcast never broadcast.

On October 21, 1998, after skiing on the Chinese side of Everest, the California adventurer told Reuters reporters that he was convinced he had spotted the legendary yeti twice, “I saw something that was not human, that was not a gorilla, not a deer, not a goat and not a bear," he told them..