Mountain guides Mike Elges and Zack McGill have accomplished feats most athletes only dream of: ascending 20,000-foot peaks in Peru, for example, or skiing down volcanoes in Ecuador. McGill once summited Mount Baker six times in two weeks.
Closer to home, you’ll find Elges and McGill shepherding climbers up and down peaks in the North Cascades during winter and summer. But when the holidays roll around, they’re occupied with a lighter high-elevation task: hanging Christmas lights around Bellingham with an 11-person crew of fellow mountaineers.
McGill and Elges work with Cascade Mountains Ascents, a worker-owned mountain guiding collective, and Northern Lights, a “group of lively mountain guides who also enjoy hanging lights.” Elges founded the latter as a “side hustle” to make income outside of climbing season. After a decade in business, he estimates they’ll complete well over 340 projects in 2024.
On the face of it, holiday decorations and mountaineering have little in common. But the disciplines have parallel demands: heights, risk management and an unusually high tolerance for freezing-cold rain.
“Oftentimes, when people are calling us, they don’t want their loved ones up on the roof, especially in adverse weather,” Elges said. “And so we hire a bunch of climbers and mountain guides who love climbing — and adverse weather is a thing they enjoy, somehow.”
From summit to roof
McGill and Elges, both 35, cultivated a love for the outdoors in their home state of Colorado. McGill worked for Outward Bound for seven years, whereas Elges got a degree in outdoor recreation leadership at Colorado Mountain College. The duo met while living in a group house in Colorado.
Both have been in the industry for more than 15 years: Elges is one of roughly 200 internationally certified mountain guides in the U.S., and McGill is a certified ski guide working his way through the rest of the American Mountain Guides Association program.
To make it long-term in the outdoor industry, “You really just have to have a passion — not just for the climbing, but for the guiding itself,” Elges said. “You have to really be into sharing that experience with somebody new, meeting them where they’re at, and helping them achieve something that is right on the edge of possibility.”
But while Elges and McGill love their field, they also recognize its limitations. Working year-round as a mountain guide is physically taxing and requires extensive travel. Most make ends meet with odd jobs: Elges’ gigs ran the gamut from working at a gear shop to replacing windows on cruise ships. One year, however, he landed a job hanging Christmas lights in Colorado.
Elges started Northern Lights after moving to Bellingham in 2016. He reached back out to friends in Colorado to see if anyone wanted to join him hanging lights — and McGill was the first (and “probably only”) person to sign up for the challenge. They found success quickly, tackling 50 projects in their first season. McGill then joined Elges in Bellingham full time.
Today, most of Northern Lights’ clients are residential, but they’re also responsible for commercial projects at spots like Barkley Village, downtown Bellingham and Fairhaven. “We have that full spectrum: from a single roof line on grandma’s house, all the way up to the big commercial projects,” Elges said.
At the end of their ninth season, Elges and McGill have achieved a lifestyle many outdoor professionals dream of: stability, security and an ongoing sense of novelty. The formula isn’t always perfect, but “every year we’ve been making moves towards a good balance,” McGill said.
“Being able to take some of that financial burden off and really create a sustainable guiding schedule … has been super cool, and we couldn’t do it without the lighting business,” he added.
Climbing and holiday lights as a ‘moving meditation’
When putting together Northern Lights’ team, it made sense to hire employees who are game for seasonal work, long hours and inclement weather: in other words, fellow mountain guides. New staff are often referred in by previous employees who understand the job’s demands.
In theory, the most obvious parallel between climbing mountains and hanging lights is heights — and the potential adrenaline rush. But most mountaineers will tell you the sport is a form of “moving meditation”: quieting your mind, trusting your body and avoiding the adrenaline rush.
Similarly, Northern Lights staff are “out on the roofs, hanging lights with a great view of the mountains, a view of the water,” Elges said. “This time of the year we have tons of migratory birds that are moving through the area, and so we’re just out there getting to experience that from a different vantage point.”
In reality, McGill added, the most important commonality is navigating risk.
“People watch ‘Free Solo’ with Alex Honnold, and they think that’s what climbing is. But especially on the guiding side of things, our job is that risk manager piece,” he said. “ … Our job at the end of the day is to say ‘no’ to people and get everybody home safe.”
Just as mountain guides must conduct hazard assessments and monitor forecasts, Elges and McGill expect employees to assess properties for hazards, implement systems to minimize risk and think on their feet. The crew also knows when to say “no” when the weather is poor, or if a project is too ambitious. (When it comes to Christmas lights, “people have big dreams,” Elges added.)
Creating a ‘sense of the holidays’
Being inundated with orders for lights can also lead to unusual side effects. At peak season, Elges’ staff are “hanging those lights every single day — and they go to bed sometimes, and they are still hanging those lights.” This is a phenomenon he calls the “lightmare.”
“For some it’s the endless tree wrap. They’re just wrapping the tree, and the tree never quite is finished,” Elges continued. “My lightmare is the slightly miffed customer. They’re not even mad. They’re just, like, a little disappointed, and that keeps me up.”
Still, Elges said the “best part of the job” is watching community members of all ages react to their handiwork.
On a recent walk in Barkley Village, “there was this young couple taking photos and being cute underneath the lights,” he continued. “We offered to take some photos of them. It was just a beautiful moment of people appreciating the work that we are doing in the community.”
Both men have positive associations with Christmas decorations: When Elges was a child, his father even won an award for creating the best light display in town. He underscored how Christmas decorations create “a sense of the holidays,” noting that kids and adults alike “light up” upon spotting them (no pun intended).
Clientele crossover isn’t unheard of, either. Two returning Cascade Mountains Ascents guests also purchased Christmas lights this year. Even more impressively, Elges said some folks who started as Christmas light customers have “then chosen to come climb a mountain with us.”
“Any place in the world where you’re lucky enough to live at the foot of a beautiful mountain, it probably is at least a thought in your head somewhere of, ‘OK, maybe I’ll climb that one day,’” he continued. “It’s great to get those folks that haven’t had that opportunity, or found the right guy. And now they’ve met us, because we hung their Christmas lights, and then I get to take them out.”
Info: northernlightsbellingham.com.
Cocoa Laney is CDN’s lifestyle editor; reach her at cocoalaney@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 128.
