“I always said, you’ll never, ever make me hike in ski boots,” says Petra Tibbitts, who bought gear for uphill skiing when resorts closed after the pandemic hit in March 2020. “Now, I just love it. It’s kind of your own battle, not just physical, but in your mind and ego. When I get to the top and turn around to see the sun coming up, it’s just so beautiful.”
Dr. Perrinjaquet’s uphill regimen has been a daily winter fixture for the last three decades.
“He’s part of the early vanguard of people doing it,” says longtime friend Jeffrey Bergeron, “but his uphill routine is probably the least interesting thing about him.”
At one point, Dr. Perrinjaquet was Michael Jackson’s tour doctor. A musician himself, he plays stand-up bass in a local band called The Pine Beatles. When he’s not schlepping up the slopes before sunrise or at his clinic, Dr. Perrinjaquet focuses much of his time on humanitarian work. He spent years traveling to Honduras and Nepal to provide free medical treatment, even putting a hard-working Nepalese teenager through medical school and paying for the construction of his clinic. They chat over Skype every Sunday.
Working with Dr. Tom Catena, a former nose guard at Brown University and subject of the recent documentary, “The Heart of Nuba,” Dr. Perrinjaquet spends several weeks a year volunteering at Mother of Mercy, a small hospital in the Nuba mountains of Sudan, bringing medicine and supplies to the war-ravaged country.
Although he didn’t travel last year, Dr. Perrinjaquet spent $81,100 on shipments of malaria and measles vaccines as well as various medicines and equipment.