A really scary article in 2

I was flipping through 2 ("Europe's Freeskiing Magazine") at the bookstore last night, and near the back, I found an essay (I think it was non-fiction, but I'm not 100%), that I can't stop thinking about. It starts off with two guys returning from an attempt to ski some really sick line (something verte?) in Chamonix. They've scared themselves so thoroughly that they can barely talk to each other. Apparently, one of them dropped in, only to find the conditions were much worse than expected. The other was convinced that his buddy was going to die, but he made it through safely. After the experience, the one who was watching decides that he can't take the stress of skiing at that level, and heads for home. The other one spends a week or so going nuts as he thinks about all of his friends that have died in the past year. He starts seeing dead people in the streets, and eventually ends up spending the night curled up in a phone booth.

My summary clearly doesn't do the article justice. After reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like to live in a place where death is ever-present. When I go skiing, I know there is risk involved for my friends and I, but for the most part, it's the risk of a blown out knee, or maybe paralysis, from a jump gone wrong in the park. I'm not sure I've skiied anything where a mistake in my skiing could lead to death. Sure I've stood on top of 100 foot cliffs, and set off small avalanches, but nothing that was so risky as to make death a sure thing.

How is it possible to ski in an area with such low odds of survival? At least when people die in North America, we can usually brush it off as some sort of dumb mistake, or a totally random thing that will never happen to us. But in the essay, it was clear that everyone in the valley knew someone who had died skiing in the past season, and most of those deaths were due to skiing in extremely dangerous areas.

Anyone else read this eassay, and want to share their thoughts? If you haven't read it, I highly reccomend a trip to your local magazine rack. It's near the back of issue 6 (the issue is devoted to "Rookies").

yup, read that, believe that it was fiction.

tom/phil/mullet probably best to answer some of your questions.

That pretty crazy, I would love to read the whole article.....kinda reminds me of the article in Powder about Hans Saari and how Erikson(?) saw him drop in, and just lose his edges right in front of him......scary shit, but I think its best to not think about those possibilities......

Erm, yeah, I read it. It was fiction not a true story. Pretty sure about that.

fiction.
but pretty cool.
i read the german version and the part where he remembers a friend of him sliding and falling 1000m, turning him into "rote schmiere"(what does it say in english?) in a couloir... is really scary.
i can just imagine him standing there in doubt about what he shall do.

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Originally posted by subtle plague
fiction.
but pretty cool.
i read the german version and the part where he remembers a friend of him sliding and falling 1000m, turning him into "rote schmiere"(what does it say in english?) in a couloir... is really scary.
i can just imagine him standing there in doubt about what he shall do.

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I think the English version was "red streak"

Mark Twight wrote a piece on Chamonix for some climbing mag years back, it was called "Over the Top or Under the Ground". In it he called Chamonix the death sport capital of the world and made some points about how you have to be cold about death to perform with the best there. This piece ois also available in his book "Kiss or Kill" from The Mountaineers Books.

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Originally posted by Platinum Pete:
Mark Twight wrote a piece on Chamonix for some climbing mag years back, it was called "Over the Top or Under the Ground". In it he called Chamonix the death sport capital of the world and made some points about how you have to be cold about death to perform with the best there. This piece ois also available in his book "Kiss or Kill" from The Mountaineers Books.

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A great book. A good read whether you're a climber or not. Helps you get into the head of these guys that like to give death the finger and keep doing what they do.