Steep Page #3

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"Well, what else can I do on skis?"

Even the deaths of men

like Vallencant and Boivin

did little to slow the pursuit

of bigger and steeper descents.

Extreme skiing is a way of life.

It was my way to become a man.

Stefano de Benedetti, like the others,

was drawn into the unskied world

around the Mont Blanc massif.

During the 1980s, de Benedetti made

some of the most extreme ski descents

ever attempted.

Some so dangerous,

they would never be repeated.

When you live in touch with the mountain,

when you spend most of

your time in the mountains

your vision changes completely.

And after three or four years,

I could see the possibility to ski

where nobody saw it.

In 1984, a film was made

about de Benedetti's attempt

to ski the east face of the Aiguille Blanche

on the Italian side of Mont Blanc.

A face so steep that it held snow

just a few days a year.

Imagine the line. The simple pen

stroke between base and summit.

It makes for an

unrepeatable experience.

Perhaps only in these

moments am I truly aware

that this is my mode of

expressing myself.

That this is my mode of speaking

to the others of freedom.

When I was sure it was the right moment,

it was the beginning of June.

I started from the bivouac

at 4,000 meters in the night.

And I climbed all over the mountain.

When you wake up at midnight

and you cross a glacier with stars

in the black and you start climbing

these big walls

with avalanches, with seracs,

you feel you are a very little thing

in a big universe.

When I reached the top, I knew

that it was possible to ski.

I knew that that day

I would find my perfect moment.

And I did it.

In the perfect moment

I was so concentrated,

there was no space for other thoughts.

When you want to make a turn

and you are at the top

of a steep vertical wall...

I mean, when you are in the situation

that if you fall, you die,

everything changes.

You think very much about turning.

You think very much about where to turn.

And you do all this in a very special way.

You act like a different person.

You act with all yourself.

You are making

a completely different experience

and in some way

you are discovering yourself.

This is the magic of the mountain.

You can accept to die for this.

You don't want to die.

But to live so close

to the possibility of dying,

you understand

what is really important and what not.

And this makes you a better person.

It's probably the highest moment

of my life because in the perfect moment

I was, or I felt to be, a little Superman.

Let's go into this clearing here.

In the mid-1980s, extreme skiing,

the way of life that emerged

in the mountains around Chamonix

found a follower in a young skier

from western Canada named Eric Pehota.

You know, back then I didn't have kids.

I didn't have a wife.

It was me, me, I, I, me, me, right?

You know, you just keep stepping it up.

You just wanted to keep pushing it

and see how big and steep you could go,

without killing yourself.

You can see the log and slosh

right there, right?

Yeah.

It's the ultimate paradox,

the closer you come to dying,

the more alive you feel.

And that's so true.

You know, if you just sit around

on a couch and watch TV.

How can you appreciate that cold beer,

or that nice, big, hearty steak

and this and that?

But you eat soup, and live in a cold,

icy environment for two, three weeks,

and, man, you get back,

and that's the best burger

you've ever had in your life

and the coldest, warmest... Doesn't matter,

that beer could be piss warm,

and it'll be the nicest beer

you've had in your life.

I tell you that right now.

Can't breathe, eh?

We should get back to the truck.

Okay.

It's my life, right. You know,

it's something I've done all my life.

And I pass it on to my kids.

Pehota, like Vallencant,

like Baud, like de Benedetti,

risked skiing

where no one had skied before.

During the 1980s,

Eric was the first to ski dozens of peaks

in the coast range of British Columbia,

including the first ski descent

of the highest peak in the range,

Mount Waddington.

I've lost a few friends,

really close friends, you know,

almost like blood brother-type friends,

in this kind of life

I guess I've chosen for myself.

But, you know,

I guess I've learned to accept that.

When you ski big mountains

in an uncontrolled environment

and on a full-time basis,

you"re going to see death

and you may succumb to it yourself, right?

Pehota's closest friend

and frequent ski partner

was a skateboarder and skier

named Trevor Petersen.

Petersen died in an avalanche

in Chamonix in 1996.

But in the 1980s, he and Eric were inspired

by the partnership of Patrick Vallencant

and Anselme Baud.

Trevor Petersen was a big influence

on my ski mountaineering.

He had a really magical psyche

for the mountains.

And he had this gift of just getting me

psyched and pumped as well.

Trevor knew quite a bit of background

on the French extreme skiing.

He had a book.

I think it was written by Anselme Baud

on first descents in the French Alps.

And Trev started filling me in

and showing me pictures and, you know,

I was just awestruck

at what these guys were doing on skis

and I said, "l want to do that."

In the "80s, Trevor and Eric

basically pioneered ski mountaineering

in western Canada.

They were the guys who put down

most of the first descents,

who taught an entire generation

of western Canadians

what could be done in their backyard.

They just got after it in ways more so

than anybody did in the States

and created a body of ski work

that is really unprecedented.

Me and Trevor always kind of had

the same goal.

We seemed to focus on the same thing

that was the big objective in the area,

the big peak and the big run.

Maybe not the raddest run in the range,

but just the big peak and the line off it.

We were both driven to do that.

I think that's kind of how

we became really close.

To share that moment with somebody

and you know, work towards

a goal and then achieve that goal.

And to actually share that

with your best friend is, you know,

a feeling that, you know,

I can't really describe.

It's just such a great feeling, really.

In the early 1980s,

few American skiers were even aware

of the kind of skiing taking place

in the mountains around Chamonix.

Most American skiers

had never heard of extreme skiing.

In 1988, that began to change.

Steep skiing in big mountains

found an unlikely American pitchman.

His name was Glen Plake.

I grew up in South Lake Tahoe,

which was considered kind of a rat hole

of a place to be a snow skier.

You know, I was definitely an oddball.

I was an outcast.

Like anybody else, you grow up raising Cain

and sometimes you get caught.

Few people would have guessed

that a former juvenile delinquent

with a criminal record would become

skiing's most recognizable icon.

Everything I have in my life is

from skiing, everything.

Every dollar I've ever earned is

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