Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25241
THEIR WAY TO SAFETY." in Europe are unmarked. There wasn't even an easiest way down posting. There were just big rocks and falling snow. We were a chatty bunch back then, teenagers, and suddenly we had run out of things to say. Two feet of fresh had fallen the night before and it was still coming down. It was the first time I had ever skied powder. I'd like to tell you we floated on down. We didn't. All I remember was a feeling that I had never felt before. The dread certa inty that a mistake here was going to cost more than the change in my pocket. It was my first day skiing in Switzerland and already I learned my first lesson about European skiin g: the Alps are a really easy place to die. By the time we got to Leysin - Switzerland's most crowded resort- I had forgotten that lesson and learned another: Chairlift lines in Europe are no place for the timid. That reserved Swiss courtesy went out the window when it came to waiting your turn . We stood with poles between our legs to prevent little kids from darting between them. Old women elbow bashed us for our places. I got in line for a chairlift and a rugby match broke out. By European standards the terrain at Leysin is user friendly. It's crowded - but that has more to do with late nights at the bars than early morning laps. The terrain isn't as steep as other mountains, but there are plenty of challenges if you take the time to look. This was our fourth day in the Alps and we had mistakenly grown confident. That was all it took. I don't know the name of the run where it happened, all I recall is a twisting, narrow chute with moguls the size of Volkswagens. There were clouds everywhere. We were racing down, knees bucking, rambunctious. There was a jump at the run's end-or what looked like a jump to me. My friends avoided it, but I decided to show off and throw a helicopter. I got halfway around before I realized my mistake. The ground beneath me had vanished and there was nothing taking its place. I had skied off a sixty-foot cliff which I had never seen coming. By the time I had stopped sliding and bouncing, my patella had been cleaved in two. This was lesson number three for skiing in Europe: There are no warning signs_ Always look before you leap. The next tjme I went to Europe it was in 1994. I hitched a ride with John and Dan Egan, and Eric and Rob Deslauriers. All four were famous skiers by then, part of the early extreme bunch who made their name in Warren Miller films, and were busy working on their legends. And when it came to ski ing Europe with legends, these four were the only choice. We went to Chamonix, at the far edge of France, where Italy, Switzerland and France bump heads in a snarl of granite spires and rude peaks. Chamonix, unlike American resorts, is not one lift-served peak with an assortment of neatly groomed runs. It's a convergence of seven mountains spread over three countries with the world's most psychotic freeway, the A40, snaking between them. The French believe that St. Bernard imprisoned the devil in the mountains of Chamonix; although it's difficult to discern this as truth, the little town is dotted with graveyards and these graveyards are apparently full of folks who went skiing and ran into the devil. 48