Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25241
Our first day there we boarded the cable car that runs to the top of Mont Blanc's Aiguille du Midi. This is the most famous lift in all of skiing. It's famous in the way of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Pyramids of Giza - because no matter how hard you try to wrap your mind around it-the construction seems impossible. Running over 5 kilometers, it's the highest cable car in the world; no more than a thin wire hangs over a yawning gorge that rises 10,000 feet over the Vallee Blanche to a knife- edge ridge right below the dark shadow of Mont Blanc. We got out of the cablt car and walked onto the ridgeline. There's nothing to compare this to-no American resort would dump thousands of paying customers on a tiny shelf surrounded by giant cliffs and then ask them to slink their way to safety. But in Europe, that day, I saw hundreds of people sidestepping down- mothers and fathers and children all edging to the place where the glacier opens up and the "traditional" run begins. The traditional run is for the tourists and the meek, a snaking, gently- sloped tour of the glacier, but we haven't come for the traditional run. We skied and hiked our way further across the mountain, to a point where the ridge ends and the world drops away. This is a place very few people come to ski. It's so steep that it in the summer hang-gliders use it as a jump-off. I remember standing at the top of a steep chute with cliffs off both sides and my mouth hanging open. At the bottom of the chute was a dark line - maybe too dark. I turned to Eric Deslauriers and asked what the hell it was. "That's a crevasse," he said, understated and cavalier, like most professional athletes, "You might want to jump over that." I had never jumped a crevasse before. Sure, I'd seen it done in ski movies, but it was not anything I'd ever considered doing. In fact, it wasn't something I ever considered considering. Then Eric offered me some more advice: "When it comes to skiing a glacier, it's not about style or technique or good turns-it's about survival." I don't remember skiing the chute, but I remember the crevasse. I remember being in midair with my knees sucked up to my chest, my arms whirling and my skis beneath me looking pure and bright and blue - and then I realized my skis weren't blue. I was seeing the sun reflecting off an enormous hole in the earth and that the walls inside the hole were made of shimmering blue ice. In Chamonix the devil has long arms. My most recent visit to Europe was in 1999-this time to Italy. The Dolomites are as formidable as the Alps, but somehow the vibe's different. The Alps are about staying alive, the Dolomites-or maybe the Italians - are about remembering what it means to be alive in the first place. We bought Super Dolomite Ski Passes, this Italian madness that links 650 miles of trails, 464 lifts and 40 separate ski mountains, on one lift pass- though most of our time was spent skiing Val Gardena. It was March, under sunny skies. It hadn't snowed in four days, but that didn't matter. The Italians never venture off- piste. This means that not ten feet from where the groomed trail ends, just past spitting distance, and four days after the last dump, there was nothing but fresh powder. Untouched, untracked fresh powder. What the hell were the Italians thinking? And then, after an entire morning of the steep and deep, we stopped for lunch at a mid-mountain cafeteria and I understood immediately what the Italians were thinking. There were thousands of people surrounding that tiny chalet. People in shorts and bikinis, drinking wine and beer-a crowded nightclub in the middle of a ski mountain. This was my last lesson in skiing on the continent: Skiing might be a sport in Europe, but not as much of a sport as living . • 49