Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

I’m back at work today after a marathon 5 days in a row of proper skiing with my friend Phil. Starting off with a full day’s off piste on fat skis in good powder on Wednesday, we then toured up to the Argentiere hut on Thursday to get a bit of experience on skins. Friday was the Vallee Blanche and as it turns out was the least taxing day of the whole week - just a leisurely boot down the punter route & back in the office for 3pm.

Then on Saturday something very different. I joined Mark Gear’s All Mountain Performance special Freeride Frenzy course as the photographer. The special bit was that Arno Adam - the freeride champion of the world in 1999 was the guest star. To get an idea of what kind of skier Arno is, take a look at this clip from his film Do You, Do You Chamonix?

The idea behind this brand new course is that Mark provides world class coaching alongside Arno who’s role is as a demonstrator. It was a stunning day. To ski with someone with that level of talent was inspiring. Freeride skiing is all about skiing the whole mountain, expressing yourself with the line you take, dropping rocks, tearing down steep couloirs and jumping off stuff. All at mach 5. In fairly hard, bumpy off-piste conditions keeping up with the group challenged my skiing more than it ever has been in the past. I learned loads, took a great set of pictures and generally had an amazing day which left me knackered and broken.

For Phil and I, Sunday was the day of the big finale of our week’s introduction to a skiing/mountaineering partnership we hope will last many years. We did a route called the Col du Passon. It’s non-trivial to say the least. It involves skiing down from the top of the Grande Montets, across the argentiere glacier, then skinning up for a couple of hours on the other side, culminating in climbing a very steep couloir for which we needed to wear crampons and carry our skis on our backs. That’s the mountaineering half, and then the decent - a beautiful hour and a half through some amazing glacial terrain down to Le tour on the other side. We did have a sketchy few minutes when we got trapped in a system of small, avalanchey couloirs which cliffed out just below us, but we managed to traverse out of that and make it safely down to the Le Tour car park and jumped on the bus back to GM to collect the car. It was an excellent day - we got the weather window just right, and did the whole route as safely as we could have done it with the experience we have. Next project is a section of the Haute Route when we both have the time.

Today I’m feeling every one of my 32 years.