Alongside an intense passion for a sport, almost always comes a sense of self-identification. When I say I’m a skier, I don’t simply mean that I enjoy sliding down hills on the snow. It means something deeper. It means that I enjoy the culture surrounding the sport, I appreciate its history, and I have let the sport permeate my concept of self-identification. Skiing feels as deeply familiar to me as the comfort of family and friends, and I consider it as much a part of who I am today as anything else in my life. This is why when I was presented an opportunity to spend some time skiing in Switzerland with close friends recently it was something I couldn’t turn down.
The European Alps are known as one of largest mountain ranges in the world. A chance to go ski them has always been a dream of mine and this trip represented a sort of personal pilgrimage to the skiing holy land. Yes, Utah might get more inches of snow annually than the alps, and yes there might be more first descents on epic untouched lines in someplace like the remote Alaskan mountain ranges, but the alps possess a certain mystique to them that is acknowledged by any skier familiar with the history of the sport. The Alps are the cradle of Modern Alpinism, as most of us know it today.
We came into the village we were staying in by train at night, so it was not until I woke up the following morning and stepped outside that I realized the sheer size of these mountains. I’ve skied out west in the Grand Tetons, which are widely recognized as some of the more gnarly skiing terrain in American, and they could not hold a candle to the landscape I found myself waking up in.
To reach the skiing village at the base of the Verbier ski resort, which spanned across four different mountain valleys, we were required to take a cable car from our small village up a mountainside steeper than anything seen at any ski mountains in Maine, and this was just to reach the base lodge. To reach the highest peak at Verbier, the famous Mt. Fort, was quite a task. We took a lengthy gondola up to a smaller peak, then skied down to a lodge nestled into a valley at the bottom of glacier called Tortin, elevation 6,726 feet (for comparison, Sugarloaf, Maine’s tallest ski mountain measures 4,237 feet). From Tortin we packed ourselves like upright sardines into a tramcar with ninety smelly French-speaking Europeans and continued upward. I don’t like heights, and swaying in a packed tram moving over deep valleys and steep cliff faces, I let my nerves start to get the best of me.
At 9,678 feet, we stepped off the tram at the base of Mt. Fort. I might have taken a second to think about whether I wanted to immediately get back into yet another tram that I could see docked at a station perched atop the highest mountain peak in sight. Luckily my friends continued on without considering my nerves and I silently followed. While unloading at the top of Mt. Fort, we stepped out of the tram onto steel grating that formed an expansive platform and allowed you to look down past your feet to a dauntingly steep mountain slope. I looked across the valley from us and saw the Bec des Rosses, the venue for the World Extreme Free Skiing Championships, and at this point started to become a bit dizzy.
Feeling quite intimidated and questioning the naivety of my own skiing ambitions, I made my way down the steps to the small area of snow designated for putting on skis. One of the most relieving feelings I’ve experienced followed: snapping into my ski bindings. Suddenly the nerves faded and my dizziness disappeared. The mountain did not feel as steep or intimidating as it had looked from the nauseating tram ride and I felt at home again on my skis. Then I proceeded to immensely enjoy what will likely be the most memorable skiing experience of my life.
Although I was skiing mountains so big and steep it had made me initially sick, I was still just in ski boots, on skis, skiing on snow. The familiarity and comfort I had felt with skiing for the better part of my life was still there, even in completely unfamiliar surroundings. For people who are passionate for a sport to the point where they feel it has become entwined with their identity, experiencing that familiar comfort in a scenario that is wholly unfamiliar is the experience of a lifetime. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything and it’s a sensation I can only hope I get to feel again someday.