А. Some people call it the most dangerous sport. It’s certainly the maddest: you’ve got to be crazy to ski down a 60-degree slope.
B. Extreme skiers have some advice for novices in the sport. It’s blunt advice, as you might expect from people who get their kicks from pushing themselves to the limits of daring. «If you fall, you die».
C. For the skiers, the steeper the descent down a mountain is the better. They are happy skiing over rocky slopes and taking extreme jumps. The craziest sportsmen will even ski over cliffs – though they do wear parachutes. And it’s all for an adrenalin rush that they claim can’t be described, only experienced.
D. The World Extreme Skiing Championship event takes place yearly in Valdez, Alaska, and it was billed as «the world's most intense heli-accessed ski competition.» The event featured many of the best freeskiers from around the world who competed head to head, facing some of the steepest and most challenging terrain available.
E. “My breathing is irregular. My heart beats in a rapid staccato. My vision blurs as my goggles fog over, and I have not even stepped out of the helicopter. The small craft takes a hit from a wind shear as we nose down towards the impossibly small landing area carved out of the snow and ice, and I wonder why I have allowed my hobby to take me to this dangerous place,» said Amy Hastings, who is keen on extreme skiing.
F. If all this seems a far cry from the weekend skiing through the snow, it’s because it is. There’s nothing like extreme skiing – in competition or for its own sake.
G. It was the French who invented extreme skiing. In the sixties a mountain guide called Sylvian Saudan took to skiing down the icy precipices above the Alpine town of Chamonix that had previously been the territory of climbers using ropes, axes and crampons. He is considered to be the father of extreme skiing and that has given him the name «skier of the impossible».