Extreme Skiing

https://www.skibro.com/blog/en/what-is-extreme-skiing

What is ‘Extreme Skiing’? A Brief History Of Extreme Skiing Extreme skiing is what happens when you get away …

https://newtoski.com/types-of-skiing/

12 Unique Types of Skiing (With Pictures) | New To Ski There are lots of different types of skiing activity, some involve competitive skiing, some acrobatic, and several involve trekking into the mountains to take advantage...

Seth Morrisson
Seth Morrison was possibly the most visible figure in extreme-skiing as truly began to go mainstream in the early 2000’s. Between 2000 and 2013 Seth had featured parts in 24 major extreme ski films from Teton Gravity Research, Warren Miller Entertainment, Matchstick Productions and others. During this time he was also the winner of 15 Powder Video Awards and had many pro-model skis and boots produced by his sponsors K2 and Full Tilt.

Scot Schmidt
In 1983 one of Warren Miller’s camera-men filming piste-skiing at Squaw Valley saw some local “rat-bags” skiing some incredible off-piste lines. He tracked down Scot Schmidt and asked to follow him around. Warren Miller himself called the footage from the next day “the most outstanding to have ever come through my office” – that footage of Scot dropping the Eagle’s Nest cliff sparked Scot’s film career and the direction of skiing for decades to come.

Yuichiro Miura
Miura broke the speed skiing record in 1964, only to see it broken the very next day. Rather than get discouraged, it gave him an idea: be the first to ski Mount Fuji, and ski it so fast it will require a parachute to brake. In addition to Fuji, Miura skied the South Col of Mount Everest in 1970. His parachute failed due to high winds and he slid hundreds of meters down the mountain, very nearly swallowed by an enormous crevasse at the bottom. Luckily he stopped a couple of meters before going in.

Stefano De Benedetti
Beginning his extreme skiing career in 1976, De Benedetti racked up over 80 first descents in the Alps before hanging up his skis in 1986 after skiing Mont blanc’s Innominata Ridge.

Bill Briggs
The original American ski mountaineer, Briggs made his name when he skied the Grand Teton in Wyoming in 1971. As steep-skiing was more of a European phenomenon at the time Briggs’ tale of skiing the Grand was met mainly by disbelief so the next day he chartered a plane so he could go up and photograph his tracks. That photograph almost instantly became iconic amongst the American ski community.

The Swiss-born Saudan is considered to be one of the fathers of extreme skiing and is credited with inventing the ‘windshield-wiper turn’ in the late 1960’s. He also completed 18 of the world’s hardest first descents including Mont Blanc, Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount McKinley.

Extreme skiing is what happens when you get away from the groomed runs and head for the steepest area you can find off-piste. As opposed to ‘regular’ off-piste, extreme-skiing involves slope angles of at least 45-degrees or a good-sized cliff drop.

If you’ve seen films by Matchstick Productions or Teton Gravity Research you know what extreme skiing looks like – but do you know its history? These days, thanks to advances in ski technology, it’s a lot easier to get extreme than it used to be, but back in the day skiers still sent it hard!

Extreme skiing is a term coined by the French in the 70’s who called it simply “Le Extreme”. In the days before throwing huge tricks off of cliffs and riding fat skis simply getting down a 55 degree pitch in one piece was a miracle. Can you imagine yourself going down a nearly-vertical chute with a pair of 65mm wide, 210cm long straight-skis on?