SKIER OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Born in Lausanne in Switzerland, Sylvain grew up in the small village of Verbier in the canton of Valais – the poorest area of Switzerland.
Sylvain learned to ski aged just three.
His father worked in a factory. Every day when he returned from work, he would tend to the family farm, feeding and milking the cows.
He worked 16-hour days and allowed himself one day off every three weeks.
The family were so poor that there was no transport money, so Sylvain would ski to school.
Sylvain’s first job after leaving education was working as a labourer in France, constructing the route national from Chamonix to Martigny.
He took his HGV license and drove a truck during the construction of the Mauvoisin hydroelectric dam.
However, Sylvain’s real passion was skiing. He was incredibly talented at it and was good enough to be a professional – but his family didn’t have enough money for him to compete at that level and he did not have the right connections.
Instead, Sylvain trained as a ski instructor and qualified as a high mountain guide. In the summertime, he was a rock climber.
Soon afterwards, he took his international ski instruction qualifications and decided to have a ‘gap year’.
He worked in Aspen, Colorado – followed by Mount Cook in New Zealand and finished with two winter seasons at Glenshee in Scotland.
“I went to improve my English, but I don’t think I have made much progress.”
Sylvain particularly enjoyed his time in Scotland. Although the mountains were not particularly high, it was difficult terrain and he felt he learned a lot. “The best way to learn to ski is when the snow is not so smooth every day.”
Sylvain also called Scotland one of the coldest places he had ever been to.
In 1967, Sylvain decided to ski the Corvatsch at St Moritz. He took a lift to the top and then skied down.
Unfortunately, he forgot to tell anybody. The company that ran the ski lifts, thought he had gone missing as he never appeared for the return journey. When they realised what had happened, they were furious – and his pass was confiscated. The Director said, “You are a bad example to other skiers.”
His breakthrough as an extreme skier came that same year. Sylvain skied down the Spencer Couloir on the Aguille du Midi in the French Alps. Up to this point, it had been considered unskiable.
An article in a French newspaper labelled him, ‘The Skiier of the Impossible’. The nickname stuck.
In 1970, Sylvain skied down the Eiger.
He followed this with a trip to the Meadows ski area in Oregon, USA.
There, he saw Mount Hood, a 3,419-metre volcano, surrounded by eight glaciers. Sylvain decided he wanted to ski down the Northeast side.
Nobody had ever even set foot on that side of the volcano.
He decided to have himself dropped at the top by helicopter. The weather was so bad, including blizzards, that they had to wait two weeks until the weather slightly improved. The pilot remained unconvinced. “We’ll try to go up, but there’s not much chance – too much wind.”
Sylvain was also informed that seventeen metres of snow had fallen in the previous couple of days. Nevertheless, he decided to give it a go.
The pilot had four failed attempts to land before managing it the fifth time. By now, it was 3pm and was already beginning to get dark.
The pilot handed Sylvain a cup of hot tea and then flew off. He was on his own.
“For the first time in my life I felt my legs freezing. For the first time I couldn’t feel my skis. I was worried about windslab avalanches – metres of snow had been blown by the previous days’ blizzard.”
Sylvain started well but hit a major problem on his second couloir (corridor). There was no way out. He had to turn around, go back uphill whilst digging himself out. It took him over half an hour.
Despite this, he successfully made it to the bottom, to be greeted by hundreds of people cheering him.
From there, Sylvain went to the Bugaboos, in British Columbia, Canada. There, he found himself waist deep in powder snow.
When he returned home, he invented a new type of ski, specifically designed for powder snow; short, wide and made of metal, to enable quick turning.
In 1972, Sylvain skied down Kilimanjaro.
Then, he went to the Himalayas where he skied in Kashmir. It was here, Sylvain developed the ‘Heliski’ – taking the idea of being dropped at the top of the mountain by a helicopter and then skiing down.
Purists hated it. They said it should only count if you had climbed up the mountain first. Sylvain said this was nonsense. “Skiing at high altitude is much harder, because of the climbing. When you reach the top, you are not in good shape.”
Heliskiing became incredibly popular in the Himalayas. Tourism vastly increased. It made Sylvain very popular in Kashmir, where he is still known as ‘The Godfather of Heliski’.
Back in Europe, Sylvain would organize trips to the Himalayas for tourists.
By now, he had a partner – Algerian-born Frenchwoman, Marie-Jose Valencot. She would do all the logistics for their journeys abroad and often joined him coming down mountains.
Indeed, Marie broke the altitude record for female climber/skiers.
Extreme skiing is very expensive and not a professional sport. Sylvain kept working as a ski instructor and for a while, he and Marie ran a restaurant in Chamonix.
Not everything went well though. In 1979, Sylvain was climbing a mountain in Nepal with a team of five others when an avalanche hit them. The doctor and a mountain guide were swept to their deaths. The other four hid underneath rocks.
Then on the descent, a Sherpa lost his grip on a rope, and he too was killed.
Only three of them made it back to base – Sylvain, Marie and another guide. Sylvain said, “It was my biggest disaster in the mountains. They can be a very dangerous place.”
Sylvain’s crowning glory came in 1982, when, at the age of 46, he skied down ‘Gasherbrum 1’ (a.k.a. The Hidden Peak). It is in Pakistan, close to the Chinese border.
Gasherbrum 1 is 8,070 metres high, and the slopes are at steepness of between 50 and 55 degrees. It was considered impossible – but Sylvain did it.
It was the first mountain over 8,000 metres to be skied down. He went straight into the Guinness Book of World Records for not only the longest ski descent but also the steepest. Both records still stand.
Any skier who makes the very first descent of a mountain, goes into the folklore of the sport. Sylvain managed this feat an astounding 23 times.
To achieve all of this, Sylvain created his own style. The size of mountains he came down meant he was going too fast for standard skiing techniques. He created his own jump turns, going from left to right, using his ski poles. He called them ‘Windscreen Wiper’ turns.
Sylvain would also practice by skiing over rocks without snow on them.
For his fiftieth birthday, Sylvain skied Mount Fuji in Japan – with no snow!
In 1987, the Canadian resort of Whistler Blackcomb named one of their ski runs, the ‘Saudan Couloir’ after him.
They also created an annual extreme race named the ‘Saudan Couloir Ski Race Extreme’. Very quickly, this became popular with people from all over the world competing and thousands of spectators. Multi-national companies sponsored it and it brought in enormous amounts of money.
However, nobody had consulted Sylvain about it and his permission had not been sought. “Nobody spoke to me, nobody contacted me – Hell, even the gift shop is named after me.”
He immediately took the resort to court. It took his lawyers nine years to get the race stopped – but still the case rumbled on.
It was finally settled in 2017 – thirty years after first going to court. It was resolved solely because a new company, Vail Resorts, took over Whistler Blackcomb. They immediately agreed compensation for Sylvain and he allowed them use of his name.
In 2007, Sylvain survived a helicopter crash in the Himalayas. The pilot was blinded by the sun and crashed to earth. Amazingly, nobody was hurt and not a ski on board was damaged. He called it, “My worst day on a mountain.”
Despite all of his achievements, Sylvain was a reluctant hero. He did not want to be seen as an inspiration to others and never encouraged others to take up extreme skiing. He had seen too many deaths. “I always said, unless you can ski in all kinds of snow on very steep slopes without falling, then don’t try it.”
In later years, Sylvain became a motivational speaker, although he kept skiing for his own pleasure.
Ironically, St Moritz staged a leg of the Freeride World Tour on the very slope that Sylvain had been told off for using many years before.
In an interview, Sylvain said, “I don’t live for the mountain. I couldn’t live without her. I live with her.”
Asked about his attitude to danger he said, “When you ski down a corridor, you’re really edging death with each move that is not perfectly controlled. There’s really only one way out: don’t fall down.”
He was still skiing well into his eighties.
Sylvain died at home, of a heart attack.
RIP – Risking Injury (&) Pain
