Sylvain Saudan, skier of ‘impossible’ mountain slopes, dies at 87

In September 1967, a skier looked down on a narrow chute of snow between the saw-toothed ridges of the Mount Blanc massif. No one before had dared to ski the Couloir Spencer, which sheared off at a 55-degree angle at some points on the French peak Aiguille de Blaitière.

When word spread that a Swiss mountain guide had successfully made the run, skeptics demanded proof. The Couloir Spencer had been considered impossible to ski: too steep, too rocky, too perilous. The next morning, a small plane flew over the site.

There, below, were the tracks made by Sylvain Saudan, who went on to become one of the ski world’s most celebrated extreme sportsmen over the next two decades. He hunted never-before-attempted ski routes - sometimes skimming over rockfalls - on ranges including the Himalayas and famous peaks such as Kilimanjaro.

“Fear has no place,” said Saudan, who died July 14 at age 87. “If you are afraid, it’s over.”

Saudan had once been the skiing equivalent of a big-wave surfer or free-solo climber in constantly seeking greater challenges and testing new methods. His conquests gave him the nickname “Skier of the Impossible” and led to innovations in ski equipment and techniques to handle gradients so steep that his back brushed against the mountainside.

“There’s really only one way out: Don’t fall down,” he wrote in the 1970 book “Skieur de l’impossible,” co-authored by French journalist Paul Dreyfus.

Saudan also helped show the possibilities for the sport away from established ski resorts, opening the way for the growing number of skiers hiking or traveling by helicopter to remote areas. (The type of free-mountain skiing that brought Saudan renown is now so popular that some of the places he first skied in the Alps are part of adventure ski tours.)

Other people before Saudan had climbed remote sections of mountains and successfully skied down. Saudan brought the feats to wider attention with films, lectures and showmanship - always seeking to surpass his previous exploits.

After he skied Couloir Spencer, Saudan tackled similar untested gorges across the Alps, including the west face of the 13,015-foot Eiger in Switzerland and a section of La Tournette, a 7,713-foot peak in France. He rarely wore a helmet and never carried emergency gear such as a rope, saying such precautions diminished the rush while coming down a mountain.

“You become much more aware of the danger, the pressure increases enormously, much more adventure,” he said in an interview published by the ski site Powderguide.com.

To cope with the pitch of the mountains, Saudan developed a style of leaning back on his skis to slow his speed while swiveling his ski tips in what he called “windscreen wiper turns.” He streamlined his ski boots to remove sections that could bump against the steep slopes, and he added ultra-strong bindings capable of handling high stresses without popping open.

His choice of skis depended on the conditions. In hard-packed snow and ice, he favored skis nearly seven feet long and used oversize poles for stability. In deep powder snow, he developed short and wide metal skis that he believed were more responsive in turning.

He often reminded interviewers that confidence and mental preparation were as crucial as the gear.

“When you make a descent like that, you have to believe in your mind that you have already done it,” he once said. “Then, on the day you do it, it is only physically. It’s too late when you are stood on the top to ask, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?’”

In the early 1970s, Saudan began testing himself on mountains outside Europe. He descended the southwest face of Alaska’s Denali (then widely known as Mount McKinley) in 1972 amid temperatures that dipped to minus-30. “When I put my ski boots on at the top, they felt like they were two sizes too small for me,” he recalled. “The clips were white from the cold. I was lucky they didn’t break.”

On Denali, he skied from near its peak at 20,310 feet to about 6,000 feet over seven hours. Later that year, he skied down parts of Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa at more than 19,300 feet.

In 1979, he set off for Nepal in hopes of starting a ski run from above 8,000 meters, or nearly 26,247 feet. On the Dhaulagiri massif, his team reached 7,600 meters before their planned push toward the summit. A sudden storm closed in, he recounted. Winds ripped at their tents.

During the night, a wall of snow and ice crashed into a tent occupied by the team doctor and a mountain guide. They were swept away to their death. When the winds eased, the four survivors began their descent. Then a sherpa, named Pemba, lost his grip on a rope in a fatal mistake. “He was caught by a gust of wind and blown off the mountain like a piece of paper,” Saudan told the Telegraph in 2016.

After 36 hours, Saudan, his partner Marie-Josée Valençot and mountain guide Jean-Pierre Ollagnier staggered into their base camp. “It was my biggest disaster in the mountains,” Saudan said. “They can be a very dangerous place.”

He returned to the Himalayas in 1982 to ski from the peak of Gasherbrum I, a nine-hour run to the base in Pakistan that was considered the first full ski descent from above 8,000 meters. His team took 10 days to hike to the mountain and 25 days to reach the top. Saudan planned the expedition as his last major challenge. “You do not want to risk your life every day,” he told the Associated Press.

But, for his 50th birthday in 1986, he skied from the 3,776-meter (12,388-foot) summit of Japan’s Mount Fuji to its base. There was almost no snow in late September. Saudan skied over slick grasses, brush and rock screes.

“If you can ski on stones,” he said, “you can ski on anything.”

Raised in the Alps

Sylvain Saudan was born on Sept. 23, 1936, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was raised in the Alpine hamlet near the present-day ski center at Verbier. His father watched over cows and sheep in mountain pastures, and his mother tended to the home.

At 15, Sylvain left school and took construction jobs - first as a laborer on a highway project and then driving trucks at a hydroelectric dam being built. He had skied since childhood, but his family could not afford the equipment for him to compete on the racing circuit.

He received his qualifications as a mountain guide and ski instructor in 1961, finding jobs in New Zealand, Colorado and Glenshee in Scotland. He said the often rough conditions of the Glenshee slopes proved invaluable in helping him later in remote mountains.

“The best way to learn to ski is when the snow is not so smooth every day,” he told the Telegraph.

Saudan died of heart-related ailments at his home in Les Houches, France. Survivors include his partner, Valençot, who confirmed the death.

After ending his extreme skiing adventures, Saudan worked as a guide for skiers on trips that included heli-skiing. In 2007, he and two clients were aboard a helicopter that crashed after its rotor clipped the ground while the pilot was landing in a Kashmir valley. No one was injured. “Not even our skis were broken,” he said.

Saudan and the two clients skied until sunset and then camped in the open, finally reaching an Indian military outpost the following day. The helicopter pilot was rescued by the Indian air force. Saudan joked that his obituary was already being prepared.

“I am one of the rare people,” he said, “who already knows what will be written about me after my death.”