"Father of Extreme Skiing" Sylvain Saudan Has Died
The famous Swiss skier Sylvain Saudan, who became known as "the skier of the impossible," has died at his home in the French ski resort of Les Houches in the Chamonix Valley, aged 87.
Saudan grew up near Verbier and qualified as a ski instructor and high mountain guide in the early 1960s, quickly building a reputation for skiing terrain previously considered too steep
He went on to make 23 first descents of previously unskied slopes, including skiing down Pakistan's (8,070 m (26,470’) high Gasherbrum I, or Hidden Peak, in the Himalayas at the aged of 46 in 1982. At the time (and possibly still) it was the longest 50-degree ski descent ever accomplished, as well as the first full descent of one of the world’s 14 8,000m+ peaks. This earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest and steepest slope ever skied. Eight years later on his 50th birthday he skied Japan’s Mt Fuji, on scree rather than snow.
Along with skiing extreme terrain all over the world, Saudan was a skilled heliski guide working in the Indian Himalayas and helping to develop the early operations in Western Canada in the 1970s, in the process creating a pioneering his own fat powder ski decades ahead of similar modern designs becoming the norm.
In his biography, "Sylvain Saudan: Skieur de L'Impossible" author Paul Dreyfus, quoted Saudan as saying,
“I don't live for the mountain. I couldn't live without her. I live with her. ….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.”