We should be finishing up the season in style with stunning spring snow! There should be music in the streets, Friday nights at the Danois and gin & tonics at the Baraque. Instead we are all making the most of a terrible situation but from what many of you have told me most of us seem to be dealing with it as well as can be expected.
Chris has kindly sent me some photos along with articles and brochures from our early ‘Alpine’ days. With time on our hands I thought I’d write a daily update accompanied by a photo or two from yesteryear.
Today’s is from a Daily Mail Ski Magazine back when I used to write monthly articles for Dave Watts. It was back before my book and it turned out to be excellent in-house training. Originally I wanted to write a book about technique but when we took some photos of exercises the movements were so delicate that each frame looked almost identical to the previous shot. With the market flooded with technique books I decided that another book on technique wasn’t such a good idea. But it was the writing of these articles that finally gave me the idea for an off-piste book. Skiing off-piste everyday gave me the opportunity to start taking ‘off-piste procedures’ photos and after about four or five years I had enough written material to form a good backbone for the book.
Writing a book is one thing but getting it published is a different matter entirely. One day I had a private afternoon with Chris Brown and he asked me the question that we all get, “What do you do in the summer?” I told him that I was thinking of writing a book and he asked me what it was about. After describing what I had in mind he immediately said, “I’ll publish that!”
I couldn’t believe my luck and immediately got to work. Chris took the necessary photos and we ended up finishing on the last day of the season climbing up high into the Combe du Signal to take the ‘jump-turns’ and ‘stem-turns’ sequences. The spring-snow was perfectly smooth but also fragile and with steepness I needed to be very delicate and precise because we weren’t going to get a second chance. Chris did a fantastic job because he wasn’t getting another bite at the cherry either! I remember feeling incredibly lucky and relieved to finish the photos before the season ended, but we did cut it close! My hip op was several days later and I spent my recovery time during the summer writing the book.
Stay tuned for another story and photo tomorrow!