Before you rush headlong into snow-covered backcountry, let’s pause for a moment and chat about something crucial: Does your gear align with your skills and project? Because, let’s acknowledge it: the wrong gear can turn your epic snow day into a chilly disaster.
Valentine et Noelle, runners at Patrouille des Glaciers 2024, share their experience following a year of intense training, only to see their race cancelled due to bad weather.
Dominique Perret is a freeride legend who helped pioneer the sport in the early ’80s. Fondateur de WEMountain, He gives us the inside scoop on his passion for snow and speed, WEMountain, and how it all began.
Mattia Piffaretti holds a PhD in sports psychology and heads the AC&T Sport Consulting firm in Lausanne. He has worked with many national and international sporting federations on the mental preparation of athletes, coaches and referees, and he promotes health through sport. He is a sports psychology lecturer in the University of Freiburg Faculty of Medicine. In addition, he is a devoted supporter of WEMountain and a compelling and passionate speaker.
Robert Bolognesi is truly passionate about snow. As an avalanche specialist with doctorates in geography (Université Grenoble Alpes, 1991) and computer science (EPFL, 1999), he travels the Alps and mountain ranges around the world. In the 1980s, he helped develop ski resorts and has since created methods for publishing local avalanche bulletins, improved road safety (through his Meteorisk consulting firm) and laid the groundwork for whole areas of study in applied snow and avalanche modeling.
Before you rush headlong into snow-covered backcountry, let’s pause for a moment and chat about something crucial: Does your gear align with your skills and project? Because, let’s acknowledge it: the wrong gear can turn your epic snow day into a chilly disaster.
Born in La Chaux de Fonds, in the Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Marc-Antoine Schaer belongs to a generation that grew up on skis and snowboards. He came to mountaineering as a teenager and developed a passion for the Patrouille des Glaciers race, competing at a high level in eight editions. Also an adept of kitesurfing and paragliding and a Microtechnology Engineering graduate of EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, he was perfectly placed to combine the best of both worlds. And that is how this dynamo invented and marketed Alpride, one of the world’s best-selling avalanche airbag systems.
The climate within the Cairngorms, the United Kingdom’s largest national park, is the stuff of legend. On a high plateau, 4,000 feet above the North Sea, boulder-strewn domed summits topped with tors, or free-standing rock outcrops, attract the most severe and changeable weather in the UK.
By Mathieu ROS – PHOTOS : Nicolas JOLY First published in Ski Magazine #396, december 2009 Denis Creissels began his career by answering a classified
