MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS
Named by Skiing magazine as one of 12 people who changed the sport.
My story
I have spent most of my life in the mountains.
I started skiing when I was two. I studied mechanical engineering because I wanted to understand skis: how they worked, how materials behaved and how they could be made better. Eventually, that obsession took me away from traditional competition and into something that barely had a name at the time: freeride.
For almost 30 years, the mountain became my career. I skied fast, jumped cliffs, made films and travelled in search of mountains and snow. In 1996, Jean Troillet and I went to Everest. After three months and three attempts above 8,000 metres, we descended from 8,500 metres on the North Face.
I was fortunate enough to achieve things I had dreamed about as a kid. But the mountain taught me something far more important than any record.
Over the course of my career, I lost many friends and colleagues in the mountains. Eventually I had to confront a difficult question:
Why, with all the equipment, forecasting and technology available to us, were experienced people still dying?
For me, the answer increasingly came back to education, judgement and the decisions we make before and while we’re on the mountain.
That became the reason for WEM.
The mountain will always change. We have to learn how to change with it.
WEM isn’t about taking the risk out of the mountain. That’s impossible.
It’s about giving people the knowledge to understand it better: to read conditions, question what they see, recognise their limits and make their own decisions.
DOM
The mountain sets the terms
You take responsibility.
We train your instincts to recognise risk.
TRAIN FOR THE MOUNTAIN.