Euro-dudes

(originally published in Off-Piste Magazine - Issue #48 Jan. 2011)

THE EURO DUDES

The Role Model

I was introduced to my archetypal Euro-dude when my parents ponyed-up for race team, on Mt. Hood, OR, in 1969. My earliest memories were of Dad, as a volunteer ski patroller, at the little hill of Cooper Spur, where he, and later my brother and I, learned to slide those pointy tips left and right. Dad moved his big white cross to the big hill of Mt. Hood Meadows, when it opened in 1968. Banging into bamboo sticks soon turned from a pastime to our full-time obsession. School classes, when attended in the winter, were rest days. We traveled the junior race circuit, on weekends, around the Cascade Mountains. Forty bucks covered the entry fee, gas, a crowded motel room with wax shavings on the floor and fast food. Our sun-weathered coaches were Canadians, South Americas and local stoners. But, the guy that stuck-out and shined was a beat-up, ex-downhiller, from Chamiox, France, named Lionel Wibault.

Lionel was a certifiable, nut-job talent, recruited by the ski director. He apparently was up for a ski-about in the States. In his 20’s, Lionel was here to both coach ski racing and sow his wild French oats. The French accent probably didn’t hurt either pursuit. Why he left that beautiful alpine valley, for the relative squalor of the local RV park/store/gas station ghetto and our quaint “resort”, left questions in my teenage mind. Lionel had a pirate-looking, scared face and a limp, from a big DH digger, but he had a ski turn that was a hot knife in warm butter. He was fun on a road trip too. We nicknamed him Rufus, after the podunk Columbia River town on I-84, because of his love of rural gas n’ piss stops, honkytonks and the female company there in.

At the top of the new Riblet chairlift, Lionel would proclaim, “you must skee zee treezs, bacuzz zay du nut muve”. I could see my brother’s rolling eyes, behind his goggles, saying “no shit, Frenchie”. But that winter, as we followed his smooth, bouncy turns, through tight firs we didn’t realize that we were become more French, all the time. We spent fruit picking money on stiff, 210cm Dynamic VR17s’ or Rossignol 102s’ skis. We had a ski poster of Jean Claude Killy, winning an Olympic medal, on our bedroom wall. We waxed skis almost every night. I even made a downhill suit, in home-ec class, in French national team colors. There is nothing quite like a good clean, teenage, obsession.

Instead of skiing Chamonix’s Valle Blanche with Lionel, we skied White River canyon off Mt. Hood’s east flank. There were no out-of-bound signs, liability concerns, parent-release bullshit or second thoughts. We climbed until someone got scared (and nobody wanted to be that guy) then we put Grand Prix bindings on Lange or Nordica heels and followed wherever his tracks led. It was different that running gates. It was racing without gates; chasing this skinny, wack-job to the bottom of the canyon, to the road where a car full of cheerful skiers would take us back up to the main lodge. Burning turns in that steep, spring corn was better than anything I’d ever experienced. I didn’t realize, until much later in life, the imprint of those days.

Chamonix Baptism

After college, I lit-out for a round-the-world climbing trip with, my buddy, Jeff. We circumnavigated westerly, working crappy jobs enough to travel to the next climbing hotspot (New Zealand/Nepal/the Alps), climb until broke and then repeated. We followed the pilgrim’s trail to Chamonix and on our first night in town I saw a poster announcing a slideshow by Sylvain Sudan. Yep, the Swiss "skier of the impossible" was in town to make some money and spread the good word. I knew of Sudan because he had skied the Newton-Clark headwall, on Mt. Hood, back in 1971. Although he rode a helicopter to the summit, he did ski a 45-50 degree face in deep powder and fine style. I sat in the garlic and b.o. fragrant room and watched slides of an old hero but couldn’t translate much of the French narrative. I wanted to approach him after the show and asked about his Mt. Hood ski but was too intimidated.

Chamonix to a logger looking, Cascade mountaineer, is a scary and intimidating town. It’s not just those big faces and famous routes; it’s also the legends in flesh and blood. I stood in bars with Patrick Vallencent in one corner and Anselme Baud (who was a ski instructor at Timberline, OR in the 70’s) in the other. It is said that Chamonix is a meritocracy, where you are only as good as your last adventure. These guys were doing big lines, every other day and breathing the same air as they, was humbling. Vallencent and Baud’s first ski descent of the north face of the Col de Peuterey can be viewed on youtube.com and watching it still makes me clinch-up. Their flamboyance and confidence wasn’t a pose but a posture necessary to fulfilling their ambition. For them it wasn’t “you fall, you die” but “if you think you’ll fall, you will”. Plus, they were French and the arrogance couldn’t be helped.

I looked-up Lionel, after settling into the campground by the babbling L’Arve river. He was older, married and much more subdued. He procured me a job at the Montevar alpine zoo, above the Mer deCouloir, on the Aiguille de Blaitiere and checked-out the face that Sudan and, later, Vallencent had skied.  Scary but reasonable was what I remember thinking, as I climbed down.

Back Home

After I returned to the States, in the early 80’s, I worked at a climbing and skiing shop that stocked the best magazines of the genres. The Euro dudes, in neon colors, were everywhere, in the mags. Any VHS tape, with European extreme skiing, was replayed, at the shop, till it wore-out. Greg Stump’s classic, 1987 movie “Blizzard of Ahhs” showed American skiers dropping big faces in Chamonix and it stoked the minds of my friends and I and opened the backdoor to possibilities in our backyard. We wore brighter colors, white sunglass frames and the occasional scarf, Hendrix-style, around our heads. The “bicycle turn” was practiced, with our ever-evolving telemark gear, until steeper and steeper slopes could be descended without slipping. In spring, we took to the Cascade Mountains with new enthusiasm. Every old climbing route now was over-laid with the possibility of a ski descent.

I waited for the Cooper Spur route, on Mt. Hood, to ripen into perfect corn snow in May of 1986 and popped jump turns down its elegant shoulder with my partner, Jimmy Katz. He and I center-punched Early Morning Couloir, on North Sister, OR, that spring too. Jimmy had a sketchy but successful descent of Liberty Ridge, on Mt. Rainer. I skied Denali’s Messner Couloir on a windless, 40 below day. We traveled together to the Andes and the Himalayas to ski beautiful peaks and awful snow in the name of “adventure skiing”. It was a good run, back then, and I have been lucky enough to tell this tale but some good friends and acquaintances haven’t been as lucky. Mark Obenhaus’, who directed a 2007 documentary film called “Steep” said, in an NPR interview, “ I think people have an appetite for adventure and it takes many forms and extreme skiing is just one of those forms. I don’t think it’s an aborational activity or that these people are suicidal. I don’t think there is some grand psychological profile that can be applied to them.” That maybe true but my easy answer is: blame it on the Euro-dudes.

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