Full Description
Adventure Skiing is a book that places adventure at the centre of the skiing experience.
At a time when ski resorts are struggling owing to the effects of climate change, we have seen increasingly crowded pistes and expensive ski passes, which are restricting the capacity for adventure. The closure of resorts during Covid led to more skiers turning to off-piste skiing, searching out snow that can be accessed by ski-touring equipment and techniques. There's more hard work in the ascents but gaining uncrowded slopes of real, "wild snow" more than compensates. This is not a guide book or instructional manual; there are plenty of those available. This book is an indication of possibilities for those who wish to step outside the bounds of the ski resort and trust to their own fitness, skills and judgement in seeking quality skiing adventures.
Those possibilities include a sense of progression, taking on increasingly challenging objectives which may inspire skiers to explore some of the wilder and more remote snows of our planet, but that's not a requirement.
Adventure can be found in single days out in the Scottish Highlands as much as in multi-day hut-to-hut tours in the Alps or lengthy snow-camping expeditions in distant locations; it depends on what the skier decides they want and the risk level they are prepared to accept. The accounts of ski adventures in the book offer enough to make informed decisions about those issues as well as sharing what makes an adventure worth having.
Contents
Preface
A Personal Progression
Day Tours to Remember
Chapter 1. The Black Mount Traverse - Scotland
Chapter 2. A Queyras First Descent - France
Chapter 3. Snow-holing in Earnest - Switzerland and Japan
Hut to Hut Adventurous Journeys
Chapter 4. The Haute Route
Chapter 5. Sleds in the Silvretta
Chapter 6. Aigüestortes - "Carros de Foc"
Chapter 7. Wapta Icefields traverses
Exploratory Expeditions - Kyrgyzstan.
Chapter 8. Ak-Shirak 2003 - A Reconnaissance
Chapter 9. Ak-Shirak 2006 - First Traverse of the Range
Chapter 10. Ak-Shirak 2007 - Exploring north of the Petrov Glacier
Chapter 11. Ak-Shirak 2008 - An Unexpected Return
