pan de sucre – Ross Hewitt Guiding

Chamonix 2018 went down as one of those all time seasons. Sometimes when you in the midst of it all skiing routes and planning the next one, there is so little time to see just how good it was. But putting these clips toegther made me realise how lucky we were. Even more so because in the preseason and about to depart for New Zealand’s Caroline Face, I got injured with a sequestrated L5-S1. Hobbling around Cham in mortal agony with a paralysed sciatic nerve that caused my glutes and calf muscles to wither and die, a successful ski season with around 15 North Face runs seemed a very unrealistic goal. Thanks to all those obsessive ski bums who I shared those turns with, those that sacrifice it all, coming from round the World, to ski down Chamonix’s big mountains.

Born in Chamonix is the latest ski movie to drop out of the mythical ski town and is the product of local skier Tof Henry and film maker Daniel Ronnback. Tof is a 100 kg+ powerhouse who could have given Jonah Lomu a run for his money on the rugby pitch but he’s a skier. Its been interesting watching Tof’s skiing evolve from a Cosmique and Rond guy to big mountain shredder focused on skiing fast and fluidly on good snow. Getting these runs to ski like this takes cunning and patience. Often when riding the first Midi cable car of the morning there are many people hoping to do these big lines and are looking at you to see how you see the conditions because they aren’t confident in their own conditions. As Tof says, when you see its on, you just have to go and go fast. I’ve had the pleasure of skiing a few Mallory’s and some other big lines with Tof last year and hope to spend some days with this young man again before I need a zimmer frame. Make no mistake, these are some of the hardest, technical and steepest ski lines in the World.