Bernhard Scholz runs the blog skialpinist.com and is working on a book about the history of steep skiing, for which he has conducted extensive interviews with the greats of the early and current scene. In the following interview, Anselme Baud explains, among other things, why he doesn't think abseiling counts as skiing and why hard snow is better than powder for steep face skiing.
BS: How did you get into skiing?
AB: I've always skied, I've always wanted to ski. From the first snow to the last remnants that lay somewhere, I was always on skis. My desire to ski remains unbroken to this day. It was normal to ski everywhere, so logically also on the steep slopes. I went on to ski races and trained as a mountain guide. All my male relatives were mountain guides, so it was the obvious thing for me to do. We - Patrick Vallençant and I - started skiing steep faces in the early 70s.
How did you get to know Patrick Vallençant?
When I was 18, I took part in a preparatory course for mountain guides. That's where I met Patrick, among others. The following year, we both went to the "Ecole National du Ski et Alpinism" (ENSA) in Chamonix together to complete our mountain guide training. There we realized that we were thinking along very similar lines. He had already skied the north face of the Tour Ronde and the Aiguille d'Argentiere back then, I had not skied anything on this scale, but there are also steep descents at my home in Morzine and we talked a lot about it.
Did you know about the other steep face skiers? Sylvain Saudan, Heini Holzer etc.
At first, very little. At first we only knew Saudan. Then Heini Holzer came out of "nowhere" and was the first to descend the Brenva flank and also the north face of the Aiguille d'Argentiere. We only found out about this afterwards. He was very modest and did not talk much about his plans. But from that point on, we knew him and followed his descents.
Of course, we knew more about Saudan. He sometimes came here to Chamonix with friends. They were skiing and drinking beer, and it was probably in a bar that they started talking about someone skiing down the Spencer. He dared to do it, his friends helped him to ski up and he did it and made it. They took a few more photos and when they were back in the valley, a woman from "Ski Flash" magazine took an interest. She published the descent and even put it on the front page. That was the beginning! Back then, in 1967/68, the term "off-piste skiing" didn't even exist and nobody was talking about steep face skiing or extreme skiing. But after that first article, things really took off.
Saudan immediately understood that you could make something out of it and built his whole life on it. He still makes a living from the two or three films he made. He also always skied on soft snow and of course used ropes to belay himself - in the Gervasutti couloir, for example (which he no longer talks about today, of course). Nevertheless, he fundamentally changed the "game" because he was able to interest the media in him.
We smiled a little at first because we followed different principles. In our view, you have to climb up a mountain before you descend. We rejected helicopters and outside help, such as porters, too. We managed all our descents in an honest and, in our view, serious way.