Only as old as you Feel

There was a time when we always had snow. If there hadn't been any, something would have been missing, like in a bad dream. As the nights became increasingly longer, the children snuggled up in the stable, listening to old stories and warming themselves on the animals. Their dreams and desires flew away, far away, towards the clouds. The first snowflake was always a big happening. From then on, it was only a matter of time before they could go skiing. Skiing may be a bit exaggerated. All they had was a few planks from old barrels with something attached to hold the feet. Old slippers, secretly stolen from an aunt and nailed to the planks were perfect. There were no ski lifts. No helicopters. No snowmobiles. There was just about nothing.

Except for these incredible mountains. On foot, they'd climb one of the slopes just above the village. The high mountains were too steep, too dangerous, too far away. And then they would slide down, one way or another, preferably making a few turns. Down, and back up. Their breath froze in their woolen scarves and settled on their snow-covered clothes. Back down, back up, until they were too tired to repeat. Many of them were pleased with that. Many, but not all of them; there is always someone who wants what nobody else dares to imagine. This someone wondered what it would feel like to ski down those steep mountains, their narrow couloirs. Crazy. Arnaud, Aaron, and Eric climb up quickly.

The couloir opens up: not long to go, and it will be time to traverse to the left. They take off the skis and pull out their ice axes and crampons. They follow the narrow ridge to the summit and feel the void all around, which has an almost deafening presence. It's early in the morning. The sunshine, which has just popped out above the plateau, is beginning to caress Pale's summits. Some rays cut through the terse air; the crampons, clipped onto their boots with hardly any weight, spurt up blueish, minuscule fragments of ice. The skis, light and performing, stand out above the three heads. Their sharp edges glisten in the pure morning light, for now biting only into the air. There was a time when everything was different.

To get real skis, you had to be very lucky: if you had the right friends, the ones that skied with the alpine troopers, maybe every now and then you would get a pair of broken skis to fix. Maybe two different skis, and perhaps all you had to do was cut off a bit if they were too long. But compared to the slates from an old barrel, this was undoubtedly great. With these skis, you could get down to serious business, ski fast like the champions, just like Zeno Colò, who raced down the Little Matterhorn at 160 kilometers an hour. All you had to do was wear an extra sweater; then you could go higher and further. And whoever said you couldn't ski down that couloir? Arnaud is 32 years old, and he has skied ever since he could stand.

That's how things work in his family. First, he skied in Switzerland only, on his home mountains. Then, well, the world became larger. In the last thirty years, Arnaud has skied almost everywhere: from the Alps to the Rocky Mountains, from Alaska to Iran. But since he discovered the Pale di San Martino, not a year goes by without him coming here to try out their snow with some local friends. There are no open slopes where you have the feeling of being able to ski even further. These mountains are made up of rock and contrasts. But despite all this – probably for this very reason – it is worth trying. Couloirs like these, with such distinctive and playful lines, are nowhere to be found. Here, you just have to ski.

Eric, lagging slightly behind, stops for a moment. This is his backyard: he was born in these mountains. He knows them like the back of his hands; every wrinkle, every rock. As his partners quickly climb up, he watches their contours, wrapped in breathable and warm clothes, standing out against the sky. He smiles and shakes his head. For this reason, precisely for this reason, he loves to bring people to the Pale. Every time is like the first time: in their marveled looks, he finds what he felt as a kid, on his first ascents. The constant rediscovery of the beauty surrounding you is something so delicate, something to dedicate yourself to with passion, commitment and love. Aaron starts to inspect his line down the mountain.

His eyes explore the snow's surface inside the couloir, imagining the turns he will draw out on that immaculate surface. He stops at cliffs and narrow places, assessing their height and hazards with the care of a watchmaker who checks his mechanisms. He looks down to the village at the bottom of the valley, which still lies in the shade. He inhales a breath of the sky. Silence. Only the delicate sound of the increasingly shorter turns of two pairs of skis is cutting through the air in natural harmony at this very moment. Arnaud and Eric slow down, pointing cautiously to the left of a drop which is definitely too high to jump. Aaron nods in agreement and follows them.

Far away, down in the village, a hand that has already aged considerably after ninety winters draws the curtain to the side to glimpse outside. A pair of old and lucid eyes glows for a moment with the same shine that made it glow when the person belonging to it was a little younger, and there were only wooden barrel slates for skiing. "Why not?" whispers a voice. "So what, you're only as old as you feel. Yes, I'm going skiing today."