There’s one premium virtue in advancing big mountain skiing: ski bigger mountains.
The problem becomes how do you get on top of them in the first place? Ski mountaineering has its logistical and physiological limits, and so do helicopters: wind or terrain with no landing zones.
Alternatives? Well, you could cut the wind risk and walk time with an ultralight plane. That’s what pilot and skier Géraldine Fasnacht does, ever since she got her pilot’s license. She stands on the wings of an established vanguard: that Hermann Geiger opened the highest landing spot in Switzerland, 4,370 meters up the Monte Rosa glacier, in 1921.
Now, Fasnacht and her cohort apply the same techniques to open big new ski lines.
Watch it go down — and up, and up, and up — in The North Face’s “LINE & AIR.”
Runtime: 38.5 minutes
