Beyond the Fence.
Verbier: The best skiing starts where the resort ends.
This year we decided to do Gravity Quest in Europe – Zermatt, Verbier, and Chamonix. All the mountains were great, but our backcountry adventure in Verbier really stood out. It was our first time skiing Verbier, so we decided to take a few runs to get a feel for the snow. Our guide took us someplace where he could check us out and allow us to “warm up”, which apparently meant a Black Diamond run that involved navigating rocks and ice to access a long steep mogul field. The snow was firm and mostly skied-out with a fair amount of crud, but good enough to warrant the effort.
From there, we rode a string of lifts to the edge of the map — the place where the resort stops, but the Alps continue as far as the eye can see. One by one we climbed over the metal barrier into the backcountry, our guide leading the way. He skated out onto a ridge about twenty yards, turned around, looked back at us with a serious face, and said, “Don’t fall.” We skied across the ridge — a knife-edge above a six-hundred-foot ledge, no second chances. On the far side we dropped into our first short descent, thick powder swallowing our skis for a dozen or so turns down to the plateau below, where we stopped, pulled out our skins, and stuck them to our skis.
Then we started to climb. We were already above the tree line and we skinned up for about ninety minutes, climbing from one plateau to the next, and the next, and so on. The sun was high in the sky with no clouds in sight, a perfect bluebird day — helmets off, every vent on our gear cracked wide open, sweat running down my forehead as the climb wore on. By the top we were spent, gasping for air, but grinning anyway, thankful to have made it to the top. Lunch was a reward in name only: sandwiches barely worth choking down — bread like a brick, not enough meat, not a trace of mayo. Thankfully, our guide had a few oranges in his pack. I’ve never been so grateful for a piece of fruit in my life.
After a bit of rest, we let it rip. The descent was a long series of drops with no sign of the bottom of the mountain. The snow was sublime, knee-deep, heavy but fast, and the turns just kept coming – three to four dozen at a time before we’d have to stop to catch our breath. About an hour into our downhill, the mountain seemed to have a change of heart: the soft billowing snow gave way to rock-hard crust on an old avalanche field, then rocky paths, and then streams to pick across. The route threading us lower and lower until it finally spilled us out into town where a comfortable chair and a cold beer were waiting, exactly as promised. We fell into the first available chairs we could find, ordered some beers, and toasted a day none of us will forget. That’s the beauty of Gravity Quest™ — it points you toward adventures like this one, and every hard-earned turn adds up to meals for kids who need them. Going beyond the fence in Verbier gave us a unique perspective on the mountain, and with a little good done along the way, it was that much sweeter. You don’t forget a day like that.
