VERBIER STEEP CAMP: Another Coombs POWDER classic

“Skiing off-piste today is considered extremely dangerous. Avalanche danger is rated level 5. Only knowledgeable and skilled skiers with avalanche safety gear should ski off-piste. Please proceed with caution.”

The recording plays over Verbier’s base-area intercom every few minutes, reverberating off the ticket-office windows, onto the gondola house, and into the boutiques and bars across the street. It’s repeated in French and English with the same tone as the droning airport warning, “This area is for loading and unloading only…no parking.” Hordes of skiers, seemingly unaffected by the announcement, pour through the electronic turnstiles—inserting and removing their passes with confidence. Shoppers slosh through the village streets carrying bags of merchandise while searching for more. Except for my wandering eyes, I’m frozen in the center of this chaos. In their bright red and orange jackets, Doug and Emily Coombs stand out from the crowd like chaperones at a high school dance. Not at all fooled by the busy, nervous energy, the two know exactly what’s happening.

In the past three days, the mega-resort of Verbier, Switzerland received over two meters of snow. Rumors volley around the village that six skiers have already died in an avalanche. Shuttle buses, that usually operate on a perfect schedule, don’t even appear. The majority of the upper lifts haven’t moved an inch in days. A dense fog replaces dumping snow, enshrouding the entire valley in a white mist.

I’m in Europe, for my first time, to participate in the Coombs’ second annual Verbier Steep Skiing Camp. For the next six days a fortunate few will follow the infamous couple, along with two world-class guides, around a resort Doug figures to be the size of 20 Jackson Holes. We’ve come to the heart of big-mountain skiing to learn from the masters. If we can hang for the next six days, we’ll have survived skiing on one of the most unstable snow packs ever encountered during a camp. Everyone is up for the challenge, mostly because we have no idea what that really means.

At the camp’s opening meeting skiers, ranging in ages from 24 to 50, fill a hotel dining room. Two bottles of red wine, a slide projector, and piles of insurance waivers cover a polished wood table. Helmets, Pieps, shovels, probes, harnesses, and packs stamped with “Steep Skiing Camps Worldwide,” cover the floor. The mood is serious with fleeting moments of awkward humor. A few people know each other, but most are skiers who’ve come to the camp in search of an adventure beyond anything they’ve ever experienced on skis.

Hugh, a 38-year-old Scottish geologist, traveled 24-hours straight from a job in Cambodia. Tony, a soul-searching, 38-year-old, retired investment banker, escaped the chaos of New York City. Francois, who’s owned a chalet in Verbier for 10 years, popped over from his home in London. Yorg, a retired commercial airline pilot, who now runs a bed and breakfast in Barbados, drove down from Munich. In his third consecutive camp, 24-year-old Chad Vanderham from Fort Collins, Colorado, sits in the corner silently gulping wine. We study a small screen illuminated by Doug and Emily’s slides from past camps and recent European adventures. The questions are endless: Where will we go? Who will ski together? What does a Level 5 avalanche warning indicate? But most importantly, what gear should we pack for the first day?

“Everything,” Doug answers with a smirk.

The next day, after two gondola rides, including a high-speed, futuristic lift in a rocket-ship-like gondola called the Funi Space, we stand above Verbier’s infamous Attelas Couloirs. Bluebird skies have replaced the fog. Jagged peaks—every one of them renowned—encircle Verbier. On a typical day in the U.S., we’d have buckled our boots while skating toward the couloirs, quickly checked for other skiers, and dropped into the race for first tracks. But today, we wait on top while the guides poke around in the snow, trade thoughts in French, and finally give us the OK. We abandon our fear, embrace our ignorance, and rip trenches through waist-deep powder. The turns are some of the most exhilarating of my life. Every fragment of pent-up, Euro-newbie tension shoots out of my body, through my ski tips, and vanishes for the remainder of the descent.

Before we can taste the melting face-shots, the guides tear by motioning us to follow. They race from the untracked slope, across a piste into more untracked, to break trail on a traverse. Their energy is contagious as we spastically attempt to follow their boot-track into another series of chutes.

Standing above a 2,000-foot couloir with a rocky, off-camber entrance, we discuss chute-skiing etiquette—always one at a time—and drop in accordingly. With Hans as our guide, Dave and I spend the day with Doug, Chad, Hugh, and Isabel, a 24-year-old Stanford student who’s skied Verbier with her father since childhood. Our objectives for the day are simply to ski as many runs as possible with a stop for practicing beacon searches.