According to Mountain Tracks, a mountain guiding company, slopes between 30° and 40° are “steep,” and slopes above 40° are “very steep.” Well, keep all that in mind when we say that Kilian Jornet and David Lindgren went extreme steep skiing on a slope that angles up to 60° in some places. It’s bananas to watch.
The two alpinists went steep skiing down Breitind’s east face after climbing it. At 3,284 feet, Breidtinden is the highest mountain on the island of Senja in Norway. The feat seems impossible, and watching it will make your palms sweaty.
“Steep skiing is a very, very niche discipline among all skiing,” Jornet says in a new documentary about his steep-skiing trip down Breitind with Lindgren. “[Steep skiing is] to ski faces that normally you would climb. It’s to go to places that involves not only ski technique but involves also alpinism techniques [. . .] some ice climbing, [. . .] some rock climbing. So, basically it’s [going to] places where, yeah, you aren’t supposed to ski there, but it’s fun.”
Jornet’s idea of fun is not the same as mine. Nevertheless, it’s fun to watch how skilled he and Lindgren are at extreme steep skiing.
Would you steep ski in a place where you’re probably just “supposed” to be climbing?