2011 was my first trip to Chamonix
That was like my first burst of the Chamonix
ski experience, and I was just blown away.
And for me, that was the ultimate moment
of like this is where I need to be.
Before that trip, I remember watching all these videos
of skiing in the Chamonix valley and immediately I was hooked.
It goes back to growing up ski racing.
You know, there's so much behind just the sport itself.
It was just a natural progression from ski racing in to ski mountaineering
because it's all the same components,
just different terrain.
As soon as I moved here in 2019,
I slowly became part of the community.
Community that didn't speak the same language.
Not everyone spoke the same language,
but they took me in because of the passion we shared
Where we live here in the Alps
everyone is very passionate for the mountains,
especially for ski touring, steep skiing
and when you start getting into winter environment, dealing with avalanche,
the high mountain environment in general, you need a lot of trust with the people
you're going into the mountains with and it doesn't come from day one.
It's something that evolves and builds and eventually
you find yourself around a small crew like I have, that have similar passion,
similar mindset, and of course,
a similar amount of motivation.
Yeah, I grew up in a small town in northern Maine called Madawaska.
Beautiful landscape,
really known for its hunting and fishing and also for its pulp and paper industry.
And that's what my parents did.
My mom and dad didn't grow up skiing.
It wasn't until my brother and I started that they really started to ski
a lot more.
And to this day, my dad still skis.
It was 100% a family endeavour
And every weekend we got in the car and were roaming
around northeast Canada on ski trips.
And fortunately I was able to join a ski club
and I started racing over in New Brunswick.
It was all about ski racing, you know, hitting the gates
hitting the gates, training, training.
Eventually, when I moved to Colorado to Steamboat, I really discovered
this whole other aspect of skiing, which was backcountry skiing.
It wasn't till my second year in Steamboat Springs
that I realized this is what I wanted to do.
Like I want it to be a ski guide, whether it was cat skiing
or even backcountry skiing.
Dropping in!
And along that path,
I learned about this whole other type of guiding,
which was guiding in the Alps and becoming a UIAGM mountain guide.
In 2014, I finished the guide program
and here I am now, full time
mountain guide in Italy.
Hey, how you doing?
What's up, dude?
So, plan is to walk up to the rifugio Chabod
Going into the mountains as a mountain guide
all the responsibility is on me.
That said, I really want to keep
the communication open with my clients.
We need to always be a team, be in unison, especially in places like the Alps,
where there's a lot of people, a lot of things going on
and that's Gran Paradiso
Exactly!
The Aosta Valley is in the middle of the most beautiful 4000 metre alpine peaks
We have Monta Rosa to the east,
the Matterhorn in the north east,
Grand Combin in the north, and Mont Blanc
and Gran Paradiso, which is the only 4000 metre peak entirely in Italy
This has meant that the profession of mountain guide
has always been really important from a historical and cultural point of view
This past winter we had such a poor snow year
in the Aosta valley, it was really beneficial to have good fitness
and be able to go ski touring.
as that gave us more options than using the lifts
It's not well known, but ski touring as we know it
comes from the Aosta Valley, with one of the great Courmayeur guides, Toni Gobbi
Thanks to him, ski mountaineering
as a sport spread internationally
I hope that now with some of the top skiers, and Mike is one of them
and we're really proud to have him in the Aosta Valley guides company,
that it gives the sport a new boost
- So you speak Italian now then? - Yes, now it's better!
Ski all the way down to the bottom?
Yeah exactly
one pasta and one vegetable soup
If you play in the mountains a certain amount of time a year,
especially as a professional, it's only a matter of time that
you’re going to be involved in an accident, either as a rescuer or the rescuee
No matter how you stick to your checklist, there's always a percentage
that things can go wrong.
The more exposed you are more chances of something happening.
The most terrifying accident
that I've been a part of was the most recent.
With a few of my friends.
We got caught in an avalanche pretty close to home here
As we were climbing the couloir, I was in front
I remember it like it was yesterday, you know, at one foot on the rock,
one foot on the snow, and then all of a sudden the mountain unleashed.
It was a force that I have never felt before.
You know, every everyone talks about how the force of the mountains
and whatnot, and you understand that and you think back, okay, yeah.
Been caught in this avalanche here,
this avalanche here...
but I've never felt
more power from a mountain than what I felt in this incident.
It didn't initially affect me until kind of the midwinter
where other accidents started happening.
Another friend got caught in an avalanche
and unfortunately he didn't make it.
And then later on that season, two very close friends of mine
got caught in an avalanche, didn’t make it.
And for me, that was that was a moment where I had to bring it in
I had to figure out is this something I want to pursue
is this something I want to continue doing
to myself, to my family to my friends, to my community?
and no one can make that decision for you.
I think if we walk another 15 minutes and we can get up to
where we can see all of the couloir
I think back to all these incidents and analyse
and self debrief and try to figure out what went wrong.
It's kind of shaping the present, of course, but as well as the future,
because I'm always going back to these moments.
When all’s said and done,
I still want to pursue my passion for skiing.
I want to pursue it with my family, my friends, my clients.
We need to understand that the mountains do take a lot, but they also give a lot.
And we need to learn to find balance
not all days need to be in the steep skiing realm
or training on the piste
Skiing has been a huge part of my life
since I was around six years old
and it still gives me the same thrill as it did the first time I ever put on skis!