Where speed meets precision. Heitz drops into high gear while filming for “La Liste” in Zinalrothorn, Switzerland. A line so steep that it can only hold snow in the warmer months of spring, it requires absolute perfection from both skier and Mother Earth. Photo: Tero Repo/ La Liste Words Josefine Ås STANDING atop the perfect pyramid of Ober Gabelhorn, 13,330 feet above sea level, Jérémie Heitz musters a shallow breath. The face looks steep— fall-off-the-Earth steep. A 55-five-degree pitch careen-ing toward the valley basin. One of the Alps’ most strik-ing peaks is more a sheer triangular wall than a freeride line, but Heitz is locked in. He waves his arms to the cameras and drops. There are no hop turns, just fast and fluid GS arcs—straight down. He muscles his skis through humid spring snowpack, the only snow that will truly stick to a face like this. Where a traditional steep skier takes eight turns, Heitz makes one. Quads ham-mering, he pushes down the throttle, hurtling toward the world below. in 2016 and is on pace to do it again this year with a second high-octane film project. Forged from the cradle of steep skiing in the Swiss Alps, Heitz combines meticulous planning and preparation with a humble-yet-infallible mental strength, feverishly reimagining the lines laid down by his heroes nearly a half century ago. “I’m born and raised in the mountains. I’ve been able to ski my whole life,” Heitz says. “To commit to skiing these lines you need to know yourself well, how far you can push it, but also know where your limits are.” During the last decade, the 31-year-old Swiss freeskier has pioneered an impossible brand of high-speed big mountain skiing, turning some of the Alps’ most consequential faces into adrenaline-thumping racecourses. It’s skiing at its most spectacular—and its most brutal. One misplaced edge or miscalculated turn and the story suddenly reads tragic. But Heitz has found progression at speed, rewriting the history of steep skiing at more than 60 miles per hour. The former racer and Freeride World Tour competitor revolutionized big mountain skiing with his steep skiing documentary La Liste Jérémie Heitz 039
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 1: Page 39
