CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Julien Colonge knows that on the Basque coastline, the early board gets the wave. The 34-year-old lives by the sea, but spends most of his winters in the mountains, often setting up his camper van outside of his engineer-ing firm and making a game-time decision between surf or sea. Photo: Courtesy of Julien Colonge Far from the Alps’ fondue stations and mid-mountain nightclubs, lunch breaks look a little different at Grand Tourmalet. Photo: Kade Krichko Skinny ski culture is alive and well along France’s southern border. Photo: Kade Krichko Arrieta was born by the sea to mountain-loving parents. For his entire childhood, he traveled between Biarritz and the nearby ski area of Gourette, straddling two worlds until a camera helped him combine them into one. After growing up an alpine ski racer, he followed his university friends into the waves, fostering a budding photography obsession from inside the barrel. Eventually he brought the camera to the mountains, and as he pushed higher beyond resort Pomas, it became a means of documenting not only his personal exploits, but also campaigns for outdoor brands throughout France. Nowadays Arrieta juggles clients like Quiksilver, Picture, O’Neill and the World Surf League, and was recently tapped to shoot Olympic surfing in 2024 (an event that will take place in Tahiti), commuting multiple times a week between the area’s natural playgrounds. Colonge has established a similar balance. Resting his head in the neighboring port city of Capbreton, the 34-year-old checks the surf in the morning before shipping up to the Pyrenees, leading groups of mostly French skiers and boarders through his guiding service, UBAC Images. Their friend and Pau native Franck Bernes-Heuga has taken things a step further, designing a pair of surf skis built to perform in the Atlantic’s sizable winter swell. For Bernes-Heuga it’s an organic progression, bringing together the two elements that have shaped the better part of his adult life. In between mountain missions in the Pyrenees and Alps, the Frenchman has been working to create a government-supported ski-to-sea event, while training to be the first human to ski into a barrel. “Where else on Earth can you do this?” Colonge mused. French Pyrenees 077
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 1: Page 77
