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Well, I could maybe do that when I'm 80,

but I can't do that now.

Every mountaineer and every skier

realizes the mountains are

a living, breathing thing.

Where's that chalk? Breathe.

When they're not happy, or just pissed off,

they're blowing, you have to read that.

You can't just say, ""I'm gonna do this, ""

even though they're telling you,

""Not today. ""

That's when you get in trouble.

Being able to feel what the mountains

are saying to you is huge.

They're alive. You know, they're totally alive

and they'll make you more alive.

You know, or they'll make you dead,

you know, if you don't read them.

You know, there's always bad luck,

and I don't know

where bad luck comes in,

but it's definitely there.

When you're always in that element,

the vertical world,

either skiing or climbing,

moving through the mountains,

not just being in them,

but actually moving through the mountains

and with the mountains, you're only a guest.

And you don't know

when your time is up as a guest.

I'm just a cheater. I've been out there

a lot longer than most people

and I just keep doing it

and doing it and doing it.

When I go out, I become more alive.

And that's probably the endorphins

that everyone talks about.

And I guess the more you produce,

the more you want.

And so I think I have been

producing a lot for a long time

'cause I want them all the time.

I just love skiing.

I like the gravitational pull.

It's not a natural motion for the human body

to stand on two planks and slide.

When you ski steep terrain,

all it takes on a 45-degree slope

to just launch into space is

a small tweak of your quadricep muscle.

And if you pop off that snow,

you can sail 20 feet

down the hill with very little effort.

You can almost get a feeling of flying.

You get up to the 50-degree range

and it starts to become

difficult to control yourself.

There's so much gravity pulling you down

that you get to a point

where you can't overcome it anymore.

But anything that produces

this much joy in people's lives

is worth a certain amount of risk,

physical risk, emotional risk, whatever.

But how much risk it's worth

is an open question.

Nowhere in the world are

the risks and rewards of a life

in the mountains revealed more clearly

than in the French valley of Chamonix.

Chamonix is the birthplace of alpinism.

It"s the motherland.

In the "70s and "80s,

it was always kind of held up as

this shining, larger-than-life destination.

It was like, "Oh, Cham, Chamonix."

And it was almost mythical.

You would aspire someday

to go ski in Chamonix.

The mountains are big. They're wild.

They're unbelievably aesthetic.

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