(Image originally published on Standard.co.uk)

It is the classic childhood scene: child climbs up tree full of enthusiasm, gets stuck at the top and panics. “If you got up there you can get down again,” our parents would say, unhelpfully. And, somehow, you always made it down.

But imagine that same scene as an adult, only you are contemplating jumping off a 10-foot snow wall. Welcome to a day’s ski touring in Chamonix’s backcountry.

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Read the article, originally published in The Evening Standard in 2010, in full, here.