Snowlines

A sweeping history of ski mountaineering and the author’s quest to complete its most challenging race: the Patrouille des Glaciers in the Alps

God of skis, protect us.

Simon Akam fell in love with ski mountaineering as a teenager and was happiest above the snowline—until a brush with disaster in the Caucasus mountains sent him into a prolonged mental collapse. The only way to regain control of his anxious, spiraling mind, he decided, was to return to the mountains and, this time, to master them. His destination was the most famous ski traverse in the world and the birthplace of his sport: the Haute Route, stretching for 60 breathtaking miles through glaciers and valleys, flanked by the tallest peaks of the Alps. He would unearth its history and learn to ski its length, unguided, in preparation for one of the most difficult ski mountaineering races in the world: the Patrouille des Glaciers.

In this extraordinary pairing of history and firsthand experience, Akam brings the sport and its pioneers alive. Popularized by Arctic explorers, skiing took hold of Europe at the dawn of the twentieth century as mountaineers who had conquered peaks in summer began strapping on skis to claim them in winter. Alpine resorts opened their first lifts and groomed runs—the beginning of industrial ski tourism as we know it—and began hosting ski races, originally intended as a training exercise for the wild slopes. We see prisoners of war cajoled into ski recreation in neutral Switzerland by Arnold Lunn, father of the slalom; the global adventures of the travel writer Ella Maillart, one of the first women to ski the Haute Route; and the astonishing velocity of Benjamin Védrines as he demolishes the traverse’s speed record in 2023.

Through grueling training in some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, Akam seeks command of a treacherous sport and a precarious mind. At turns triumphant and tragic, Snowlines is a journey of exhilaration, exuberance and disaster.