Extreme skiing
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Extreme skiing is skiing performed on long, steep (typically from 45 to 60+ degrees, or grades of 100 to 170 percent) slopes in dangerous terrain. The sport is performed off-piste.
The French coined the term 'Le Ski Extreme' in the 1970s. The first practitioners include Bill Briggs, who descended Grand Teton on June 16, 1971, and Swiss skier Sylvain Saudan, who invented the "windshield wiper" turn in the mid-1960s and at some point later made the first filmed descents of slopes were previously considered impossible.[citation needed] The Frenchmen Patrick Valencant and Anselme Baud were among those who further developed the art and brought notoriety to the sport in the 1970s and 1980s. Extreme skiing as an English term has changed since the 80's when the term "extreme skiing" was coined to now be classified under Big Mountain skiing and/or Freeskiing which encompasses all aspects and methods of descending off-piste terrain. Some North American skiers who popularized the sport include: Doug Coombs, Shane McConkey, Seth Morrison, Glen Plake, and Scot Schmidt.
Because of the extremely long, steep slopes, and dangerous terrain, single mistakes at the wrong moment by some extreme skiers have led to their deaths. This distinguishes true extreme skiing (in the French sense) from the spectacular and dangerous (but not usually deadly) derivatives encapsulated in the American English term.
