Coffee Table Book of: Alpine Skiing (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Alpine Skiing is a large-format coffee table book of alpine skiing, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: skis old and new, edges and wax, boots, bindings and poles, slalom gates, lifts and mountain huts, groomed corduroy and deep powder, skiers anonymous in plain dark clothing, and the high mountains from dawn to night.

Then boots and poles, the groomers and the snow: modern boots with their buckles, crossed poles, avalanche fences high on an open slope, old bamboo poles against a whitewashed wall, a single snow crystal on a wool mitten, a groomer with its lamps lit at blue hour, one curving track through a bowl of fresh powder, rime feathers on a marker pole, goggles and leather gloves.

Then gates, lifts and the high ground: a giant slalom gate on a steep slope, a red and a blue slalom pole, an old wooden ski with steel edges screwed along it, a peak in alpenglow, a couloir at dawn, a skier traversing a wide snowfield, an empty chairlift seat, a crescent moon over a slope at dusk, a T-bar, hoar frost glittering on the snow, a summit above a sea of cloud and a boot held in a modern binding.

Then the walk home and the turning year: a skier walking to a hut at dusk with skis over one shoulder, old wooden skis strapped base to base, a skier of earlier days with a single pole, a floodlit piste far off under the stars, wind-carved ridges of hard snow, the first snow of autumn above golden grass, frost ferns on a window in a log wall, the fall line seen from the top of a run and a ridge in the first gold of dawn.

Short notes run through the book, on skis and their care, boots, bindings and poles, the snow and the mountain weather, lifts and groomers, and the early history of the sport: early skis were carved from a single piece of hardwood such as hickory or ash, leather lace-up boots were the rule until plastic boots arrived in the 1960s, steel edges were first fitted to wooden skis in the late 1920s, and chairlifts have carried skiers uphill since 1936.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.