Sam Favret redefines glacier skiing inside Chamonix’s Mer de Glace

Not many skiers like ice, and even fewer make it look good. Sam Favret is one of them

“Oh, I would have skied it/hit that jump/hiked to the top of the line, but it was pretty icy.” One of the all time great ski excuses, it gets you out of anything that’s a bit too scary without any loss of ego or pride. We’ve probably all used it at on time or another, and it’s good to have in the pocket just in case things get a bit too hairy out on the hill.

Unfortunately Sam Favret may have just ruined that get out of jail free card for skiers everywhere with this incredibly creative edit, taken from his full length film Backyards Project. The Chamonix local and descendent of 3 generations of high alpine mountain guides is more at home among the peaks and glaciers around Mont Blanc than most in the comfort of their favourite armchair, and he shows it while playing in his backyard: the mythical ice labyrinth known as the Mer de Glace .

Ice Call – Sam Favret / Backyards Project

Here it is ! PVS Company presents ICE CALL, an extract of BACKYARDS PROJECT, a freeski movie of Sam FAVRET. Discover a new perspective of the mythical Mer de Glace, at the heart of the Mont-Blanc mountains (France).

The Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) is the largest glacier in France, 7km long (when you take into account its tributary glaciers) and 200m deep. Its own weight forces it to flow downhill – surprisingly quickly too, at a rate of roughly 1cm per hour in the Montenvers region (90m a year; 120m a year higher up). It’s this downhill travel that results in the formation of the myriad crevasses and seracs riddling the glacier, as the ice compresses and cracks when flowing over terrain variations.