Check out the pics at:
http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=b61f88c2-d0e5-42a7-9f21-79f99a78fff8
Dag Aabye: The Last Ski Bum
Canada's best-known skiing legend still lives on the edge -- with one more stunt to pull.
Doug Ward
Vancouver Sun
VERNON - One day in February 1969, Dag Aabye skied down the 70-degree slope of The Lions. It was an exercise insane enough to prompt a U.S. ski magazine to give him an award for the most idiotic ski stunt pulled that year.
The run down The Lions, which stick up 5,000 feet behind Grouse Mountain, also put him on the front page of the next day's Vancouver Sun.
"Of course it was a dumb thing to do," Aabye recalled recently, a mischievous smile on his weathered 61-year-old face, while enjoying a libation at Silver Star Resort, the ski area near Vernon where he now lives and works.
"The Lions had never been skied before. But I was young then. Full of piss and vinegar."
Long before extreme skiers and snowboarders replaced downhill racers as the poster boys of the snow sports industry, there was Aabye, a wild mountain man with a shock of blond hair and an instinct to go where no skier had gone before.
"You could call him the first extreme skier -- possibly even the world's first extreme skier," said Nancy Greene Raine, Canada's best-known skiing legend, who lived during the 1960s in Whistler, where Aabye's stunts on skis earned him some local notoriety.
But back to the 1969 descent of The Lions.
It had seemed like a good idea the day before when Aabye suggested the venture over beers to the late Sun photographer Deni Eagland.
Aabye, then 27, who started skiing when he was two, had tackled many of the world's most challenging runs since leaving his home town of Sigdil, Norway.
"The challenge of the south face of The Lions would be another notch in his ski pole," wrote photographer Eagland in his account of the stunt in The Sun.
Eagland accompanied Aabye as he was flown up to a small crested ridge between the peaks in a helicopter. Eagland and helicopter pilot David Alder then flew further down the slope to a vantage point where he could capture Aabye's run on film.
"We watched in awe as Aabye plunged down the slope leaping off mounds and gracefully avoiding trees in beautiful sweeping turns," wrote Eagland.
"But in a split moment the beauty turned to horror as a section of snow about 100 feet wide by 300 feet deep started to slide, carrying Aabye with it.
"It seemed like a giant carpet had been pulled from under him. We stared in terror as the seething mass of snow engulfed Aabye."
The skier's blue jacket popped to the surface then vanished. Eagland and Alder circled the avalanche area for several minutes in the helicopter before seeing a tiny patch of blue at the base of a tree.
"I fell into a tree well. Everything I had was broken: My skis, everything. I didn't have my hat or gloves, nothing. But I was alive. It was pure luck."
Aabye recalled that he knew at the time that the avalanche risk was high. "I knew right from the beginning that I might be in trouble. There was two feet of fresh powder and the snow layer underneath had frozen."
The run down The Lions isn't the only crazy stunt in Aabye ski history. After arriving in Whistler when the ski operation opened in the mid-'60s, Aabye had people shaking their heads when he would balance on one hand on the top of the cafeteria roof. He'd then flip over, ski down and jump off the roof, landing in the parking lot.
Jim McConkey, a Whistler ski legend and pioneer, recalled similar Aabyesque antics.
"I was going up the old T-bar and when I got to the top I saw this guy walking on his hands with skis on. He just flipped over and skied down the hill."
Aabye also skied down the rocky, narrow gondola line at Whistler, terrain that then was avoided by most skiers.
McConkey also remembered the time there was a huge dump of snow on Grouse Mountain and Aabye decided to ski down underneath the gondola.
"I remember going down the gondola and seeing his tracks in the snow. It was very steep and there were rocks and logs."
Only someone like Aabye could have completed such a hairy run, said McConkey. "He was built like a bow-string, all sinew. He was a phenomenal athlete and a great -- what they call today -- extreme skier."
A profile in the winter 2001 issue of Ski Canada magazine calls Aabye the Father of Freeride. Another apt moniker for Aabye could be The Last Ski Bum.
Today Aabye lives at Silver Star where he holds the record for completing the most double-black diamond runs in one day -- 31 on the steep terrain of the Putnam Creek mountain face. Silver Star honored Aabye by naming a ski run after him -- Aabye Road.
Aabye lives rent-free in a converted school bus with a wood stove at the foot of the mountain near Vernon.
He rises early every morning -- about 3 a.m. -- and runs through the dark up an old logging road to the resort. After changing out of his sweats, he dons new clothes and cross-country skis for an hour. (Last year he placed fourth in the world cross-country championships in Quebec in his age group.) He returns to the resort and starts his job as a dishwasher at the Lord Aberdeen Hotel where he also runs a video movie store.
It's a different life than the one he lived in the 1960s. Aabye served in the Norwegian army, which allowed him to develop his skills in skiing and acrobatics. Eventually he moved to Britain where he taught skiing. While at a party in London, he was spotted walking down stairs on his hands. This attracted the interest of a talent agent who convinced Aabye to become a movie stunt man.
The blond Norwegian appeared as a stunt man in about 20 movies, including a few James Bond movies with Sean Connery.
After quitting the cinema in the mid-'60s, Aabye taught skiing for a while in Latin America. Then a friend gave him a free ticket to Vancouver, telling him there was a great new mountain opening up called Whistler. Aabye moved to the fledgling ski operation in 1966. His acrobatic skills on skis were captured in ski movies by Jim Rice, a ski film-maker and rival of Warren Miller.
Aabye spent many years near Squamish as a logger, had a family and divorced. He doesn't talk too much about his personal life but is clearly proud of his daughter, a snowboarder, and his son, a competitive runner.
Aabye is also proud that he's still a mountain man.
"I never really figured out what I would do after I was 60. When I was in my 20s, most people said I would never make it past 30. Then in my 30s, they said I'd never make it past 40. But I'm still here."
Aabye's next big challenge is the 2003 125-kilometre race in Grande Cache, Alta. The event is called the Canadian Death Run -- "death" as in the runners being "dead tired" or looking "like death" or having a "death wish." He's being sponsored by Silver Star to compete in the competition.
It's one more stunt to pull, something to keep Aabye going.
"We have a life to live, right?" "The day you don't have a hill to climb, you might as well forget about it."
