Adrenalin junkies only, please

Freeriding is the latest ski craze. Cathy Packe experiences the all-mountain thrill

If you're sick of traditional skiing and bored with boarding it might be time to try the latest craze sweeping across the mountains. Freeriding began in America, but like all popular trends it is quickly catching on in Europe too.

Freeriders are not interested in pistes, painstakingly groomed and carefully marked. They are driven by adrenalin, and their thrills come from skiing off the beaten track, through virgin snow, with a few steep couloirs and outcrops of rock thrown in to make the ride more interesting. The idea is to take on the whole mountain and to negotiate it by the most appropriate means – jumping, somersaulting or skiing down a vertical face. To anyone watching from the bottom, a freerider looks like an off-piste skier with a death wish.

The extraordinary thing is that anyone can do it – although being young and fit, with a reasonably good technique does help.

At its simplest, freeriding is an extension of off-piste skiing, made easier by the technical developments in skis themselves. While skis remained long and thin and straight, it seemed that boarders had all the fun. Now they are shorter and fatter, and some turn up at both ends so you can take off backwards as well as forwards; so skiers can do anything boarders can do, either on- or off-piste. As a result, skiing is trendy again.

Freeriders may look reckless, but the secret is not to leave anything to chance: at least, that is the advice of a former world champion, 23-year-old Guerlain Chicherit from Tignes in France. "It is important always to know where you are going," he warns; and he is careful to spend plenty of time plotting his route down the mountain ahead of each competition. But not even this can guarantee success. Last year, when the world championships were held in his home resort, Chicherit chose a particularly dangerous route. Despite all his preparations, he tumbled spectacularly down the mountainside and was disqualified.

The final stage of the Bouygues Telecom Freeride Tour takes place in Les Arcs this weekend, and Guerlain Chicherit will be trying hard to regain his title. A fall in the first leg of the competition in Whistler, Canada, in January left him at a disadvantage, but his win a month ago when the tour moved to Snowbird, Utah, has put him back in with a chance of taking the championship.

Chicherit spent two years in the French mogul ski team, but prefers the flexibility of freeriding. "There's a different spirit," he says. "Even in a competition, the pleasure of it is more important than the results."

The former champion cuts a striking figure, with a mass of bleached hair and piercing blue eyes. He wears his own-label "Flair for Freedom" clothes, loose-fitting and trendy, but without the grunge elements that appeal to boarders. Chicherit admits freeriding is a fashion. "Sure it is. But five years ago skiing was a has-been sport. The young generation only wanted to go snowboarding. With freeriding everyone wants to be on skis again."

Cathy Packe visited Tignes as a guest of the Ski Club of Great Britain (www. skiclub.co.uk, 020 8410 2000) and Virgin.net (www.virgin. net/travel)