Dust on crust, but make it a 50-degree slope. When climbing and skiing harrowingly steep lines, Sam Anthamatten hauls up what he calls “skis for going fast”—crucial for descents like this in Zinalrothorn, Switzerland, near his home in Zermatt. Photo: Tero Repo

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Sam Anthamatten’s Relationship with Risk

There’s a peak towering above Zermatt, Switzerland, that has long captured Sam Anthamatten’s imagination. The pointy, ice-coated, triangular face that haunts his dreams is not the Matterhorn, but something much more interesting to him, with one of the wildest ski lines in the Alps dropping straight off the summit. He has been to taller, more technical peaks as far away as Alaska and even Pakistan, but the one right behind his house has captivated his mind for decades.

Sam has summited the 13,330-foot Obergabelhorn many times, even skied the north face in fast and fluid freeride style, but one approach has proven elusive. Harnessing the area’s famous thermals, he wants to paraglide to the peak from his house in town, climb and ski the face, then return back home, all under his own power. Normally, the north face is quite a slog from Zermatt: a two-hour drive, a two-hour (at Sam’s rapid pace) hike to a mountain hut to spend the night, followed by an alpine start to get to the bottom of the line. That’s all before even knowing how the snow is. With the right conditions, Sam thinks he can fly a paraglider from his house to the base in less than two hours. To him, it would be the ultimate combination of his skills as a mountain athlete: climbing, flying and skiing.

With such a deep bag of skills, what defines Sam? It depends on who you ask.

In a world of seemingly cut-and-paste career trajectories, the last 20 years of Sam Anthamatten’s stands out—not just for its longevity, creativity and steady growth, but how in many ways, it’s been flipped.


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