You Won’t Believe What The First Televised Extreme Skiing Contest Looked Like

The year was 1991. The skis were straight. They were long, too. Helmets? The word hadn't even been invented yet. And up in Valdez, Alaska, the first World Extreme Skiing Championship was going down on a steep, exposed face the likes of which had rarely been skied before. WESC–the first organized big-mountain contest in history–would open to the doors to the legitimization and expansion of the discipline, would open Alaska as the world's dreamland destination thanks to its combination of puckering terrain and velvety, stable powder, and would launch the careers of dozens of legends, from Doug Coombs (R.I.P.) to Wendy Fisher, Dean Cummings, and Brant Moles. 

But before Seth Morrison would make chucking backflips of 80-foot cliffs the name of the game, these guys made hop-turning down exposed faces on 210-centimeter race skis the name of the game. It was man shit, '91-style. Check it out.