4-573: The World Extreme Skiing Championships (WESC) was an extreme skiing competition held from 1991 to 2000 in Valdez, Alaska . It was brought back for one year in 2011 but was discontinued for lack of athlete interest. Co-founder Karen Davey Stewart died in September 2015. This article related to sports in Alaska is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This skiing-related article
8-478: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Extreme skiing Extreme skiing is performed on long, steep (typically from 45 to 60+ degrees, or grades of 100 to 170 percent) slopes in mountainous terrain. The French coined the term 'Le Ski Extreme' in the 1970s. The first practitioners include Swiss skier Sylvain Saudan , who invented the "windshield wiper" turn in the mid-1960s, and in 1967 made
12-429: The art and brought notoriety to the sport in the 1970s and 1980s. The key North American skiers who popularized the sport include: Doug Coombs , Shane McConkey , Seth Morrison , David W. Kraft , Glen Plake and Scot Schmidt , known as The Extreme-6 and all considered among the top extreme skiers in the world during their prime. Because of the extremely long, steep slopes, and dangerous terrain, single mistakes at
16-641: The first descents of slopes in the Swiss, French and Italian Alps that were previously considered impossible. Saudan's 'first descent' in America was at Mt. Hood March 3, 1971. Early American practitioners include Bill Briggs , who descended Grand Teton on June 15, 1971. The Frenchmen Patrick Vallençant , Jean-Marc Boivin and Anselme Baud and the Italians Stefano De Benedetti and Toni Valeruz were among those who further developed
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