(dramatic music) ♪ (heavy breathing) ♪ (man) Whoa!

♪ (narrator) Without Superman's powers, without Batman's cape, with just a pair of skis, this 21st-century man launched at more than 100 kilometers per hour defies the survival instinct.

♪ (shouting) It was the selfsame survival instinct that drove our ancestors to invent skis.

♪ Just two planks, yet they had changed the lives of millions of human beings.

(swooshing) The era of skiing was created at the dawn of time.

(swooshing) (snow crunching) ♪ (scraping) (rhythmic drum music) ♪ (squeaking) ♪ (speaking native language) (Yves) Contrary to what you might imagine, skiing is not a modern invention.

♪ The idea of having planks under the feet and a pole or two to aid balance dates back to several thousand years before our era.

We found skis that correspond with scientific certainty to 4,000 or 5,000 years ago.

♪ (narrator) The oldest skis on earth to date were found in marshland, in Sweden.

Thanks to carbon-14, they have been dated, and at 5,200 years old, they predate the pyramids of Egypt.

♪ No fossilized soccer balls have yet been found.

But we have found skis all over the world where there's been snow, so we can assume that as soon as humans walked on two legs and lived on snowy terrain, they used skis.

We can imagine that skiing is as old as human beings.

(soft music) ♪ (narrator) Skiing was born at least 10,000 years ago in these mountains in Mongolia.

♪ At least, that's what the nomadic peoples of this region proudly claim.

♪ The paintings in this cave, they say, are proof.

These characters are wearing skis on their feet.

♪ Some scientists agree.

Others are unconvinced.

Mystery prevails.

♪ The skis used by prehistoric humans are still made identically by these Mongolian nomads.

Descendants of these first skiers repeat ancestral gestures handed down from generation to generation.

(tapping) Two long, wooden planks covered with reindeer skin simply bound to the foot with straps.

(shouting) Every winter, the nomads hold traditional races to reaffirm their origins.

(shouting) (rhythmic drum music) ♪ (shouting continues) ♪ But the people of Mongolia are not the only ones to claim paternity.

(melancholy music) ♪ Fossilized skis and cave paintings have also been found in other regions of Central Asia, Russia, the Baltic states, and Scandinavia.

From the Middle Ages, we find illustrations of skiing in books.

Engravings of skiers were featured for the very first time in a 1555 work.

Its author, Swedish archbishop and historian Olaus Magnus retraces the daily life of the Nordic peoples.

We find out that skis were already used by Norwegian soldiers in waging war.

(shouting) (horse neighing) (clanging) (cracking) But skis, the archbishop claims, were used above all in hunting game.

He had this to say about his engravings: "Inhabitants of the polar regions, both men and women, pursue ferocious beasts at such speeds that sometimes they overtake them."

(Guillaume) Skiing has allowed human beings to move quickly through the snow in order to hunt and, therefore, to survive, to follow and to take care of their herds.

Otherwise, it would've been totally impossible.

There are snowshoes, but skis are much faster.

(narrator) Not so long ago, the peoples of the north still needed these wooden planks to be able to live in snowy regions.

(clopping) (speaking native language) It was an instrument of survival.

You might even say that the fact we exist today is down to skis because if some of our ancestors hadn't survived through skiing, then, we, their descendants, wouldn't be here.

(wind howling) (narrator) It's true that 10,000 years ago, a large part of Europe was still covered in snow.

It is, therefore, highly probable that through migration, we all carry some genes from these first skiers.

(wind howling) After allowing humans to survive for millennia, from the 19th century, skiing would enable them to reach the unexplored extremities of the planet.

(wind howling) The man who flung open that door was Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen, a brilliant scientist, aged 27.

He was obsessed with crossing a land that, as yet, was totally unknown: Greenland.

(soft music) ♪ The crossing would be made from east to west with light equipment.

But no one believed in it.

"He's completely mad," they exclaimed.

(indistinct chatter) Nansen himself maintained where there's a will, there's a way.

♪ And the crux of his plan would be skiing.

♪ Skiing is a bit like the rocket that took us to the moon.

It's the tool that enabled Nansen to cross Greenland at a time when it was obviously seen as totally impossible.

(gunshots) (barking) (narrator) On August 15th, 1888, he and his companions set off.

In total autonomy, they towed their light sleds mounted on skis.

(barking) For 49 days, they battled 450 kilometers of fissured ice cap.

They imprinted in their memories these landscapes never before seen by humans.

(cracking) And above all, they accumulated topographical and geological survey data.

Their triumphant return stunned their compatriots.

(barking) (Guillaume) He was a really flamboyant character who would obviously publicize this expedition with a book which would sell all over the world, which would be a bestseller of its time, and which would raise the profile of skiing.

(piano music) ♪ (narrator) By publishing The First Crossing of Greenland, Nansen revealed to the world the secrets of a land that, but for skis, couldn't have been opened up.

♪ (snow crunching) ♪ The method he developed was both so simple and so brilliant that it turned out to be the key to reaching both Poles.

Even today, extreme adventurers use it to continue probing our planet.

(wind howling) (soft violin music) ♪ By the end of the 19th century, thanks to Nansen, these long, wooden planks had become popular even in the Alps.

(bird chirping) ♪ In winter, thousands of kilometers of borders between France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Austria are made inaccessible by snow.

It's impossible for the Alpine hunters to watch over them.

♪ At his post deep in the French Alps, Captain Clair was making ready to winter in Buisson.

♪ His wife presented him with a pair of skis unearthed in Geneva.

She didn't know it then, but this unexpected gift would change the lives of soldiers.

♪ Duly won over, the captain equipped his regiment.

♪ No more long winter breaks.

He and his men would be able to patrol the snowy borders.

♪ (horn music) ♪ Soon, regiments throughout the Alps were similarly fitted out.

♪ The renown of Captain Clair's men was at its height.

♪ They were invited to compete against Swiss and Italian Alpine hunters.

(scraping) (thwacking) (speaking native language) (Yves) 1907 was when skiing took off as that was when the first competition was held.

The press was invited, and not just the press.

The people came out to see.

And they saw, and they found it fun.

(indistinct chatter) (scraping) (laughing) (speaking native language) "Fun" wasn't really a word you heard a lot in the mountains.

It's a sacred place.

There was an initiation.

Women didn't go into the mountains.

They had other things to do.

It was the brave men who went mountaineering.

(soft, lilting music) But suddenly, people who'd never been to the mountains said, "That's good.

I want some.

♪ I want to have fun."

♪ So skiing went from useful to futile.

♪ We're not ashamed to say that skiing is first and foremost about pleasure.

(shouting) (speaking native language) The tempo, definitely.

The rhythm, going fast from point A to point B.

The wind in your face.

There's a magical side.

There's an energy.

There's no engine, but it's fast and you move.

It's fascinating.

You have this feeling of flow.

It's the ultimate.

The pleasure of speed without the burden of effort.

(melancholy music) ♪ (narrator) The 20th century was just beginning.

There were still only a handful of vacationing ski novices.

♪ And Switzerland was one of their primary playgrounds.

♪ In Davos, we'd find the famous author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

He and his wife, Louisa, would blithely descend the resort slopes.

♪ The writer and columnist shared with his readers the sensations that these two astonishing wooden planks could give him.

♪ Looking at them, there is nothing extraordinary about a pair of skis.

At first glance, nobody could imagine the incredible power that is hidden in them.

(man) Woo!

(applause) (swooshing) (narrator) You approach as no other human can the feeling of flying.

(scraping, gasping) (applause) (piano music) ♪ After that, the women took over.

They, too, wanted to have fun.

They assumed the right to put on skis.

(laughing) ♪ (narrator) Skis served as a springboard for female emancipation.

On the snow, women carved for themselves a new space of freedom in unison with the emerging feminist movement in Europe.

From the first competitions, they seized the right to compete.

An exceptional event in the history of sport.

♪ (indistinct chatter) ♪ (Yves) Before 1920, the women had their big dresses, their beautiful hats, so obviously, they didn't have all the rights.

They had the right to go into the mountains but certainly not to take off their dress.

(soft, lilting music) ♪ (narrator) They didn't reckon with the boldness of a certain Marie Marvingt, an extraordinary adventurer, aviator, mountaineer, inventor, and journalist.

♪ While putting on the first skis, this woman refused to be hampered by petticoats.

In launching a new fashion, Marie Marvingt was an influencer before the term was even coined.

♪ (Yves) She was one of the very first women, perhaps the first, to dare to take to the slopes in pants and to encourage women to follow her lead, saying, "Set elegance to one side.

Don't be bothered by outfits that hinder you."

And then, gradually, the women dressed up as men, started to ski as well, if not better, than the men themselves.

(laughing) (scraping) (melancholy music) ♪ (laughing) ♪ (narrator) But for many, a woman remains a woman.

And these amazons with their transgressive behavior so curiously shod unleashed the imagination of these gentlemen.

♪ (Yves) Pleasure had sinful connotations.

Having fun wherever and with whomever was still, at the time, a little guilty.

(soft music) ♪ (narrator) "Skiing isn't very Catholic," frowned the clergy.

♪ However, in 1908, the parish priest of Saussines embraced it with pleasure.

♪ Despite the censure of his superiors, he proclaimed his love for these objects of delight: "I was tempted by the demon of pleasure.

Ah, my fine skis, I won't let you be slandered.

I can still feel you on my feet, smooth and firm.

♪ Your sudden surges, your whims, the fleeting pressure of a body's lean, and the fantasy of a barely conceived desire.

♪ Indeed, how to resist these growing temptations, for soon the era of effortless pleasure would be upon us."

(engine puttering) (shouting) Between the wars, it took imagination to help budding sportsmen climb to the top of the slope.

In (unintelligible), by bike, by motorbike.

(engine puttering) More than ever, skiing was fun.

(laughing) (squealing) (rattling) In the 1930s, clever mountaineers improved their technique a little.

Finally, victory.

A Swiss engineer developed the first ski tow, which would cause a sensation in Davos.

(jazz music) By 1934, more than 60,000 valiant skiers were being towed by the device on a production line of exhilaration.

♪ Then, other inventors filed other even bolder patents.

(chuffing) (clanking) Soon, pleasure-seeking skiers were spoiled for choice of easy routes to the snow-capped peaks.

(Guillaume) That was the real invention of winter sports.

Thanks to the ski lifts, in fact, we take out everything that is a little painful, tiring, difficult, and technical in skiing and only keep the pleasure of the descent.

(shouting) (swooshing) (narrator) And the pleasure of the descent, like pride, goes before a fall... (thwacking) ...which on skis is quite an art.

(Guillaume) At that time, there was only one type of skiing, Nordic skiing, where the heel is unattached.

This required adaptation to the Alpine slopes.

So a dedicated few set about adapting it by fixing the heel to the ski.

Hannes Schneider did that.

(melancholy piano music) ♪ (narrator) Austrian Hannes Schneider was born in Arlberg.

In 1907, this cheesemaker's son opened the very first ski school.

He was only 17.

♪ (Guillaume) Hannes Schneider has a special place, at least personally speaking, because he was one who participated in the evolution of modern skiing.

♪ (narrator) Before him, everyone did as best they could.

Over the years, Hannes Schneider developed a method that codified the skier's actions, and it was revolutionary.

♪ (scraping) (Guillaume) A ski was a single piece of solid wood, so it wasn't flexible.

Back then, turning wasn't easy.

You often had to jump with the help of one or two sticks, or poles.

(narrator) The heel fixed to the ski opened up new possibilities.

Approaching turns in the snowplow position was a better way of controlling speed.

(soft swooshing) (melancholy music) Instructions for this new way of skiing were included in The Wonders of Skiing.

♪ Schneider's work was translated into many languages.

The Arlberg method spread all over the Alps.

In Germany, land of champions, his book became the skier's bible.

♪ (ominous music) ♪ It was in this Germany that Alpine skiing made its debut as an Olympic discipline at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Games in 1936.

(fanfare music) ♪ (chanting "Sieg Heil!")

(narrator) Adolf Hitler was relying on his skiers to make German excellence shine in the eyes of the world.

And he had good reason to.

The Germanic athletes, both male and female, asserted their superiority.

They relentlessly won all the Alpine skiing events.

(indistinct chatter) But to everyone's surprise, a young Frenchman robbed the Germans of a place on the podium.

(cheering) (shouting) (dramatic music) This unknown skier refused to make the Nazi salute.

The photo would be seen all around the world.

It was through this gesture full of panache that we discovered Émile Allais.

At 24, this son of a Megève baker had only started making headlines.

♪ Émile Allais was the most important French skier and may even be one of the most important international skiers in all areas.

♪ (narrator) The first area in which he came to the fore was competition.

In just two years, he won every title.

(cheering, clapping) ♪ (narrator) Émile Allais also owes all his victories to his talents as a handyman.

He adapted his own equipment with great intuition and ingenuity.

(camera shutter clicking) (melancholy music) ♪ (narrator) But the dashing Émile shone in more than just inventiveness.

Several times world champion, he would perfect a new method for teaching skiing.

The time had come for turns with parallel skis.

♪ The Schneider snowplow was sidelined.

"When Hannes Schneider invented the Austrian method," recounted Émile Allais, "there were no groomed runs.

Their technique at the time was valid.

I don't want to boast, but it was we who took a step forward.

Modern skiing was born with parallel skis."

♪ All the schools in France soon fell in step with the famous Allais method, and Émile himself trained the first instructors.

(scraping) ♪ (speaking native language) Around the same time in Arlberg, the Nazis were requisitioning Hannes Schneider's ski school.

(speaking native language) They accused the Austrian, a Jew, of rebelling against the regime.

(whistle blowing) In 1939, after a stay in prison, Schneider immigrated to the USA.

(dramatic music) ♪ There, the skiing pioneer dispensed his method.

It would still prove popular despite competition from the Allais method.

♪ When war broke out, the German families scrambled to give their soldiers their pair of skis in a great surge of patriotism.

(soft music) Skis became essential equipment in the war effort.

♪ (speaking native language) ♪ On the Mont Blanc massif, French Alpine hunters faced the Italians throughout the winter of 1940.

(exploding) (gunfire) Among their valuable recruits was a certain Émile Allais.

(planes droning) (exploding) On the Eastern Front, Russian soldiers were parachuted directly onto the terrain wearing skis.

Only they were equipped for and used to skiing at 30 degrees below zero.

(exploding) Supported by their tanks, they regained the advantage and routed the Germans.

(engine puttering) (clanking) (uplifting music) Switzerland was spared by the conflicts but remained on its guard.

♪ In 1943, to motivate the troops, a race was created, the Glacier Patrol, a 53-kilometer race at high altitude.

This would forge the values of solidarity and brotherhood amongst the mountain regiments.

♪ Today, this legendary race takes place every two years.

It has opened up to civilians from all countries.

(thrum of helicopter blades) (bell chiming) The war ended, and the story of skiing turned a new page.

Throughout the Alps, more and more modest villages were turning into ski resorts.

Even in the most remote valleys, the arrival of skiers would turn the lives of the mountain people upside down.

(Guillaume) The local population was people who still lived as their parents and grandparents did, in the valleys where, sometimes, there wasn't even any electricity.

They lived there.

They had cows, pigs, potatoes, lettuces.

Then, they were told, "Now you'll live from tourism," which is quite a leap into the unknown.

But they went for it.

(narrator) The villagers rolled up their sleeves.

To welcome the tourists, they had to build and install ski lifts and bring them into line with modern standards of comfort.

(jazz music) (narrator) The hotel industry in particular offered new opportunities.

No need to go off to the cities to find work.

People of every generation retrained for new jobs.

♪ (Guillaume) So these are rapid, meteoric life changes.

And there are few examples from other areas that have known such a sudden, abrupt passage from one world to another.

An entire past several centuries long melted in favor of a kind of El Dorado, this financial windfall.

(melancholy music) (narrator) To promote their charms to city dwellers, the ski resorts advertised joy, snow, and pleasure.

♪ In the streets and in the stations, smiling skiers would invite you on a trip.

All over Europe, you'd find happiness on skis.

♪ In Switzerland, the resort of St. Moritz was the first to use skiing as a unique selling proposition to attract tourists.

(clopping) ♪ (bell chiming) A century later, St. Moritz still projects an image of skiing glamour.

Showing off in skis, ç'est chic.

(funky music) The resort became a must for society gatherings.

The alarming Rita Hayworth... ♪ (camera shutter clicking) ...Michèle Morgan, French elegance... (camera shutter clicking) ...Ursula Andress, most Swiss of all the Bond girls... ♪ (camera shutter clicking) ...the incorrigible seducer, Clark Gable, and Winston Churchill sans cigar.

♪ (Dr. Grégory Quin) The relationship between St. Moritz and Winston Churchill was pretty strong, and we know that Churchill came several times to Suvretta House.

And the crowned heads came to vacation here as well as meet other influential people.

Important decisions for the future of the world were taken in the cozy lounges of the hotel.

(narrator) Among the resort's loyal crowned heads here was even an emperor, the dreaded Shah of Iran, who liked to live there in grand style.

(bells jingling) (laughing) With less glitter but certainly more gusto, thousands of children were leaving their parents for the first time.

(speaking native language) They set off to taste the joys of skiing with their classmates.

(shouting) (chuffing) From the 1950s, no one was to miss out on the benefits of this sport.

Whether called "ski camp" or "snow class," doctors prescribed these stays as miracle cures.

(singing in native language) (yodeling) (upbeat music) ♪ (narrator) For generations of new skiers, these interludes in the mountains became a factory for great memories together.

♪ (narrator) For them, winter would become synonymous with skiing.

(narrator) In Switzerland, the number of schoolchildren who attend ski camps during their education is close to 100 percent.

They can sing the national slogan "Everyone on skis with pride."

(shouting, swooshing) These school-aged ski camps between 10 and 20 would actually make youngsters want to continue skiing in later life.

It's with these young people that we hope to conquer the adults of tomorrow.

(melancholy music) ♪ (narrator) To meet the growing demand of these new skiers, resorts spring up in the Alps.

♪ Unlike Switzerland which developed its existing villages, the French state launched in 1964 a vast mountain development policy known as the Plein Neiges.

♪ (Guillaume) The state would facilitate the construction of integrated ski resorts at high altitude to generate mass industrial tourism.

And above all, they would be built at altitudes where there are no villages.

They would construct ski resorts out of nothing on virgin terrain of altitude with all the attendant technical difficulties and constraints that implied.

(soft music) We had to do everything, build everything.

It wasn't easy.

It really took a pioneer spirit to invent an architecture, a town planning.

♪ (narrator) One of the most emblematic resorts, Avoriaz, surprised with its radical concept.

♪ ♪ (melancholy piano music) ♪ (swooshing) ♪ (Guillaume) The principle is, you can spend your week's vacation in extremely practical buildings without needing your car.

In architectural terms, it may be debatable, but in town planning terms, it's brilliant.

(swooshing) ♪ (exuberant music) ♪ (narrator) In 1968, 800 million television viewers were captivated by the Grenoble Olympic Games.

♪ All generations of the family were thronged in front of their brand-new television set.

For the first time in history, the Games were broadcast live, in color, and in mondovision.

(applause) (melancholy music) ♪ All factors are simultaneously present to trigger collective interest among the population.

People would go around to their neighbors or to family members with color TVs to follow the events.

(speaking native language) ♪ (swooshing) (narrator) The star of those Games was Jean-Claude Killy.

With him, the sport's popularity reached its peak.

(swooshing) The whole world became passionate about Alpine skiing events.

(cheering) (narrator) Jean-Claude Killy won three gold medals.

Never before had any skier known such fame.

He became an international icon.

(all) Jean-Claude!

Jean-Claude!

♪ (Guillaume) There was a kind of excitement.

It was a time when we'd see skiing in magazines on the cover of Paris Match or on the news.

Skiing was an attractive sport.

We had stars.

Each country has had its great champion.

♪ (narrator) Shortly after, in the 1970s, it was Switzerland's turn to parade its champions.

Bernhard Russi, reserved and studious, became a star admired by all.

(narrator) His great rival, Roland Collombin, was quite the opposite, a hot-headed party animal.

(narrator) He also collected World Cup victories.

(indistinct announcements) Their fierce duel enthralled spectators for years.

(cheering) Together, they have written a page of legend in the history of competitive skiing.

(speaking native language) (speaking native language) It's like this saga that takes place every winter with a winner at the end.

Following the exploits of Killy and the others is taking an interest in skiing, and that makes you want to ski.

(bluesy music) ♪ (narrator) Ski sales were big business.

Ten million pairs of skis were sold each year in the 1970s.

♪ Rossignol, founded by a carpenter, became the largest manufacturer, accounting for almost one-third of global sales.

Production lines were running at full speed.

Farewell to the antique wooden planks.

Now was the time for modern materials.

♪ (rattling) Ski-making became a cutting-edge technique.

♪ Émile Allais, ever the avant-gardist, developed revolutionary new models for the brand, including the famous Allais 60 and the legendary Strato.

Skiers were discovering new sensations.

(scraping) (honking) As the '80s arrived, like here in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, 50,000 holidaymakers thronged together at the height of the season.

Skiing had become so popular that everyone, young or not so young, broke or well-off, wanted their place on the ski lift.

(speaking native language) The development of ski lifts has been a vital element in the creation of skiing as a mass hobby.

(swooshing) (Dr. Grégory Quin) We're finally getting to the maximum that these valleys can accommodate.

Some ski areas have reached 1,300 kilometers of slopes with 50 ski lifts.

It's tough to cover all of that in one week's vacation.

(narrator) White gold.

The expression has never been so apposite.

In the early 1980s, classic Alpine skiing reached its peak of popularity.

But a wind of protest was rising.

Frozen by its own success, skiing hadn't evolved for years.

(swooshing) Young people were now claiming the right to slide with the times.

(grunting) (grunting, shouting) (shouting) (cheering) It was a new generation who invented other ways of sliding and descending, saying, "Hey, guys.

Mom and Dad, look, we don't ski like you."

So they invented dissident skiing.

Basically, they were disrespecting the Alpine skiing orthodoxy.

(cheering, clapping) It was the beginning of the free period.

And it certainly opened doors.

Board sports were fashionable.

"We can do that?"

(dramatic music) ♪ (narrator) Skiing left the beaten track of the groomed slopes and ventured into mountaineer's terrain, attracted by the vertigo of verticality.

♪ It was the rise of off-piste, new ground... (scraping) ♪ ...for which the skis offered by the market were no longer suitable.

(scraping) (crunching) (Dominique) The ski brands made skis for competition.

And when we went to see the brands and say, "Look, to ski as we want, we need other tools because these don't suit and they're too long.

They dig into the snow too deeply."

And we had to fight.

And when I say "fight," I physically wrestled with manufacturers to change the way they made skis.

(scraping) We made the skis smaller, we widened them.

We made skiing much easier.

♪ (narrator) By having skis evolve, Dominique Perret brought speed to the slopes.

♪ But what he and other pioneers did was engineer a new era, the marriage of board sports and photography.

(swooshing) ♪ At the dawn of the 2000s, these startling images shot by Dominique Perret went viral.

The press awarded him the prize for the best freerider of the 20th century.

♪ And millions of young people fall into the intoxicating promises of these new films where risk-taking is part of the pleasure.

(rustling) (Dominique) We sold beautiful pictures of powder snow, but in fact, behind those images, there was work, there was knowledge, there were professionals.

And that couldn't be seen.

So the image we gave was slightly biased.

(Dominique) It requires a certain responsibility in that today there are thousands or millions of practitioners.

They're young, they're in very good physical shape, however, they don't have the knowledge of the mountains, and we see that there are just over 200 deaths per year in avalanches and things like that.

And here, I think, there's a huge amount of work to be done to give these people access but with training that is done intelligently.

(thwacking) (narrator) At the end of the 20th century, our two planks are experiencing a new and final revolution.

They have more of an hourglass shape that allows you to indulge in what they now call "carving."

♪ Carving comes from snowboarding.

Ski copied snowboard.

♪ Because, actually, it was they who started to carve, that is, to ride on the edges and not just slide.

It's elegant and stylish.

♪ It was a real revolution because it changed everything from a technical point of view, but also from the point of view of the sensations of sliding, everything, in fact.

(cheering) (uplifting music) (narrator) Thus trimmed, skis found a new lease of life.

Everyone, champion or novice, could earn their share of thrills.

(camera shutter clicking) Émile Allais, still dashing on the eve of celebrating his 100th birthday, embraced them with enthusiasm.

(soft, lilting music) (camera shutter clicking) But how long will we be able to go on sliding?

♪ (speaking native language) (Eliane) I remember.

I looked at pictures of myself as a child after ski races.

There were winters with less snow, but most of the time, there was a lot of snow, lots of it.

I think the trend has changed.

What was exceptional has become normal.

There's been incredible change in the last 15 years.

Today we have significant changes in temperature.

We can have five feet of snow the day after rain, so tackling the mountain becomes very complicated.

Today, if I was young again, I don't think I would envision a career as a professional skier.

(soft rustling) (wind howling) (Dr. Grégory Quin) Global warming inevitably poses a risk to skiing.

If skiing exists at medium altitudes today, it's mainly thanks to artificial snow.

Without that artificial snow cover, more than half of the ski areas would be directly threatened.

(soft whooshing) (Guillaume) What is certain is that ski resorts will be forced to evolve and to make a transition more in line with the ways we consume, with the environment.

But I'm convinced that even if we had no ski resort and no ski lift, we would still have the skiers.

(birds chirping) What I love about skiing and the history of skiing is that it's always reinvented itself while keeping the essentials: glide, gravity, speed, and play.

♪ (singing in native language) ♪ (bright music)