Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.
I used to ski across the vast white expanses of a quiet and lonely mountaintop. In the stillness and solitude... I pondered the mysteries of the universe, the planet, nature and of man. I'm still pondering.
Getting to Valle Nevado is half the fun. A serpentine road from Santiago wriggles up the spine of Andean peak for an hour, then traverses a valley and finally up again. The hotel is perched on a rugged mountain crag at 3,000m: no other sign of human development is visible from this spot, which is close to the Argentinean border.
I come from Surajpur, a valley in Himachal Pradesh near Manali that is named after my great grandfather Sarju Singh Ranaut.
Flagstaff, up in the mountains where I lived, there is 130 inches of snow a year.
I was born and brought up in Himalchal Pradesh, so I have bond with mountains and love being surrounded by them. So I love Nepal.
All of a sudden you have this feeling of clarity. Backcountry snowboarding has really done a lot to boost that feeling in me.
People are starting to know more about it, but I was blown away by Almaty, Kazakhstan. It's like a future Swiss Alps. It has the potential to be an extraordinary ski resort. It is a city with beautiful mountain scapes.
Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer.
I have been blessed to be born and brought up in Uttarakhand, in the midst of all that snow, plus pure and divine environment.
See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away Over the snowy peaks!
I know my family and I would always go up to the mountains just for fun. We always skied. Then, all of a sudden, my brother started snow boarding. Older brother thing, I had to do what he was doing. So I started snow boarding.
Mt. Hood is still one of my favorites for its sun, warmth, and slushy, forgiving conditions.
Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared.
The mountains paralleled the valley and the snowy peaks were extending with fall to the valley floor.
Himachal is my second home.
