It's no wonder adrenaline junkies are drawn to the mountains as thieves are drawn to diamonds.
Mountains are sublime and dangerous - a hedonistic and addictive allure. To those hungry for snow-topped peaks with hidden depths and untracked territories, the mountains are a candy store of endless curiosity.
During two unparalleled winters skiing and snowboarding in Chamonix in 2009/10 - I teetered on the perilous edge of danger more than a few times. After a knee injury mid-way through my first season (sustained during the first run of the day, skiing over-ambitiously, hungover, on piste) - whatever 'no fear' attitude and bravado I had build-up over those first few months instantly diminished as my mortality became lucidly clear.
After a recovery which took about 7 weeks, I got back up the mountain (a gazillion times harder than getting back on a horse after a fall) and began to play safer - not veering off-piste too far, not going as fast as I knew I was capable of going. I decided to check into the 'safe' skier brigade. Definitely a minority group in Chamonix.
Last week a friend phoned to tell me someone we knew had died in an avalanche out in Chamonix. He was 27, a very skilled skier - well-seasoned seasonnaire making sausages (his nickname was Davey Sausage) to pay the bills and training a local youth football team in his spare time. Always smiling.
I only met him properly once last year, when he stayed at my house in Bristol for one night with a group of my Chamonix friends. He got up early to buy and cook breakfast for us. Simple but kind gestures like this stick in your memory.
I was shocked to hear the news and it brought back a familiar pang of pain. Familiar because I'd lost someone special to the mountains the same year I had my skiing accident. Ed Cakebread (aka Gateaux Pain) chose the same shabby barely-chic art nouveaux-style watering hole as me to earn a living at that winter. Like freshers, we were thick as thieves: the gang competing to go out and get smashed every night as fervently as we promised to get up the mountain (with or without hangovers).
Like me, Ed was a beginner skier, but unlike me, he was brimming with testosterone and determined to fly through the ranks and become a pro asap. He did progress quickly, perhaps too quickly.
A short time after my accident (Ed was my knight in shining armour that day - buying sweets to get my sugar levels up after the shock, and looking after me until I was ready to get back into town), his family came out to Chamonix for a short holiday.
Keen to show off his new skiing prowess, Ed took his family to Grand Montets (the most challenging area of the resort), and proceeded to go over some of the jumps in the park. These park jumps were mostly reds - and fatally, he pushed himself too far, got too much air after one jump and landed flat on his back. His heart stopped instantly.
The news dented the town like a giant meteor. Mourning and longing took hold. In a way, having his family there helped - we were able to build a more rounded picture of Ed - the Ed who lived in England. We swapped stories and everyone wrote pages and stuck photos in a memory book for Ed's family to take back home with them.
Like Davey Sausage, Gâteaux Pain was charming, perma-happy and on thrill-seeker overload. On the hunt for that perfect day of synergy on the slopes.
I'd class myself as a fair-weather skier now, like the day-tripping Italians in their duffle coats and Ray Bans - content to do a few runs interspersed with generous doses of sitting on a sun-drenched terrace, sipping vin chaud.
These brave and peerless guys pushed the boundaries - gave everything they had, sacrificing themselves for that perfect moment in the snow. I hope their final moments were sublime, perfect, exhilarating. I also hope that when their bodies touched the ground, they felt nothing.
There's risk in everything we do, and yes, skiing is definitely at the top end of the risk barometer.
Live each day as if it's your last.
Davey Sausage and Gâteaux Pain thrived on this mantra and that's why we'll always remember them for the amazing things they actually did.
Procrastination was not in their dictionaries.
