For the majority of us, the rarified world of steep skiing on the world’s highest and most remote mountains is something we’ve only witnessed in adventure films and exotic travel magazines. Even viewing still photos of the sport leaves most of us breathless and awestruck, both at the beauty and the palpable risk. But for the likes of Doug Coombs, it was a way of life.

Coombs was well-known in the world of off-piste and backcountry skiing, where groomed trails, ski lessons, and hot cocoa in a crowded resort are pushed aside for the spectacularly pristine swaths of snow that can only be reached by helicopter, hiking, or rock climbing.

Mountains were in Doug’s blood from early on. As a native of Boston, Coombs started skiing on the slopes of New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts at age three, and later honed his technical mastery on Western slopes while attending college at Montana State University. After earning his degree in geology, Coombs raced on the Montana State Ski Team, and began to guide skiers on heli-ski trips in Wyoming. Coombs was a fully-certified guide by the IFMGA (International Federation of Mountain Guides), as well as a member of AMGA (American Mountain Guide Association).

Coombs won the first World Extreme Ski Championship in 1991 in Valdez, Alaska and again in 1993; no slouch herself, his soon-to-be wife Emily won the women’s division of the same event in 1992. In 1993, the Coombs’ started Valdez Heli-Ski Guides, and began guiding in the Chugach Range of Alaska, blazing the path for later heli-ski operators in the area.

But even the wilds of Alaska could not hold the Coombs’, and they later began guiding in the Alps, making La Grave, France their second home for part of each year. From there, they would guide groups of backcountry enthusiasts down the untouched slopes of France and Switzerland.

Emily began guiding all-women groups, and the two continued to guide adventurers in Valdez and Wyoming, as well as more remote locations such as Greenland. By all accounts, Emily and Doug were deeply in love, with each other and their passion for adventure. In 2003, they both fell in love again, this time with their newborn son, David Douglas Coombs.

In the spring of 2006, while steep skiing with friends in a ‘no fall zone’(roughly translated as ‘fall and die’), one of the party, an AMGA guide in his own right, hit a patch of ice and slipped off the lip of a couloir. Coombs immediately sidestepped down over rock slab to call for his friend, and he too slipped, unable to get an edge on the bare rock. Neither survived.

Although the death of Doug Coombs rocked the off-piste and backcountry world, a few were not surprised. Not because Coombs was reckless – in fact, he was extraordinarily careful, arguably the most technically-skilled skier in the world, and took his role as a guide very seriously. But the fact is that while backcountry skiing is immensely exhilarating, it, like most extreme sports, holds an inherent danger. Even the very best succumb from time to time, not out of stupidity or ego or carelessness, but just because. Doug knew his friend had gone over the edge and did what any friend would do – go to help with little thought of his own safety.

 Coombs will be missed by those who knew him, and by those who knew him only as a living legend. Emily will continue to run the Ski Camp business, and their young son, David, will undoubtedly grow up to be a fine young man, learning about his amazing father both from his equally amazing mother and all the people whose lives were deeply touched by Doug’s passion. Legends like Doug Coombs never really die.

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