A Tribute to Luca Pandolfi
As backcountry skiers and riders, we’re understandably eager to analyze avalanche fatalities, so that we may discover from them and prevent the exact fate. But hardly ever do we analyze a life—particularly a existence well-lived—with the same scrutiny. Luca Pandolfi, a 47-year-old Italian significant mountain snowboarder who handed away in Italy’s Gran San Bernardo Valley on March 17, lived just one these types of life, both on and off the hill.
From the Alps to the Himalayas
Pandolfi originally hailed from the Italian province of Asti, despite the fact that his snowboard journey would inevitably draw him deeper into the heart of the Alps—and more afield. He picked up snowboarding late, at age 18, but immediately took to the craft as he honed his skills in Verbier and Gressoney before settling down in the steep-skiing mecca of Chamonix. When Pandolfi experienced received competitions previously in his career, it was on sheer faces and to start with descents in Chamonix where he actually built his identify.
“He was one of the very first riders for Jones,” suggests Jeremy Jones. “I did not know him just before that. My Italian distributor commenced hooking him up with boards and then I started looking at what he was accomplishing on them and was really just blown absent by it.”
“Coming from Chamonix, both of those the Italian aspect and French facet, the stuff he was doing off the Midi and the Helbronner and just the Mont Blanc Massif, that is about as cutting-edge snowboarding in severe, sophisticated terrain as it gets,” Jones proceeds. But comfortability on technological steeps was not the only excellent that encouraged Jones to invite Pandolfi on a journey to the Himalayas during the filming of Increased (2014). Pandolfi, Jones says, experienced a “thirst for unique experience.” He was somebody who Jones understood could handle “foreign lands, a unique diet program, distinct cultures,” and, “when it did occur to snowboarding—big major mountains.”
Pandolfi’s existence and persona came via in Better, which is nicely-really worth a re-watch in the wake of his passing. The multi-day trek to the significant-altitude Shangri-La spine wall was assured to be grueling, but Pandolfi was not just facing physical battles—he was also battling psychological types, also. “I’ve been hit by a lousy detail. I found my mom was terminal, she was ill, she experienced a bad most cancers,” discussed Pandolfi in Bigger. “Then she was undertaking perfectly once more, so I obtained motivated, I went into training once more, then quickly, 4 days before leaving she passed away. And that is been a pretty rough minute for me. I just fell down. I was emotionally wrecked. But I knew also that Nepal was a fantastic location to refresh my intellect, to get in touch with character. Character is the best way to get into the move all over again.”
Following three-and-a-half weeks of trekking as a result of the Himalayas devoid of so a lot as touching snow, Pandolfi held his very own when it arrived to using spines—a terrain attribute that was utterly international to him. Perched atop a corrugated wall, he viewed Jones get sloughed out, and his response was as comical as it was spectacular: “Pretty significantly to start with knowledge for me on major spines like that with a ton of sluff administration, and think about the experience to be at the leading of these spines, you are not confident what you’re accomplishing, this is your very first knowledge, and you see [the] Spine Master get sloughed out… I was like ‘What the fuck I do now,’ you know? But then I just like to unplug the mind, be in that zone, the place you just react to what is coming your way.”
Pandolfi unplugged, tapped in, and rode the line with grace. Later on, he manufactured the conclusion to again off of the major objective as he wasn’t feeling one particular hundred p.c. The energy, adaptability, and knowledge Pandolfi exhibited in these consequential moments confirmed that Jones was right—Pandolfi was the perfect husband or wife for this Himalayan experience.
Like a Brother
Ettore Personnettaz, an Italian splitboarder and snowboard instructor from Aosta Valley, had the pleasure of expending quite a few times with Pandolfi in the mountains, each as his trainer and using companion. Jointly, the two tackled major strains, like the seldom-skied Grivola, a 3,969-meter pyramid reminiscent of the Himalayas.
Personnettaz street the Givola in 2016, the very same calendar year that Pandolfi turned around on on the very same line on a independent attempt, but in Could of 2018 a scarce window of stable problems, apparent temperature, and ample coverage materialized. Pandolfi was nursing a shoulder harm, however with a little prodding joined Personnettaz and a several some others on a productive two-working day bid at the peak. “The problems have been excellent,” remembers Personnettaz. “40 centimeters of contemporary snow—crazy situations.”
“Luca was very, very happy for this—‘Finally, the Grivola!’” states Personnettaz. “This experience, made our friendship much better, our friendship forever…. When you go to the major, the hard work, the adrenaline, the study of the descent, and the experience of currently being element of the team—that is [a beautiful] thing. I journey with a lot of skiers and snowboarders, but only with a number of do I really feel that [special bond].”
“Luca was like a brother for me,” explains Personnettaz. He was “a frank buddy, no frills, a totally free spirit, sincere and unpredictable, a nonconformist gentleman with an inexhaustible enthusiasm for snowboarding and the mountains.”
Pandolfi, Personnettaz recollects, also had a superb feeling of humor. “We joke, we joke, we joke some much more.” As Personnettaz helped Pandolfi generate his snowboard teacher certifications, “he named me ‘Master’ since I am the instructor’s teacher.” Through the certification method, Personnettaz states Pandolfi had to reveal turns, jumps, and boxes—the latter of which was even extra foreign to the large mountain expert than these Himalayan spines. Pandolfi was nervous to hit the box, laughs Personnettaz, and just after he completed the maneuver they drank a beer to celebrate. According to Personnettaz, Pandolfi was flushed with victory as he joked, “Ettore, immediately after this, I consider the box emotionally for me was far more fascinating than a descent of the Sentinella Rossa Couloir,” a noteworthy descent Pandolfi ticked off in 2013. In a vacation report on the Sentinella, Pandolfi wrote, “Riding a line like the Sentinella Rossa is not a ski journey it is a vacation into a different dimension.”
Whilst Personnettaz cherished his friendship and brotherhood with Pandolfi, he notes that in Italy, and Europe as a entire, Pandolfi was an legendary freerider. “For the European splitboarding community, his passing was a large loss.” Among his a lot of noteworthy descents and lengthy job, Pandolfi “was a issue of reference” for all European freeriders.
Pandolfi’s impression rippled effectively past the Alps, many thanks to his position in Greater, his proclivity for snowboard excursions, his status as a major mountain pioneer in Chamonix, and, over all else, his open-hearted frame of mind. “I rode with him in Chamonix in 2015, and the next year, I invited him to Japan and showed him the Hakuba location,” remarks notable Japanese guidebook and Pandolfi’s Jones teammate Yuta Watanabe. “My very first effect of Luca was, ‘I surely like this guy.’ He was no cost, always sincere to himself, and I felt his passion of snowboarding so a lot that very first day. He showed me the Italian design and style of snowboarding—must have a sturdy Espresso to start out of a day, riding quick like a Ferrari, and always pizza and beer immediately after riding,” recalls Watanabe. “He was the ideal host to make us satisfied.”
Honesty was significant to Pandolfi which at times obtained him into scorching h2o, though other instances it opened doors. Will Ritter, founder of Spark R & D, chuckles as he remembers his initially interaction with Pandolfi back again in 2011. “We had been just obtaining our ft underneath us,” remembers Ritter. “And the to start with e-mail I have from him he was pissed off simply because he broke stuff. And he’s like ‘I’m in Chamonix. I journey steep shit. I can’t have things breaking.’”
“We looked him up and went, ‘Whoa, he is not kidding.’” A handful of emails later on, Pandolfi joined the Spark relatives. From the soar, Ritter admired Pandolfi’s joie d’vivre. Pandolfi was a “free spirit, wanderer, very much matted, pursuing his bliss all more than the location,” remembers Ritter. “You could just sense the rad on him from afar.”
As Ritter sifted back by means of previous correspondence, he uncovered emails from Pandolfi returning from all kinds of exploits, together with a trip to Africa. “It was comforting for me to evaluate that things and know that whilst he could have gotten limited-adjusted a small bit with time, he packed in lots of lifetime’s really worth of adventure into it.”
“On a particular be aware, we named our son Luca,” states Ritter, of his now 7-12 months-old. “And Luca Pandolfi was a element of the inspiration to do that—again, remaining these a rad free spirit.”
Dan Ventura, Spark’s Advertising Manager, also worked carefully with Luca. “He struck me as another person that experienced the appropriate amount of money of gratitude for what he was accomplishing. And I feel that arrives with people that chase their passions across the world and across the mountains.”
The source of Pandolfi’s generate in the mountains, Ritter promises, was pure. “This was a true gentleman of the mountains. He did not seem to be preoccupied with how numerous followers he had or how several movie elements he could put with each other. He preferred to do tremendous unwell lines for him and then share it with persons by means of guiding,” explains Ritter. “I picture he most likely bagged a bunch of 1st descents, did not take a solitary picture, and informed two mates at the bar at Cham. And that was sufficient.”
The Tracks that Make a difference
All tracks are fleeting. They fade, working day by working day. The wind fills them in. Snow entombs them. And as the seasons adjust, the solar erases them completely. Backcountry skiers and riders devote our lives to these tracks—making them, studying them, instruction for them, dreaming of them. They are our work out, our diversion, our struggling, our pleasure, our artwork, our religion. But when all is reported and accomplished, and a life is lost in the mountains, these tracks don’t make a difference.
Luca Pandolfi remaining his sweeping signature down a great number of couloirs, surfed fall strains with grace, and pioneered puckering descents. We rejoice the traces he rode and the peaks he explored, but these aren’t the tracks that we try to remember him for. We recall Luca for the tracks he left on our lives. The brightness of his being—the liberty of his spirit—these are the tracks that issue.
“It was a very shorter period of time paying out time with Luca, but I can say that he lives in my coronary heart endlessly,” says Watanabe. “Because his passion continue to influences my lifetime. In my coronary heart, he tells me how I should really live—to be straightforward to myself. Enthusiasm is the most critical. That’s what he taught me via his snowboarding daily life.”
“He just lived so quite a few lives and introduced so considerably electrical power and a great deal of that electricity came from his time in the mountains,” suggests Jones. “And so it is amazingly unfortunate, but it was also such a beautiful lifetime.”
“When I go to the top of some peaks, it is for Luca and for other mates that I missing in the mountains,” suggests Personnettaz. “The finest tribute, I believe, is that we respect their mind, their spirit, their passion.” The ambition is not to die in the mountains, describes Personnettaz—it’s to live a lot more totally. And that ambition is 1 that Pandolfi achieved time and time again through his adventure-packed 47 yrs, may possibly he rest in peace.
Drew Zieff is a Utah-primarily based rider and writer who handles all items splitboarding for Backcountry Magazine, which include composing the definitive record of the sport. You can read his total splitboarding manifesto in Concern 136.
