I know who that is. Saskia Sparks. She beat me in the British Snowboarding Championships last year, placing third to my fourth.

And this year I’m going to beat her.

My long blond hair, a few shades darker than hers, is pretty distinctive, and if I recognize her, she probably recognizes me, yet if she does, she doesn’t reveal it. She simply unfastens her back foot from her bindings and skates across to the tow lift.

I dump my backpack and hurry after her. I’ve heard stuff about her. The Ice Maiden, they call her.

My lift pass is in my pocket. I tilt my hip to the scanner, wait for it to beep, then push through the turnstile. The lift is pretty basic, weather-beaten plastic T-bars that dangle from a tatty-looking moving cable. I seize the nearest T-bar, slide it between my thighs, and watch the action as it drags me up the slope.

With its naturally forbidding terrain of rugged cliffs, narrow couloirs, and slopes too steep for the average package holidaymaker, Le Rocher holds cult status among expert skiers and snowboarders.

The resort has another big draw, and here it is: the Le Rocher half-pipe. The snowboarder’s equivalent of a skateboard ramp, the long white channel stretches up the slope. Built to Olympic specification—a hundred and fifty meters long with walls of snow six meters high on either side—it looks in pretty good shape.

Riders are crisscrossing back and forth, launching out of the sheer ice walls and doing all kinds of crazy shit. It’s hard to tell who’s who under the hats or helmets and goggles, but there are clearly some big names gearing up for the Le Rocher Open tomorrow.

I wish I’d gotten here earlier. The season started two weeks ago, on the fifth of December, but I was still working. Had to make sure I’d saved up enough to last the whole winter; that way I can focus on my training. I’ll never make the UK top three if I’m up all night working some crappy bar job. Anyway. Catch-up time.

Saskia is back at the top already. Is she here for the season or just the Le Rocher Open? She drops in and pulls another huge 540 spin. Really nails those landings.

The first time I saw a half-pipe, the steepness of the near-vertical walls terrified me. It’s an illusion. The vert is your friend. Land on it correctly and it’s so smooth you don’t feel it. But the ice is hard as concrete, so if you screw up, you’re in trouble.

Fear tingles through me as I fasten my boots into my bindings. Inside my leather pipe gloves, my palms are clammy. I’m more nervous than usual because my snowboard is new—a Magic Pipemaster 157 from my first-ever board sponsor.