‘Guys!’ the rep, I think he’s called Richard, calls to his clients, who are finally putting on their skis, thank Christ. ‘You be careful down there, OK?’

‘Right-ho!’ the older one yells. ‘We ready for the off?’

Just then, my business partner Andy turns up. Not for the first time, I wish I’d set up Skitastic on my own.

‘Why are you here?’ I ask. Checking up on me, no doubt.

‘My clients have decided to call it a day. Too cold, for them, apparently. Shall I come along with you?’

I’d much rather go on my own – I don’t want Andy babysitting me and picking holes in the way I do things – but even I know I can’t say that and still look like a reasonable person. So I shrug and say: ‘If you like. Makes no difference to me.’

And off we go.

The visibility is appalling. It was bad enough at the top, but once we’re over the back, the wind blasts directly into our faces. As I predicted, my two charges are barely up to the task. They both ticked boxes saying ‘confident black-run skiers’ on the forms – yeah right. It’s already clear that that isn’t true. I told them this was back country, but it isn’t really, luckily for them. I knew they wouldn’t be able to cope with anything properly hardcore. ‘Couloir Noir’, as it’s called, isn’t actually a couloir at all, it’s just a steep, narrow slope. Officially it’s off-piste, but it’s about as vanilla as off-piste can get. As long as you know where you’re going, like I do, you start at the top of the chairlift and you pop right back out at the bottom of the chairlift, no major deal. No hiking, no putting on skins. Nothing much to be alarmed about at all. But because it’s at the top of the glacier, these losers can boast about how they went ‘down a couloir off the back of the glacier’ when they get back to their pathetic little offices or university or wherever it is they go when they’re back at home, which is all they want. I know their type.

It’s no surprise to me that they don’t look like they’re enjoying it in any way. Andy has hung back a bit, saying ‘I’ll pick up any stragglers’ and left me leading the clients. As one of them snowploughs and picks their way down, the other one bolts past me, thinking he’s something special because he can go fast, whereas in reality he’s simply out of control. It’s not big or clever, it’s downright dangerous. Andy races past me and I shout, ‘Make that guy wait! He doesn’t know where he’s going!’ but my voice disappears into the howling wind.

‘This is trickier than I expected,’ says the slower one.