"The views from the top of the Ranfoilly Express were beautiful – everything I’d hoped for as I’d poured over my Google image searches all those weeks before. The white dome of Mont Blanc was just visible through the clouds in the distance; snow-capped peak after snow-capped peak filled the void between.

I focused on them for a long time, making a show of taking photographs, and trying hard not to think of the red-slope precipice behind me. It was day two of my first-ever ski trip, I was on top of the highest peak in this little corner of the French Alps, and there was no other way down."

Extract from Alpine addiction, Getaway Magazine, July 2015. —