Strapping on their stiff wooden boards, they descended down a narrow rock-walled needle of snow, over forty degrees of slope. It was beyond rational thought, but in one afternoon the two alpinists redefined the limits of skiing.

It was only fitting, therefore, that ten years later Allais would travel to the Sierra Nevada and become Palisades Tahoe’s first ski school director. For no other ski resort in North America has become as synonymous for being a wildlife sanctuary for adventure as the former Olympic site.

"The atmosphere at Palisades Tahoe has always equaled a penchant for risk. It is matter of fact," explained the late Norm Simmons, who became known in the sixties for his epic leaps off KT’s Eagle’s Nest.

"As a result, you had a lot of top skiers, climbers, and adventurers hanging out, people like speed skier, Steve McKinney and Bev Johnson, one of the first really good women climbers. Then there was Rick Sylvester, Dick Dorworth, Kim Schmitz, and Eric Beck, who were the first to solo Half-Dome. There has always been a lot of free spirits."

Tahoe’s extremism in the early ‘70s was no more, but certainly no less, than what was going on around the world at the time. If anything, it was partially inspired by the go-for-broke attitudes of others.

Sylvain Saudain skied the West Face of the Eiger. Skier-mountaineer, Chris Landry, skied the East Face of Aspen’s Pyramid Peak, long considered an impossible descent. Italian ski instructors, Matteo Thun and Giorgio Ferraris, successfully skied the sulfur-choked, lava flanks of Stromboli, as the volcano erupted. They later exclaimed that “although our skis bases melted, our edges still held."

Skier-mountaineer, Ned Gillette, with Palisades Tahoe residents, Jim Bridwell and Craig Calonica, became the first humans to circle Mount Everest on skis. During the same period, Japan’s Yichireo Miura, equipped with a parachute for a brake, schussed the South Col of Everest. Ski instructor, Joe Meegan, skied a frozen Niagara Falls. Kirk Hill set the world single-skier endurance record at Angel Fire, New Mexico, completing 434 consecutive runs covering 195,300 vertical feet, skiing non-stop for 63 hours until he began "losing contact with reality."

No one could outdo Swiss adventurer, Sylvain Saudain, who climbed without oxygen and skied down the 26,470 foot Hidden Peak in the Himalayas. The descent took nine hours, over 9,000 vertical feet, requiring more than 3,000 turns over slopes of 55 degrees.

All through these years, Palisades Tahoe remained a bastion for adventure. The sport of speed skiing, pioneered by Dick Dorworth, Steve McKinney, and Franz Weber, arguably, was popularized more on Squaw’s slopes than anywhere else. Watch any mainstream, ski film made in the last two decades and more than likely the majority of the cast make Palisades Tahoe their home stomp. Skiers such as Scot Schmidt, Griff Davis, Kevin Andrews, Tom Day, Robby Huntoon, Eric and Rob DesLauriers, Kent Kreitler, Robb and Scott Gaffney, and Brad Holmes are names in the history book. And snowboarders Chuck Patterson, Damien Sanders, and Jim Zellers have become today’s state-of-the art daredevils.

Throw in bungee jumpers like Rowe Geisin and Jimbo Morgan (730-foot bungee jumps), base-jumpers Shane McConkey and JT Holmes, and Everest climber-skiers, Craig Calonica and Dave Nettle, and Palisades Tahoe continues to produce its own form of home-grown lunar madness.

Although these Palisades Tahoe adventurers and many others have pulled off an incredible array of stunts, here are seven events that helped propagate the Palisades Tahoe legend.

SYLVESTER’S SLOT. Along the rocky buttress known as Little Granite Chief, near the Rockpile where the aerial cable car’s Tower 1 stands, is an impossible steep sliver of a chute called Sylvester’s Slot. "The steepest part isn’t the top," says veteran backcountry skier and Palisades Tahoe resident, Paul Arthur. "Three turns down it funnels into a tiny narrow, almost invisible line with rocks on both sides. It’s a 60-degree grade at its critical point, with zero recovery if you get in trouble."

First called the, "Rockpile," the named was changed to honor Rick Sylvester after his daring descent in 1970, while a member of the Palisades Tahoe Ski School.

"Sylvester’s Slot reflects a picture for those who had the desire for high, untracked lines," explains Paul Arthur who has done numerous first descents all over the west. "There are tougher things to jump into such as the East Couloir of Dana Peak, but Sylvester’s was one of the early challenges, open only to a few… and only a few who had the vision to do it."

BECK’S ROCK. "We all have our own daydreams. But how many of us are able to transcend our dreams and make them reality..." So begins the opening narration of the ski film, "Daydreams.” Shot and edited during the winter and spring of 1974-75 by Tahoe native, Craig Beck, even after 30 years the film contains some of the most eye-popping skiing and hucking ever put on film. One highlight has to be Dave Burnham’s flip off the Palisades into 80 feet of air. The other is Greg Beck’s drop of 100 feet off what is now called Beck’s Rock.

The day before, Beck’s best friend, Mark Rivard, had broke both legs trying to attempt the same feat.

"That big jump by my brother is still something that blows me away," admits Craig. "We measured it and it’s over 100 feet. He dropped it just right and nailed a perfect landing. The jump still knocked him out cold."

SCHMID-IOTS. Hikers-left from Beck’s Rock, atop the Palisades, is the Chimney Chute. In the big snow year of 1983, while filming for Warren Miller, 21-year old Scot Schmidt took a leap down an eighty-foot corridor of rock known today as Schmidt-iots.

"There was a lot of snow, the conditions were primo," recalls Schmidt who now resides in Santa Cruz. "I’d been jumping a lot of stuff all day and was getting pretty comfortable. I started looking for a new line."

What he picked was a plunge never done before from the 9,000 foot elevation band of cliffs, which remain the predominant geological statement at Squaw. In between two large rocks on one side of the chute, Schmidt shot down straight onto two pads, or little ramps of snow, which allowed him to launch out of the chute and into the side hill compression below.

"Looking back, it’s considered kind of small by today’s standards," says Schmidt. "But back in 1983, it opened some eyes."

CHINESE DOWNHILL. On St. Patrick’s Day of 1970 the Palisades Tahoe Ski Patrol held the first Chinese Downhill. Nineteen skiers started en masse from the top of Gold Coast. There was no defined course, nor any rules. The first person to enter the base area bar called The Pub and throw back a shooter would be declared the winner.

The late Norm Simmons, a former defensve back for the Houston Oilers, won the prize, a bottle of Commemmorotivo Tequila. He’d go on to win four out of the five competitions during the race’s short-lived life.

"That first race there were icy conditions with little visibility. There was no grooming either, back then," said Norm. "I won, I think, because I kept my tuck through Mombo Meadows on down Mogul Hill. Most everybody else, in their right minds, stood up at one point and slowed down to ride all the bumps on Mogul Hill."

The next four years the start was moved to the ridgeline of Siberia Bowl with the finish at the Beer Gardens in the Olympic House, a vertical drop of 2,800 feet and a distance close to three miles.

The race became so popular that large crowds began to gather at Mogul Hill and at Tower Twenty to watch the racers and the occasional crash. Entrants increased to the point it was a hysterical mob at the start. Few competitors wore helmets.

"It was insane," remembers Paul Buschmann, who remains the only other winner besides Simmons. "I was 15 years old and kind of scared by all these crazy guys at the start, jostling for position. I knew that getting out in front was the key. The course was basically the Mountain Run, but right at Tower Twenty you could take The Waterfall, a steep little section where you could shoot down and come underneath the old Headwall station and through the trees to Mogul Hill."

In its final year, 61 skiers competed. However, during the race, one competitor went off-course and struck a spectator who had been warned repeatedly to leave the position from where he was watching.

The collision killed the spectator.

"That was the end of the race. It was a real tragedy," remembered Simmons, who was a ski patrolman at the time. "It really tarnished a rather fun event, which up to that point had been very good natured and without any type of injury."

Part II of II, coming up.