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10 Stupidly Gnarly-Sounding Pistes

BODY BAG, AGONY, WIDOW MAKER - BUT HOW MANY ACTUALLY LIVE UP TO THEIR NAME?

D.O.A. in Whistler backcountry. The name doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, does it? Photo: Justin Lamoureux

Piste names. They come in all shapes and sizes – funny, terrifying, incomprehensible and sometimes just plain deceptive.

Take Le Tunnel in Alpe d’Huez for example. It sounds pretty tame but don’t be fooled. It’s one of the longest black runs in Europe – fine when it’s sunny but as soon as the ice sets it, it’s a veritable death trap.

The Europeans don’t quite have the same overactive imagination as the Americans when it comes to naming pistes. Agony, Jaws of Death, Deathstar and Delirium Dive are among some of the favourites we’ve Yankee titles encountered. Do they actually live up to their name? That’s for you to decide.

As Chris Moran said in his Whitelines’ issue 100 column, “there’s nothing quite like watching an elderly American couple rag-doll down a ‘blue’ run named Bellecôte which is actually a rock-strewn, 50-degree mogul field.”

It’s this that inspired us to find the gnarliest-sounding piste names in the world. We asked you guys to chip with the best you’ve encountered and these were the results… The real question, however, is which of these bad boys would you take on?

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