ONELIFE #33 – English

N A V I G A T O R
I N T O T H E
INFERNO
In 1928, before chairlifts existed, a group of 13 men and
four women from the Kandahar Ski Club climbed the
Schilthorn summit in Mürren in the Swiss Alps on long hickory
skis with strips of sealskin fitted to stop them from sliding
back. From near the summit, they then descended to the
village of Lauterbrunnen. And so the Inferno Race was born.
Eight decades later, the race lives on, and it is still an
event that is not for the faint-hearted. Each January 1800
skiers stand here, take a sip of schnapps for courage and
head off down the Inferno. At 15km (three times as long as
anything on the World Cup schedule), the trail plunges two
vertical kilometres. There is nothing quite like it anywhere
in the world.
In August this year, James Bond stunt driver Ben Collins
lined up a standard Range Rover Sport just under the peak of
the Schilthorn, attempting to do something nobody has ever
tried; not only to navigate the length of the Inferno in a car,
but to do so at race speed, beating the record of the Inferno’s
fastest skier.
August in Mürren is normally warm and sunny and
although there is a little snow still lingering at the top of the
run, the trail is normally dry. Not so this year. Unseasonable
rain threw out Land Rover Experience off-road expert
Phil Jones’ calculations and put Collins’ nerves on edge; “I
wouldn’t say I was smiling as I was driving,” he told Onelife,
“I was in the zone. If you’re not in the zone, you’re going to
be over the edge.”
Collins’ progress in the very latest Range Rover Sport was
nonetheless spectacular as you might expect from the most
famous of the former Stigs from BBC Top Gear. His time at
the finish was just shy of the ski record, which in the
circumstances is almost extraordinary.
“Roughly halfway down I hit a big boulder that I really
couldn’t miss because it was that, a tree or a sheer cliff,”
Collins explains. “The low-pressure warning told me I had a
puncture in a rear tyre, and that meant a huge loss of grip on
the rear axle.” Collins’ perseverance nonetheless impressed
Cleeves Palmer, President of the Kandahar Ski Club and a
veteran of 30 races.
“The terrain is strewn with boulders,” Palmer told us.
“I would far rather race it on skis in winter than drive it in
the summer!”
02
NEWS
WATCH THE FILM
Down the Inferno landrover.com/downhillchallenge
10