Meet the Eccentric Skier Who Turned Chamonix Into a Flying Playground

It was a warm day on the Aiguille du Midi.

The towering, 12,605-foot peak above Chamonix, France, was first made accessible by cable car in the 1950s and has since blossomed into a steep skiing mecca. Some call it “Mama Midi.” 

Michael “Bird” Shaffer had already made a few laps. Arriving at the cable car’s mid-station to download back into the Chamonix valley, he encountered a large queue. The lift attendant suggested that he go back up to the top, but at the upper terminal, another download line awaited. He weighed his options, worrying that the conditions might not be ideal.

“I was like, ‘God, it’s going to be turbulent in the valley, but I should just go,’” Shaffer remembered.

He donned his wing and took off, beginning the more than 9,000-foot aerial descent. Shaffer isn’t just a professional skier. He flies, too, using a small, specialized chute called a speed wing that allows him to ski and soar in one run. Through years of experience, he’s turned the fantastical airborne trip from the Aiguille du Midi to Chamonix into a comfortable routine.

This time, though, as Shaffer neared a grassy field where he would touch down, his landing trajectory went wrong. He slammed into the ground, and his skis exploded off his feet. He lay there, moving his fingers and toes. Then, he tried to stand, but couldn’t.

Shaffer’s knees were blown.

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Tweet Dreams

At 54, Shaffer sports long, graying hair and a small soul patch.

Sometimes, he wears a pink bandana tied around his neck. Other times, he’ll don a headband, capping it off with a flat-brimmed hat. On the mountain, Shaffer is clad in colorful outerwear made by his sponsor, the Chamonix-born Black Crows. He speaks in a surfer-esque voice, but he isn’t laconic; when a topic that Shaffer’s passionate about is mentioned, like skiing, he’ll talk non-stop. He is diehard skier iconography, personified, with a mystical and joyous twist.

In emails or social media posts, he might write “kaw kaw” as a greeting or replace the word “beautiful” with “birdtiful”—an ode to his avian nickname. Another Birdism: “See you in the morning,” Shaffer typed after an evening text exchange before one of our phone conversations. “Tweet dreams.”

Ross Hewitt, a ski guide and an old friend of his, remembered meeting him at Elevation, a bar in Chamonix, more than a decade ago. At the time, a strong cohort of American skiers was in the area. As Hewitt recalled, they were guarded and competitive. Shaffer was different. 

“One thing that drew me to him was his amazing spirit. He’s very open-minded,” said Hewitt. “You don’t meet so many people like that.”

Like Hewitt, Shaffer’s a longtime member of the crew that runs wild in the mountains above Chamonix. He first arrived in the valley in 1997, after receiving a tip from the Canadian ski mountaineers Ptor Spricenieks and Troy Jungen, who told him that if he wanted to ski the steeps, he needed to go to France. 

At first, gazing up at the Mont Blanc massif, Shaffer couldn’t see the routes that people supposedly skied through the towers of rock and ice, but with time and guidance from the cast of thrill-seeking characters that call the Aiguille du Midi home, Shaffer learned to navigate the labyrinthian slopes. “It’s a freaking powerful place,” he said.

Shaffer’s personal discovery of paragliding, and eventually the speed wing, transformed his understanding of Chamonix. On the Aiguille du Midi’s north face, many of the enticing, open slopes end in sheer cliffs or intense exposure. Skiing these lines begins with liberating powder turns but ends in a slog of careful sidestepping and rappels that can consume hours. 

With his speed wing, Shaffer employed a technique that allowed him to bypass the slower, methodical portions of a run down the Aiguille. He’d ski the upper face and, when confronted with the technical section of the route, don his wing, take off, and continue freeriding in the sky. Shaffer’s approach falls within the broader purview of speed riding, an offshoot of paragliding that sees a pilot ski with a small wing overhead, floating from the snow to the air and back. 

While the development of speed riding was led by pioneers like Antoine Montant and Francois Bon, Shaffer was one of the first to present a novel remix—ski first, fly later—helping popularize the dynamic marriage of skiing and air sports in Chamonix. 

“Out of all the good skiers here, nearly everyone flies,” said Hewitt of Chamonix. “I think Bird has really taken a role [in] influencing that and opening people’s minds to what you can do with the ability to fly.”

In the spring of 2017, Shaffer applied his methodology to the Frendo Spur, an aesthetic ridge of high alpine snow visible from Chamonix. That day, the upper section of the Aiguille du Midi cable car was closed, but that didn’t stop Shaffer. He drove over the border to Italy, ski-toured up from there, and plunged down the mountain alone. When the section of the Frendo Spur that required rappels arrived, Shaffer paused and unfurled his wing, taking flight.

“At that time, I knew, this is the most freedom you could have on skis,” he said.

Soon after Shaffer’s descent, another skier, the Frenchman Edgar Pascal, looked up at the Aiguille du Midi north face. Without the usual cable car access, it was untouched by skiers or snowboarders, glowing with fresh snow. Pascal eventually spotted another oddity. Perfect ski tracks on the Frendo Spur that, partway down the mountain, vanished. It was Shaffer’s calling card.

Pascal, now a highly skilled but under-the-radar Chamonix pilot representing a new generation of speed riders, quickly figured out what he was seeing. Shaffer had flown, and he wanted to do the same.

“For me, Bird was a real source of inspiration,” Pascal wrote in a text message.

A Different Kind of Flight

During the crash in 2022, Shaffer tore his MCLs and ACLs. He was carted through airports on a gurney, flying back to the U.S. and spending the entire 2022-23 ski season recovering. It was part of a frustrating pattern. Only a few years earlier, in 2020, Shaffer hit the ground while flying, breaking his back. The accidents, Shaffer has decided, happened because he’d been relying on external, adrenaline-soaked outlets to feel good. 

“It’s really easy to start going more and more closer and faster and want to push,” Shaffer said. “And then shit happens.”

Shaffer likened flying to an addiction. “You get used to that boost and that feeling, and then nothing else compares to it,” he said, noting that he wasn’t giving the sport, which can punish mistakes with severe or permanent consequences, enough respect. That posed a big question: where did he get fulfillment from? If you only find it while flying and “touching the hand of God,” he said, then when you come back down, life doesn’t mean much.

Shaffer’s name is synonymous with Chamonix. But another valley, Washington’s Methow, is where he was raised and currently lives. The slice of land in the North Cascades is picturesque, quiet, and known for cross-country skiing rather than speed riding. There, amidst his injuries, Shaffer found life-affirming alternatives to his adventures in the sky. 

The Methow Valley’s little ski area, Loup Loup, presented a serendipitous full-circle moment. Shaffer learned to ski at Loup Loup. Now, he’s helping the next generation do the same. During the 2021-22 season, the mountain’s then-director of ski school, David Morris, launched a new coaching program. It was intended for young skiers who could benefit from mentorship and technique improvements, but weren’t interested in joining regimented racing programs. Morris called it Adventure Camp. 

Morris came from a traditional ski instruction background. He said he knew he could be the “bad cop” but needed to find a “good cop” to complement his expertise. Shaffer, who would return to Loup Loup and tell stories from his travels, fit the role perfectly. 

“The kids just adore him. He’s just got that electricity. He’s excited about your excitement. He’s excited about your improvement,” said Morris. “Any area would be better with him in it.”

Morris left the Methow Valley in 2022 to care for his mom, and wanted Adventure Camp to continue without him. So, last fall, he asked Shaffer to take over, offering administrative support in the background. Shaffer agreed, adding his signature touch—it’s become Bird’s Adventure Camp. Shaffer, among other tips, teaches the kids to thank the lift operators and hopes that, through skiing, they can find the confidence that the sport gave him. 

Shaffer has discovered a passion for environmental advocacy, too. Last year, he penned an op-ed for the Methow Valley’s local newspaper in opposition to four planned Forest Service timbering projects—Shaffer believed a lighter, community-driven approach would be better for the Valley. With the help of a conservation group and others, he also released Our Backyard, a short film about the importance of protecting the Methow Valley’s forests and ecosystem, in 2024.

“I was lucky that I could get into these other things that help give back to the community, and then that sense of purpose grows deeper, right?” Shaffer said.

The Bird Takes Flight (Again)

This past spring, Shaffer returned to ski and fly in Chamonix for the first time in three years. Surrounded again by the crackling zeitgeist of the modern speed riding community, Shaffer’s nervous system went into overdrive. He had trouble sleeping. 

“It freaked me out,” he said. “I felt like there was some pressure for me to be kind of like a person that knows what’s going on.”

Soon after Shaffer arrived, a storm deposited multiple feet of snow all the way down to the valley floor, temporarily closing the cable car. When it reopened, Shaffer rode up and skied off the Aiguille du Midi with his guide friend, Hewitt, whom he felt thankful for. “I was definitely not leading,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer eventually went to stay with a family he knew in Les Houches, a small town outside the epicenter of Chamonix. From there, Shaffer could look at Aiguille du Midi from a different angle. He went on skiing and flying missions with another of his friends, Medhi Bidault—Shaffer affectionately refers to him as “Magic Medhi.” With time, Shaffer became more comfortable. 

“I stopped rushing to meet what the demands were in my head, and started to feel what was going on inside me, and just slowed down,” he said.

That patience is another lesson Shaffer’s learned over the past five years. He plans to go back to Chamonix next March. Despite the injuries, it’s clear that for Shaffer, giving up on flying and skiing would be unimaginable. But now, when Shaffer stands on a windswept ridge peering down into the abyss, he said there’s a newfound calm.

“I don’t feel like I have to go again immediately,” Shaffer explained. “I’m taking my time. I’m letting others take off and fly.”

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