Skiing To Dreams Where A French Daredevil Died, A Huge Glacier Offers His Brand Of Thrills - With Less Danger

CHAMONIX, France — I'm just a weekend skier, with only fading memories of glorious runs I made through the deep and steep of Utah in my youth. That was nearly 20 years ago. I'm now 39 and a desk jockey.

But even weekend skiers can dream and, ever since I first heard of the exploits of the great Patrick Vallencant, I longed to follow in his tracks.

During the '70s, Vallencant skied the cliffs and couloirs of France's Mont Blanc, and became a national hero for making death-defying runs down dropoffs as steep as the Transamerica Pyramid and twice as long. He popularized the term "extreme skiing" (translation: extremely steep, extremely risky and extremely scary). He paid with his life for challenging the heights, but brought both cachet to the sport and tourists to this valley in the French Alps.

I'm one of those tourists. I had read the stories, seen the pictures and dreamed of skiing Europe's tallest peaks and staring down fear as I, too, made tracks on some of the steepest slopes on the planet.

So last winter I decided to chase the dream. Along the way, the idealized

vision of youth became the compromise of maturity: I discovered glacier skiing. As compromises go, it was just about perfect: I would be near the fabled slopes that Vallencant braved (and near where he died last year while climbing a rock face above Chamonix), and I would experience an alpine adventure that wouldn't put me in the kind of peril Vallencant so willingly faced. I figured a little bit of the dream was better than none at all.

Several months of conditioning, and a previous week of skiing, had prepared me for the quest. I felt ready.

I had made an all-day train ride to Chamonix, followed by a night of dinner, boasting and toasting with newly made friends that ended with a few hours of sleep.

I had never before met my four ski companions. I had, however, spoken with one of them - Roger Miller of Langhorne - a month earlier. He sells and leads ski-tour packages from the Philadelphia area. Kevin and Mike were on one such package, and our second Kevin, from Toronto (who, at 6-foot-5, was dubbed ''Tall Kevin"), was enjoying a self-guided vacation of European skiing. We were what could be termed a "pick-up" group.

The next morning we awoke to a picture-perfect winter's day. The sky was steel-blue, and icicles hung from our windowsills.