“I always try to have a lesson or two when I’m skiing, and I think I’ve made a serious breakthrough here in Jackson,” says Blumenthal.

Duret agrees. “When we first started skiing here in Jackson, Heston was fighting each turn,” he says. “He was trying to dominate the skis.” (That’s Heston all over, I told Alex!)

“There was also the issue of my hip,” says Blumenthal. “I’d had to have a hip replacement in June 2014 and before that skiing had become painful and restricted.”

“I’d almost forgotten how thrilling skiing is. I couldn’t believe it had been so long since I had experienced that wonderful adrenalin rush and joie de vivre.”

Typically, he’d postponed the operation till the end of the ski season so he could get his annual skiing “fix” – in spite of the pain.

“Now it’s really just retraining the muscle memory,” he says. “It’s no longer painful but it does need more awareness until I’ve reprogrammed and activated the right muscles.”

So although Heston has no discomfort skiing anymore, Duret noted that as a consequence of muscle memory, the chef was “doing Z shaped turns”.

He says: “After working on some technique Heston was able to start creating nice C-shape turns, with much less effort. We agreed that we needed to create pressure on the skis at the beginning of the turn and then take that pressure off at the end.”

Since then Blumenthal has skied as often as his busy lifestyle permits. One winter he even managed four visits to the mountains. And now, in March 2016, it was Jackson Hole, where he and a mutual tour-operator friend, Amin Momen – who runs the annual City Ski Championships, now in Verbier, Switzerland – are hoping to organise a Mountain Gourmet Ski Experience similar to an event they run every year in the Italian ski area of Courmayeur.

Jackson has some challenging slopes and although we didn’t take on the resort’s infamous Corbet’s Couloir, which involves a somewhat terrifying leap on skis, he didn’t hold back on any of the steeper runs. After cruising down Sundance at anything but snail’s pace, we moved on to sterner stuff in Rendezvous Bowl at the top of Jackson’s iconic Tram (cable car) and then hurtled down Bivouac – so steep it can only be groomed using a winch-cat. Challenging? It certainly is – but no problem for Heston’s derring-do!

“My skiing companions said they’d never seen anyone ski that run so fast who wasn’t actually racing… others might call it ‘being out of control!’”

Five years ago, in Val d’Isère, he got rather carried away during a descent of the Olympic “Face” run. “I’d had a grappa coffee,” he admits, “but the snow was ideal and the light was just right. I was listening to some inspirational music on my headphones, and I just went for it. Just as the music hit a crescendo a little track I hadn’t noticed catapulted me into the air. I went flying, spinning and bouncing into a compression and fell heavily. Result: a broken rotator cuff in my shoulder. My skiing companions said they’d never seen anyone ski that run so fast who wasn’t actually racing. It was certainly too fast for my ability. Others might call it ‘being out of control!’”

Blumenthal only became aware that his legs and back were not properly aligned when Graham Bell (during a Ski Sunday special) and Warren Smith (the British ski guru) exposed a weakness in his right hip. “I carried on training with increasing pain,” he says. “Finally an X-ray showed I had two cysts and no fluid at the top of my right leg – so it was bone on bone.”

His new hip has given him a skiing renaissance. But what was his Argentinean instructor’s secret? “Skiing is a very dynamic sport,” says Alex. “The skier should always be moving to affect the skis. We focused on trying to manage the pressure between the skis and the snow throughout the entire turn by extending the legs during the first half of the turn and flexing the legs during the second half of the turn. The extension enables you to increase the pressure on the skis, while the flexion allowed us to decrease the pressure.

These movements help compensate for the external forces (mainly gravity and centripetal force) creating a dynamic balance of the internal and external forces.”

Gosh. Sounds almost like a scientific cookery lesson! But a menu that has given the amiable chef skiing wings wherever he goes.

“I love skiing anywhere really,” says Blumenthal. “One day I’d love to ski in the Andes, but I love Courmayeur and Zermatt. And Jackson Hole too now I’ve made my first visit. Hopefully it won’t be the last if we can get the Mountain Gourmet Ski Experience going here. We’re hoping there might even be a TV show to go with it.”

To read the rest of Mpora’s Wild Issue head here

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