Watch GoPro Footage of Death-Defying Downhill Ski Run By Léo Taillefer, French GoPro ‘Line of the Winter’ Champion [Video]

GoPro footage has emerged online capturing a daredevil skier’s death-defying downhill ski run that some have described as the scariest ever. The GoPro footage was one of several entries for the GoPro “Line of the Winter” competition that challenges skiers from around the world to shoot raw and extreme GoPro action footage of themselves doing their most daring runs down dangerous snowy pistes.

The 22-year-old daredevil professional skier Léo Taillefer, submitted the stunning footage (see YouTube above) for the competition and won the February 2016 Line of the Winter competition with a prize of $1,000. The grand prize of $20,000 for the GoPro Line of the Winter competition is awarded annually.

The competition is run by GoPro, the San Mateo, California-based company that manufactures the world-famous GoPro action cameras.

Entrants are challenged to submit raw, unedited GoPro footage of their most daring ski runs. The entry clip that demonstrates the most daring action, most creative filming and skiing technique wins the prize.

The Daily Mail notes that the organizers warn entrants that they participate in the competition at their own risk and that the organizers would not be responsible for any harm or death to skiers or videographers.

“By participating, Skier/Snowboarder and Videographers acknowledge they are participating at their own risk and that neither Grind nor any Sponsor is responsible for any physical harm or death that may befall any Skier/Snowboarder or Videographer as a result of participation in these Contests.”

Taillefer’s winning entry shows the expert skier demonstrating flawless technique with death-defying stunts during the course of a hair-raising ski run down the Val d’lsére piste at the French skier’s hometown.

Watch as Taillefer begins the deadly run by leaping from the roof of the Le Signal Val d’Isere restaurant. He then streaks down the slope, negotiating the treacherous course dotted dangerously with trees and yawning drops.

The slightest error or miscalculation as he weaves through the tightly packed trees down the slope would have sent him slamming fatally at several miles per hour in a rough tree trunk. Awestruck crowds watch and cheer as he zips down the slope at fearsome speed.

He pauses at a point down the slope to scale a wall and then continues down the path.

The video went viral immediately it was uploaded to YouTube on April 8, exceeding 100,000 views in the first two days.

According to the video description, Léo Taillefer was the winner of the grand prize for the GoPro Line of the Winter competition last year (see video below), and now again he has been named the winner of the competition for the month of February 2016.

The YouTube above shows the skier being awarded the grand prize of $20,000 after he won last year’s competition. His entry stood out among more than 800 competing entries “due to its creatively and the technical difficulty of skiing [the] narrow canyon flawlessly.”

Taillefer said in a Facebook post that he was “super happy” to win the monthly (February) prize for the Line of the Winter competition.

“Thanks to the restaurant Le Signal Val d’Isère for letting me jump from the terrasse,” he wrote.

A piste is a graded and marked path down a hill or mountain for snow skiing or snowboarding. Pistes are graded relative to other pistes in an area according to the difficulty of negotiating the piste.

In North America pistes are usually graded using a green circle symbol to indicate the easiest, while a double black diamond indicates “expert only.”

A blue square stands for an intermediate course and a single black diamond stands for an “advanced” course.

[Image via Shutterstock]