In the spring of 2001, high on the windswept summit of Mount Everest, a 22-year-old French snowboarder stood ready to make history. His name was Marco Siffredi, a Chamonix native raised in the shadows of Mont Blanc, where steep lines and avalanches were part of life.

That day, May 23, he strapped into his board and dropped down the Norton Couloir. Four hours later, he slid into Advanced Base Camp, the first person to make a continuous snowboard descent from the highest mountain on Earth. The world called him l’Ange Blond, the Blond Angel.

But Everest wasn’t finished for Marco. His true dream was the Hornbein Couloir, a 55-degree chute on the mountain’s unforgiving west face, a line many called the “Holy Grail” of snowboarding.

He returned the following year. Autumn 2002. The snow was deep, the weather unstable. For weeks he battled storms, avalanches, broken gear, and exhaustion. His Sherpa team begged him not to go. Still, on September 8, after a 12-hour climb to the summit, Marco clipped into his bindings.

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

Then he pushed off into the Hornbein. At first, the Sherpas watched him carve turns down the face. Then the clouds swallowed him. He never came out.

Marco Siffredi was just 23. His body was never found.

Back in Chamonix, the boy who had once ridden impossible lines on the Aiguille Verte, was gone. But his legend only grew. Friends remembered a fearless rider, some even his own sister, held onto the belief he may have survived, vanishing into Tibet.

But for most, the mountain had taken him.

To this day, his 2001 descent remains one of the greatest feats in snowboarding history. His disappearance in 2002, one of Everest’s enduring mysteries.

He didn’t chase fame. He chased purity, the fall line, the untouched slope, the descent that lived only in his mind.

Above the clouds, in the thin air where snow becomes silence, the Blond Angel rides on.