THE LAST DAY I SPEND with Silitch is supposed to be his day off. It's his turn to watch the kids, who've been bouncing off the walls. "I have a lot of work to catch up on," he tells me over the phone. Problem is it snowed again, and clouds are clearing to reveal a sparkling blue sky.

"Maybe you could just come guide me for a half-day," I suggest. "Let's go ride the lifts and you show me areas to ski out of bounds. That's a big part of your winter business, right?"

In less than 20 minutes, his minivan comes screaming into my hotel parking lot, the tires skidding on slick cobblestones. Silitch already has his helmet on.

"Good thing you're wearing that," I say when I open the door.

"I'm a professional," he says. "Get in."

On a powder day in Chamonix, the best thing you can do is make a beeline for the open, steep slopes of the Grands Montets, a ski area at the top of the valley near the Argentière Glacier. Since there are no laws about where you can ski—even private land becomes public once it's covered in snow—jumping into the backcountry from there is ideal.

We ride up on the tram, and for the next few hours I follow Silitch into gullies, off cornices, and down knolls with powder welling up to our waists. Both of us are charged, maybe too much so; I'm beat by early afternoon.

Silitch drops me off and I wander around Chamonix, past the newly smoke-free bars and down a quaint little alley by the burbling L'Arve river. I stop at a wine shop that smells like musty cheese and buy a bottle before heading back over to Silitch's house to meet one of his neighbors. On the way, Silitch walks fast, even after hours of hard skiing. I point it out.

"Everyone has their thing," he says.

We knock at the door of a tidy house near the train tracks. A man in torn purple sweats and a teal sweater embroidered with the Company logo opens the door. He is stocky and balding but spry. Armand Comte, 73, is one of the oldest Company guides still working.

"Please, please, come in," Comte says, leading us to a creaky room with smoky crystals displayed in a glass cabinet. "My grandfather was a crystal gatherer," he says. "He was also a guide."

Silitch explains how he's working as a reinforcement for the Company and asks Comte to share some of its history with us. Comte speaks slowly, telling us how his grandfather, born in 1868, traversed the frightful ridges of the Dru five times in the summer of 1911. That, along with other exploits, was enough for the Company to honor him with a commemorative medallion, issued posthumously in 1975. "He was sure, prudent, and modest," Comte says of his grandfather. "Me, I was never a brilliant climber, but in bad terrain I was good." He and Silitch then swap stories about routes and peaks and huts that have come and gone.

We are there for nearly two hours before Comte's wife comes in to tell him dinner is ready. As we rise to leave, Silitch asks Comte about his grandson, who goes to the same preschool as Silitch's son Birken. The whole time he's been speaking to Comte formally, using French's polite vous to address him, instead of the informal tu. Comte interrupts him.

"Stop with the vous," he demands. "You can say tu. Me and you, we are the same. We are guides."

He leads us outside and waves goodbye. When I turn around, the door is still open.