At 86, James Salter has been many things: West Point graduate and Korean War fighter pilot, skier and climber, New Yorker and Aspenite, and one of our greatest writers on the allure of life in the outdoors. Two of Salter’s works in particular helped define the emerging world of adventure sports: his 1979 novel Solo Faces, which follows a climbing purist named Vernon Rand as his ambition propels him from California to Chamonix, in the French Alps; and his script for the 1969 film Downhill Racer, in which Robert Redford plays a lone-wolf member of the U.S. Ski Team. That world and those sports have evolved almost beyond recognition in the decades since, but Salter’s insights into the curious alchemy that occurs when young men fall under the spell of the mountains remain acute. When Tim Sohn met him for lunch in Manhattan, Salter—sharp, incisive, energetic, and exceedingly gracious—had just returned from winter in Aspen, where he’s lived at least part of the year since 1969.

SOHN: Did you get any skiing in this winter?
SALTER: I didn’t ski this year, because I have a bad leg, but hopefully, if it heals up, I’ll go next year.

Was it hard to be in Aspen and not ski?
Well, a little. Often, when you meet people for a drink or a meal, they’ve come down from skiing and talk about snow conditions, which can be very boring if you’re not skiing. And of course, when you look up at the mountain from Aspen, you see Corkscrew, you see the bottom of Little Nell, and that kind of calls to you.

Skiing’s changed a bit since you moved to Aspen. Have you seen the X Games?
I don’t go to them, but there’s a brilliant blue light in the heavens that comes from those games when they’re in town. It’s unbelievable what they do. I mean, they’re skiing in these barrel-shaped things on skis that are rounded front and back, and they’re 16 years old. Phenomenal, but the connection with what used to be skiing and the life of skiing is tenuous.

It’s certainly different from the world of Downhill Racer. Tell me about when you and Robert Redford went to Europe, to the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, to research the film. I’ve heard that was kind of improvisational.
Exactly. We weren’t invited. I mean, we went over there to be with the ski team mainly, and as I recall there was some, uh, additional business—I believe the Olympic ­organizers had sold the rights to film to somebody else, so I think Redford was trying to bootleg some footage of the ­Olympic races for the film, which was not authorized. I wasn’t involved.

You’ve said that Redford’s character was based on both Billy Kidd and Spider Sabich, famous U.S. Ski Team members from the sixties. Do you see any skiers today with that individualist’s attitude? I think of Bode Miller.
Bill Johnson, the American who won the downhill gold in the Olympics in 1984, was a pre–Bode Miller, the same type without the trailer. Not quite the panache of Miller. Just an outsider, and he claimed he based his persona on Redford’s character. I mean, in a way it’s too silly. But, you know, movies are very influential.

That film was the start of a productive relationship between you and Redford.
We had met in New York before that. But yes, after Downhill Racer we stayed in touch, and we talked about doing a subsequent movie, a climbing movie.

Which was Solo Faces.
Right. That book started as a film script I wrote for him. In the end he didn’t like it. I was thinking of that book the other day. I saw a video on YouTube of the guy [Swiss climber Ueli Steck] who soloed the Eiger in 2 hours and 47 minutes. Have you seen it? It makes that whole book seem like the day of sail. Really, it made it almost irrelevant I thought.