Daredevil snow sports enthusiasts know John Egan as an icon of extreme, the embodiment of huge-air, impossible-descent adventure skiing.

Even if you don’t recognize him by name, you’ve witnessed Egan in action if you’ve seen any of the epic don’t-try-this-at-home ski flicks.

Egan has launched off cliffs and soared across crevasses from Chile to Greenland. He’s achieved more than 30 first runs in the desolate, 70-degree pitched mountains of Turkey, Russia, and Romania. In 1990, a house-sized cornice at Grand Targhee in Wyoming broke away from beneath John and his brother Dan. The brothers not only survived, but they completed the run so stylishly that the death-defying footage became the single most-used segment from filmmaker Warren Miller.

Egan, a 52-year-old Boston native, has called Sugarbush home since he hitchhiked to Vermont as a teenage ski bum, earning $50 a week washing dishes. He now runs the resort’s four-season Adventure Learning Center, and is available for private lessons that max out at $659 for a full day of skiing. Yet this is no cushy late-career change. Egan can pinpoint the exact moment in 1994 when he decided to transition from entertaining people to educating them.

It was at Snowbird in Utah. Everyone who was anyone in extreme snow sports had gathered to show off and party — Olympic athletes, pro racers, ski-film legends.

“We were on fire,’’ said Egan. “Rock stars.’’

After an all-out day of one-upmanship, everyone agreed to take it easy on the final run.

Except for Egan and a buddy, who waited until the others went down to corkscrew off a sheer rock outcropping they had been eyeing all day.

“We went flying, a 25-foot drop into the woods,’’ Egan recalled. “What we didn’t know was there was another guy who took off after us. He careened straight into a tree. Punctured his lungs. Dead.

“The harsh reality of wowing people hit me in the head like a ton of bricks,’’ Egan said. “From that day on, I never skied to that level in front of people. I would dumb it down, try to teach them something.

“And you know what?’’ he said. “My available energy to give to other people just tripled. It was off the charts. Since then, it’s been an interesting ride, bringing people to the next level.’’

Early rise Egan’s ride began around age 5 or 6 while growing up on Richwood Street in West Roxbury.

“I couldn’t ski,’’ he said. “I was determined to ski. I was going to learn, and I was going to do it right now.’’