You often hear skiers middling about the audience of a ski movie never seeing an accurate representation of what is "really going on" in Alaska. It's a noteworthy complaint but in all honesty, I wanna see you shred, not whine about standing on top of a line for two hours. To me, talking in ski movies is like Long Dick Johnson and Steamy McHole trying to "act" in between their doing-it scenes. It just tends to undercut the thesis.

So now that we've determined words and ski movies go together like Sunnis and Shiites, let's not put a full containment cap (top kill?) on the original subject. You see blogs are made up of all kinds of words and are generally boring in the first place. So maybe in the next few posts I'll peruse this subject of "A day in the life of filming in Alaska". Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But whatever the outcome...whatever, I'm blabbing now.

Day 2 Day 1 was met with collecting ski gear the airlines had lost the day before, signing filming permits, getting briefed with the heli and being introduced to our guides. Standard protocols for any trip. Day 2. Well Day 2 broke blue. It was game-f$%&ing-on.

When the sun is shining and the cameras are ready in Alaska, I gotta say the feeling is not made of pure exhilaration and excitement. When the cameras of legends like Scott Markewitz and the boys from MSP are about to be focused on you for the day, the pressure to perform percolates nervousness into your veins. The helicopter starts whirling and soon you're vaulted into the lofty dangers of tall mountains from the safety of a parking lot. It's 0 to 220 mph in seconds.

The beautiful sights can calm but flying into the unknown still tickles your tension wires.

We flew south in search of terrain. Soon this face of rime, ice and powder came into view.

Yet unfortunately it lacked the necessary terrain to shoot. Its ice and rime was creative and fun looking yet the airs seemed few and small and its beauty on camera might not appear on the big screen. So we moved on in search of the legendary Spine Cell. We knew the light might not be on it yet. But we flew on in search of the goods.

Sure enough when we arrived the notorious face was shrouded in the shadows.

You could see the potential but its amazing spines weren't highlighted by the sun and the face was unshootable for the cameras. It always seems to baffle me how uninteresting terrain can look in the shadows. It can be easy to skim your eyes right by a full-chubby face while it's in the shadows. It's when it's in the sun that it captures your gaze like a shot of optical heroin.

But anyway, we're foregoing chronology. Let's jump back into the time-line.

While we waited for Spine Cell to come into the light we decided to get some warm up runs in the light. Both for the camera's and the skiers, it was necessary to warm up on less critical lines.

We scoped the eastern flanking wall of Spine Cell. It looked small from the air but would work for the first lines of the trip.

Henrik and I decided to start our skiing off on the two prominent spines on the looker's left side of the face. Essentially they were mini-golf but it was a great way to get the feeling of the steepness of AK under your skis and a little air under your feet. As it usually is with AK, our judgment of scale was out of whack. We originally assumed both exit airs on the spines to be mere 5 to 10 footers. Sure enough they were 20-30. They probably aren't shots that will make it in the movie but nonetheless they were fun.

My second line was another failure in judgment. Not that I didn't expect the air to be bigger than the first, but I assumed a medium 30-35 foot huck was in order. Much to my surprise when I rolled off the edge of the cliff I found out my air was more like 60-65. I literally had so much time in the air to think that I jockeyed back and forth between going for the stomp or not. At the last moment of flight I said to myself, "Well this is MSP. So I should probably go for the stomp."

Despite the mid-air wish-washing a stomp it ended up being.

I immediately got to the glacier floor below completely wired and excited like I just mainlined a pound of coffee. Confidence began to boil in me. I was then ready for the rest of the day.

With Spine Cell looking like it wouldn't be in the light for another few hours, we decided to go exploring.

Soon we buzzed around the Chugach in search of terrain. The guides pitched forth ideas while we grazed around looking at potentiality. Off in the distance our guide Clark pointed to one of the highest peaks in the area. He said, "There's Peak 6500, we haven't really gotten it before, you guys wanna go check it out?" We could see its steep flanked headwall and lightly featured spines from nearly 10 miles away. We happily agreed to Clark's suggestion.

And then we were there.

Holy Moly did this face look like fun. The airs in the top quarter of the run looked like a pleasurable size. Not too huge to scare the crap out of you, but big enough to sail. Likewise, the 50 degree angle of the face allowed for any hop to turn into a lengthy flight.

As we got to the top, Henrik questioned the snow density. It looked firmer than the first run and the higher altitude of Peak 6500 hundred suggested that fact as well. Henrik decided to take a snow assessment lap on the far skier's left of the face.

After Henrik's run, he radioed up to me in a nervous tone, "The snow is quite hard. I don't know if it's going to be good to send it on."

His words coursed through my head. I took note of Henrik's comments but felt only confidence. I radioed back to Henrik and the camera crew, "It's okay man, I feel confident with this. I'm ready to go."

I mentally lined up the first two turns into the twenty footer and where I had to be to clear the bergschrund at the bottom of the face. "Dropping in 10," I radioed.

Soon I was absolutely nuking down a creamy but dense 50 degree face. I arced two turns, let my skis run and picked up my feet moments before my air. I sailed 20 feet of the deck for what felt like a casual minute. 60 feet had passed under my skis before I landed. The speed after the air was intense. I used all of my old Downhill racing skills to lay into two last turns at 60+ mph before the air over the bergschrund.

The run felt like a DH race. Accelerate, air, haul-ass, finish. Adrenaline juice was now flooding my body.

After another lap my eyes were attracted to the biggest feature on Peak 6500. It was the obvious A+ line. But part of me wanted nothing to do with it and my body tried to suppress any thought my brain was putting up of skiing this line. With the harder snow on the runs before and what looked like a massive air out the bottom, the line had a high injury potential

Henrik decided to ski a spine next to my exit air. I thought it was a good opportunity to assess the size of the cliff. If I could take a picture of him skiing next to the cliff then perhaps I could get a good estimation of the exit air's true size.

I snapped the pic and then got scared.

Henrik looked absolutely tiny next to the cliff. Yet I still couldn't accurately gauge the cliff height. All I knew was that it was going to be big. The height to me looked like it was at the highest borderline of my stomping ability. I stood at the bottom on the glacier below. My mind bounced back and forth. I radioed to the crew. Mentioned my thoughts. Soon I had said too much. Awakening the possibility to the public pushed my desire to ski that line over the edge. I was going to ski it.

We flew up to the top. Within moments I was standing on top and was absolutely petrified.

I couldn't see a single foot of my line. I had no idea where my spine and air was. I radioed to the cameramen across the valley for assistance. They all tried to direct me with directions like, Them: "You see that spine to the right of you? Me: "No. I can't see shit."

But eventually the time was the time and I felt that this was a line I could do. I roughly figured out where I needed to be, uselessly tried to get my nerves in check and got counted in.

I dropped over the rollover, took three slower paced turns to get comfortable with the snow and hopefully place myself on the correct line. Soon the slough I had kicked off from my first turns was tickling my back and threatening to pull me into death traps below. I picked up the speed. Spotted my spine. Eyeballed the blind take-off of the exit air. Picked up my feet and suddenly I was soaring. Time slowed down and I felt nothing but the sensation of flying. After what felt like minutes of gliding I landed with a forceful impact. Sped away from my slough. Hopped the bergschrund and woke up out of the concentrated daze of skiing and flying. Buzzing like a high-tension wire, I was so excited I couldn't even scream (a first for me).

And then it was about 1:00 o'clock. Time for lunch....

The day is half.

Standing under the monolith of Peak 6500 we wait for the heli. The day is far from over yet. Spine Cell now stands in the light. I just skied arguably the best line of my life. Usually life altering moments are great times to take a break, reflect for a second, maybe cheers a beer. That time is not now.

We load into the heli. Fly past dozens of peaks and round the corner into the back of a glacier carved valley. Pressed into the back corner, a corrugated curtain of spines awaits.

Rumor has it that Jeremy Jones has camped out in Girdwood for weeks waiting only for Spine Cell to come into good conditions. Its combination of features, pitch and length are absolutely ideal. It's the track that was built purposely for the Bugatti Veyron, it's the clay court for Nadal, it's the course that Tiger built. It's perfection in skiing.

Now it was time to ski the son of a bitch.

I noticed a great starter line. The spine started just to the lookers left of the cornice. Had an open pitch into what looked like a little launch ramp that fed into a curtain of spines.

What ensued was a line that was essentially simple in its follow through but divine its pleasure to ski. The dangers weren't omnipresent yet the steepness was great enough that the turns are a balance between floating and falling. Every turn is a gravity fed reconnection with the snow, the moments in between those turns are space walks.

When you lift your feet, you fly.

By this time Henrik and a were on such a roll that a ten ton boulder coming down a mountain would have troubles keeping up with us.

We skied on.

We skied and we skied. Lapping Spine Cell a total of 6 times each Henrik and I absolutely exhausted ourselves. The heli buzzed over us with the cameramen dangling off the edge of the skid while we dropped in in 5 minute intervals. We would finish our lap, have mere seconds to click out of our skis, jump into the heli and prep for dropping in on another line. The helicopter would do a test lap to see how the pilot could fly the line in order to keep the filmer and photographer's lenses focused on the action the entire time. Breaths weren't caught and hearts weren't calmed by the time I had to drop in. I skied lines that were lines of a lifetime like they were afternoon laps on KT-22. That is exactly how incredible this day was. Extraordinary was the ordinary. A lifetime of dream-skiing was packed into 12 hours.

The stoke could not be contained.



Thanks for listening,

~CT

PS - be sure to check out my blog The Ski Life

It’s been a long winter for the MSP crew and athletes, but all good things must come to an end. Looking back, everyone here agrees that this has been one of our best seasons yet. Everyone worked their asses off to make the best of it and the results were nothing short of spectacular.

While December provided a few early-season opportunities for the skiers to shake off the cobwebs and get out and start filming, we really took it up a notch in January. As usual, British Columbia delivered the best early snowfall, leaving Mark Abma and Eric Hjorleifson to take full advantage during a skin trip at the remote Meadow Lodge.

February ramped up with two long trips overseas. Bushfield hooked up with Russ Henshaw and Bobby Brown across the Atlantic, sessioning huge jumps provided by the Portes du Soleil crew. Meanwhile, Pettit and Windstedt joined Jacob Wester in Japan in search of deep pow. As it turns out, they didn’t have to search hard… overhead fluff beckoned nearly everywhere they went.

The big-mountain crew slayed huge lines in BC during the month of March. Abma, Hoji, Pettit, Heim, and Bushfield all posted up and had unlimited access to the best terrain on the planet right out their back door in Bralorne. Another crew journeyed to Idaho mid-March to session backcountry booters, and we were introduced to Gus Kenworthy. This trip took an unfortunate turn when Bobby Brown injured his back during a bad landing, and – thinking he was out for the season – the crew packed it in after wishing Bobby a speedy recovery.

We were hungry to start fresh with some new trips in April, so Henrik Windstedt and Cody Townsend teamed up for three weeks of heliskiing with CPG. Both of them came out of Alaska grinning ear to ear, knowing they had set the bar a few notches higher. Meanwhile, Iceland’s volcanic eruption had grounded Wester, Henshaw, and Kenworthy for several days while they were scheduled to shoot with MSP in the US. After a few days of frantic phone calls, they all arrived in Stevens Pass to meet up with Richard Permin, fresh off another trip in northern BC. Despite some rough Washington spring weather, the whole crew managed to rack up shots.

In early May, Sean Pettit had a plan in mind and took a rare trip south of the Canadian border to shred backcountry booters outside of Cooke City, MT. Many of the park skiers were hungry to get shots after competing all season, so we took the Stevens Pass crew to Keystone for a quick mission in the A51 park. Keystone was as hospitable as ever and had several cool features already built for the boys, providing them a veritable playground in which to throw down. The real bangers, however, were reserved for Alyeska, where we saw the triumphant return of Bobby Brown less than two months after his injury. Back on track and ready to shred, Bobby and the rest of the boys threw every trick in the book – quite literally – over the behemoth creation courtesy of Alyeska Resort. When it was all over in AK, a few of the boys decided to cruise down to Mammoth and wrap up a few last shots in the park and pipe before calling it done.

All in all it was definitely a season to remember and there were too many good days to count. What we’re left with are stacks upon stacks of epic footage… the best of which will be flashing before your eyes in just a few short months. Stay tuned to Skimovie.com in the coming weeks for more info, including an official announcement on our 2010 ski film and a teaser that will make your eyeballs pop!