Red Bull Skiing

Back in April Red Bull Skiing was fortunate enough to accompany Tanner Hall and his film crew up to Haines, Alaska where they were filming for Tanner’s upcoming movie release, “The Massive”. Also along for the trip, to collaborate with and document what Tanner’s crew was doing, was Eric Crosland, Dave Mossop, and Malcolm Sangster of Rocky Mountain Sherpas. In an effort to create a new and innovated avalanche education film in 16mm, the RMS have traveled far and wide this winter capturing epic images of skiing and its relationship to avalanches. Malcolm took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to talk to Red Bull Skiing about their movie, "The Fine Line".

Tell us about the project you guys are doing and how it came about?
 
In high school we lost four close friends to an avalanche, and over the years we’ve lost more and seen many young people perish.  We’ve always wanted to try and do our part and make an avalanche education film that kids will actually be stoked on.  The Canadian Avalanche Foundation, having similar goals of youth education, realized that an energetic film is a great way to engage students and inform them about avalanche safety.  Their belief in us really opened doors and companies like North Face, Red Bull, Black Diamond, and others have followed suit and have made this thing possible.

You guys have been out in the field a whole bunch this year. Any great stories of pow days or amazing things you've seen?

Well, we’ve definitely filmed a bunch of sick pow riding and gnar in BC and Alaska this year, but one of the more exciting things to watch was the avalanche control work done by various operations.  Western Canada had a pretty sketchy snowpack this year and with teams like that of the Lake Louise resort in Alberta, we got to chuck a few shots around and fire a couple guns to try and film some avalanches.  One crisp January morning, in pinging pink light, we blasted a size 3 avalanche to ground and captured it on 16mm. The power of such a slide is truly savage to behold.

How and why did you end up working alongside Tanner Hall's "The Massive" project?

Working earlier this winter with Red Bull and their Canadian athletes Sean Pettit, Mikey Rencz and Will Gadd led us to cross paths with CP and Tanner’s project, “The Massive”.  After a few phone calls and plan to collaborate in Alaska, we all met up in Haines to throw down.  Together we captured some unreal riding by Tanner and Dana Flahr, but we also got a chance to delve into the behind the scenes avalanche safety protocols that go into filmmaking in such big terrain.  We’re in business to film gnarly lines and we’re showing that there is a lot more that goes into it than what you see in the ski movies.

When does the movie come out? Any future plans?

The primary film piece is set to premier in October 2008, look for the full DVD package with the four training films to release after that.  Future plans? Well, definitely a severe whack of editing and animating interspersed periodically by some climbing and patio drinking.  After that comes the film tour in the fall.  Our goal is to spread avalanche awareness as well as general interest in going to the backcountry to as many people as possible.  So once the production is wrapped up we need to make sure this thing circulates, educates and gets as many people psyched as possible.

Check out "The Fine Line" Teaser!

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One thing about traveling to the further corners of civilization to find pow is you also find the people who live in these corners. Tanner Hall appreciates everyone with a story and everyone with a stoke for the mountains and sliding down them. This week we find Tanner and Ian McIntosh walking the streets of Terrace, British Columbia and interacting with the locs.

Check out the video!

And for even more flavor, head on over to Red Bull!

The first day of May fell on this past Thursday and all over the country lift chairs idly swung in the spring sun as the meltdown intensified at the base of the lift towers. Not everywhere though. In a couple places across the country, winter was still in full effect and some skiers dropped in to their eighth straight month of powder skiing.

We cleared our schedules and kept a keen eye on the weather sites: almost with the same anticipation we do in the fall when the wind blows cold and the storms start lining up in the Pacific. Just like skiing powder in October is a rare and fulfilling treat, skiing powder in May is similarly satisfying.

Clocking in with eight inches of new, Sugarloaf, Maine was representing the East Coast. Utards were dumbfounded with 20 inches in Little Cottonwood Canyon the night before the 1st, and Timberline at Mt. Hood, Oregon checked in with an accumulated 20 inches on Thursday.

We made the mad rush up Highway 26 on a Timberline mission. Nearly to the lodge, we overtook a snowplow blasting powder into the roadside trees. Look at the picture, it could be the dead of winter. The temps were slated to warm up, and that they did, but for a few glorious hours in the morning the light and fresh was slayed in Timberlines secret steep stashes. As the clouds burned off, the scene literally changed from winter to spring before our eyes and under our feet. Nothing a little park skiing can't fix. Here's to you winter, we'll see you next year.

If you got no pow and need a fix, head over to Red Bull!

One thing that makes Sean Pettit such an amazing skier is the fact that he's packing world class skills in a frame that barely breaks a Ben Franklin (or Sir Robert Borden for you Canuckistanies). Like a human pinball, Sean's manages to make an epic fail on a gnarly backcountry Utah pillow line look almost, well, intentional.

Check out the video, and for some recovery of your own head on over to Red Bull!

The last update left us up in Haines with sunny skies, severely wind affected snow, and sketchy avalanche conditions. Still there was a glimmer of hope that a couple days time could heal the mountains, and that it did.

With Tanner Hall down with an injured ankle, Dana Flahr was left to carry the torch for the AK segment in “The Massive”. Under the given conditions, most of the other film crews in town were flying all over the range outside Haines looking for good snow up high. Unfortunately, up high is where the wind hit the hardest: a little gem of knowledge our seasoned guide and snowboard legend Tom Burt was keen enough to factor in. We began working the lower elevations where all the puzzle pieces had to fit together perfect to make for a good run: proper aspect not getting heat from the sun, good light, and wind protected.

All of a sudden, in a place that normally has endless possibilities, the options became few. Tom’s wisdom and experience put most of them under the skis of Dana Flahr. For two days while other film crews fruitlessly burned budget or pulled out to town, Dana slayed some of the nastiest AK lines of his life. The kind of runs you don’t find anywhere else: steep, narrow, high consequence spines. Appropriately, the doors came off the heli and some epic aerial shots were captured, ensuring “The Massive” will have some Grade A Alaska footage.

Check out the final AK Gallery!

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Back in early March we brought you a story that followed Tanner Hall and "The Massive" crew from Austria to Utah in search of powder. After thousands of miles traveled and over a week of waiting, the storms finally broke and the crew posted up in an epic zone in Northern Utah. However, the warm glow of first light and the backcountry silence was soon to be shattered by an unforseen force of destruction. Attack of the Sledneckers!

Check out the video!

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The last update left us with Tanner Hall and his injured ankle. A few days of rain gave him, and the snowpack in the mountains outside of Haines, some time to heal up. The weather finally broke a few days later and after some long sessions of shuffle puck, TV, and hacky-sack we were all ready to get back up above the treeline.

Tanner hopped back in the ship and we took off into sparse clouds. Looking for a break where the sun was hitting a skiable face—aptly termed “window shopping” in AK—we found a nice spine between two bowls for Tanner to test the snow and his ankle. The heavy rains down in town dumped about a foot of fresh up high and Tanner dropped into some nice turns. The clouds were a bit too thick for filming, but Tanner managed to bag a pretty nice run. We moved on to some features that were a bit lower, but the temperature was such that 1000 feet lower the snow was heavy junk. Tanner moved through the second run in obvious pain. Basically he was fine in super light, fresh pow, but the heavier snow was really putting strain on his ankle.

Tanner was forced to make the painful decision of calling it quits in AK. His ankle proved to be an issue, and Alaska is no place to be skiing with physical reservations. The glass half-full part of the story is he got a couple killer shots for the movie, slaying some insane lines, and he still has time to heal up enough to perhaps do a terrain park or backcountry feature shoot for “The Massive” in June.

Injury and uncooperative conditions are always looming outside factors in ski-movie making. The decision was made to continue to trip with Dana Flahr, but just as things were looking good, with a little new snow, the wind moved in. A bit of wind on the heavy coastal snow of AK is sometimes good to suck moisture out and velvet out the powder, but when the wind rips and scours the snow off the peaks it can quickly change a good situation bad.

A few days after Tanner left the weather finally popped blue for what looked like a good run of days. This is exactly what skiers come to Haines for.  Unfortunately, it seems like there’s always one thing wrong when everything else comes together, and this time it was the wind. Cold air from the North blasted the fresh powder and transformed the snowpack. From high in the helicopter you could see the damage to the snow, which is never a good sign.

Our guide Tom Burt got to work meticulously assessing the stability, and the diagnosis was sketchy. We actually picked up off the top of a run due to unstable conditions, and while that’s never something you like to do while heliskiing, everyone was fine with Tom’s educated decision. That day other groups out in the field set off at least two slides resulting in one complete burial (safely dug out) and one blown knee. Under sunny skies our new reality was severely diminished options and a snowpack that needed time to settle and bond. We retired back to town a bit deflated, but knowing that a couple days in Alaska can change thing dramatically. Hope is not yet lost.

Check out the full photo gallery here!

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In all the post world record flurry surrounding Simon Dumont these days, the fact that he rolled off a plane from 10 days at the Jon Olsson Super Sessions in Sweden to capture it in Maine is sometimes overlooked. And not only did Simon compete in a world class event at a world class level, but he along with his team of filmer Riley Poor and photographer Blake Jorgenson captured the People's Choice award at JOSS. Congrats Team Dumont!

See the video/photo entry by Team Dumont here!

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*Video courtesy of Riley Poor/Empire Productions

Last week we saw Tanner Hall and crew having a rough go of things in Austria with injury and bad snow while filming for "The Massive." In this weeks webisode, Tanner is still on the mend from an ankle injury, but the Pettit Brothers and the Provo Brothers manage to go out on sleds in the Utah Backcountry and, as Tanner would say, get the murder mission back on track. Check out Callum launching a high-speed double stager, Sean busting a huge corked 720, and Ian displaying some switch mastery in the backcountry.

Click in here for the video!

The ladies of the Red Bull Ski Team, Grete Eliassen and Angeli VanLaanen, recently got back from a once in a lifetime trip deep inside Mother Russia. All the effort of traveling for days in a strange land paid off with some epic conditions and terrain so gnarly it's hard to believe it's within a ski area with lifts.

Click in here for Grete's blog!

Click in here for the photo gallery!