Aspen – Like tracks on a powder day, the lines between two of skiing’s most distinct schools are blurring.
What began about four years ago with a handful of wickedly talented skiers ferrying their park-honed acrobatics into the steep-and-deep has become a movement.
“It was inevitable that park and big mountain would eventually merge,” ski filmmaker Greg Stump said. “Skiing is about athletic expression and this is the next step in that journey. It validates skiing. And really, the backcountry is the only place white boys can dance.”
The latest releases from the increasingly crowded world of ski films are rife with this newest of the new school: spinning, inverted, back-flipping, backward-facing tricks thrown off natural features on steep slopes of powder. Chris Collins in Teton Gravity Research’s “Anomaly” squeezes three back flips and high-speed 720s out of 50-foot cliffs. Tanner Hall rides backward off skyscrapers of snow and lands backward in his latest movie “Show & Prove.” Action shots swing seamlessly from Aspen halfpipes to Alaska’s most remote powder. Athletes born and bred in the hard-packed snow of the terrain park are now releasing themselves into the wild.
“It’s filling in the gaps between what I do and what they do,” former U.S. ski racer and big mountain technician Jeremy Nobis said . “They aren’t taking away from what we are doing. I want to see these little park kids grow up and ski big mountains. It will give them a whole new perspective. It will open their eyes. It will change their lives.”
Stunts off big cliffs are nothing new. Seth Morrison, one of the most recognized freeskiers in the world, has built a career out of his jaw-dropping ability to rotate and spin while hurtling off monster cliffs. But where Morrison once reigned alone, the big mountains of Alaska and British Columbia now teem with park-prepared tricksters, such as big mountain jib kings Mark Abma and Anthony Boronowski, who both take off and land giant cliffs riding backward – known as “switch” – as easily as they do facing forward.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t have a park to learn. We practiced on natural features. It’s about time it’s happened. Riding lines switch, there’s the future. That is the end all,” Morrison said. “Eventually it will be like snowboarding. We won’t even notice the difference between switch and forward.”
Once again, skiing has taken a cue from the single-planking riders. It was snowboarders who forged the park-to-powder path, just as they led the skiers into the park a decade ago. Riders such as Travis Rice, whose powdery prowess in Absinthe Films’ latest release “More” continues to reveal the possibilities for backcountry aerialists.
“Skiing was here first, but the snowboarders were a lot more creative when it came to having fun. They led the way, laid down the future for skiing,” said Utah’s Jamie Pierre, a big-air specialist who last year hurled himself off a 245-foot cliff near Idaho’s Grand Targhee ski area. “It’s about soft landings and using natural features. The only place for jibbers to progress is into the backcountry.”
Simon Dumont, one of the world’s most prolific park skiers, saw the light last season when he crawled from a helicopter atop a gargantuan peak in Alaska. Growing up on the East Coast and then spending several years riding nothing but park did not prepare him for what he saw.
“I have huge, huge respect for big mountain skiers now,” the Maine pipe and park champion said. “You know, this all started on the mountain and then we moved it to the park and now we’re going back to the mountains. It’s come full circle. Now we can really call it freeskiing.”
If ski movies are indeed the harbingers of what is to come, then the latest releases from Teton Gravity, Matchstick, Level 1 and Poor Boyz indicate park may be slipping from its lofty perch in skiing’s hierarchy. The competition angle – thanks mostly to ESPN’s Winter X Games – will continue to inflate the sport and the athletes’ pockets.
Competition is essential to all aspects of snowsports, but the softer snow and the lack of judges and the interpretive freedom of big mountain skiing will continue to glean disciples from the park world. Especially the top athletes who are worked from the rigors of competition and the punishment delivered from years of landing on hard snow. It’s a return to the reason everyone started skiing in the first place: powdery thrills.
“The park is overplayed in the movies,” said Chris Davenport, who last season skied all but nine of Colorado’s 54 fourteeners in an audacious attempt to lay tracks down the state’s biggest hills in a single year. “Bringing the park to big mountain skiing creates a whole new genre for our sport. Mother Nature has so many creative options than what machines make in the park. It’s a natural progression.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
