April 2008 Archives

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!

Want more action and energy? Click over to Red Bull!

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!

For more action and energy click on over to Red Bull!

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!

To ready yourself for more action, click over to Red Bull!

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!

For more world class events, energize yourself at Red Bull!

*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!

Here you go folks, you saw it here first. Yesterday Simon Dumont obliterated the world quarterpipe record spinning a corked 900 tail grab 35 feet into the stratosphere above his home mountain of Sunday River, Maine. Today RedBullSkiing.com brings you a first look at the feat that literally elevated Simon even further into the upper echelons of the sport's elite. Congratulations Simon!

Click in here for the exclusive video!

Red Bull’s Simon Dumont made history today. After some kinks in the road, all was smooth sailing at 10:12 a.m. EST when Simon shattered the world record for highest air off a quarterpipe.

Simon accomplished the unthinkable establishing a new world record for highest air on a quarterpipe as he launched 35 feet into thin air at his home resort of Sunday River in Maine. On the world’s tallest quarterpipe (38-feet tall and 78-feet wide) custom-built by Snow Park Technologies, and with a Guinness Book of World Records representative on location, Simon beat previous holder Terje Haakonsen’s 32 feet 6 inches during the last of day of his attempts. Soaring 73-feet above the ground—more than a seven-story building—the hometown hero sent the intimate crowd of family and friends into a frenzy as they witnessed the moment.

The project began Tuesday morning when Simon arrived on site directly off a flight from the Jon Olsson Super Sessions in Sweden. Simon began hitting the quarterpipe in the early afternoon when he reached heights as high as 28 feet off the deck, before drifting in the air and landing low on the transition. His hard landing caused him to bruise his heel and aggravate an existing knee injury. After seeing the doctor, Simon returned to the hill on Wednesday, but his injuries were still acting up and he was forced to call it for the day. Thursday was disrupted by high winds forcing the entire staff to delay their flights in order to provide one more opportunity to attempt the world record. At 9 a.m. on Friday Simon showed up with his game face on and was ready for his final attempts. After an hour of repeatedly hitting the quarterpipe, Simon hiked an additional 15 feet up the in-run to gain more speed. Simon tucked up to 55 m.p.h. coming in and not only launched 35 feet in the air, but busted a huge 900 in the process.

Keep checking into www.redbullskiing.com for further updates, photos, and video.

Steinbeck said it best, really. Earlier in the season we brought you the chronicles of Tanner Hall and Sean Pettit's ill-fated trip to Austria. Rotten snow, injury, and spring in February rendered an intended two-week epic European adventure into a three day suffer-fest of planes, trains, and automobiles.

Behind the scenes with "The Massive" brings us back to an inside glimpse of the downside of ski-movie making. It's not all pow and fun, unfortunately.

Check out the new webisode!

When you come to Alaska, you come prepared. You come with beacon, shovel, probe, and harness. You come with down coat, two way radio, spare googles, and digi cam. But if you really know what’s up, you come prepared to wait. Slow roast, marinate, call it what you want, but a couple days spent lying around is absolutely draining. “This must be what it feels like to be in an opium den,” CP ponders. We fill the time with a harddrive full of seasons of TV shows. In case you were wondering, the second season of “Dexter” is really, really good.

Crack, it’s blue. Our guide Tom Burt calls from Mile 33. Don’t think, react. Tom Burt wants to go heli-skiing in Alaska…right now. Go, go, go! We roll up to Mile 33 from Haines, scramble to assemble the gear, and wait. Heli-skiing is the antithesis of instant gratification. Sure you get plucked from the side of the highway and plopped on the gnarliest peak you’ve ever stood on in just minutes, but you wait in the mud pit at Mile 33 for an hour to get to that point. With something like 10 groups flying in two helis, it’s a logistical puzzle too difficult to fathom. Still, we’re not complaining. We’ll take waiting in AK over traffic in LA any day of the week.

Tanner Hall, Dana Flahr, and crew get dropped on a ridge with six prominent peaks on top, and countless spines, flanks, flutes, faces, and gullies below. From across the valley, through a 200mm lens, Tanner looks like an ant dropping in. He’s slays a few turns down a flank rolling over onto a steep face that in most other parts of the world wouldn’t hold snow. Tanner is maching now, each arching turn taking him hundreds of feet further down. The face chokes up and he points it into the shadows. For a split second he’s gone, but quickly blasts onto the apron below picking up speed and running away from the boiling river of sluff ripping down just beside him.

We move on to two other zones. Tanner and Dana both get epic shots in the can. Standing on a small cornice, under the watchful eye of Tom Burt, Tanner boosts onto a face, rips a few turns, and funnels onto a spine emerging from the shadows in the afternoon sun. He’s ripping down the spine now, which leads into a pillow that diving-boards into the apron below. For a second everything is silent, less the whirring of the 16mm and the clicking of cameras. Tanner brings around an effortless 360 and stomps. The valley erupts with hoots and roars from various vantage points. “It was the most epic run of my life,” Tanner says later. It's difficult to convey what it's like to see skiing in Alaska, at the level Tanner and Dana are bringing, with your own eyes. It's even more difficult to convey the awe we all are stricken with while watching Tom Burt nonchalantly rip a run after the boys have dropped. Hopefully the photos can do some talking.

We wish this update could end on that high note, but minutes later, just ripping some fun turns down a mellow slope to the heli pick-up, Tanner skids out on some hidden ice. Evidence of the fact that it hasn’t snowed in a while, only certain aspects are still holding good snow. Tanner rag dolls and twists the ankle that has been plaguing him with pain this season. Fast forward a few hours and following a visit to the clinic in Haines, Tanner’s short-term plan is to wait a few days and see how his ankle feels. The doc says if he feels OK, it’s good to go for skiing. Here’s hoping a few days back on the slow roast is enough time for Tanner to get back up and running. He still has tons he want to do in AK.

Keep clicking into RedBullSkiing.com for further updates and check out the full photo gallery here!

A typical day in Haines, Alaska involves getting up as dawn breaks over Lynn Canal. A visual inspection of the weather situation and some phone calls render one of two things: throw all your gear on and bust-ass to the heli pick-up or climb back in bed for another few hours. Yesterday involved the latter, as we awoke to rain and low clouds. Sometime around noon everyone at the Captain’s Choice Motel was milling about in the courtyard, killing time in the usual manners. Then the sun broke. Then the phone rang. This was no fire drill. Be at the airport in 30 minutes, we’re going up.

Our crew consists of Tanner Hall and Dana Flahr, and a handful of filmers and HD operators. Getting footage for “The Massive” is the obvious goal of this trip, but our group is also partnered with Rocky Mountain Sherpas, Inc., who are making a 16mm Avalanche Education Film. The Canadian Crew are here to document the safety aspect of the heli skiing operation here. Check out the trailer for their movie, “The Fine Line,” which will release in the fall.

Tanner and Dana promptly got to work under the careful guidance of snowboard legend, and our guide, Tom Burt. Landing on a high peak, Dana picked off a gnarly line into a cliff drop and Tanner dropped in off of the top of ridge into what he thought was double stager. “I thought the line had two drops, but it was actually four,” he said, laughing, later on. Tanner rocketed out the bottom, straightlining down to the heli.

The boys picked off a couple more lines, and a gap over glacial ice serac was scoped out before some weather moved in killing the light. We got shots in the can though, and there’s nothing quite like getting out in the mountains in AK for a few hours. It’s difficult to describe the immensity of the terrain here, so we’ll let the images do the talking.

Check out the Massive Gallery!

We don’t know who coined the term “slow-roasting” in relation to the ski film industry, but making a journey to Alaska is a sure fire way to understand what it fully means. We flew into Juneau, Alaska’s capital city, a few days ago with the Massive crew and, after seeing a dude wearing a full-on wolf pelt for a jacket, promptly boarded a ferry for a cruise to the heli Mecca of Haines. Four leisurely hours, and a few naps later, we landed at our destination.

Pulling into the Captain’s Choice Motel, our home for the next three and half weeks, it was obvious the slow-roasting was already well in effect for the crews that had been there for a while. We met up with big mountain shredder Dana Flahr. Being a three-week veteran of the 2008 heli-season already, Dana was posted up in his hotel room with all the essentials: speakers to plug the laptop into, nudie mags, and a balance board made out of an old skate deck and section of PVC pipe. Tanner Hall flew into Haines the same day, and with his Alaska trip only hours old had already landed a kickflip onto the pipe. A tournament is planned for later in the week.

With one full day to rest and prepare for the elusive bluebirds, we made our way out to Mile 33 for safety briefings. There’s one highway out of Haines and the chopper operation is run out of the thirty-third mile, hence the name. Alaska Heli Skiing is probably the last roadside, cowboy heli op in Alaska. Basically some shacks in a mud swamp, Mile 33 is littered with dudes, dogs, and enough dank gore-tex to fill a dump truck.  Snowboarding super legend, Tom Burt, rolled up in his truck and hopped out. We are fortunate enough to have Tom along as our guide in Haines. Aside from being a snowboarding pioneer from way back in the day, Tom Burt is probably the best heli guide in Haines, if not Alaska.

Today was our first official day to fly. We piled in the A-Star with Tanner and Dana knowing full well the first run would more than likely be a warm-up with the clouds the way they were. Sure enough, it was pretty socked in up high, but it’s always good to pop your AK cherry and get the jitters out. AK is the real deal. Tanner and Dana found a sick wind lip and made plans to come back to hit it when the light was better. We snaked our way down a long drainage, legs burning, shredding alongside tracks laid down by Tom Burt. Not bad for quick first run in AK.

Keep checking into www.redbullskiing.com for frequent updates from Alaska. Tanner is chomping at the bit, so once the sun pops it’s on!

Check out the photo gallery here!

This week we're back in Tahoe checking in with Tanner Hall and Ian Provo as they ready themselves to hit a gnarly line in the backcountry. We see even the best laid plans by the best skiers in the world are often thrown off track by unexpected outside forces. What could've been a major downer for Tanner and the crew turns out be somewhat enlightening.

If you want the full story, well, check out the video already!

Leave it to Jon Olsson to take things to the next level. The stylie Swede has really outdone himself with his latest project: The Jon Olsson Super Sessions. Basically the idea was to take a Jon Olsson Invitational style session, but spread it out over a week with multiple features all over Jon's home resort of Are, Sweden.

Jon's hospitality towards the invited athletes, including Red Bull's Simon Dumont and Oscar Scherlin, has been world class. From the helicopter shuttles to the hotel to the raging parties every night, the only thing eclipsing the lifestyle off the hill is the ridiculous skiing going down on it. Jon, Simon, Oscar, and a handful of the best freeskiers in the world have been laying down perfomances that raise the bar on a daily basis.

Get the full story here!