April is fast approaching and for winter sports enthusiasts living in North America, it’s one thing: the end of the ski and snowboard season.
Many resorts in the Midwest of the U. S. U. S. residents have already closed for the season, and the vast majority of the rest are expected to close through April 30 (by contrast, Mammoth Mountain in California, which has noted historic snowfall of more than 630 feet at its base, will remain open until “at least” July. )
If your hotel house has already closed or your ski vacation is over all year round, why not turn to the most productive?The 2022-23 season has been exceptional when it comes to ski and snowboard movies, and if you can’t make dust turns or run on steep lanes, why not watch others do it?
Here are some of the skiing and snowboarding videos from the 2022-23 season.
Kai Jones, 16, was nominated for IF3’s Outstanding Male Pilot of the Year for his segment in this year’s annual TGR ski film Magic Hour, and it’s not hard to see why. In addition to Jones’ talent, this magnificent film, which begins in TGR’s Home Territory in Jackson, Wyoming, before moving to British Columbia and Alaska, uses the 4k Phantom slow-motion motion, which shoots up to 1000 frames in line with the second.
Magic Hour stars heavyweights Jeremy Jones, Michelle Parker, Parkin Costain, Veronica Paulsen. It can be streamed on Prime Video, Apple TV, Red Bull TV and more.
Homestead Creative’s Fleeting Time, the JOY studio in 2019, sees Ben Ferguson step into the director’s chair for the first time. It also reunites Ferguson with fellow JOY riders Red Gerard and Sage Kotsenburg, as well as Danny Davis, Brock Crouch and Gabe Ferguson.
Over the course of two winters, the group, which includes other big names (and Olympians) like Mark McMorris and Hailey Langland, traveled in search of the biggest storms and horseback riding in Whistler, B. C. ; McCall, Idaho; Jackson, Wyoming; Haines and Valdez, Alaska; Lake Tahoe, California; Japan; and Mt. Bachelor and Mt. Hood from Oregon.
The philosophy of the film is that time is running out, punctuated through the chimes of an authentic wall clock, and it is vital to spend it doing what you love. (It sounds like an existential nightmare, but the message is really hopeful. and inspiring. )
“I hope this movie makes other people need to snowboard,” Ferguson told me at the film’s premiere. “Even if you don’t snowboard, I hope it makes you need to get out there and enjoy everything you love to do. . . and enjoy the time you have. “
You can watch Fleeting Time for free on Red Bull TV.
In Invisible Ground, director and manufacturer Elias Elhardt and Xavier De La Rue, encouraged by tragic avalanche accidents, embrace the nature of freeride, threat assessment and what it means to be vulnerable to them.
Reaching 34 minutes, it is a must-watch for those who have ever set foot in an unfixed field, and even for those who have not.
“While risk-taking is the most apparent and proportionate theme in our sport, I felt we see it primarily in the form of the action hero who overcomes the risks,” Elhardt said. “With Invisible Ground, I question the fact that the narrative and finds it another attitude in making a film that is neither glorifying nor educational, but that explores the area in between.
Elhardt and De La Rue’s efforts earned Invisible Ground the name “Best Snowboard Film” at the 2022 High Five Festival. The full movie can be viewed on the Natural Selection Tour YouTube channel.
Craig McMorris’ snowboarding videos are welcome additions to the genre, regularly with amazing cinematography and progressive driving.
Now he’s back with 2022’s FIXIN, the sequel to 2018’s We Tried. In his new film, McMorris aimed to offer a skiing thrill to all “fixin’s”: established names and newcomers, superbly filmed through Ben Webb, Connor Winton and Seb Judge.
FIXIN may be entirely on Shred Bots’ YouTube channel.
By their nature, high mountain skiing and snowboarding movies cause sweating on the hands and an accumulation in the center of the frequency. So when a film stands out for the anxiety it can create, it’s noticeable.
In 2022, professional splitboard practitioner Krister Kopala undertook the first descent of the south face of Jiehkkevárri on a split board. The remote mountain, in the Norwegian Lyngen Alps, is a giant domain with no falls. The white giant documents this search.
While the Kopala Line on the South Face won the Mountains On Stage “Line of the Year,” the documentary also provides a refreshing look at attempts that don’t work.
White can be seen in its entirety on Rab’s YouTube channel.
Danny Davis, an executive manufacturer at the time of his career, noted that many of the film’s racers paid their own expenses for the helicopter-only terrain in Alaska.
“It’s getting harder and harder to get film projects from brands and getting cash; I think it’s probably getting harder and harder to succeed as a snowboarder,” Davis told me at the film’s premiere. “But we’re very fortunate to have brands like MTN Dew, Burton and Dragon to really help us. “
Davis, Brock Crouch, Mark McMorris, Elena Hight, Gigi Rüf, Mark Sollors, Mikey Rencz, Mikey Ciccarelli, Mikkel Bang, Nick Russell and Raibu Katayama appear in the film. Hight had the lead role in ARK, which unfortunately is still too rare in snowboarding movies.
ARK and Radical Sabbatical can be seen on Outside Watch.
Trevor Kennison is the largest sitting skier on the planet who pushes the barriers not only of his sport, but also of his own mood and mind.
While skiing in the Vail countryside in 2014, Kennison suffered a T11-12 spinal cord injury, which paralyzed him from the waist down. Since then, Kennison has crossed off two top achievements on his list that many professional skiers will never achieve: Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Kings.
Full Circle is, in part, the story of Kennison’s quest to return to the crash six years later to attempt the world’s first double backflip on a sit-ski. There’s more at stake than a world record attempt, and the result is one of the most poignant ski movies of recent times.
Full Circle premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February. More screenings will be held in the spring and early summer, and virtual plans will be announced.
In 2021, The Approach greatly brightens the winter sports network by highlighting those who are not at the forefront of skiing and skiing: BIPOC, female and adapted athletes.
It made such an impression that in 2022, The Approach 2, directed again by Anne Cleary, debuted to give us more of what the industry obviously misses.
Brooklyn Bell, Vasu Sojitra, Sophia Rouches, Emile Zynobia, Anna Soens and Ingrid Backstrom return for the action-packed sequel, “rising as they go and cheering others on the descent. “
The Approach 2 can be completed on The North Face’s YouTube channel.
You think of the female-directed film NEXUS as a debut film for The Approach 2; in fact, the two films shared screening at Evo Salt Lake in October 2022.
Starring Michelle Parker, Lucy Sackbauer and Krystin Norman, NEXUS features five distinct teams of female skiers exploring their connection to each other and to the mountains. To a large extent, however, the NEXUS team sought to create a big-budget film starring female athletes, who are still rare after Pretty Faces broke barriers by making so much in 2015.
NEXUS can be fully featured on Arc’teryx’s YouTube channel.
The short film Full Frontal Freedom can feature the largest naked ski tour in the world, as more than two hundred women walk the slopes of Bluebird Backcountry in Colorado without inhibitions or clothing.
But it is not intended to excite. By contrast, Jenny Verrochi of Wild Barn Coffee, who also hosted Boot Tan Fest, the nude cross-country ski festival for women and women, conceived the film as a way to give a women’s organization a sense of “collective freedom” and thus unbridled joy.
“Skiing mountain lines can be a lot like a bar fight. “
That’s the concept of Alex D’Agostino’s 2022 ski movie Bar Fight, starring Jake Hopfinger, Jonnie Merril, Caite Zeliff and Lucas Wachs.
It’s a high-concept film, interspersed with scenes of bar fights in the Wild West, and it’s a breath of fresh air in a landscape that watches so many videos that they cut athletes’ games one after another and play music.
Bar Fight can be viewed in its entirety on LINE’s YouTube channel.
There were many other videos about skiing and skiing in 2022-23 that were not on this list. A brief review of more movies to discover:
Blur through Austen Sweetin and Sean Lucey, through Quiksilver (watch Quiksilver on YouTube)
Free Rider through The North Face, starring Sam Anthamatten and Victor De Le Rue and directed by the inimitable Jérôme Tanon (see on The North Face YouTube)
Ruckus III, featuring all-Kiwi programming Carlos Garcia Knight, JJ Rayward and Mitch Davern, from Shred Bots and presented via Monster Energy (see Shred Bots YouTube)
Sincerely Yours of Ride Snowboards, with the team’s European riders in Finland, Norway, Switzerland, France and Austria (watch Ride Snowboards on YouTube)