SKIER/Ora Pro Nobis (Pray for Us)

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STORY LESLIE ANTHONY | PHOTOS MATTIAS FREDRIKSSON/PBP f you don’t know how ski films get made, here’s how it should work: Choose a few exotic locations you’re sure nobody else is filming at; hand-pick a crew of A-team athletes with limitless travel/heli budget; line up a few deep-pocketed sponsors who are down with your program; hire a pricey, award-winning cinematographer—or two—for the shoot; invite top-seeded still photographers and a recognizable writer to help give the movie legs in the worldwide snow-sport press; hit the road running.

Got that? Good. Now forget it.

Here’s the reality: Wherever you go, no matter how exotic, it’s unlikely you’ll be the only movie company there; most cinematographers are award-lacking, impoverished ski bums who max out their own credit cards on behalf of the film company; the footage being shot could, for a variety of political and business reasons, end up in as many movies as there are athletes; the still photographer is sure he could kill it a lot faster and cheaper if the film crew disappeared into a crevasse; although the athletes—bless their talented, physically fatigued souls—are still the loveable mélange of alternately industrious/lazy, predictable/mercurial, fragile/egotistical, soulful/brash thrill-seekers they always were, they’re now inclined by design (and contract stipulations) toward little other than serving their own interests which are, per se, generating a series of fiveto-30-second moments of inspired (or accidental) bravado that can be sewn together into a killer (see also “sick,” “rad,” etc.) segment so that their sponsors receive the exposure required to justify threadbare contracts, deem them worthy of renewal and offer the athlete a chance to go out and spend the following winter in the same anxious square dance, linking arms variously with film, photo, comp and PR demands.

It makes spinning 1080s seem like a good way to slow down time and take stock of your existence.

Somewhere in there, if the athletes even care—and shockingly, many do not—they will get to ski. For fun. With no lenses in sight. Unencumbered by any worry that their “seggie” isn’t finished or that someone in an office in Europe is adding up logo-visibility minutes under a column headed by their (very likely misspelled) name.

From within the swirling vortex of a transcontinental existence, however, athletes cannot see and surely don’t have time even to imagine such halcyon deliverance. And so, dear reader, we must do it for them. Because every single frame of film and each published photo of a pro skier begs one simple indulgence of the viewer, best put embodied in the lingua franca of the church: ora pro nobis—pray for us.

For we are skiers.

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“ALL WE WANT IS A LITTLE DIVINE INTERVENTION. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?”

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THIS LINE IS CALLED MR. WIGGLY BUT IT’S GIVING US THE OPPOSITE. MIKE DOUGLAS AT MICA. “BEN TO GOD, BEN TO GOD… HEEEEEELLLLP! OVER.”

n the dark road to Revelstoke, B.C., amidst another record stretch of high-pressure during a snow-impoverished winter, Mike Douglas’ ruminations have, in fact, descended into a litany of prayer: “I hope the weather and terrain are good enough that we don’t have to resort to rails…. I’ve never skied with C.R. [Johnson]—I hope he and [Mark] Abma don’t want to ski the same kinds of lines I do…. I want to step it up gradually, you know—start with a warm-up, then some mini golf and get to the big stuff last; I hate throwing down right out of the gate….

By the way, remind me to buy some Advil when we stop for gas.”

This orison seems fitting, because when we arrive in Revie, the rest of the crew are consumed in their own supplications: Mica Heli Guides’ marketing director, Darryn Sewchuk, is secretly imploring that we aren’t the same demanding pain in the ass other film crews have been; Mattias Fredriksson is beseeching the weather gods for 16-hour work days so he can kill it for his pan-global photo empire; C.R., a walking human sacrifice on skiing’s new-school alter, is bargaining 720 Mutes for sleep after arriving directly from Panama; Poor Boyz cinematographer “Blue State” Ben Mullin is on his knees begging for a Canadian girl—the closest thing to a female Democrat he’ll find on this trip. And everyone is adjuring that Abma, en route alone from Kelowna in his dilapidated pickup and unheard from for hours, will find us. Of course, it’s also understood by all that somewhere in the cosmic background, The Great Spirit—Salomon—is crossing its fingers that all and sundry will justify the money it will drop on this shoot.

The combined weight of expectation is about equal to the pressure exerted by a Mayan pyramid leaning on a walnut, so naturally, everyone is happy that after a long, hard drive through nighttime mountains, such malignant background considerations remain unspoken.

It lasts about five minutes and half a bottle of beer.

“Uhhh… we better to have an early start tomorrow,” drawls Maniacus Freakrisson in nasal, punctiliously syllabic English. “It’s a two-hour drive to the heli pickup, I have 500 kilos of baggage to transport, and I want to be shooting by noon.”

“Right. We’ve only got four days,” agrees Douglas, drawing a puzzled stare from Maniacus.

“Uh oh… I thought we have three days. I have only 600 rolls of film… but I can maybe get some more....”

“I’m a bag of shit and can’t move,” mumbles C.R., face down on the floor, fortunate his baseball cap was already twisted sideways when he landed there. “There’s no way I can ski tomorrow.”

“We will need three heli loads,” surmises Maniacus, conspicuously alone in his calculus.

Darryn’s eyes widen.

“Who’s paying for all of this?” he asks of no one in particular, for which he is rewarded with no answer whatsoever.

The question does, however, seem to resonate with Ben. “I better call [Poor Boyz boss Johnny] DeCesare,” he muses, fingering his credit card.

Someone else wonders if Salomon sent the test skis.

Everyone wants to know whether, since all of the skiing in the entire rest of a province the size of Australia has been wiped out by unseasonable warmth and rain, there could possibly be anything left at Mica.

Meanwhile, “Where’s Abma?” speech balloons rise and vaporize around the room like methane bubbling out of a swamp.

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iraculously, and with even Abma in tow, the next morning goes almost as planned; we make the drive, shuttle loads and move into Mica’s comfortable, isolated lodge high above Kinbasket Lake by noon.

It being a bluebird day and all, no time is wasted in wolfing down lunch and making a test foray into the wilderness of Mica’s vast tenure.

Mica Heli Guides is the latest venture of Island Lake Lodge architect Dan McDonald [see “Helivision,” SKIER 4.2], and like his original brainchild, it has spawned a media circus; if you didn’t have Mica on your slate sometime over the past two seasons, you would have missed the boat. Few did.

McDonald’s unique vision for Mica includes the world’s first vacation-property ownership setup for a heli operation, but its major appeal to the appetite of the world’s ever-hungry snowsport monster is terrain: an inspiring seven drainages and 1 million acres of sprawling glaciers, fluted faces and serrated peaks. Mica’s location on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains is key: these high peaks are indifferent to the ranges surrounding them—the Monashees, Cariboos, Selkirks and Purcells are peppered with heli ops that can’t lay claim to the same bounty of diverse terrain and snow conditions. Rising on the far side of the Rocky Mountain Trench, a province-long, north-south feature visible from space and one of the most prominent of B.C.’s pantheon of weather influencers, the sudden rampart delivers an Interior-esque snowpack that’s higher, drier and more reliable than the real thing. It’s an anomaly we’re happy to discover, given the recent decimation of B.C.’s vaunted backcountry industry. Operating with only eight guests a week, there’s always untracked at Mica—your own private million acres.

Ten minutes from the lodge at the head of the Harvey drainage we find a well-preserved 30 centimetres of powder on a settled base of four metres. The news sets Maximus Shutterson’s trigger finger atwitching; he burns through two rolls before anyone even has their skis on.

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“WHERE’S ABMA?” SPEECH BALLOONS RISE AND VAPORIZE AROUND THE ROOM LIKE METHANE BUBBLING OUT OF A SWAMP.

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“WHERE’S ABMA?” SPEECH BALLOONS RISE AND VAPORIZE AROUND THE ROOM LIKE METHANE BUBBLING OUT OF A SWAMP.

“PSSST… DUDE, C.R. SEEMS REALLY DISTANT TODAY—AND ALL MY OXYCONTINS ARE MISSING.”

DAY 1: TERMINAL CABIN FEVER

The excitement is contagious enough to morph our leisurely scouting mission into sudden pressure to get something in the can. In short order, athletes and cameramen are sprinkled in strategic locations across the valley’s headwall. Any hope of a warm-up evaporates as instructions are shouted, skiers grow quiet and cameras roll.

Despite the shotgun start, Douglas hits his first line perfectly, sailing off a flute and dropping 10 metres. Abma misses his mark, getting sloughed out and subsequently flushed. C.R. nails a sweet line on the largest part of the rimed face and finishes with a huge 360, demonstrating how adept he is at tricking off of tricky big-mountain features.

A second round sees Douglas line up a sweet drop over a bony fin, but when he launches it’s only to disappear blind into a cascading Niagara of slough and magically reappear at the bottom, shaking his head at the good fortune. Trying to avoid the same slough flume, Abma gets gnarled out again in some rocks and starfishes down. He has to climb back up through thigh-deep to reclaim a ski. C.R. goes bigger than before and, though he doesn’t stick it, comes up on his feet, holding his shoulder and screaming like a girl. It reminds me of the time he screamed like a girl after injuring his hip at the X Games, or the time he rang his bell at Global X, or the time he packed so hard at the U.S. Open he couldn’t scream even if he’d wanted to. (He’d wanted.) We explain to the panicky guides that what sounds very much like cata-

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strophic injury echoing around the valley is merely one of many painful strains that, at the tender age of 21, C.R. has learned to live with.

That the demands of this job exact a toll is never in doubt; what is in perpetual question is that the rewards can be so meagre in relation to the risk and physical punishment. When C.R. spends $12,000 to $15,000 to be in an MSP film, it’s in addition to the hefty sums his sponsors have already thrown down to have their riders in it. His personal contribution to this sum is beyond what he has been given for travel budget, putting him perpetually out-of-pocket just to be in movies whose sole reward is a ticket to be in more movies and ergo—are you following?—spend more of his own money.

I’d scream like a girl, too. ext day we start off working mini-golf ridges that flow through a massive basin called Molson Canadian, adjacent to a face that has recently been named—in a monument to indiscretion given the number of film companies cycling through the Mica turnstiles—MSP. Douglas’ first line terminates with a cliff-huck 360 that ends up being twice as big as the eight metres he anticipated, and though he rotates it perfectly, the sheer size of the surprise drop causes him to explode like a watermelon. Both C.R. and Abma are largely on their game, hit-

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ting stylie grabs off knife-edge flutes; likewise, however, there are still enough high-impact takes to cause wincing among the audience.

For the rest of us, it’s an interesting and rare opportunity to observe three generations of ski-film stars at work. Douglas, the oft-cited Godfather of New School, is clearly the most experienced and polished, pretty much hitting everything he tries. Fastidious in approach and perennially solid amidst a well-populated old guard and proliferation of new, big-name talent, he continues to serve notice—well beyond age 30—winning the prestigious Best Performance by a Male at the 2003 Powder video awards.

C.R., once singled out to me by Douglas as a prodigy teen in Blackcomb, B.C.’s summer glacier scene, is one of the new millennium’s biggest superstars. A brilliant all-around skier despite being known largely for slopestyle and stratospheric Superpipe performances, he came pre-packaged with the chops for big-mountain tricking—notwithstanding the cumulative effects of park skiing’s school of hard knocks.

“I’ve got to get these things looked at properly,” he grimaces after what looked like another clean stomp, touching one shoulder, then the other. “I just keep putting it off because I don’t have time.”

And then there’s Abma, the 2004 Best Male Performance phenom, a well-known park master who surprised the ski world with ridiculous

big-mountain lines and smooth, super-booter air. At this juncture of his sophomore season in the spotlight, he’s struggling to get it right; lacking the experience to pick lines best suited to him, he also likely suffers from second-album syndrome and performance anxiety, so rapid has been his meteoric rise. Emblematic of his trial by fire is the back-story to his big opening line in MSP’s Yearbook.

“I got called into the shoot in Bella Coola because Pep Fujas was injured. I just got there and was in the heli with Hugo Harrisson and Shane McConkey,” he tells me, pausing to let the specific gravity of the company sink in. “They’ve been there and know what they’re looking at. Hugo says, ‘Drop me here,’ and then Shane says, ‘Drop me off here.’ So I’m all by myself, and I just kind of look around without really thinking and say, ‘Drop me off there.’ Once I was on top, there was no turning back; I was super gripped, but before I had time to think, I hear the radio and it’s saying ‘OK, Mark, you ready?’ ” That instant, in which Abma put every iota of experience, technique and guts on the line to hurl into the abyss, proved the stuff that movie magic is made of. But it could easily have gone the other way, where blowing a first chance at big-line bravado means a quick ticket to ignominy. It helped that Harrisson spent the winter cartwheeling through his own Cirque du Désolé, and that McConkey was riding ponies on the comeback trail, but Abma had quickly proved he was

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SHOULDER SEASON FOR C.R. JOHNSON. LOCATION: MICA.

the real deal. Which he continues to do with us throughout the rest of a day in which the overworked crew finishes up on a series of unique pillow spines, one of which, Mr. Wiggly, was vetted to much acclaim in TGR’s Soul Purpose.

At day’s end, C.R.’s left shoulder, which was his bad shoulder, is now his good shoulder, and he’s walking like a hunched-over asthmatic. But it’s only the tip of the battering iceberg, and he desperately tries massage to restore a bone-weary body. It helps, but the next day he’s still so sore that he handfuls Advil in the hot tub for breakfast while praying that the murky sky doesn’t clear so he won’t feel compelled to ski. But athletes’ prayers are seldom answered, and it quickly clears off behind a hurricane wind.

Heading out at the crack of noon, we beeline to the Rock Garden, a truncated ridge of unimaginable pillow lines. This time the boys work their way down the ridge from short shots to the big stuff. It’s all in the shade, however, with the wind blowing, so everyone is cold.

Still, the snow is deep and dry, and the guys keep warm by bootpacking up hundreds of vertical metres. Not that they have much choice: the heli sits shut down and forlorn nearby, the pilot reading a book because no one can afford the extra cost of a few, short lifts. ack at the lodge, debate remains open as to whether having wireless Internet in the wilderness is a good thing.

Ben walks into the common room one evening and sees everyone tapping away on their laptops. “Jesus,” he mutters, “this is just like Starbucks.”

And why shouldn’t it be? After all, we are, to a person, businessmen—earning our keep, staying in touch, lining up future business.

Engaged, like the rest of the world, in making money both for ourselves and those who employ us.

The fact that, at least to outsiders, the commodity in which we trade seems an intangible balance between risk and recreation matters not.

These days, it is, as they say, strictly business. A dangerous, often short-lived business built around the fine line between extreminating and exterminating, where one small mistake in the former could result in the latter—a reality that tends to underwrite the often-misplaced urgency with which it’s carried out.

There are other reasons for staying on top of it. Like any business, the world of ski-media is a shark tank of fissioning loyalties and fusing partnerships driven by an ever-evolving vision of what is core and how it should be represented. In fact, animosity runs so deep that some moviemakers aren’t even on speaking terms. Slagging each other is a recognized sport.

“The asshole factor in this business is huge, and the only reason we don’t kill each other like other competing people is because we get to ski in all the most amazing places in the world,” says Ben. “It’s the great pacifier.”

Unstated competition also lies at the heart of Matticulous Overkillitsson’s shotgun approach to the craft. One of a handful of shooters who has mastered the art of beating others to the punch with moviemakers, sponsors and magazines, the onetime writer and editor of Sweden’s national ski magazine is widely recognized as one of the world’s best outdoor photographers. Talent, dedication and a farmer’s work ethic helped boost him to this echelon, but a hyperkinetic personality and business savvy are what keep him there. He is so hardworking, in fact, that it casts other notable overachievers as slugs, a trait that both endears and annoys in equal measure.

Although athletes indeed get fed up with dawn-to-dusk lifestyle shoots on top of demanding action duties (and secretly joke that they can only truly relax when Matticulous is asleep), they can hardly complain; given the over-arching role of exposure and photo incentives in their lives, the still shooter is, in every sense of the word, their meal ticket. Thus, when Matticulous complains about motion-camera set-

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ups being useless for stills, or must carry so many rolls of film that they’re spread around the group in two separate heli loads such that he doesn’t even know where the unshot rolls are, athletes don’t say, “Thank God”; they say, “Let’s find that film,” and, “Where do you want us to go?... Sir.” Which is precisely the case on our final day, which begins midway up the far side of the Harvey drainage near yet another unnamed peak.

Despite an enormously successful three days of filming, which could have meant walking away happy for all, last-day mania prevails.

Although it’s bluebird again, what’s left of the snow is showing effects of being what’s left of the snow: barely negotiable after a weeklong party thrown by the sun and wind. It’s hard to make anything work, even for Douglas, who ticks a rock on his first landing, blowing a shoe with a sound that resonates with certain injury. Sure enough, he has tweaked his ankle mildly. Aware that a few centimetres either way could have made it so much worse, he keeps it tight on the rest of his shots. Abma also struggles—he is, of course, trying to throw ridiculously difficult tricks onto manky landings—but gets it together in short order. Strangely, C.R. is still on fire, and up for ripping big lines that end in huge drops, a monument to the prostaglandin-negating effects of ibuprofen.

God help his liver.

“AN ATHLETE’S PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE BUDGET PUTS THEM PERPETUALLY OUT-OF-POCKET JUST TO BE IN MOVIES WHOSE SOLE REWARD IS A TICKET TO BE IN MORE MOVIES AND SPEND MORE OF THEIR OWN MONEY.

fter a morning of recovery in Revelstoke and a ferry ride across Arrow Lake (both of which Maxximus turned into de facto photo shoots), we drive toward Nelson through the Slocan Valley, a famous centre of homegrown neo-liberal “agribusiness” cleverly disguised as an enormous junkyard. The entropy parade features quasi-pastoral, triple-wide showrooms, cabins succumbing to long, bitter fights with gravity, and myriad rusted reminders of a century of broken dreams.

All of this is bizarrely punctuated by tiny, roadside espresso stands set in the middle of nowhere, suggesting folks stop to pick up coffee on their way to tend “the crops.”

If you laid every dreadlock in the Slocan Valley out end-to-end, they would probably stretch to… well, Nelson, which for every conceivable reason would be entirely appropriate given the latter’s status as cultural and economic hub in this part of the Kootenays. After the isolation of Mica and somnolence of Revelstoke, Nelson, a small town by any measure, seemed a veritable metropolis bursting with wild

A DOUGLAS TOSSES ANOTHER HAIL MARY AT MICA.

promise. Which had no effect whatsoever on our crew of walking dead who barely made it through dinner before calling it a night.

Our mission here was simpler, as Ben and Matticulous wanted to tap some local vibe by shooting at powder-mecca Whitewater Ski Resort and a couple of cat operations. At Whitewater, where more or less everyone knows where everyone else’s line is and can point out their own tracks in a miasma of others, we quickly realize there can be only one place in this usual paradise that will harbour anything resembling blower. The hike-to Trash Chutes enjoys northern exposure and late light. Consequently, these are regularly exploited by local photo legends Dave Heath and Doug LePage, the latter of whom actually catches up with us out there. Noting the movie camera in tow, he scrupulously locates himself as far away as possible, demonstrating acute familiarity with film clusters.

Of course, the radio is dead. It was always dead. Which is why what would normally have been a relatively quiet shit show is now a complete breach of wilderness tranquility characterized by people

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YO HO HO AND A BOTTLE OF… BANKRUPTCY.

yelling to each other from ridge tops and valleys. Under such a situation it would be preferable to keep the banter to a minimum but for Maxximus, whose quest for perfection leads to the relaying and rerelaying of detailed instruction until the only thing anyone is sure of is that no one is sure of anything. At least the snow is good enough to milk a few shots, and the camera guys and athletes group hug over their good fortune in finding the last, last stash.

It is indeed good fortune that many A-shots are in the can and that the trip can, even at its halfway point, be considered a success. This in spite of a repeated Groundhog Day visage of standing onshore and watching the tide going out at every venue we visit. A sled-ski mission to the famed alpine of Valhalla Powder Cats would be awash in dealing with the difficult dregs of winter. Conditions wouldn’t be much better a few days later at much vaunted Retallack Alpine Adventures, where hardworking guides would once again help scrape up the crumbs of the last possible goods.

That’s the way it is in the movie business, where skiing a shot takes a back seat to a shot of skiing. It could be worse—we could be paying bank to sit on our asses for two weeks in Alaska.

On a last, finally relaxed afternoon at the Trash Chutes, while we while away the hours waiting for the light to change, C.R. entertains everyone by busting spot-on impressions of Swedish athletes.

Encouraged by our laughter—and his own ennui—he then offers the most devastating and sadly funny thing I have ever heard. It happens

after Amba—who sat morose and silent at the bottom for an hour before spontaneously booting up the ridge—suddenly launches and cleans a savage triple-drop on the sketchiest line of the entire thing, apparently solely to exorcise some personal demon. A short, sharp, masterful piece of skiing that it’s doubtful everyone caught.

As we stare with jaw agape, C.R. opens his mouth somewhere in the background, and the deadly drone of TGR’s patented monotone narration drifts in: “…2005, C.R. Johnson and friends head to the promised land of British Columbia, where the snow is deep and the weed deeper, looking for the goods. Mark Abma boots up a face, finds what he’s looking for and shralps the gnar…. The only problem is, did anybody see?”

The real problem is, if it wasn’t on camera, would anybody care?

Ora pro nobis.

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MICA HELI GUIDES, REVELSTOKE, B.C.; 1-877-837-6191; micaheli.com WHITEWATER SKI AREA, NELSON, B.C.; 1-800-666-9420; skiwhitewater.com HUME HOTEL, NELSON, B.C.; 1-877-568-0888; humehotel.com VALHALLA POWDER CATS, NELSON, B.C.; 1-888-352-7656; valhallapow.com RETALLACK ALPINE ADVENTURES, TK, B.C.; 1-800-330-1433; retallack.com Check out Poor Boyz Productions of TK at poorboyz.com

THE SKI-MEDIA WORLD IS A SHARK TANK OF FISSIONING LOYALTIES AND FUSING PARTNERSHIPS DRIVEN BY AN EVER-EVOLVING VISION OF WHAT IS CORE AND HOW IT SHOULD BE REPRESENTED.

IT WAS BULLET PROOF…SO ABMA TOOK A SICK DAY. LOCATION: VALHALLA POWDER CATS.

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