Video: Watch the Amazing JP Auclair Street Skiing Scene From All.I.Can.

JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.

This scene from the award-winning Sherpas Cinema ski film All.I.Can. may have been our favorite at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Set to LCD Soundsystem's "Dance Yourself Clean," it features freeskier JP Auclair jibbing his way through three towns in British Columbia, Canada. "We asked people if we could 'play' in their front yards before we'd start jumping over their cars, etc.," says Auclair, who seems to effortlessly ski across snowless roads (causing sparks), down staircases, and flipping through intersections. "We had spotters at each intersection to make sure there were no cars coming ... usually our spotters were kids walking back from school and people living in the neighborhood." Amid all the fun of this scene is a serious message: "Showing skiing where most might not have expected it, making turns beyond the ski resort, beyond the snow was a simple way to illustrate human's capability for imagination and creativity—which are just a few of the qualities we need to solve crisis like global warming," says Auclair, who answered some of our questions about the scene below. —Mary Anne Potts

Adventure: All.I.Can. has a strong environmental message. How does this scene play into that? 

JP Auclair: Global warming is a serious issue. People have to act. We believe we need to go beyond the traditional "consume less, travel less, live less" mentality. We believe a shift in the approach to a sustainable world is also needed. The parallel drawn with the piece is basically to show we can think outside the box. Showing skiing where most might have not expected it, making turns beyond the ski resort, beyond the snow was a simple way to illustrate human's capability for imagination and creativity—which are just a few of the qualities we need to solve crisis like global warming.

A: Is it legal to ski like this? Did you have to ask people to stay out of the way? 
JP: This was shot in Trail, Nelson, and Rossland—all in B.C., Canada. Not sure if this was entirely legal to ski like that. I can say, however, that you're less likely to run into trouble in whatever you are doing if you respect the wellbeing of others around you. We asked people if we could "play" in their front yard before we'd start jumping over their cars, etc. We had spotters at each intersections to make sure there were no cars coming ... usually our spotters were kids walking back from school and people living in the neighborhood. Lots of "standbyers" participated!

Outdoor Skills + Advice: No Matter the Weather, Getting Active Outside is Always Worth It

By Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin, Field Instructor and Diversity and Inclusion Manager at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS); Photograph by Ashley Wise

The frigid wind was whipping at what must have been 60 miles per hour. Ok, maybe it was 30. All I know is I couldn’t feel my face. “This wind . . .,” I yelled back to my husband, Jamie, trying to come up with a euphemism for what I was really thinking. Words like “sucks” and “blows” were at the tip of my tongue, but as I glanced back Jamie gave me a look of warning. The message was clear: Don’t say what we’re both thinking. Not in front of our son, Kieran.

Hearing the whiny tone in my voice, Kieran—who was leading our pack of three up the trail to the climbing wall—stopped his hustle and faced me, looking expectant. I bit my tongue, patted him on the back of his head, wiped the snot off on my jacket sleeve, and pushed him forward. “Good job buddy! I’m proud of you!,” I said, in my cheeriest voice, urging him up the trail.

I tried to be optimistic. The weather had to be better up at the climbing wall, which radiated the sun’s heat. Up there was sure to be a whole new world; a different weather system. Right?

Wrong. We spent the next three hours climbing easy routes exposed to gusts of wind that blew down from the high country. Every few moves, I’d hang, unzip my jacket, fleece, and base layer, stick my numb hands as far into my armpits as possible, and try to regain feeling. Then I’d make a few more moves while my fingers screamed.

And Kieran? He was having a ball. He was in his “cozy spot,” a little land of jackets, fleeces, and a sleeping bag that we had created between a boulder and a juniper bush. All the plastic animals were out, reenacting a scene from one of Kieran’s favorite movies. What was the deal with that kid? It’s like he couldn’t even feel the cold!

We persevered for the next three hours. The day ended with sore forearms, bloody fingers, and . . . a happy and tired kid. Later that evening, drinking tea in the comfort of our living room while Kieran slumbered, Jamie asked, “are you happy we climbed today?” The answer was yes. It’s always yes. The moral of the story? It’s always better to get our family outside in s****y weather than never to venture out at all.

Tech: Shoot a Better iPhone Adventure Video With Tips From Camp 4

If you spend any time watching adventure videos and films, then you know Camp 4 Collective. The powerhouse production team includes some of the world's best climber-photographers—Jimmy Chin, Renan Ozturk, and Tim Kemple—shooting in the world's most extreme, least seen places. Last week they released The Denali Experiment, featuring an all-star crew of mountaineers, skiers, and snowboarders blending their skills to climb up and shred down North America's tallest peak (definitely a must-watch). The Camp 4 guys are total pros—both at staying safe on the most grueling, exotic adventures and shooting incredible footage. 

Gillian Chase - iPhone 4s Music Video from Camp 4 Collective on Vimeo.

Recently, Camp 4 conducted another experiment: They shot a music video on a camera phone. While normally this would sound like a waste of time for filmmakers of their expertise, that was not the case. Shooting on the iPhone 4S, with its 8-megapixel camera and 1080p hi-def video, the team produced great results.

"The first digital video cameras we took with us into the mountains four years ago—to Pakistan—were shooting lower resolution and weighed significantly more," says Tim Kemple, who directed the music video featuring singer Gillian Chase. "But even bigger than that to me is the idea that you can always have this camera with you—no set up, no setting down your backpack." Pretty ideal for documenting your adventures.

Here are Kemple's tips—including how to stabilize your shooting, optimizing for iOS5 features, apps for extreme environments, tethering to send dispatches, and dealing with low light—so we all can shoot more like the pros. Just don't forget to put your iPhone in airplane mode. —Mary Anne Potts

Adventurers of the Year 2012: The Ultimate Descent: Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa and Sano Babu Sunuwar

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

See photos of all the Adventurers of the Year!

When Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa first saw paragliders arrive in the Himalaya, he dreamed of flying above the massive peaks of his home—the Khumbu region. After his third successful summit guiding trip on Everest, he viewed paragliding as a simpler, faster, and more graceful way of descending through the peak’s perilous slopes.

In October of 2010, Lakpa borrowed a paraglider, got a few pointers, and launched from a hillside above his home. He promptly crashed into a tree. With his paraglider wing badly damaged, Lakpa set out for the town of Pokhara, considered to be the gathering spot for paragliders, to seek repairs and find a mentor. He ran into Sano Babu Sunuwar, whom Lakpa had met years earlier on Island Peak. Babu repaired the glider and the two men hatched the plan for the Ultimate Descent.

They would climb to the world’s highest point, launch a paraglider and fly for as long as possible, bicycle to a point where streams gathered into rivers, kayak across the Nepali border into India, and paddle the Ganges River all the way to the Indian Ocean. It would be an unprecedented first, but it was the overall combination of sports, audacity, and friendship that drew the duo to the idea. Babu, 28, had no climbing experience. Lakpa, 37, had never kayaked and didn’t even know how to swim.

In April of 2011, the duo had borrowed gear, slapped a basic plan together, and began their ascent of Everest. On May 21, they became the third party to launch a paraglider from the summit and set a new world record of 8,865 meters for free flight in the process. On the Kosi River’s Class V rapids, Babu got caught recirculating in a massive whirlpool in their two-man kayak, while Lakpa floated down river. Once they reached the Ganges, they paddled flatwater through unfamiliar country. They were robbed at knifepoint and had to live off fruit trees. After 850 kilometers, Lakpa and Babu reached the Bay of Bengal. On June 27, they became the first people to complete the descent from Everest’s summit to the Indian Ocean.

“When we arrived on the beach, we were frightened. We were surrounded by giant red scorpions,” says Babu. Later after showing pictures to friends, he would learn that these “scorpions” were in fact harmless crabs.

The Ultimate Descent team earned recognition from the international paragliding community, and the Nepali press hailed them as national heroes. Western adventurers admired their spunk, simplicity, and bare-bones budget. There were no social media campaigns, corporate sponsors, or expedition websites, just the essential ingredients for adventure—vision, creativity, and friendship.

—Fitz Cahall

Now read the interview with Lakpa and Babu and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer

Adventurers of the Year 2012: Surfer Carissa Moore

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

See photos of all the Adventurers of the Year!

Surfing likes its legends. When the surf media started comparing a teenage girl from Hawaii with the sport’s reigning superstar and 11-time world champion, Kelly Slater, some of the passionate fans of the sport labeled it as hype. Carissa Moore made the first step toward proving the doubters wrong this year when she became the youngest person ever to win the world title. Her aggressive but fluid riding turned heads. Later his month Moore will be the first woman in the modern era to compete in the men’s Triple Crown of Surfing. Not bad for a 19-year-old.

In 2010, the then 18-year-old Hawaiian began making her case for greatness when she was accepted onto the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Women’s World Tour. Moore won two events, earned a nod as Rookie of the Year, and graduated from high school. She was just getting her bearings on surfing’s center stage. By 2011, Moore crushed the female competition in surfing’s main events. During the ASP World Tour, she placed first in three events and never placed lower than third to win the overall title. In her two years on the tour, she’s already raked in $225,000 in purse money and attracted top-notch sponsors such as Red Bull, Roxy, and Nike.

Even though the women’s ASP World Tour ended early due to lack of sponsorship dollars, Moore’s season continued when she got wild card slots to surf alongside the world's best male surfers on the male tour at the Reef Hawaiian Pro at Haleiwa and the Van’s World Cup of Surfing at Sunset Beach, both on her home turf of Hawaii. The events are in November.

“I’m kind of nervous, but I’m also really excited,” says Moore. “I’m being realistic about what is going to happen. The guys I’m surfing against have a few more years and more experience on me, so I probably won’t make a heat, but if I do, great. That would be awesome.”

—Fitz Cahall

Now read the interview with Carissa Moore and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer

Adventurers of the Year 2012: Snowboarder Travis Rice

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

See photos of all the Adventurers of the Year!

Travis Rice’s father was in the ski patrol at Wyoming’s Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. And like many dads, he raised his son to follow in his ski tracks. Fortunately for snowboarding, things didn’t go as planned.

A decade ago and unheard of at the time, Rice arrived at Snowboarder magazine’s Superpark contest at Mammoth Mountain, launched a now legendary backside rodeo across a 117-foot gap jump, and left a star. Since then, Rice has developed into the best all-around snowboarder in the world: He is equally capable of showing up to win a slope style event in Aspen as he is in pioneering a first descent in the remote Darwin Range on the tip of South America. The 29-year-old makes use of all the tools in a snowboarder’s quiver—big-mountain tenacity, acrobatics, and snow and mountain sense, often in a single descent. And 2011 was the apex so far in Rice’s career.

Filming for the highly anticipated film The Art of Flight, which he co-produced with Brain Farm Digital Cinema's Curt Morgan and Chad Jackson, Rice took the staggering aerial tricks usually reserved for the relative safety of the manicured, avalanche-controlled terrain parks made popular by the X Games and the Olympics, and applied them to the big mountains. In these peaks, a fall could mean tumbling down a vertical face or being swept into a gaping crevasse. Rice performed them all while under the watchful eye of director Curt Morgan’s superslow motion camera.

The movie, whose trailer went viral, marked the final stage of snowboarding’s crossover into the mainstream. It generated excited retweets from 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake and large movie industry players—such as Dolby Laboratories and Skywalker Ranch—teamed up with Morgan.

While the tricks and big-mountain lines mixed with cutting-edge cinematography inspire “ahhs” from wide-eyed audiences, ultimately it’s Rice’s enthusiasm for pushing the limits of his sport that resonate. In 2011, Rice made an entire generation of young skiers consider buying a snowboard.

“Experiencing the world through endless secondhand information isn’t enough,” says Rice. “If we want authenticity we have to initiate it.”

—Fitz Cahall

Now read the interview with Travis Rice and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer

Adventurers of the Year 2012: Skier Nick Waggoner

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

See photos of all the Adventurers of the Year!

“In the moment, it felt like we were failing every day. We weren’t good enough. We weren’t strong enough. It’s part of the artistic process,” says ski filmmaker Nick Waggoner, director of Sweetgrass Productions. Twenty seconds into Solitaire, his South American ski odyssey, it’s clear that the 25-year-old Waggoner has disproved the idea that the only way to make a better adventure film is with a bigger budget.

SOLITAIRE: A Backcountry Skiing, Snowboarding, and Telemark Film from Sweetgrass Productions on Vimeo.

Shot on foot, horseback, riverboat, skis, and paragliders over the course of two years, Solitaire explores South America from the Amazon jungles to the Cordillera Blanca and from the Altiplano all the way to wind-raked Patagonia. Waggoner and his co-producers Michael Brown, Zac Ramras, and Ben Sturgulewski chose the Andes for its extreme conditions—fickle snow, horrible winds, and powerful landscapes. No helicopters. No chalets or ski lodges. Shooting the film required living and working out of tents in relentless rain and snow sometimes for weeks in a row, traversing broken glaciers just to see the peaks they would then climb and shoot, and flying paragliders from 17,000-foot mountains while filming. Each shot was earned by hiking thousands of feet in predawn darkness.

“This was complete immersion in the environment,” says Waggoner. The enormity and risk of what they were about to attempt hit home on the very first day of filming on location. The New York City native and Ramras arrived in South America to the news that their friend and the film’s intended star, extreme skier Arne Backstrom, had fallen to his death from 18,897-foot Nevado Pisco.

“This was no longer a cute little ski film,” says Waggoner. “This movie became about the dark place between failure and success.”

Fortunately for us, that uncertainty makes a beautiful, intriguing film through the focus of Waggoner’s lens. When it comes to the art of adventure, heart, resolve, and imagination trump a million dollars every time.

—Fitz Cahall

 

Now read the interview with Nick Waggoner and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer

Adventurers of the Year 2012: Rider Danny MacAskill

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

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Two years ago Scottish street trials rider Danny MacAskill was just a guy working a nine-to-five job as a mechanic in an Edinburgh bike shop, crafting his vision of what was possible on a bicycle in the hours after work. In March 2009, he took a risk and left his job to pursue riding full time. A month later his roommate, Dave Sowerby, released a video of MacAskill leaping, flipping, and balancing across Edinburgh’s famous buildings, parks, and back alleys on his bike. No one had seen riding like this before.

The video went viral. First friends and then total strangers forwarded it via email and posted it on Facebook. MacAskill’s audacity, skill, and grace spoke to people, even those who had never heard of the obscure sport of street trials, where bicyclists use existing structures to create physical puzzles that are solved by moving from obstacle to obstacle. Some even chalked MacAskill’s mind-bending moves up to a special effects hoax. The video went on to be viewed 27 million times.

MacAskill could have been a one-hit wonder. But when his 2011 short film Industrial Revolutions—which featured him riding through Scotland’s abandoned factories, leaping between train cars, and riding across two-inch beams suspended 15 feet above concrete—generated three million views on YouTube in a month, he proved he wasn’t. What MacAskill can do on a bicycle, his body shifting, pausing, and then exploding upward in a seamless tangle of man and bike, makes us reimagine our daily environments.

Groundbreaking adventure has always made us examine and then redraw the fine line between the possible and the impossible. Like the great performance artist and tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who captured New Yorkers’ attention with his 1974 walk between the towers of the World Trade Center, MacAskill has taken the the landscapes of his everyday and turned mundane into a physical canvas.

Since 2009, MacAskill has used his newfound fame and monetary support to log over 40,000 miles in an RV, traveling across Scotland looking for the perfect trick in the ideal location.

“I never had the goal of being a professional rider,” says MacAskill. “I just wanted to ride my bike.”

—Fitz Cahall

Now read the interview with Danny MacAskill and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer!

Adventurers of the Year 2012: Mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

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In the summer of 2010, Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner was perched on K2’s infamous Bottleneck couloir 400 meters below the summit. She radioed her husband, Ralf Dujmovits, who was hunkered at base camp far below the 8,611-meter summit of the peak on the Pakistan-China border. Through the radio, Dujmovits could hear the shock in his wife’s voice. Moments earlier her partner, ski mountaineer Fredrik Ericsson, had slipped while unroped, tumbled past her, and fallen to his death.

Kaltenbrunner immediately aborted her summit attempt to look for her friend. It was her fifth failed attempt on the world’s most deadly peak. K2 was the final summit remaining in her 14-year quest to become the first woman to climb all 14 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen or porters.

In 2011, Kaltenbrunner returned to K2, this time to the mountain’s north side to avoid the Bottleneck, where 11 climbers died in 2008. At 6:18 p.m. local time on August 23, Kaltenbrunner reached the summit. “I have never had a view like that. There were no clouds, you could see to Nanga Parbat. I had the feeling that I was one with the universe. It’s still present in my heart,” says the 40-year-old Austrian.

Her fascination with the world’s tallest peaks began when she was in her early 20s. When she was 23 years old, she reached 8,027 meters but not the summit of Broad Peak, also on the Pakistan-China border, which sparked the idea to climb all 14 peaks more than 8,000 meters tall. In 1998, Kaltenbrunner, a professional climber who trains year-round, reached her first summit, Cho Oyu, and began ticking off the peaks, sometimes two in a year. She became known for her calculated patience.

This year on K2, the reminders of a misstep were always present. “Twenty or thirty meters beneath K2’s summit, you can look down and see the Bottleneck. It felt like Fredrik was near,” says Kaltenbrunner. “He was with us in a good sense.”

—Fitz Cahall

Now read the interview with Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer!

Adventurers of the Year 2012: Kayakers Jon Turk and Erik Boomer

Over the next two weeks we will introduce each of the new Adventurers of the Year here on our blog. Be sure to cast your vote every day for the People's Choice Award.

See photos of all the Adventurers of the Year!

“What do you do when a polar bear charges you? We found yelling colorful language was more effective than gentle talking,” says 65-year-old writer and Arctic explorer Jon Turk. “The right tone could communicate, ‘You’re bad. We’re just as bad.’”

Turk and pro kayaker Erik Boomer discovered this when, during the final week of their 1,485-mile circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island, a polar bear ripped a hole in their tent—while five other bears looked on.

The journey around the world’s tenth largest island, which took Turk and Boomer 104 days on skis, in kayaks, and on foot, was considered by polar experts to be the last great unattempted polar expedition, so daunting due to its remoteness and dangerous ice conditions. No one had attempted it before this summer.

For Turk, who pioneered big-wall climbs on Baffin Island and engaged in five Siberian expeditions to study shamanic culture, this was his “retirement party,” his last expedition. For the 26-year-old Boomer, who made a name for himself kayaking into the world’s wildest white water, this was the first of what he hopes will be many journeys to the Great North.

“I’m used to taking risks in short bursts, like in a single rapid or waterfall,” says Boomer. “This trip was so long, the risk so sustained and impossible to plan for. Jon is rare. He’s willing to do something where the outcome is unknown.”

In May, the duo began by dragging their 220-pound, 13.5-foot kayaks 800 miles across flat ice. As the ice broke up with the spring thaw, they were forced to jump over cracks and between unstable ice floes. By midsummer, they were able to paddle through slivers of open water.

Though the bears proved to be an ongoing danger—on one day they saw eleven, nine of which were aggressive—unfavorable winds were the greatest threat. Offshore winds pushed sea ice up against the sheer cliffs of Ellesmere’s rugged coast. Getting trapped between the two would mean certain death.

A text message Turk sent during the final leg of the trip summed it up best: “Bears scare us. We scare bears. The wind scares us. We don’t scare the wind.”

-Fitz Cahall

Now read the interview with Jon Turk and Erik Boomer and be sure to vote everyday for your favorite adventurer!