Winterland

A great skier once said, RAMTIN IRAN IRAN IRAN

"sliding on snow is a special gift

of the relationship between earth and sky."

It only comes in sufficient amounts in particular places

at certain times on this earth.

And people devote their whole lives to it.

We are all eternal here,

in this place with epic storms,

bluebird backdrops and the paint desire of alpine glow.

There is something bigger than life in a trip to this place,

where the earth and sky collide.

Whoa.

Yeah, I'm fine.

Come on!

Is that everybody?

Yeah.

Are we ready to rock?

Teton gravity research has called Jackson home

since we picked up our first camera 25 years ago.

Unrivaled terrain and snowfall has allowed generations

of unknowns and icons alike to hone their skills here,

surfing storms that never seem to break.

Not since the winter of '96, ninety-heaven

had Wyoming seen such copious amounts of snow.

The echo of patrollers' bombs rolled

like thunder in the darkness,

and locals reveled in the seemingly endless bounty.

The latest information on

the significant winter storm still anticipated tonight,

through the day Wednesday and into Thursday.

We're anticipating strong winter storm conditions

and blizzard conditions.

One of the strongest and potentially deepest low pressure

systems in years is projected to intensify.

Travel Wednesday and Thursday is

extremely and highly discouraged,

and if not, should be canceled at this time.

Overhead, go left!

Overhead!

Word is biggest February here in history,

and I believe it.

There's no reason to leave.

It just kind keeps dumping.

Nice!

Thank you.

Yeah, dude!

Yeah!

It was good to get after it,

and have a fun crew to do it with.

This season they knew that Jackson was the place to be.

Jackson hole is the shaggy,

untamed unicorn of the rockies.

With a backyard so big, it's a national park,

and a back country so legendary,

it's become a training ground for some

of the best free riders in the world.

Despite historic amounts of snow stacking up

across the tetons, for brief moments between storms,

the home lavatory sparkled like a diamond.

Pretty much anyone who wanted

to have a good time and heard about our amazing season

came out and shooshed around Wyoming.

Just cracked blue after 18 inches.

Buzzing energy up here.

Ha ha!

Three, two, one.

Whoa!

Left!

I'm good.

Oh, my god!

Three, two, one, dropping.

That was big!

Yeah!

Okay, I'm going up.

Three, two, one, dropping.

Dude!

Oh yeah, dude.

Good work everybody.

That was sick, dude.

- Waiting for Timmy, since he doesn't ever get back

to me when I message him.

I've got him right here.

Dude, it looks like he's getting really close actually.

Waiting for Tim, man.

Story of my life.

Yo, dude!

Who are you waiting for?

You.

You were waiting for me?

Tim, where's your stuff?

Where's your stuff?

You did it, dude.

I'll check your backpack.

What about here?

Where's my gopro?

He lost it.

There it is!

But you know what, it's always worth it.

I'll wait for Tim any day.

It's alive.

Whoa!

Yeah dude!

That was epic!

Sick!

Tim, here, is crazy man.

Yeah, boy!

Europe, the old country,

where the names of storied ski areas

sound like breathless foreign prayers.

Saas fee, chamonix, verbier, and kitzbuhel.

As if just uttering them would give you the strength

in your heart to set an edge on slopes as sheer as steeples,

with only heaven above and wine and white glory below.

While relentless early season mega-storms continued

to line up like soldiers,

and with local ski legend, fabian lentsch,

already poised to show US his homeland,

we led out to immerse ourselves

in the fabled magic of the alps.

I feel like a modern ski bum at times.

I love living in a Van.

Can just base out of the bottom of the lift,

and then if the snow comes from the other direction,

you just move over there.

Yeah, that's the way to go in Austria.

Just boutta be out in the middle of no where,

sleep there, get up super early, ski lines.

We got here in the middle of January,

and Austria was having pretty much the best season ever.

It was almost too much snow.

Villages were shut off because of avalanches.

By the time we showed up,

things had settled down a little bit,

and we were pretty poised to tee off a bunch of lines

that rarely, if ever, get skied.

It's been crazy.

In January and February we get that amount

of big mountain skiing.

Nice to be out on a little morning stroll.

Okay, he's going real fast, huh?

Yeah!

That was exciting.

Even though we've been at resorts,

we've hiked every single line.

There's no way.

Fuck!

Oh, that was intense.

Some of the hiking's been like the most exciting things

that happen during the day.

I wanna report I'm 100%.

Yeah buddy!

Oh, my god!

Yeah!

Woo!

We had all gotten our lines,

and smoothy was kind of frothing a little bit for one more,

so went back up,

got a couple turns, cut out this big pocket that propagated

and all this stuff, and the entire face is on the move

and waterfalling down over the cliffs at the bottom.

The whole face went.

I'm gonna re-drop now.

Oh, my god.

Smoothy, smoothy!

You're good.

You're here.

The helicopter's on the way.

You're right here with me.

- Yeah, so we saw smoothy go down,

and I was the first one in so I ran up to him

and rolled him over and saw that he was completely seizing.

Eyes rolled up in the back of his head, jaw locked shut.

It was pretty--

it's not a good day in the mountains.

When you show up to somebody and they're in that state,

pretty somber afternoon there with the rescue

and not knowing how it was gonna pan out.

Even though Sam turned out to be more or less fine,

he had a trauma induced seizure.

Smoothy definitely got away with one that day.

Kind of a wake up call to everybody

to just keep the ultimate goal in mind,

which is come home safe at the end of the day.

I was like talking to wolves yesterday.

Wolves or walls?

Wolves, I actually saw wolves.

I've been on my own too long.

We miss you though, buddy.

Yeah buddy.

Hey, thanks for the call guys.

Have a good time tomorrow, and we'll talk soon.

Luckily smoothy's greatest quality,

his sense of humor, was in tact.

That definitely made it a little bit easier

to continue on with the trip,

but you still have this loud reminder

of what could go wrong and how fast that could happen.

Putting on the vert, go up that way.

Looks deep and steep.

Why are we doing this again?