No one likes a claimer or a bragger. Especially amongst the demographic of readers of Wasted Talent. When you do the best trick of your life or catch your best wave you better play it cool as if nothing happened. As an American, we are even worse off making claims as we already have a poor reputation for being overconfident and obnoxious. I say this to set the stage cautiously to state the biggest claim of my life.
“I’ve been snowboarding in more countries than any other pro snowboarder.*”
I specify pro snowboarder because I’m sure there are snowboard enthusiasts who’ve got me beat. But among professionals, I’ll make my case, North and South Korea, throughout Scandinavia, all the marque European countries including some of the less frequented ones like Greece, Japan, China, Russia, India, Nepal, and strangely the UAE, throughout the United States including my favorite, Alaska, all across and up and down Canada, Southern Hemisphere destinations of Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, Australia. 26 countries in total. This outlandish and exorbitant claim highlights my terrible carbon footprint and provides perspective to my next claim.
“Antarctica was the most surreal destination of my life, exceeding any preconceived expectations while overdelivering jaw-dropping scenery, wildlife and terrain.”
Antarctica was never on my radar or bucket list. I imagined it was a big frozen tundra unhospitable to humans, my limited knowledge came from reading Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, which is a heroic and epic tale but it does not inspire you to book your next holiday. However, the previous year my boss, friend and photographer Alex Pashley ended up on a honeymoon esc. trip with his wife and some friends to go snowboarding in Antarctica. They boarded a 100M cruise ship in Ushuia, Argentina and set sail across the Drake Passage aimed for the tip of the Antarctica Peninsula. With about 100 ski and snowboard clients on the ship led by Ice Axe Expeditions, they sailed through the Antarctic Penisula snowboarding along the way and even crossed paths with Shakeltons route from Endurance. When Alex got home from that trip he said:
“We gotta go to Antarctica and shoot snowboarding there, it is absolutely insane.”
One year later Alex, Myself, Curtis Ciszek, Jessa Gilbert and Jake Price were in Ushuia, Argentina to start our journey to Antarctica, the coldest, driest, windiest continent on Earth. I use the term journey because that’s what it is, Antarctica is far away but it’s much further than I imagined. Once loaded onto the cruise ship with 100 of our closest back-country skiing and snowboarding friends, we were on our way. On the first day while you are sailing across the Drake Passage there is a mandatory orientation meeting in the large conference esc type room. They give a run of show of the trip, where things are at on the boat, what to do in case of emergencies yada yada yada. However, about halfway through this meeting, the notoriously rough seas combined with the all-you-can-eat buffet started getting to people. It was like a chain reaction, some people made it to the bathrooms, some quietly vomited sitting in their seats and others attempted to make the bathrooms but vomited while running towards them. The aftermath and smell of this room will be with us forever. Before you get sight of land you start seeing icebergs, specks of white floating in a sea of blue. As you get closer you realize those specks are the size of apartment buildings, each with a unique and one-of-a-kind architecture. Days later we arrived at Deception Island and it was met with the quote of the trip from Curtis.
“Oh no, I forgot my splitboard hardware.”
Here we are, in Antarctica, arguably the most remote and challenging place to get to on the planet. A once-in-a-lifetime trip to go splitboarding and Curis forgets critical hardward for his splitboard. He’s embarrassed, ridden with guilt but we push on and head to shore. Our first steps in Antarctica are across a black sand beach with penguins pacing around. There are remnants of an old whaling processing facility with rusty fuel tanks where us humans killed around 500,000 whales to extract their oil. Meanwhile, Curtis is using a variety of ski straps to fasten his bindings to his splitboard as we prepare to head up the mountain. By the end one run Curtis is fatigued from his feet slipping and sliding around. Back on the boat we decide to change tactics and switch to snowshoes for the remainder of the trip and shift our expectations closer to shore. Each night the ship motors through the Antarctic Peninsula and you wake up surrounded by a different set of mountains. Again, I expected a relatively flat tundra but in reality, it looks like outer-worldly. 2000M rocky peaks jetting straight out of the ocean surrounded by icebergs, penguins swimming and lounging sea lions. It looks like advanced CGI from a future version of Avatar, truly unimaginable. Specifically, the Lemaire Channel, an 11km-long channel of water 600M wide with 1000M peaks towering along each side of the ship with overhanging glaciers that appear to be on the verge of crashing down.
“Anywhere you go it is easy to see humans impression on earth, roads, logging, mining, cities, planes, cars, houses, people, our mark is everywhere, except here.”
It was news to me that Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth, and learning that made it surprising to find ourselves in a blizzard. Navigating the zodiacs in whiteout conditions by GPS to travel from the ship to shore through a sea of icy water. In total the storm produced about 60cm of fresh snow and was followed with blue skies and cold temperatures. Doug Stoup, the trip leader, founder of Ice Axe Expeditions and the world’s leading polar guide who has skied to the South Poles more than anyone on the planet said this was not expected. He said it was some of the best conditions he had seen in his 20+ years sking and snowboarding here. With snowshoes on our feet and boards strapped to our back, we hiked up, rode down, hiked up and rode down on repeat for the days to follow. To say we scratched the tip of the iceberg would be corny and a vast understatement. And before I make any more pompus claims snowboard filmer extraordinaire Jake Price is going to share his approach to documenting this trip.
* I expect to hear from the long list of snowboards that have been to far more places than I.
films / HELLO WINTER / COMMUNITY VIGNETTE
no script in mind
WORDS BY JAKE PRICE photos by alex pashley
A trip of a lifetime or an opportunity to do something out of the ordinary.
Most documentarians would want to capture the landscapes you see on the Discovery channel, blue skies, endless ice caps, penguins and the gorgeous colors of the sea and ice refracting as one. The first thing any sane person would do is go buy the newest Raptor X Pro Dragon Fs20 digital cinema camera with a stabilized drone and extra hard drives. This was the norm on the Ocean Albatross, influencers and professional photographers and videographers firing away at the sight of every bird, cliff, desert and everything you usually get likes for on the apps.
How could I do this differently I asked myself. Well, I doubt anyone since Shackleton’s original expedition had shot black and white 16mm film at the end of the world. Why would you? Color film was invented years ago. I ordered the black and white 16mm film and loaded up my trusty Bolex and committed to a 100% “hand made” approach. This film is not going to be for the “likes”.
In preparation for capturing the expedition, I didn’t have much of a script or idea in mind. I knew that Austin, Curtis, Jessa, and Pashley, were 4 of the funniest people I know, not in a stand up comedic sense, but more of a not afraid to look like an idiot on film way. How could I convey this humor with no sound? Let’s go back to the Charlie Chaplin Silent film era. Brilliant. I knew there was the possibility of not even snowboarding at all, so I needed to make every moment we were on the frozen continent count. The script just wrote itself, capture the scenics, the overall location, the guys wandering around and snowboarding on whatever was allowed. What I didn’t expect was the perfect combination of humor that this talent brought in front of the camera. From Curtis forgetting his split board parts, to Austin’s infatuation with hot dogs, to Jessa’s antics of constantly reminding us to be roped up to each other, to Pashley’s loose vision of a free vacation with penguin costumes for added laughs.
Without the modern luxury of reviewing each clip, I just had to trust that everything we captured was going to work. Knowing I was going to be hand developing this film in my makeshift laundry room darkroom, nothing was going to be perfect. In fact, I wanted everything to be raw, scratched, hairy, burned, and even in some cases completely lost. Cue Austin’s 900 attempts, when the film burned out just when he may or may not of became the Tony Hawk of Antartica. When the images started to appear on the film, I knew we had something special.
It took about a week to develop all 1000 ft. of the film, I carefully started splicing and cutting the moments that stood out, organizing each 1 - 2 meter strip or “shot” on a drying rack with a note attached to each one describing what it was. The frames of 16mm are tiny, so a loupe and a light table was my best friend. I carefully accounted for the timing of each shot with a template. After some time of building a storyline, making mental notes and numbering the order of where shots will go, I shot all the inter-titles on film and started taping and splicing the film in the specific order as I saw fit. This is where the magic and fuck it attitude starts to shape up. Hand splicing a film is a tedious process that overall resembles an assembly line of decisions and happy mistakes. Compared to a modern approach of non-linear editing, I was surprised on how much faster the film came together, all without melting my eyeballs staring at a computer.
Endurance II, is meant to be watched live on a 16mm projector. I wanted to challenge the formula, upload to YouTube and get instant gratification and “likes” experience. I wanted to treat this more like going to see a live band play including the so called mistakes and unforeseen events that may happen. The few times we have shown it, there were major malfunctions with the projector and the film ripping in half and rolling out onto the ground. This was exactly what I wanted, for the audience to see that it’s not just about the film itself, but the overall experience. I had one viewer after the first showing come up to me and say that his favorite part was watching the total melt down of the film reel and how I kept it cool and re-spliced the film together 3 minutes before the premiere. Yes, this is not an easy way to garner more likes or an online following, but I guarantee everyone lucky enough to be at our showings left with a new perspective on the importance of getting together and sharing the ultimate basis of snowboarding, originality.
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