Heading out for a quick hit of backcountry skiing this AM; time for a quick report on how the film festival is going. Since 5Point is a new festival, I’m sure the organizers were wondering how their turnout would be. Not to worry, a full house of more than 600 outdoor sports folks filled the auditorium/gym of our town rec center for last night’s flicks. We watched ’em all, though by 11:00 PM I was nodding through the last one. One of our faves was “Ephemere,” a Swiss art film presenting five sports in five days, strung together with an ephemeral woman tipping an hourglass back and forth. Sound weird? Indeed, getting a bit out there but WAY better than watching endless cliff hucking. Got some of that anyway, as our least favorite of the bunch, but still an eye opener, was “Source,” which is basically a kayak hucking flick involving ballistic plunges off waterfalls.
In between the Swiss art and hail Mary water hucks, our top picks were the Chris Sharma rock climbing film “King Lines,” and a powerful full-screen presentation of “A Dozen More Turns,” that heart ripping story of Montana backcountry skiers who go out for powder play, but encounter a tragic avalanche disaster due to a small glitch in their decision making process. “Dozen” has of course been easily accessible on the web for quite some time now, but seeing it in large format was powerful. As always, the film made me examine my own life in many ways. Excellent to have this stuff three blocks from WildSnow world headquarters. More later, gotta head out and see how much snow the last storm layed down.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
