Alex Dierker
Photos by Danielle Perrot
Oh October, what a wonderful month you are. As usual Mother Nature is having a hard time making up her mind. One day it’s 45F, raining, and dusting the high country with the white stuff we so eagerly await…and then it’s back to 80F and sunny. Don’t get me wrong, I love the shuttle between ski training workouts, climbing, and running outside. But really, I’m a cold weather person and if I see one more day of 90’s before strapping skis on I may have a conniption.
Every fall teases us and adding to the torment is the unveiling of the season’s crop of new ski films.
This last week I caught the new TGR flick, Tight Loose, at the Boulder Theater. There wasn’t much of a story line, but hey, that’s not why you go see a TGR film in October. You go see TGR to see big lines, deep pow, dudes who say “BRO!” and add ammunition to your day-job-daydreaming as we creep ever closer to winter 16/17.
TGR has been in the game for awhile and this film is their 21 year celebration which entertains by drawing contrast from the early days of suitcase sized cameras, no budget, and a large appetite for destruction, to the drone, helicopter and POV footage which dominates the web today.
Fall tradition to fire up your winter stoke, TGR.
I will say that after spending several days at the ISSW avalanche study conference in Breckenridge last week, going to see a TGR film may have not been the best follow up act. There were a few presentations at ISSW that focused on the issue that today’s youth have a much greater hill to climb regarding outdoor recreation and status. Growing up before the dawn of the POV and Instagram, I just competed with friends on the hill or on the field and couldn’t have cared less that kids my age were going way faster and way bigger in New Zealand, Japan, wherever. This is no longer the case. Kids today compare and compete with whatever they see on the web, edited, scripted, filtered or not.
At the early showing for Tight Loose it was interesting to see kids 8-14 going bananas in the front row, watching professional athletes out-run or survive large avalanches in highly technical terrain, cheering and gawking. Obviously those athletes know what they are getting themselves into, but it does come off a bit as “no big deal” until someone gets really hurt or killed. Which does happen, perhaps even more than we know.
Kids go bananas at TGR.
Regardless, TGR has left a 21-year legacy of getting us psyched for winter. I’m glad they are still showing us glimpses of deep pow in far off mountain ranges and therefor the traditional pre-winter potty dance will continue.
(Guest blogger Alex Dierker grew up skiing the corn fields of Illinois, and moved to Jackson, WY full-time in the winter of 2013. There, he met his girlfriend and recreation partner Dani and since then, they have become a two-for-the-price-of-one partnership. After chasing early mornings to remote and obscure moderates in the Tetons, they moved to Boulder, Colorado and have been making powder 8’s year-round in Colorado ever since. Check out their website here.)
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