Backcountry telemark skiing movie shot in the Kimberley Area.
Each year Utah based Powderwhores crew produces ski films, when the snow failed to fall in their home mountains forced the Powderwhores to hit the road.
For months we have been hearing from the Powderwhores that PW07 would have a different groove then the Utah-based crew’s previous Wasatch-centric productions.
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A very late start to winter in their home mountains forced the Powderwhores to hit the road. “We got into February and realized we had no movie,” Noah Howell said, “so we did what everybody else was doing and headed north.”
The resulting film: PW07, is a masterpiece on many levels, but none more for the way that the film unselfconsciously documents the exciting state of the sport of telemark skiing, here at the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century. This probably would not have happened if Utah had not failed to go off early last season.
Backcountry telemark skiing gets a lot of attention, in the athlete segments and in the segment shot on the Powderwhore’s trip to Kimberley, British Columbia. The ski mountaineering crowd is not forgotten in a beautifully shot.
And then there is the Alaska segment. What would a telemark manifesto be without seeing modern freeheel athletes on what has become the world’s biggest big-mountain stage? Comprising nearly a third of the movie, the footage that the Powderwhore production team brought back from the Chugach is totally off the hook. Dave Stratton and Devore, among others, shred huge lines with style and elan, and on a level unseen before in a telemark ski movie. The camera work is superb and the skiing is incredible.
Wonderfully paced and without apparently trying, PW07 takes the viewer on a ride which covers the main elements of freeheel skiing as it has evolved in the modern era. Technique is well represented by some of the strongest and most talented tele skiers ever captured on film, including young phenom Nick Devore, who made history last year at the alpine world’s premier big-mountain competition, the US Freeskiing Championships at Snowbird. Devore turned heads as the first tele skier ever to make the finals, while also finishing 18th out of a field of 150 of the world’s top freeskiing athletes.
Finally, the movie closes with a segment accurately titled, “Deep Powder,” and with a musical score written especially for this segment, this is the stuff from which dreams are made for many of us. Exceedingly rare are the days when the sun comes out and you get great light while the powder stays fluffy, and yet that’s what we have here.
Simply put, it’s the most awesome tele pow footage the Powderwhores have given us yet, and that’s saying a lot.
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