AK the hard way…
I stopped by the Patagonia Warehouse tonight to see the newest Adventure Film Works production, “AK the Hard Way” about a journey to Haines Alaska to ski some sick lines and test the limits of human epic endurance. What I liked about this ski movie was it’s humanity. It’s admission that we are all beings with history, subtext and above all, fear and doubt that inevitably affect the way we ski. When have you ever seen a ski movie where one of the stars is so sketched out about a line that she skates down it in big secure, looping turns cause she’s so scared of the terrain and line? Would you rather see some douchetard whirlybird off a yacht after an all night session of redbull and Play Station and take a slider and barely come up alive only to wax douchetic about the feagility of live while riffing to footage of impossible chopper lines?
Sure, it isn’t cathartic in the sense that an MSP film is with it’s steep dusty lines and helicopter footage is, but why do we watch these movies? why do we ski? Why to we wrench ourselves out of a fitful dreamscape, palms sweating, scalp stretched tight with imagined tension while in our minds that we are dropping a far far sicker line than we may ever have the nerve to drop.
Cause it scares the crap out of us while attracting us with is vibrance like nothing else we know for reasons we don’t really understand. Good job Duane Kubischta!
If anyone wants a screening of Duane’s most recent film, or his past films, “Weather We Change” and “Hustle and Snow” I can arrange a screening. I picked up all three tonight.
Thanks to Duane for coming to Reno and to our good freinds @ the Nevada Wilderness Project for hosting him tonight.
-M