Ski (2024) Movie Script
1
This is a huge mountain.
And I find it hard to believe that
he's going to do 27 of these.
Alright, I'm in position up here.
I hope he's not turning back.
Maybe he's turning back.
It is pretty cloudy.
Oh no, he's moving.
Alright, we have him on the move.
Vegard is officially on the move.
So many years in the making.
Now it begins.
The Greatest Ski Tour of all Time.
Nikolai Schirmer is one of
Norway's most foremost skiers,
making a living skiing down
extremely steep mountains,
often with his life on the line.
Schirmer runs his own
production company and...
Hey, should we move one of
the big roll-ups closer to the door?
- Nice.
- Then people are like, oh, here it is.
Excuse me Nikolai, could I have a photo?
It feels really good to start this
whole thing off with a sold-out show.
I have made a decent living
telling stories
as a professional skier.
But I had bigger dreams than
small-time ski festivals and YouTube.
Something that could fill a
movie theater all by itself.
- You know, the ski world's very own
- Free solo.
This film is for everyone
who believes in the impossible.
I'd never found the story about
that impossible endeavor, though.
An undertaking years,
no a lifetime in the making.
A deeply personal story
of someone who gives up
on love, money, fame.
A person who's literally gone underground
to live like a snow warrior monk.
He trained in here.
A story about forsaking everything
to chase a goal where death is
always just one small mistake away.
Oh my god!
Oh my fucking god!
I'd never found that story,
until I heard Vegard was back.
You call that a camera?
- Yes.
- This is a camera.
You know that one friend
who's the only person in the world
who loves the thing you love
just as much as you?
Okay, rolling.
That one friend you'll
gladly follow off a cliff.
Nice!
And try to go a little bigger.
Whoa!
That one friend
who's happy to sleep in a ditch
and eat dumpster food with you
to afford going on that ski trip.
You making my nose look big?
That was Vegard.
Rolling!
We were gonna take
on the ski world together.
But that all fell apart.
I don't really know
where we lost each other.
All I know is, we did.
Now, I heard that Vegard was back
and he was training for a ski tour
unlike anything I had ever seen before.
27 peaks.
Yeah, that's 13 more than
that Netflix film you've all seen.
And Vegard would do them all in one go.
200 kilometers, 25,000 vertical meters,
that's 82,000 feet for you Americans.
It's like doing four marathons in a row
while you're climbing Everest
from sea level,
three times, and moving through the
most technical alpine terrain in Norway.
How long have you been
a professional skier?
- Like 10 years, maybe.
- 10 years?
Yeah, but in the start there
was no money, you know.
So it's been a long road to Paris.
I had just signed the biggest
sponsor deal of my life.
But my contract had exactly zero euros
allotted to telling the story of
some guy who never blew up,
dropped off the map
more than a decade ago,
and refused all sponsor deals ever since.
What I did have
was budget to tell stories about myself.
Yeah, you heard that right.
Gnarly, impossible ski tour guy,
free soloing,
sleep deprived after having just climbed
and skied way too many mountains.
Not the main character.
The guy with a YouTube channel?
Main character.
I was thinking billboards, sold-out shows,
and my own skiing in the movie
finally earning me that cushy
pro skier life we both dreamt of as kids.
Vegard's Ski Tour
was my ticket to all of it.
But first, I needed to find him.
Alright, so, Vegard would,
disappear for weeks at a time,
and nobody would know where he would be,
his dad would call me...
Good afternoon.
He's not the easiest to get in touch with.
Troms, it's a small town in the far north
of Norway, and you know,
it's the sort of place
where you'd be surprised
to not run into one of your friends
when you go the store.
And still,
I'd been getting messages like this:
"Where's Vegard?," from Vegard's dad
for 15 years.
He'd even stop by my house.
That was Vegard's dad.
He's been trying to get a
hold of him for four days.
And he's like, "Is he at your place?"
He's a mysterious dude, this guy.
Nobody knows where he is.
And for a while,
he was staying in this, like,
it's kind of like a hobbit cave down here.
I was trying to find Vegard.
Everybody was trying to find Vegard.
And my buddy was like,
"He's living in a cave in this fjord."
Just stop by the big
rock, and you'll find him.
Let's see if he's here.
Hello?
Hello?
Casa de Vegard.
Rock roof.
I would go so crazy
if I would stay in a place like
this for a few weeks all alone.
But with him, it's just like, he loves it.
I guess he has the mountains
and the fjord,
and it's like enough for him in a way.
And honestly, it looks like
someone's still staying here.
There is fresh firewood here.
These chairs are fairly new.
I guess he is not here,
he's somewhere else.
It is 5 am.
We were supposed to go scout
part of Vegard's Greatest Ski Tour,
but I just got a message he's not...
He's not coming.
I actually went to law school
right in this building for six years.
But today we're meeting
Vegard's old roommate.
He's now a doctor studying pain.
Always keep a comb in your back pocket.
I think I lived with Vegard
for maybe two years
in the legendary Blue House.
And I remember once we were
in the living room in the morning
just having a bit of coffee.
He said, like, "Yeah, I'm going
to go away for a little while."
He just went out the door,
and it was about a year
later he came walking in again,
and he's like,
"You want some coffee?"
Somewhat of an enigma.
Do you know where Vegard is now?
No idea.
Thank you for letting us stop by.
You're welcome anytime.
So we're here to meet Vegard's lovely mom.
Maybe she even knows where he is.
- He was a very cute baby.
- Yes I can imagine.
He loved to climb trees when he was young.
I used to say to him, I can't
watch when you are climbing up.
So don't climb so far up you won't
be able to get back down on your own.
He's been skiing since he
was less 2 years old.
He became independent early on.
He packed his gear and
fixed everything without help.
He didn't need any company,
he was so focused on what he was doing.
We always felt he was
older than he really was.
- Do you know where Vegard is now?
- No
Very good. Thank you.
So, she also does not
know where Vegard is.
It continues to be a mystery.
Hi, how are you?
My skins fell off, the binding
broke, my ankle hurts and I got a cold.
But nothing that can't be fixed.
I just got the word - I'm
finally gonna get to film him,
to shoot his frickin'
training, to actually meet him.
It feels like I'm hunting a Siberian
super rare tiger or something.
Now, it's happening.
We're rolling.
I had him, in my viewfinder.
Finally.
Do you think you dare to put on the mic?
It's really hard to film someone
who has no interest in being filmed.
I could barely keep up in the storm.
Holy hell, Vegard!
And this was just his first lap.
I have understood he needs
to do 6 and 8 laps a day,
to get the workout he needs
to complete his ski tour.
Vegard would need another full
year of doing laps on Fagerfjellet
before he could make any attempt on
The Greatest Ski Tour of all Time.
So let's rewind,
because that man up there,
that wasn't the boy I met
all those years ago.
The boy who had changed
the course of my life forever.
Watch this.
It's fun tonight because
there's just two kids here.
Understandably too because it's
kind of warm and wet and rainy.
That was me and Vegard, every day,
no matter the conditions.
Do you want to ski together?
- This way.
- In the trees?
What brought us together was this place
and discovering our love for skiing.
We were kind of weirdos,
like everyone was just playing football
and going cross-country skiing
and like this whole skiing thing,
like in our age group,
it was just me and Vegard.
Woo-hoo-hoo!
We watched pirated ski movies
and discovered this
whole new world together.
A world where teenagers and
young adults made the rules.
No coaches, no showing up for training.
So far from the tedium and
rigorous structure of school
and organized activities
that dominated our childhood.
Our heroes were the North
American ski superstars:
Tanner Hall, Ingrid
Backstrom, Cody Townsend.
Years before he was kind
enough to take on the role
as expert commentator for this movie,
Let's do this.
Cody dominated the award shows.
This goes to Cody Townsend!
Cody's God-given talent would
win him multiple trophies a night,
seemingly by just playing around.
It's fun, that's why I've got a
smile on my face right now.
I've always said, the best skier on the
mountain is the guy having the most fun.
Yeah, I mean, training was very
looked down upon as a freeride skier.
Like even so much, I made a
video once of making fun of the fact
that people train.
The culture of freeride skiing
is much more just about like...
Hi, welcome to Chug Life 6.
I'm your host, Ian Kenneth Cosco.
Hanging out, going and
sending it with the boys.
Drinking a beer at the end
of the day and going home
and just doing it again.
And I was very careful to
like not share that I trained
yet I was in the gym
every day in the offseason.
That old culture I thought was
like really negative because you're
setting this like fake ideal
that people aren't training
when they actually are training.
Vegard and I fully
idolized that fake ideal.
A life of freedom and skiing?
Recording!
Man, how we wanted to be those
guys we watched in the videos!
My friend is a pro!
Pro!
Life of a pro skier.
That whole world was
literally an ocean away though,
but there was this one link to it.
We are in central Norway.
This is like where old pro
skiers go after their career.
We're linking up with Torkel Karoliussen.
In the 2000s, Torkel was traveling
the world, skiing in ski movies.
He was, I think, the first
pro skier out of Troms, ever.
And he was actually the guy who
sort of discovered me and Vegard
when we were teenagers.
-20c, damn!
- Not Troms temperatures.
- Not quite.
Back in the day, Torkel was a
skier, but now he is a snowboarder.
I had too many years
in that plastic stuff.
The good thing is that
I saved the best for last.
Imagine the other way round.
Getting tired of snowboarding and
having to go skiing when you are retired.
You were so lucky
to be Vegard's buddy,
otherwise you would have never
become "Nikolai Schirmer, The Pro Skier".
Yeah.
I always thought Vegard was
the one with the potential to go pro.
He was sending the hardest, and
you were just kind of along for the ride
because you were his best friend.
- Yeah.
Vegard was my hope to go
pro and represent Norway
in the international ski world.
You know that feeling when
everything you ever dreamt of happening
might just be happening?
We're quite stoked.
With Torkel's help we had trips
booked to Japan, the Alps,
and started the winter off with
our first time skiing in America.
- Are you filming?
- Yes, filming.
Wow, check out these pillows!
We got the pillows!
Get the fucking pillows!
This is the best day of my life.
What's up, Vegard?
One foot of snow.
We are sixth in line...
Us lifties, we're bombing down the runs.
Doing some avy control.
To make sure it's safe
for you guys to crush it
This was our big break.
We're going to shred the gnar!
Yeah, it's rolling!
Vegard was absolutely shredding.
Me, I was trying too.
Are you all good?
And then it happened.
I've torn something in my knee.
Vegard tore his ACL.
- Are you able to lift your leg?
- Yes.
Shit, dude!
I hope we can still go to Japan.
I told him I'd meet him at the hospital
because the snow was
too good to stop skiing,
but I probably shouldn't have said that.
I tore my MCL, PCL, and meniscus
and fractured my tibial plateau.
Oh my God!
We had to re-book those flights to Japan.
How did you two do that to your legs?
Eh, skiing.
I'm guessing you are best friends.
I came here to Chamonix pretty much
as soon as I healed
from that injury in Jackson Hole.
So we lived in this apartment right here,
Vegard, me,
and then a bunch
of other friends from Troms,
and it was a so small, one-bedroom,
like one-room apartment.
And I remember at one
point it was so cramped that
we had to synchronize going to bed because
once we were sleeping, all the floor
space was taken up by sleeping ski bums
and it was just impossible to move.
Chamonix, it's definitely like
the Hollywood of the ski world,
and I just remember
feeling so excited to be here,
but I also felt like I was losing Vegard.
Wow, what a place, huh?
Niko dropping.
I would be here, you know, skiing all day,
using the lifts to work on
different ski movie projects.
Whereas he would just go off
on his own, touring up the pistes,
only focusing on uphill stamina
and shying away from all the cameras.
And to be honest, I didn't really
understand what he was doing
or where he was trying to go.
But it was definitely somewhere
completely different
to where I was headed.
After Vegard left, I just put our
camera on a tripod and kept going.
So I decided to skip going
into law for a bit and moved out...
You know, I was 26 years old,
I had just graduated university.
So I decided to just skip law
for a bit and move out here...
And after all these years, I still
wasn't skiing professionally full time.
So I decided to just skip going into law
and I moved out here to Pemberton instead.
I am touring all by myself because
I have like half a friend here.
When I first saw Niko pop up on the
scene, I could say I was a little nervous.
I'm always a bit like, why
do I gotta do this by myself?
I mean, I saw a really talented
skier, but at the same time,
I was watching his skiing going like,
I probably don't want to
go ski with this guy.
We have very different risk tolerances.
I figured like, if you're
not alive, then you don't care.
That's fine.
That's kind of dark, but...
Woo-hoo!
Wow!
Well, that was fun.
That can be the start
of the of the web series.
I'm gonna do a weekly one this season.
Basically, you're in BC
because you're doing a weekly video blog,
which isn't really a video blog.
It's almost like weekly small short films.
It's really, really good.
Fuck, this looks good.
I was like wow, he's
either got a massive budget.
I don't know how he finds
time, but you do it yourself.
That's sort of the downside, yeah.
I'm sort of always working.
I think I've done well on
YouTube, but I had a headstart.
I had a career in free ride skiing
and I was a big name at that point.
So it was easy to get
people over to my channel.
All right, first day.
And I'm pretty excited.
I've never actually seen
the mountains here before.
This is the first time I see the peaks.
It's kind of bluebird, so
hopefully it'll be good.
And I've started my own
companies in the past.
Companies that have dozens of employees.
Producing for YouTube,
it was the single hardest,
most stressful thing I've ever done.
I don't think it is for everybody.
Starting from scratch like Niko
did just shows this level of talent.
Yeah, it's really, really difficult.
I get these thoughts when I'm out there,
when I'm gonna hit a natural air.
I know I can only hit it once.
Do I go for the safe air or do I
do a trick that I might not land?
And I was like, wow,
that's just like life.
Do you risk crashing,
or do you take the safe route?
And I realized that I always
risk crashing, which is,
I don't know if that's a good or a
bad thing, because I crash a lot.
I'm not Vegard.
I don't do well without people.
My life was just work.
And I was always just like
one malfunctioning piece of equipment
away from personal bankruptcy.
Do you have someone to
talk to when you get down?
That's been tough actually, yeah.
You don't want to be a burden.
I was so burnt out.
I was so alone.
It was doing things to my head.
You know how you can
crave chocolate sometimes?
I would experience
this like craving for death.
Where is the closest gun?
Was there another
Snickers bar in the cupboard?
What about just crashing
my truck into a rock wall?
What was so frustrating with my
particular suicidal tendencies
was their absence...
their absence in situations where
where death was near and easy.
All I was left with was the torment,
and just like the absurdity of
trying to stay alive in the mountains
when I'd want to end
it as soon as I got down.
It turns out you don't have
to live alone in the woods
on the far side of the planet
from everyone you love
to go pro on YouTube.
I mean, it's pretty obvious,
but if I don't work 24/7
and have good people around me,
I stay somewhat sane.
Okay, we got a good crew.
We got a good crew.
Should we bring a harness?
I have my little red rocket today.
You can't do that!
That's not...
No way! No, no, no!
Okay we gotta go, I gotta make some money!
This YouTube shit doesn't run itself.
I'm paying for a whole
movie with this... this day.
Real humble.
It's just like a bunch of guys
just bragging about themselves.
Who's been bragging?
If that little sling dick, if
that was him bragging,
I'm curious to know what
the real deal is looking like,
the size of that thing.
It works like this.
First, I have a good day in the mountains
and make sure it's documented properly.
Then I choose a little photo that'll make
it stand out among all the other videos
and put a catchy name to it
so someone might actually click it.
Wow, what a place, huh?
Then when someone's clicked
the video and I have their attention...
Beautiful!
the algorithm detects whether
that person is entertained or not.
Ah, this run looks good.
My friends and I
pushing our comfort zones,
that works well.
But then the next section isn't clean,
like there's a little bit of billy-goating
to get on to the next thing.
Okay.
Yeah, this is a pretty cool place to be.
But most importantly, I
just need to tell a good story.
Okay, Finn in five...
You know like an okay story?
That'll get me maybe 100,000 views.
Okay, Lisen in three, two, one.
Whoa!
A great story; that'll get me a million.
Lisen, you're an animal!
I sell marketing targeted
at those viewers,
and that's the job.
Wow, guys, we're so lucky!
Yep.
I'm not winning awards like Cody Townsend,
and the west face of Trollvasstinden
definitely isn't the
greatest ski tour of all time.
But it was me making a
living as a professional athlete
by just playing around on skis.
It's what Vegard and I
dreamt of as teenagers.
I was just missing the main
character in that dream - Vegard.
And I couldn't help but
wonder what he left me for.
Why he left me to live
this life without him.
My mom got a little bit frustrated.
She said, "Why can't you spend
your time on something useful?
Do something sensible"
- You just hike up and go back down?
- Yeah.
It's not that complicated.
I really believe in just
doing something consistently.
You don't need fancy
breathing techniques and fasting.
These material things, it
seems obvious to chase them.
But pro skiing back when Nikolai
and I started getting sponsor deals,
it was mostly about
succeeding at social media.
That didn't feel good.
It had a negative effect
on my skiing experience.
I wanted to define what had
a purpose for me without that.
The goal is to build endurance,
aerobic endurance,
in the fast twitch fibers,
so they get a bit more capacity.
That winter ten years ago
when Vegard stopped chasing
professional skiing with me,
he did his first traverse
of the Lyngen Peninsula.
The Lyngen Peninsula is situated
on the most arctic extremity of Europe,
but it's just an hour's drive
away from Troms.
And even before it was the staging ground
for the greatest ski tour of all time,
Lyngen was where
the heroes of my hero skied.
Seth Morrison, Shane McConkey,
those guys were my idols and heroes.
They still are.
Holy shit!
Holy shit!
Oh my god!
Yeah!
Holy shit!
Vegard wasn't sending
cliffs in 2014 though.
Vegard and his crew traversed the
entire mountain range from south to north:
114 km and 9600 vertical meters
over ten days with massive
bag packs full of camping gear.
Vegard worked in the docks
back then, unloading frozen fish.
The heaviest session we did...
we did
37 hours,
with 1 to 2 hours of sleep.
It opened my eyes.
I know what is coming, and that is pain.
On his next attempt in 2017,
Vegard did that same 10-day traverse
of the Lyngen peninsula in 29 hours,
only taking off his skis
to swim across a fjord.
It is a little heavy.
What Vegard was doing back then
was part of this larger cultural shift
that was happening in the mountains.
The traditional way to reach an objective
is to lug heavy gear
through a series of camps
like Vegard and his crew
did on that first traverse.
In 2017, Vegard was opting to rely
on extreme physical fitness instead,
to do that 10-day traverse in a
single continuous push at high speed.
I feel something I've
never felt before in my feet.
It feels like they are disintegrating.
It looks like a trench foot.
Approximately 30 hours of skiing.
This is the more modern
light and fast strategy.
This strategy relies on fitness,
but it also puts extreme
requirements on the gear.
So I had to pick up
these super ultra light skis,
but they're the wrong brand.
This is not Black Crows
and Black Crows is paying for this movie.
So I'm gonna have to rebrand them.
I can't sell Black Crows
with an Atomic ski.
These are skis so lightweight
that they make it almost
impossible to ski downhill.
Not fun.
But fun wasn't a concern
for Vegard now, of course.
His concern was skiing 27 peaks
in one big push.
The greatest ski tour of all time,
was more than twice as big as
anything Vegard had ever done before.
And he would do it light and fast.
The Bible of this light and fast movement
was Scott Johnson's
Training for the New Alpinism,
which Vegard read religiously
and pestered me about getting into.
Nikolai and I have some discussions.
I have tried to tell him to
make an effort with training
beyond just skiing.
I was busy trying to have fun, though.
And for a professional freeride
skier with generous sponsor deals,
this old traditional versus lightning fast
wasn't really an issue.
Traditionally, to access freeride terrain,
you're using snowmobiles
and, more often than not,
the best lines are found via helicopter.
Nice with helicopters -
they just take you
wherever you wanna ago.
That was until I started
getting too uncomfortable
with melting the snow
that I rely on to do my job.
Now, over to a guy that
has had a project this winter
about more climate friendly skiing.
Please, welcome Nikolai Schirmer.
I reduced my emissions from 40
tons of CO2 per year to 12 tons,
but I still wanted to make
better ski movies.
My goal is to ski better now.
That is a lot easier said than done
without burning any fossil fuels.
I was not winning awards
like Cody Townsend,
Trying to catch up with Vegard.
But now documenting Vegard
training for his ski tour.
He's right up there.
I realized I could
not only sell his ski tour,
I could appropriate his way of life
to achieve my own goals as a skier.
If I just trained like an actual athlete,
I might actually have a
shot at winning skier of the year
while making this movie.
It was just the time.
It was a time to leave all the
principles of my teenage years behind
and call up the author of Vegard's Bible.
Hey.
Hey, everybody.
You said a friend of yours, Vegard,
suggested you get in touch with us, huh?
Yeah, he has this huge, big
ski tour that he wants to do,
and he's training for that.
But I would be interested in trying
to apply it to the sort of
human-powered freeride skiing.
Yeah,
I coached Alex Honnold for some time,
and Alex is crazy hard to coach.
What I've seen before when
high-level athletes come to us,
it's a shift in their mentality.
You're going to do a lot of things
that aren't actually your sport.
Scott assigned one of his coaches,
Kylee, to structure my training.
It involves more prescribed,
contrived workouts.
They expect me to train every day.
So I talked to Vegard,
and he's like, I'm the only
one who's allowed to film him,
so I'm going to have to
follow him for his whole thing.
- No way.
- It's like 20,000 vert.
- No way.
- 80 hours.
- You're the only one, huh?
- Yeah.
No, but honestly, I'm a bit worried about
it because at first, I thought, the
plan was to have a big camera crew,
one on each mountain.
And now, it's only you.
But why?
Because he wants the experience
of being alone in the mountains.
He's not making a movie, he's training.
- He's just doing it.
- Yeah.
And he's barely allowing me
to make a movie.
Like, if I can keep up.
Vegard?
It did get a little bit easier
to keep track of Vegard
when he became my room mate.
- I'm going to train now.
- Okay.
I'm thinking muscular
endurance, carrying water.
How much?
I don't know, maybe 20 liters.
Shit.
How much are you carrying,
Vegard, 30 liters?
Gains, yeah.
Just two guys in their thirties,
dodging relationships,
carrying water up mountains.
Uh, this is where
the backpack starts hurting.
The rock gets to come down.
The rock's in it for the
uphill and the downhill.
On to the next one.
It's funny, like, I don't really
feel myself getting a lot fitter
because if I get more fit then
Kylee just increases
the volume of training.
I'm hoping that you're gonna feel tired?
Oh my God!
This fucker, so heavy.
It's the smallest weight.
If I'm structuring you properly
by that third week, you're
going to want a rest week.
You're going to be like, ah.
I'm so happy next week is rest week.
It's equally tiring every time.
But I do feel myself
getting a lot weirder.
I'm leaving parties at 10 pm
while everyone's out.
I'm just really tired all the time,
really tired.
And I brought it up with
Vegard and he was like,
"You haven't noticed that I'm weird?"
I honestly don't feel
like it is a sacrifice.
One day, I will party again.
I think the training itself is fun.
The process.
I am feeling kind of skimo.
They are so lightweight.
It's so nice with light skis, isn't it?
You can keep a nice
pace without getting tired.
Now I understand how
you do one Everest a day.
That's actually a point.
When we are out in real mountains,
- It's just different things I am doing.
- Yeah.
I totally agree and I take self-critique.
I needed to fix my stamina and
my technique with lightweight gear.
Oh, shit!
But I also wanted to win that award.
So I'm going to go to the Alps,
I need to ski.
I need to actually ski a lot
to have any chance
at performing this winter.
Meantime, Vegard is going
to stay here and he will train.
And because he won't
let anyone but me film him,
I figured I should let him film himself.
- Vegard Cam!
- Oh my!
I don't want to push you,
but if you like, you can film
yourself while I'm in the Alps.
I see a vlogger coming in!
I give an inch...
I'd lived like Vegard since the summer,
only building uphill stamina.
But uphill stamina alone
wasn't gonna win me any awards.
We're in the Alps,
we have lifts so we can get
in shape for Lyngen in spring.
Touring in the Alps,
fresh legs
for the send, but then
you really got to send it.
1300 vert in the lift,
50 on the legs.
Holy schmackaroni, Niko!
Brada, man!
Holy fucking shit, it's steep.
Oh, freaking!
Are you sure?
I'm not sure.
Brada, man.
The slough is going to be riding
at 1,000 kilometers an hour, dude.
- You feel good about your lines?
- Yeah.
But I'm feeling a little like...
Oh, you should.
OK, Niko, in three, two, one...
Niko dropping.
Meanwhile, the Vegard cam
was rolling up north.
Yes, first day as a vlogger,
and I'm chatting like this at 800 an hour.
Which meant he was skiing
more elevation than me,
even though I was using the lifts.
Niko dropping.
I'm happy.
I'm feeling super strong
My 7 is still as wonky
as it always is,
but I take it down to my feet.
I'm feeling really good on my skis.
Take 23.
I was actually going to ski
another month in the Alps
and then drive electric home.
But I couldn't let this movie
rest on Vegard's efforts alone.
It's funny because the
only reason I am flying up
is because Vegard
won't let anyone film him.
So I am flying up because I am the
only one who can hold the camera.
So I feel I can sacrifice the
climate for the art, just for now.
Ladies and gentlemen,
good evening from the flight deck,
your first officer,
we are approaching Troms.
We're in under landing
in about 15 minutes,
so please fasten your seatbelt.
Physiotherapy
How are your legs?
The long days have made it a bit worse.
- Let's start. We'll focus lower today.
- Okay, great.
This is part of Vegard's body
that has been worked way too hard.
So I am trying to help him with that.
His hard training has caused this.
If he doesn't step it down
a bit, it will be hard to fix.
But we are trying to find a balance so he
doesn't have to decrease volume too much.
I think those will be
the deciding factors;
the conditions and if my legs survive.
I know it'll be painful.
I just have to do what I can
to make it less so.
I am planning to be
on crutches for all of June.
The meteorologists have no less than five
extreme weather warnings this weekend.
This is going to be awesome.
What is the deal with
Fagerfjellet, why always go there?
Because I can be here in this weather.
This year, I've averaged 8 trips per week.
What about avalanches when you are alone?
I try to avoid them.
But I know this mountain pretty well.
I've been okay so far.
I've done this regularly
for 1 and a half years.
The weather is better than expected.
Holy shit, it's so fucking windy!
I don't think I've ever
been out of this much wind.
Vegard's just disappearing up there.
Luckily, it's not cold.
That would have been uncomfortable.
Yeah!
Damn, dude!
This is what you do while I am
having beers in the sunny Alps.
I wouldn't have traded spots.
You're keeping quite the speed,
both up and down.
As long as my body doesn't
fall apart, I'm optimistic.
It's in his nature to do
whatever it takes
to complete the training he needs.
I think it was a big sacrifice for him
to not be here for Christmas dinners.
Because we all got sick.
The girls found this old little
Santa and put it on his chair
during the Christmas
dinners he wasn't here with us.
So he was kinda with us in the photos,
at a safe distance to avoid infection.
Oh, I can only imagine, like, how
frickin' gnarly
it's gotta be up there right now,
in the dark, all alone.
Does anyone ever join you for this?
Strangely, not a lot of people want to.
I do enjoy the company
of friends and family.
It's not that I want to escape them.
Rather that I miss being
alone for a week or two.
No music, no podcast, no audio books.
Nothing.
So I'm really alone in my own head.
And I like being there.
And then, it's nice to return
and meet people, after.
Compared to Vegard, I
felt addicted to people
I couldn't even wait alone
at the trailhead for an hour.
I'm filming my buddy,
doing laps on Fagerfjellet.
Vegard on the other hand,
he'd even given up on the whole
concept of having a girlfriend,
for this ski tour.
I view it like avalanche risk,
where I acknowledge that
avalanche terrain is deadly in advance.
Because you are not
rational when you are up there
about to drop in on a sunny powder run.
Yeah, Niko!
I take that same approach to love.
I take a step back before I am
consumed by the biochemical high,
and make the decision to give
other things the priority right now.
There's a bit of uncertainty
to it right now,
exactly where it's possible to climb up.
So it'll be good to check it out
just to see that it is even possible.
This is definitely the crux
of the ski tour.
Yes.
It's the chute going up on the left?
Yes.
- Almost looks like a fun run.
- Yes.
We are going to the mountain.
- Oh, did it sluff down there?
- Oh my god, it did!
- Do you see it?
- Well, that's no good.
No.
- I feel like that's a no go.
- Yes.
The best way to not end up in an avalanche
is to just not go into the mountains
when there are signs of avalanche danger.
- That backpack gets stuffed.
- With all the gear?
Yeah.
All those years
I chased professional skiing,
Vegard studied to be a mountain guide.
When you are operating in the
grey are between climbing and skiing
where Vegard likes to play.
You need to know the climbing
techniques that you bring into skiing.
These are the foremost
experts on avalanches, ropes,
everything about safety
and navigating the mountain.
He was obviously very talented.
Where the other students
would barely manage to get down,
Vegard would turn around
and ski backwards.
- It looks really gnarly.
- Yeah, it looks quite impossible.
We'll see.
Vegard in the wild,
first time with Joonas behind the lens.
Things are looking up, superstar now.
Joonas has been my go-to cinematographer
for the past eight years, I think.
Yeah, at first, of course, he
barely accepted me at filming him.
And then I looked at
the route and I'm like,
how the hell am I
going to cover this route?
I'm going to be dead
after like, the first 10% of it.
Now, he's accepted you.
This is serious.
I've never seen a plan like this.
- Yeah.
- It's crazy, huh?
Yeah.
I've never seen a person who's been
up for 47 hours about to climb a mountain.
And then this is actually, like, one of
the most technical parts of the route.
This is what he's
training for in the cave,
the traverse of Anderstinden.
Oh my God. And that's just the start.
- No way!
- It's insane.
Do you think it's physically safe?
- Are you okay?
- No, there is a slab up here.
Lyngen has a lot of low-density
snow, with a bad hold for ice axes.
In the Alps, your axes actually hold you,
while in Lyngen, they often don't.
I'm not going to pretend I'm not scared.
I feel it the most
when I watch others climb.
This is a walk in the park.
But it's a walk in the park
with deadly consequences.
Agreed, and that's the worst part.
The axes aren't safe,
so you have to distribute
your weight between the axes,
and crampons, and then
almost crawl up.
It's not difficult but it is exposed.
- Okay, Vegard, I am climbing.
- Got it!
Oh, my God!
- Where did you go here?
- I went on top of it,
sliding kind of.
I can't say I am in the middle
of my comfort zone.
- You're not doing this solo, right?
- Yeah, I think so.
God damn!
This was the only section I was
not entirely sure how to do before.
But this is psycho!
And where will you abseil from?
I'm actually pleasantly surprised
at how smooth it seems.
But this last part is fairly spicy.
Yes, obviously.
I'm impressed you are free soloing this.
Yes.
- Definitely airy.
- Yes.
The route up Anderstinden, that was
the final piece in Vegard's puzzle.
But me,
I hadn't spent the past year living like
a snow warrior monk for nothing.
I still had an award to win.
Vegard still had another
month of training, though,
so it was time to bring in some
hard charging American backup.
High hopes.
High hopes of high peaks.
Fresh off the boat from the US;
coming in hot!
Does it ever bother you that,
like Powder magazine
only gives awards for like
backcountry segment of the year,
but never like human-powered
backcountry segment of the year?
- So it's always like the heli segment
- and you're like,
- is that even backcountry?
- Yeah.
Have fun.
Enjoy your day.
Game on.
I had seen this terrain
before in Nikolai's videos,
and I wanted to ski it myself
and just become curious.
Am I strong enough?
Am I skilled enough to ride these lines?
This looks properly sick.
Niko dropping!
You are a madman!
The strategy to win an award
is basically just to find
the craziest skiing
you might be able to do,
and then capture the attempt on camera.
Oh, Niko!
That was insane!
We've had
a really safe snowpack this year.
This is the first year in
as long as I can remember
where we haven't had
any avalanche fatalities.
You know, we have this snowpack,
we're chasing this award,
I figured
this might be the time to attempt
the north face of Balgesvarri.
It's huge, and the run
gets gradually steeper
towards this ice fall, this ice cliff.
If you start falling at the top,
you need to be either extremely lucky
or extremely strong
to be able to self-arrest.
And if you're not able to self-arrest,
you're going over that cliff.
But at the same time,
there's this allure, right?
There's this allure of a run where you can
push yourself
as far as you can as a skier.
You know there's people taking helicopters
to the top of mountains now?
No eight hours of hiking
through the night?
Yeah, they're not starting at 8 p.m.
We're gonna do it
10 miles of approach today.
Into the night.
- Yeah, the approach is like, it just
adds this entirely different element.
Just the endurance
capabilities you have to have.
I'm feeling really good right now,
but it's only midnight.
It might change
in like four or five hours.
And then to go ski something
super-fast and super hard,
it's just...
I would say it's not
even slightly more difficult
to ski free ride lines via human power.
It's like 10x more difficult.
It is on a different level.
It's definitely steep.
It's so steep.
Holy shit!
I mean, you're just going to go like zero
to 60 pretty fast when you drop in there.
Just don't go too far and do
not get caught by your slough.
At this point we had kind of established
that we weren't really dealing
with any avalanche problems.
Dude, I know.
So stoked.
Fucking awesome to be up here.
It's pretty fucking sweet.
So I'm pretty much ready
when you guys are.
- Wow, I'm nervous.
- Yeah.
- Let's go, Niko.
- Enjoy boys.
Fucking send it.
Oh, wind affect.
Really wind affected.
He's going pretty fast.
Holy shit that's loose.
Holy fucking shit!
Okay he kind of shut it down.
Okay now he's like properly
shut it down before the crux.
Holy shit!
That is some crux!
That was crazy.
It's definitely seen some wind
so it's pretty variable, but rippable.
The last part
into the crux is super steep.
I might try and stay ahead of the slough,
kind of similar to what he did at the top.
Yeah, go for it.
I admittedly
just got a little competitive.
And that's, I think, also okay
as long as it doesn't kill you.
Joonas ready.
Have fun down there.
Oh, fuck!
Fuck!
- Stop Jim!
- Oh my fucking god!
Dude, get it together.
Stop, Jim, stop!
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!
- Get it together, get it together!
- Please stop.
Holy shit, get it together, dude!
Are you okay, Jim?
This is Jim, I'm okay!
Oh my god!
Oh freaking hell!
Oh my god, Jim, I'm
so glad you're okay.
That's so not good.
I'm so happy he is okay.
Okay this is Jim, I have my skis on.
It's like the whole game is to
stay alive where most wouldn't.
But then when
your buddy's about to lose...
Holy shit, I just realized
how stupid it is and
like who cares about movies and awards?
Yeah Jim.
- Oh my god!
- Good work!
- Man, I am so glad you're okay.
- Me too!
Amazing, amazing self-arrest.
Oh, are you feeling okay?
I feel fine, yeah.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
Sorry about the beta. I...
You know, he came over the radio and said,
"You know, it's totally rippable."
And he was like, "Sorry I said that."
No, it's okay. I mean, you did rip it.
I was trying to rip it the same way.
And I just dug a tip in.
Rippable for Niko is one thing, you know,
and then for the rest of the world,
it's a different thing.
Big scare, big scare.
I've definitely learned a lesson.
- Yeah, it makes you think, huh?
- Yeah.
I think the speed it's okay to go at
is where you don't fall off the edge.
Balgesvarri was almost the end of Jim,
and we didn't know it at this point,
he was still just blissfully training,
but it would be the end for Vegard too.
And me?
I had sped off that edge months ago.
It's altitude training.
I'm up at 2000 now, pretty soon.
Good, good.
I'm just wrapping up some editing here.
I didn't stop doing YouTube
when I started training like Vegard
to chase skier of the year.
The amount of output created by Niko
is too much for us.
Thank you. That's great,
but could you one where it's more like
most skiers do one video
in an entire season
whereas Niko does like
10 before Christmas,
while he's working on
a feature documentary,
and he's doing a TV show on top of that?
Okay.
And I really feel like I'm trying to
balance, like two athletes' careers
with running a production company,
and I'm not doing it.
I'm failing horribly.
I'm in the car with my brother.
We're driving home for
Christmas to see the family.
Suddenly, Nikolai says:
"I need to pull over.
I can't see properly."
What happens sometimes if I work
too much, I start losing my vision.
I think it's called a silent migraine.
And I'll just have entire sections
of my vision just disappear.
So essentially, I go blind.
So I said,
"maybe you should work a bit less."
And then he looks at me with
this intensity and says:
"I just need to do one more video."
Then, I realize he has a problem.
You know, Vegard wasn't
going to stop training.
Winter happens when winter happens.
I have the budget
to do this movie right now.
If I stop, everything stops.
And I think that's a real strong
sensation that I have in my life.
What I'm saying is people
think you ski around the world,
but actually you just work all the time.
Yes, I do work all the time.
But it's a lot of fun though.
So it is a very privileged
situation in that sense.
I don't want it to stop,
and then, I will just keep pushing.
I've repeatedly over many years,
tried to get him
to see a therapist regularly.
But he does this evasive thing
where he meets them once and says,
"This person can't help me;
the only one who can help me is myself."
When I was in Canada,
I was so close
to not making it through that.
But this time around, luckily,
it was not my mental health,
it was my physical health that broke down.
I was getting sick before Christmas,
which is like a month ago.
And I've just been pushing through,
because I've had shit to do.
Oh my god, it's heavy.
I've just been sick.
I don't have a single quality
ski clip of myself
since we were in Austria.
And now there's five,
six weeks left of winter.
And I'm kind of stressing a little bit.
So I really hope today is the day.
Two, one, go...
Oh my god!
Niko dropping.
That was a big day.
And I'm feeling pretty good, actually.
Like I've said this a billion times,
But I think this is the day.
I'm sick again.
I'm not feeling like I'm Skier Of The Year
right now, for sure.
- The doctor's office.
- I stopped by six weeks ago,
- Yes.
I've had these respiratory
infections since late December,
and I haven't gotten any better.
I'll have a doctor call you to
see if we can run more tests.
Great, thank you.
In the meantime,
I look over and Vegard is just,
he's on this, like, Zen routine.
Vegard is working
on his third degree right now.
I'd get studying done first.
Two - three hours.
It's important
to change your work position.
In combination
with stretching and foam rolling.
Then, I'd go train for many hours.
Pretty monotonous.
It's the same day.
Again. And again. And again.
I like it.
You get a lot done in that mode.
Spring is coming, and I still
haven't done the sort of skiing
that I know I need to do to have
any shot at winning any sort of awards.
I'm stressing and I'm starting
to feel that that's sort of slipping.
You know, do a day on foot
that would be comparable
to a day in a helicopter.
If I ski the three Lenangstindan,
and then cap it off with the
north face of Store Jgervasstinden,
I'll have a shot here.
The coming weeks is... that's it.
After that, it's summer,
and then it's over.
I didn't have cancer.
I didn't have to be in bed.
If you just have like respiratory viruses,
you can still do everything
- it's just more painful.
There are pills for that.
I got some new pills from the doctor.
I started doing painkillers.
I'm pushing through.
Oups!
I call another doctor.
I need to take my meds.
I'm taking this antibiotics.
I'm still getting sick.
What do you think? Do you think it's
possible to do all three of them in a day?
I'm eating the pills. I'm
sneezing my way up the lines,
even if I'm not feeling 100%.
Okay.
Two out of four.
But you can't ski well if the snow is bad
and the clouds roll in.
And the clouds roll in every damn time.
I did like half of the dream
day that I was working towards.
I think if those pills start working now.
We got a bit better light,
a bit better snow.
I think there's still hope for this thing.
You know, this could be that day
I've been thinking about all season.
That's the hope.
It's clearing.
We have a cloud situation.
It's crazy, we've been so
unlucky with forecasts this year.
Like today, it was fully bluebird.
So if we see any clouds on
the mountain before we get up,
we're not going for it.
That's a big old cloud.
Hopefully the sun hasn't
cooked the snow too bad.
- It's pretty firm.
- Yeah.
- Bad.
- I'm really not sure about this snow.
- It's getting worse, huh?
- Yeah.
That first day,
if it weren't for the clouds...
but that's how it goes.
It's always one little thing.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That would have been the day.
- Fuck.
Skiing bad snow is possible,
it's just really hard
and really dangerous.
Jim dropping.
Oh that's gnarly.
That was so bad.
Holy shit, that looked so gnarly.
3, 2, 1, Niko dropping.
Oh my god.
What!
Oh man, the snow was so bad.
No way I'd risk skiing three
more mountains with that snow.
I had this whole thing,
trying to ski better,
be better, do all these things
all year working so hard.
And then it doesn't matter, because
the face is cooked, you know?
And now this is the last
shot to do it this winter.
And it's over.
I mean, yeah, I failed.
I failed.
And I understood that
when I live like Vegard,
when I live like an
athlete, when I set goals,
that means you can lose.
Even if the line I just did
was cool enough in itself.
I don't know if people truly
understand what he's doing,
because the only way that I
understood how crazy his skiing is,
is because I had just skied
that face in those conditions.
Like, it's possible to go
that fast when it's perfect.
But then I didn't understand that
it's also possible to ski that
fast when the snow is bad.
I had to see it firsthand
in order to believe it.
One mountain is not four mountains.
Fourth place is not first place.
When I set goals beyond
just having a good time,
that's not good enough.
And I had just spent a year living
like a fricking snow warrior monk,
to be not good enough.
But at the same time, all was not lost.
I might not win an award this winter,
but I could still make the movie
about the greatest ski tour of all time.
Vegard still had his huge ski tour.
I'm not even close to those
training professionally, but
the three last months I did 20 to 25
hours a week, plus strength training.
You have the level you've
earned through that process.
Spending so much time
staring at weather models.
All of a sudden, the one
looking good flips to bad,
and then the one
looking bad flips to good.
It's for sure not easy.
Vegard won't admit it on camera, but
he only really has one shot.
Once, he's made a
proper attempt, that's it.
He'll be so tired, so wrecked
that within the next month he
won't be able to regain his fitness.
Vegard needed four days of weather window.
He needed safe snow
and he needed visibility; no clouds.
- It has changed for the worse.
- Yes.
But on the other hand,
what are the chances the snow
stays good and we get another window?
This was 2023 May 1st.
This is now.
It's definitely like a lower year.
It's kind of like you're watching
this hourglass just sort of like, run out.
I need to make a call
and then I need to stick to it
knowing...
there's great uncertainty
in these decisions.
What's happening?
We're good to go from
Monday until Thursday, maybe.
Oh, my God, it looks really good here
from the toilet too.
Toilet seat approved?
Toilet seat approved.
We're gonna get it.
What's your avalanche rescue kit?
- I'll skip it.
- Yes.
Buried in an avalanche, you're
fairly likely to survive 15 minutes.
In a crevasse, you don't
suffocate the same way.
Normally you bring a
shovel, probe and a beacon,
but that's to save your buddy.
And because we're going to be
operating alone this whole trip,
it's like there's nobody to dig you out.
I'm going to get a little
head start on him here.
I think for like the first 20 hours,
that's going to be like normal to watch.
You know, people do that,
but then the next 60 is
going to get really interesting.
Here we go.
I have one hour, 15
minute head start on Vegard.
Hopefully that's enough.
Um, this peak looks okay,
but like the more technical
peaks further along the route,
are still pretty socked in.
There are so many things
that could go wrong
for Vegard on this trip.
There are crevasses he could fall into,
there are cornices that could fall.
There's rockfall this
late in the season
avalanches of course,
and not to mention the climbing.
On Anderstinden, he is free soloing.
If he slips, if he makes one mistake,
you know, he, yeah...
I'm just worried about him.
There's a million ways
that this could not work.
So many years in the making.
Now it begins:
the Greatest Ski Tour of all Time.
Vegard was supposed to
start moving half an hour ago,
but I've seen nothing on the tracker.
I hope he's not turning back.
Maybe he's turning back.
It is pretty cloudy.
Fuck this.
Oh, no, he's moving!
He is moving.
Also, this is a huge mountain.
And I find it hard to believe that
he's going to do 27 of these.
Oh, my God, this is white.
The man in the fog.
- More clouds than forecasted.
- Yes.
What do you think about the climbing then?
I guess I'll climb...
Right?
Yes.
There's this mental thing about
going into something with bad visibility.
But then there's this creative
process finding the route
that still makes it possible.
And so it begins.
First peak done.
A few left. Feels good.
Is Nallangaisi possible in bad visibility?
I think so.
On a pointy peak like Nallangaisi,
you can follow the rock
formations to the top,
even in fog.
Whereas on a dome peak
like Balgasvarri and Jiehkkevarri,
the sky and the ground
just kind of blend together
so you don't see the edge
before you're falling off it.
- Okay, I'll see you on Jiehkkevarri.
- Yes.
It really needs to clear before then,
because
I do not want to navigate a glacier
in any sort of conditions like this.
Whiteout navigation...
Big terrain,
bad visibility.
A little nasty.
Not easy.
I actually need to put the camera away.
The GPS is really good,
but even if you know you're
going in the right direction,
if you don't see that 5m cornice,
it'll hurt to fall off that,
and you can't see that on the GPS.
Even a small fuck up will end this.
The forecast didn't say the fog
would be as thick and low as it was.
I have to admit it's a bit scary
roaming around like this
in the whiteout,
and then up a fairly big mountain.
I had faith it would clear at some point.
Still in the clouds.
Airy.
The queen of Lyngen
Conditions are not perfect.
But, maybe it's possible.
Let's see.
He's doing Imbodentindeh, Tomastinden,
Store Lakselvtindan,
and then the traverse starts.
Day one, caught some kind of cold.
Big surprise.
But I still have a few hours
before I have to go anywhere.
So I'm going to sleep.
Joonas and I, we do
sort of like one massif each.
You're on a roll.
Yeah, I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling really good actually.
Legs are super fresh.
But, Jiehkkevarri won't be
possible in this fog, for sure.
It would be so nice if it clears.
I'm almost over the clouds.
So close.
Let's call it a summit.
Looks better, doesn't it?
Holy shit!
Wow, wow, wow!
That was so nice.
Enjoy!
Thank you.
It's really deep.
Climbing Store Lakselvtind.
Knee deep in snow.
Super tiring.
Let's see how this goes.
Looks a little spicy.
Let's try.
It's now 3am
and he is about to step
onto the trickiest section.
The most technical climbing,
the most exposed climbing,
so I hope he's feeling good.
A little tired.
20 hours.
A loot of bootpacking.
At this point, you know, he's
been moving for almost 24 hours.
He's by definition sleep-deprived.
You shouldn't drive a car in this state,
let alone free-solo a mountain.
I'm impressed by Vegard's scheduling.
He said it would be up
there at Anderstinden at 4.30.
It's 4.30 and he's
climbing Anderstinden,
you know, like 22 hours later.
Sketchiest bit of my trip
coming up.
But I think as long as Vegard is
doing the stuff he's doing,
I can't be like complaining too hard.
Very little snow this year.
I have to be very, very
careful through here.
I bring ice axe.
It's not for the steepness
but for if you fall in a crevasse.
Yes, would suck to be
in a crevasse with no axe.
So the plan was for me to go
to the south peak of Jiehkkevarri,
where I could shoot
Vegard on Balgesvarri,
and then join up with him for
the main peak of Jiehkkevarri.
The wind has set in.
Freaking crevasses.
It's freaking terrifying being solo.
Ah, the fog is back.
It would be ridiculous if this cloud
would break the greatest
ski tour of all time.
Jiekkkevarri is not a place
you want to be in the fog.
Trying to find my way here.
I think I can see the edge, though.
It is not a friendly environment
for a human right now.
The 27th hour.
Feeling in shape, feeling fresh now.
Ah I'm tired.
Also, there is a lot of windloading.
It'll be hard to see the avalanche slabs
in flat light, and definitely in the fog.
I have eyes on him.
Will he come up, or?
He's worked so hard for this.
I think it's gonna be pretty hard
for him to turn around.
Shooting cracks.
Not thick, but reactive.
We talk about red flags
in avalanche assessment...
A natural release on Balgesvarri.
Heavy winds.
Holy fucking wind!
- I, I turned back.
- Yes.
- The fog is so thick.
- Yes.
It's really thick up here too.
And there was a natural
release avalanche on Balgesvarri.
The worst part is my
body is feeling so good.
He's seen avalanche activity.
There's all this wind.
Of course, the snow is moving.
There is no visibility.
There is not way for him
to do safe route finding.
I've just found it really hard to accept
the fact that we were letting go of this.
Yeah, yeah, it was a good time.
We were going to make a movie
about the greatest ski tour of all time.
It's not easy, this game.
Feels like summer down here.
Protein.
Good effort.
Yeah, it was nice.
Felt good.
I was giving this,
this, you know, everything...
and...
I failed at award winning skiing,
now we failed at this project too,
but I'm pretty sure Vegard
doesn't feel like he failed.
I think he thinks he had,
like, two pretty good years.
It was so cool.
It was so damn nice.
There's more of a defined end date
on a movie project like this, maybe,
as opposed to a process where you
work continuously and it's a lifestyle,
rather than a project with an end date.
A little tweaking and it's a good route.
I would have done it again.
Or, I am going to do it again.
I had completely misunderstood
how that whole award thing works though.
Hello Mr. Schirmer.
Hope you are doing fine.
Just wanted to officially congratulate you
on being voted skier of the year.
Congratulations, what an accomplishment.
You've been killing it, and love
to see that everyone else thinks so too.
You don't win awards by
skiing well, of course.
You win awards by being popular.
And making YouTube videos
till you go blind
makes you pretty damn popular.
There's no award show though, thank you.
You can stop that.
I just staged this whole thing to have
a more snappy intro for this movie.
Hello, testing, testing.
They just send you the trophy in the mail.
But life isn't this.
I'm sad, okay?
We want more sad.
Sadder!
I'm really bad at being sad around people,
but sometimes I am really sad.
I mean, you are sad.
You're just with good friends.
So with good snow, you're happy.
Yeah.
But for me, this project
was about trying my friend's process,
who's like in the "snow
warrior monk train every day, all day,
push everything else aside."
To him, his goal is an excuse to be in
that process.
Whereas to me, I don't really love that
process so much.
And then it's kind of stupid, you know?
I think this winter has taught me that
skiing is meant to be enjoyed.
That's the reason I got into it.
And I think that's the reason
I'm gonna keep doing it.
This is a huge mountain.
And I find it hard to believe that
he's going to do 27 of these.
Alright, I'm in position up here.
I hope he's not turning back.
Maybe he's turning back.
It is pretty cloudy.
Oh no, he's moving.
Alright, we have him on the move.
Vegard is officially on the move.
So many years in the making.
Now it begins.
The Greatest Ski Tour of all Time.
Nikolai Schirmer is one of
Norway's most foremost skiers,
making a living skiing down
extremely steep mountains,
often with his life on the line.
Schirmer runs his own
production company and...
Hey, should we move one of
the big roll-ups closer to the door?
- Nice.
- Then people are like, oh, here it is.
Excuse me Nikolai, could I have a photo?
It feels really good to start this
whole thing off with a sold-out show.
I have made a decent living
telling stories
as a professional skier.
But I had bigger dreams than
small-time ski festivals and YouTube.
Something that could fill a
movie theater all by itself.
- You know, the ski world's very own
- Free solo.
This film is for everyone
who believes in the impossible.
I'd never found the story about
that impossible endeavor, though.
An undertaking years,
no a lifetime in the making.
A deeply personal story
of someone who gives up
on love, money, fame.
A person who's literally gone underground
to live like a snow warrior monk.
He trained in here.
A story about forsaking everything
to chase a goal where death is
always just one small mistake away.
Oh my god!
Oh my fucking god!
I'd never found that story,
until I heard Vegard was back.
You call that a camera?
- Yes.
- This is a camera.
You know that one friend
who's the only person in the world
who loves the thing you love
just as much as you?
Okay, rolling.
That one friend you'll
gladly follow off a cliff.
Nice!
And try to go a little bigger.
Whoa!
That one friend
who's happy to sleep in a ditch
and eat dumpster food with you
to afford going on that ski trip.
You making my nose look big?
That was Vegard.
Rolling!
We were gonna take
on the ski world together.
But that all fell apart.
I don't really know
where we lost each other.
All I know is, we did.
Now, I heard that Vegard was back
and he was training for a ski tour
unlike anything I had ever seen before.
27 peaks.
Yeah, that's 13 more than
that Netflix film you've all seen.
And Vegard would do them all in one go.
200 kilometers, 25,000 vertical meters,
that's 82,000 feet for you Americans.
It's like doing four marathons in a row
while you're climbing Everest
from sea level,
three times, and moving through the
most technical alpine terrain in Norway.
How long have you been
a professional skier?
- Like 10 years, maybe.
- 10 years?
Yeah, but in the start there
was no money, you know.
So it's been a long road to Paris.
I had just signed the biggest
sponsor deal of my life.
But my contract had exactly zero euros
allotted to telling the story of
some guy who never blew up,
dropped off the map
more than a decade ago,
and refused all sponsor deals ever since.
What I did have
was budget to tell stories about myself.
Yeah, you heard that right.
Gnarly, impossible ski tour guy,
free soloing,
sleep deprived after having just climbed
and skied way too many mountains.
Not the main character.
The guy with a YouTube channel?
Main character.
I was thinking billboards, sold-out shows,
and my own skiing in the movie
finally earning me that cushy
pro skier life we both dreamt of as kids.
Vegard's Ski Tour
was my ticket to all of it.
But first, I needed to find him.
Alright, so, Vegard would,
disappear for weeks at a time,
and nobody would know where he would be,
his dad would call me...
Good afternoon.
He's not the easiest to get in touch with.
Troms, it's a small town in the far north
of Norway, and you know,
it's the sort of place
where you'd be surprised
to not run into one of your friends
when you go the store.
And still,
I'd been getting messages like this:
"Where's Vegard?," from Vegard's dad
for 15 years.
He'd even stop by my house.
That was Vegard's dad.
He's been trying to get a
hold of him for four days.
And he's like, "Is he at your place?"
He's a mysterious dude, this guy.
Nobody knows where he is.
And for a while,
he was staying in this, like,
it's kind of like a hobbit cave down here.
I was trying to find Vegard.
Everybody was trying to find Vegard.
And my buddy was like,
"He's living in a cave in this fjord."
Just stop by the big
rock, and you'll find him.
Let's see if he's here.
Hello?
Hello?
Casa de Vegard.
Rock roof.
I would go so crazy
if I would stay in a place like
this for a few weeks all alone.
But with him, it's just like, he loves it.
I guess he has the mountains
and the fjord,
and it's like enough for him in a way.
And honestly, it looks like
someone's still staying here.
There is fresh firewood here.
These chairs are fairly new.
I guess he is not here,
he's somewhere else.
It is 5 am.
We were supposed to go scout
part of Vegard's Greatest Ski Tour,
but I just got a message he's not...
He's not coming.
I actually went to law school
right in this building for six years.
But today we're meeting
Vegard's old roommate.
He's now a doctor studying pain.
Always keep a comb in your back pocket.
I think I lived with Vegard
for maybe two years
in the legendary Blue House.
And I remember once we were
in the living room in the morning
just having a bit of coffee.
He said, like, "Yeah, I'm going
to go away for a little while."
He just went out the door,
and it was about a year
later he came walking in again,
and he's like,
"You want some coffee?"
Somewhat of an enigma.
Do you know where Vegard is now?
No idea.
Thank you for letting us stop by.
You're welcome anytime.
So we're here to meet Vegard's lovely mom.
Maybe she even knows where he is.
- He was a very cute baby.
- Yes I can imagine.
He loved to climb trees when he was young.
I used to say to him, I can't
watch when you are climbing up.
So don't climb so far up you won't
be able to get back down on your own.
He's been skiing since he
was less 2 years old.
He became independent early on.
He packed his gear and
fixed everything without help.
He didn't need any company,
he was so focused on what he was doing.
We always felt he was
older than he really was.
- Do you know where Vegard is now?
- No
Very good. Thank you.
So, she also does not
know where Vegard is.
It continues to be a mystery.
Hi, how are you?
My skins fell off, the binding
broke, my ankle hurts and I got a cold.
But nothing that can't be fixed.
I just got the word - I'm
finally gonna get to film him,
to shoot his frickin'
training, to actually meet him.
It feels like I'm hunting a Siberian
super rare tiger or something.
Now, it's happening.
We're rolling.
I had him, in my viewfinder.
Finally.
Do you think you dare to put on the mic?
It's really hard to film someone
who has no interest in being filmed.
I could barely keep up in the storm.
Holy hell, Vegard!
And this was just his first lap.
I have understood he needs
to do 6 and 8 laps a day,
to get the workout he needs
to complete his ski tour.
Vegard would need another full
year of doing laps on Fagerfjellet
before he could make any attempt on
The Greatest Ski Tour of all Time.
So let's rewind,
because that man up there,
that wasn't the boy I met
all those years ago.
The boy who had changed
the course of my life forever.
Watch this.
It's fun tonight because
there's just two kids here.
Understandably too because it's
kind of warm and wet and rainy.
That was me and Vegard, every day,
no matter the conditions.
Do you want to ski together?
- This way.
- In the trees?
What brought us together was this place
and discovering our love for skiing.
We were kind of weirdos,
like everyone was just playing football
and going cross-country skiing
and like this whole skiing thing,
like in our age group,
it was just me and Vegard.
Woo-hoo-hoo!
We watched pirated ski movies
and discovered this
whole new world together.
A world where teenagers and
young adults made the rules.
No coaches, no showing up for training.
So far from the tedium and
rigorous structure of school
and organized activities
that dominated our childhood.
Our heroes were the North
American ski superstars:
Tanner Hall, Ingrid
Backstrom, Cody Townsend.
Years before he was kind
enough to take on the role
as expert commentator for this movie,
Let's do this.
Cody dominated the award shows.
This goes to Cody Townsend!
Cody's God-given talent would
win him multiple trophies a night,
seemingly by just playing around.
It's fun, that's why I've got a
smile on my face right now.
I've always said, the best skier on the
mountain is the guy having the most fun.
Yeah, I mean, training was very
looked down upon as a freeride skier.
Like even so much, I made a
video once of making fun of the fact
that people train.
The culture of freeride skiing
is much more just about like...
Hi, welcome to Chug Life 6.
I'm your host, Ian Kenneth Cosco.
Hanging out, going and
sending it with the boys.
Drinking a beer at the end
of the day and going home
and just doing it again.
And I was very careful to
like not share that I trained
yet I was in the gym
every day in the offseason.
That old culture I thought was
like really negative because you're
setting this like fake ideal
that people aren't training
when they actually are training.
Vegard and I fully
idolized that fake ideal.
A life of freedom and skiing?
Recording!
Man, how we wanted to be those
guys we watched in the videos!
My friend is a pro!
Pro!
Life of a pro skier.
That whole world was
literally an ocean away though,
but there was this one link to it.
We are in central Norway.
This is like where old pro
skiers go after their career.
We're linking up with Torkel Karoliussen.
In the 2000s, Torkel was traveling
the world, skiing in ski movies.
He was, I think, the first
pro skier out of Troms, ever.
And he was actually the guy who
sort of discovered me and Vegard
when we were teenagers.
-20c, damn!
- Not Troms temperatures.
- Not quite.
Back in the day, Torkel was a
skier, but now he is a snowboarder.
I had too many years
in that plastic stuff.
The good thing is that
I saved the best for last.
Imagine the other way round.
Getting tired of snowboarding and
having to go skiing when you are retired.
You were so lucky
to be Vegard's buddy,
otherwise you would have never
become "Nikolai Schirmer, The Pro Skier".
Yeah.
I always thought Vegard was
the one with the potential to go pro.
He was sending the hardest, and
you were just kind of along for the ride
because you were his best friend.
- Yeah.
Vegard was my hope to go
pro and represent Norway
in the international ski world.
You know that feeling when
everything you ever dreamt of happening
might just be happening?
We're quite stoked.
With Torkel's help we had trips
booked to Japan, the Alps,
and started the winter off with
our first time skiing in America.
- Are you filming?
- Yes, filming.
Wow, check out these pillows!
We got the pillows!
Get the fucking pillows!
This is the best day of my life.
What's up, Vegard?
One foot of snow.
We are sixth in line...
Us lifties, we're bombing down the runs.
Doing some avy control.
To make sure it's safe
for you guys to crush it
This was our big break.
We're going to shred the gnar!
Yeah, it's rolling!
Vegard was absolutely shredding.
Me, I was trying too.
Are you all good?
And then it happened.
I've torn something in my knee.
Vegard tore his ACL.
- Are you able to lift your leg?
- Yes.
Shit, dude!
I hope we can still go to Japan.
I told him I'd meet him at the hospital
because the snow was
too good to stop skiing,
but I probably shouldn't have said that.
I tore my MCL, PCL, and meniscus
and fractured my tibial plateau.
Oh my God!
We had to re-book those flights to Japan.
How did you two do that to your legs?
Eh, skiing.
I'm guessing you are best friends.
I came here to Chamonix pretty much
as soon as I healed
from that injury in Jackson Hole.
So we lived in this apartment right here,
Vegard, me,
and then a bunch
of other friends from Troms,
and it was a so small, one-bedroom,
like one-room apartment.
And I remember at one
point it was so cramped that
we had to synchronize going to bed because
once we were sleeping, all the floor
space was taken up by sleeping ski bums
and it was just impossible to move.
Chamonix, it's definitely like
the Hollywood of the ski world,
and I just remember
feeling so excited to be here,
but I also felt like I was losing Vegard.
Wow, what a place, huh?
Niko dropping.
I would be here, you know, skiing all day,
using the lifts to work on
different ski movie projects.
Whereas he would just go off
on his own, touring up the pistes,
only focusing on uphill stamina
and shying away from all the cameras.
And to be honest, I didn't really
understand what he was doing
or where he was trying to go.
But it was definitely somewhere
completely different
to where I was headed.
After Vegard left, I just put our
camera on a tripod and kept going.
So I decided to skip going
into law for a bit and moved out...
You know, I was 26 years old,
I had just graduated university.
So I decided to just skip law
for a bit and move out here...
And after all these years, I still
wasn't skiing professionally full time.
So I decided to just skip going into law
and I moved out here to Pemberton instead.
I am touring all by myself because
I have like half a friend here.
When I first saw Niko pop up on the
scene, I could say I was a little nervous.
I'm always a bit like, why
do I gotta do this by myself?
I mean, I saw a really talented
skier, but at the same time,
I was watching his skiing going like,
I probably don't want to
go ski with this guy.
We have very different risk tolerances.
I figured like, if you're
not alive, then you don't care.
That's fine.
That's kind of dark, but...
Woo-hoo!
Wow!
Well, that was fun.
That can be the start
of the of the web series.
I'm gonna do a weekly one this season.
Basically, you're in BC
because you're doing a weekly video blog,
which isn't really a video blog.
It's almost like weekly small short films.
It's really, really good.
Fuck, this looks good.
I was like wow, he's
either got a massive budget.
I don't know how he finds
time, but you do it yourself.
That's sort of the downside, yeah.
I'm sort of always working.
I think I've done well on
YouTube, but I had a headstart.
I had a career in free ride skiing
and I was a big name at that point.
So it was easy to get
people over to my channel.
All right, first day.
And I'm pretty excited.
I've never actually seen
the mountains here before.
This is the first time I see the peaks.
It's kind of bluebird, so
hopefully it'll be good.
And I've started my own
companies in the past.
Companies that have dozens of employees.
Producing for YouTube,
it was the single hardest,
most stressful thing I've ever done.
I don't think it is for everybody.
Starting from scratch like Niko
did just shows this level of talent.
Yeah, it's really, really difficult.
I get these thoughts when I'm out there,
when I'm gonna hit a natural air.
I know I can only hit it once.
Do I go for the safe air or do I
do a trick that I might not land?
And I was like, wow,
that's just like life.
Do you risk crashing,
or do you take the safe route?
And I realized that I always
risk crashing, which is,
I don't know if that's a good or a
bad thing, because I crash a lot.
I'm not Vegard.
I don't do well without people.
My life was just work.
And I was always just like
one malfunctioning piece of equipment
away from personal bankruptcy.
Do you have someone to
talk to when you get down?
That's been tough actually, yeah.
You don't want to be a burden.
I was so burnt out.
I was so alone.
It was doing things to my head.
You know how you can
crave chocolate sometimes?
I would experience
this like craving for death.
Where is the closest gun?
Was there another
Snickers bar in the cupboard?
What about just crashing
my truck into a rock wall?
What was so frustrating with my
particular suicidal tendencies
was their absence...
their absence in situations where
where death was near and easy.
All I was left with was the torment,
and just like the absurdity of
trying to stay alive in the mountains
when I'd want to end
it as soon as I got down.
It turns out you don't have
to live alone in the woods
on the far side of the planet
from everyone you love
to go pro on YouTube.
I mean, it's pretty obvious,
but if I don't work 24/7
and have good people around me,
I stay somewhat sane.
Okay, we got a good crew.
We got a good crew.
Should we bring a harness?
I have my little red rocket today.
You can't do that!
That's not...
No way! No, no, no!
Okay we gotta go, I gotta make some money!
This YouTube shit doesn't run itself.
I'm paying for a whole
movie with this... this day.
Real humble.
It's just like a bunch of guys
just bragging about themselves.
Who's been bragging?
If that little sling dick, if
that was him bragging,
I'm curious to know what
the real deal is looking like,
the size of that thing.
It works like this.
First, I have a good day in the mountains
and make sure it's documented properly.
Then I choose a little photo that'll make
it stand out among all the other videos
and put a catchy name to it
so someone might actually click it.
Wow, what a place, huh?
Then when someone's clicked
the video and I have their attention...
Beautiful!
the algorithm detects whether
that person is entertained or not.
Ah, this run looks good.
My friends and I
pushing our comfort zones,
that works well.
But then the next section isn't clean,
like there's a little bit of billy-goating
to get on to the next thing.
Okay.
Yeah, this is a pretty cool place to be.
But most importantly, I
just need to tell a good story.
Okay, Finn in five...
You know like an okay story?
That'll get me maybe 100,000 views.
Okay, Lisen in three, two, one.
Whoa!
A great story; that'll get me a million.
Lisen, you're an animal!
I sell marketing targeted
at those viewers,
and that's the job.
Wow, guys, we're so lucky!
Yep.
I'm not winning awards like Cody Townsend,
and the west face of Trollvasstinden
definitely isn't the
greatest ski tour of all time.
But it was me making a
living as a professional athlete
by just playing around on skis.
It's what Vegard and I
dreamt of as teenagers.
I was just missing the main
character in that dream - Vegard.
And I couldn't help but
wonder what he left me for.
Why he left me to live
this life without him.
My mom got a little bit frustrated.
She said, "Why can't you spend
your time on something useful?
Do something sensible"
- You just hike up and go back down?
- Yeah.
It's not that complicated.
I really believe in just
doing something consistently.
You don't need fancy
breathing techniques and fasting.
These material things, it
seems obvious to chase them.
But pro skiing back when Nikolai
and I started getting sponsor deals,
it was mostly about
succeeding at social media.
That didn't feel good.
It had a negative effect
on my skiing experience.
I wanted to define what had
a purpose for me without that.
The goal is to build endurance,
aerobic endurance,
in the fast twitch fibers,
so they get a bit more capacity.
That winter ten years ago
when Vegard stopped chasing
professional skiing with me,
he did his first traverse
of the Lyngen Peninsula.
The Lyngen Peninsula is situated
on the most arctic extremity of Europe,
but it's just an hour's drive
away from Troms.
And even before it was the staging ground
for the greatest ski tour of all time,
Lyngen was where
the heroes of my hero skied.
Seth Morrison, Shane McConkey,
those guys were my idols and heroes.
They still are.
Holy shit!
Holy shit!
Oh my god!
Yeah!
Holy shit!
Vegard wasn't sending
cliffs in 2014 though.
Vegard and his crew traversed the
entire mountain range from south to north:
114 km and 9600 vertical meters
over ten days with massive
bag packs full of camping gear.
Vegard worked in the docks
back then, unloading frozen fish.
The heaviest session we did...
we did
37 hours,
with 1 to 2 hours of sleep.
It opened my eyes.
I know what is coming, and that is pain.
On his next attempt in 2017,
Vegard did that same 10-day traverse
of the Lyngen peninsula in 29 hours,
only taking off his skis
to swim across a fjord.
It is a little heavy.
What Vegard was doing back then
was part of this larger cultural shift
that was happening in the mountains.
The traditional way to reach an objective
is to lug heavy gear
through a series of camps
like Vegard and his crew
did on that first traverse.
In 2017, Vegard was opting to rely
on extreme physical fitness instead,
to do that 10-day traverse in a
single continuous push at high speed.
I feel something I've
never felt before in my feet.
It feels like they are disintegrating.
It looks like a trench foot.
Approximately 30 hours of skiing.
This is the more modern
light and fast strategy.
This strategy relies on fitness,
but it also puts extreme
requirements on the gear.
So I had to pick up
these super ultra light skis,
but they're the wrong brand.
This is not Black Crows
and Black Crows is paying for this movie.
So I'm gonna have to rebrand them.
I can't sell Black Crows
with an Atomic ski.
These are skis so lightweight
that they make it almost
impossible to ski downhill.
Not fun.
But fun wasn't a concern
for Vegard now, of course.
His concern was skiing 27 peaks
in one big push.
The greatest ski tour of all time,
was more than twice as big as
anything Vegard had ever done before.
And he would do it light and fast.
The Bible of this light and fast movement
was Scott Johnson's
Training for the New Alpinism,
which Vegard read religiously
and pestered me about getting into.
Nikolai and I have some discussions.
I have tried to tell him to
make an effort with training
beyond just skiing.
I was busy trying to have fun, though.
And for a professional freeride
skier with generous sponsor deals,
this old traditional versus lightning fast
wasn't really an issue.
Traditionally, to access freeride terrain,
you're using snowmobiles
and, more often than not,
the best lines are found via helicopter.
Nice with helicopters -
they just take you
wherever you wanna ago.
That was until I started
getting too uncomfortable
with melting the snow
that I rely on to do my job.
Now, over to a guy that
has had a project this winter
about more climate friendly skiing.
Please, welcome Nikolai Schirmer.
I reduced my emissions from 40
tons of CO2 per year to 12 tons,
but I still wanted to make
better ski movies.
My goal is to ski better now.
That is a lot easier said than done
without burning any fossil fuels.
I was not winning awards
like Cody Townsend,
Trying to catch up with Vegard.
But now documenting Vegard
training for his ski tour.
He's right up there.
I realized I could
not only sell his ski tour,
I could appropriate his way of life
to achieve my own goals as a skier.
If I just trained like an actual athlete,
I might actually have a
shot at winning skier of the year
while making this movie.
It was just the time.
It was a time to leave all the
principles of my teenage years behind
and call up the author of Vegard's Bible.
Hey.
Hey, everybody.
You said a friend of yours, Vegard,
suggested you get in touch with us, huh?
Yeah, he has this huge, big
ski tour that he wants to do,
and he's training for that.
But I would be interested in trying
to apply it to the sort of
human-powered freeride skiing.
Yeah,
I coached Alex Honnold for some time,
and Alex is crazy hard to coach.
What I've seen before when
high-level athletes come to us,
it's a shift in their mentality.
You're going to do a lot of things
that aren't actually your sport.
Scott assigned one of his coaches,
Kylee, to structure my training.
It involves more prescribed,
contrived workouts.
They expect me to train every day.
So I talked to Vegard,
and he's like, I'm the only
one who's allowed to film him,
so I'm going to have to
follow him for his whole thing.
- No way.
- It's like 20,000 vert.
- No way.
- 80 hours.
- You're the only one, huh?
- Yeah.
No, but honestly, I'm a bit worried about
it because at first, I thought, the
plan was to have a big camera crew,
one on each mountain.
And now, it's only you.
But why?
Because he wants the experience
of being alone in the mountains.
He's not making a movie, he's training.
- He's just doing it.
- Yeah.
And he's barely allowing me
to make a movie.
Like, if I can keep up.
Vegard?
It did get a little bit easier
to keep track of Vegard
when he became my room mate.
- I'm going to train now.
- Okay.
I'm thinking muscular
endurance, carrying water.
How much?
I don't know, maybe 20 liters.
Shit.
How much are you carrying,
Vegard, 30 liters?
Gains, yeah.
Just two guys in their thirties,
dodging relationships,
carrying water up mountains.
Uh, this is where
the backpack starts hurting.
The rock gets to come down.
The rock's in it for the
uphill and the downhill.
On to the next one.
It's funny, like, I don't really
feel myself getting a lot fitter
because if I get more fit then
Kylee just increases
the volume of training.
I'm hoping that you're gonna feel tired?
Oh my God!
This fucker, so heavy.
It's the smallest weight.
If I'm structuring you properly
by that third week, you're
going to want a rest week.
You're going to be like, ah.
I'm so happy next week is rest week.
It's equally tiring every time.
But I do feel myself
getting a lot weirder.
I'm leaving parties at 10 pm
while everyone's out.
I'm just really tired all the time,
really tired.
And I brought it up with
Vegard and he was like,
"You haven't noticed that I'm weird?"
I honestly don't feel
like it is a sacrifice.
One day, I will party again.
I think the training itself is fun.
The process.
I am feeling kind of skimo.
They are so lightweight.
It's so nice with light skis, isn't it?
You can keep a nice
pace without getting tired.
Now I understand how
you do one Everest a day.
That's actually a point.
When we are out in real mountains,
- It's just different things I am doing.
- Yeah.
I totally agree and I take self-critique.
I needed to fix my stamina and
my technique with lightweight gear.
Oh, shit!
But I also wanted to win that award.
So I'm going to go to the Alps,
I need to ski.
I need to actually ski a lot
to have any chance
at performing this winter.
Meantime, Vegard is going
to stay here and he will train.
And because he won't
let anyone but me film him,
I figured I should let him film himself.
- Vegard Cam!
- Oh my!
I don't want to push you,
but if you like, you can film
yourself while I'm in the Alps.
I see a vlogger coming in!
I give an inch...
I'd lived like Vegard since the summer,
only building uphill stamina.
But uphill stamina alone
wasn't gonna win me any awards.
We're in the Alps,
we have lifts so we can get
in shape for Lyngen in spring.
Touring in the Alps,
fresh legs
for the send, but then
you really got to send it.
1300 vert in the lift,
50 on the legs.
Holy schmackaroni, Niko!
Brada, man!
Holy fucking shit, it's steep.
Oh, freaking!
Are you sure?
I'm not sure.
Brada, man.
The slough is going to be riding
at 1,000 kilometers an hour, dude.
- You feel good about your lines?
- Yeah.
But I'm feeling a little like...
Oh, you should.
OK, Niko, in three, two, one...
Niko dropping.
Meanwhile, the Vegard cam
was rolling up north.
Yes, first day as a vlogger,
and I'm chatting like this at 800 an hour.
Which meant he was skiing
more elevation than me,
even though I was using the lifts.
Niko dropping.
I'm happy.
I'm feeling super strong
My 7 is still as wonky
as it always is,
but I take it down to my feet.
I'm feeling really good on my skis.
Take 23.
I was actually going to ski
another month in the Alps
and then drive electric home.
But I couldn't let this movie
rest on Vegard's efforts alone.
It's funny because the
only reason I am flying up
is because Vegard
won't let anyone film him.
So I am flying up because I am the
only one who can hold the camera.
So I feel I can sacrifice the
climate for the art, just for now.
Ladies and gentlemen,
good evening from the flight deck,
your first officer,
we are approaching Troms.
We're in under landing
in about 15 minutes,
so please fasten your seatbelt.
Physiotherapy
How are your legs?
The long days have made it a bit worse.
- Let's start. We'll focus lower today.
- Okay, great.
This is part of Vegard's body
that has been worked way too hard.
So I am trying to help him with that.
His hard training has caused this.
If he doesn't step it down
a bit, it will be hard to fix.
But we are trying to find a balance so he
doesn't have to decrease volume too much.
I think those will be
the deciding factors;
the conditions and if my legs survive.
I know it'll be painful.
I just have to do what I can
to make it less so.
I am planning to be
on crutches for all of June.
The meteorologists have no less than five
extreme weather warnings this weekend.
This is going to be awesome.
What is the deal with
Fagerfjellet, why always go there?
Because I can be here in this weather.
This year, I've averaged 8 trips per week.
What about avalanches when you are alone?
I try to avoid them.
But I know this mountain pretty well.
I've been okay so far.
I've done this regularly
for 1 and a half years.
The weather is better than expected.
Holy shit, it's so fucking windy!
I don't think I've ever
been out of this much wind.
Vegard's just disappearing up there.
Luckily, it's not cold.
That would have been uncomfortable.
Yeah!
Damn, dude!
This is what you do while I am
having beers in the sunny Alps.
I wouldn't have traded spots.
You're keeping quite the speed,
both up and down.
As long as my body doesn't
fall apart, I'm optimistic.
It's in his nature to do
whatever it takes
to complete the training he needs.
I think it was a big sacrifice for him
to not be here for Christmas dinners.
Because we all got sick.
The girls found this old little
Santa and put it on his chair
during the Christmas
dinners he wasn't here with us.
So he was kinda with us in the photos,
at a safe distance to avoid infection.
Oh, I can only imagine, like, how
frickin' gnarly
it's gotta be up there right now,
in the dark, all alone.
Does anyone ever join you for this?
Strangely, not a lot of people want to.
I do enjoy the company
of friends and family.
It's not that I want to escape them.
Rather that I miss being
alone for a week or two.
No music, no podcast, no audio books.
Nothing.
So I'm really alone in my own head.
And I like being there.
And then, it's nice to return
and meet people, after.
Compared to Vegard, I
felt addicted to people
I couldn't even wait alone
at the trailhead for an hour.
I'm filming my buddy,
doing laps on Fagerfjellet.
Vegard on the other hand,
he'd even given up on the whole
concept of having a girlfriend,
for this ski tour.
I view it like avalanche risk,
where I acknowledge that
avalanche terrain is deadly in advance.
Because you are not
rational when you are up there
about to drop in on a sunny powder run.
Yeah, Niko!
I take that same approach to love.
I take a step back before I am
consumed by the biochemical high,
and make the decision to give
other things the priority right now.
There's a bit of uncertainty
to it right now,
exactly where it's possible to climb up.
So it'll be good to check it out
just to see that it is even possible.
This is definitely the crux
of the ski tour.
Yes.
It's the chute going up on the left?
Yes.
- Almost looks like a fun run.
- Yes.
We are going to the mountain.
- Oh, did it sluff down there?
- Oh my god, it did!
- Do you see it?
- Well, that's no good.
No.
- I feel like that's a no go.
- Yes.
The best way to not end up in an avalanche
is to just not go into the mountains
when there are signs of avalanche danger.
- That backpack gets stuffed.
- With all the gear?
Yeah.
All those years
I chased professional skiing,
Vegard studied to be a mountain guide.
When you are operating in the
grey are between climbing and skiing
where Vegard likes to play.
You need to know the climbing
techniques that you bring into skiing.
These are the foremost
experts on avalanches, ropes,
everything about safety
and navigating the mountain.
He was obviously very talented.
Where the other students
would barely manage to get down,
Vegard would turn around
and ski backwards.
- It looks really gnarly.
- Yeah, it looks quite impossible.
We'll see.
Vegard in the wild,
first time with Joonas behind the lens.
Things are looking up, superstar now.
Joonas has been my go-to cinematographer
for the past eight years, I think.
Yeah, at first, of course, he
barely accepted me at filming him.
And then I looked at
the route and I'm like,
how the hell am I
going to cover this route?
I'm going to be dead
after like, the first 10% of it.
Now, he's accepted you.
This is serious.
I've never seen a plan like this.
- Yeah.
- It's crazy, huh?
Yeah.
I've never seen a person who's been
up for 47 hours about to climb a mountain.
And then this is actually, like, one of
the most technical parts of the route.
This is what he's
training for in the cave,
the traverse of Anderstinden.
Oh my God. And that's just the start.
- No way!
- It's insane.
Do you think it's physically safe?
- Are you okay?
- No, there is a slab up here.
Lyngen has a lot of low-density
snow, with a bad hold for ice axes.
In the Alps, your axes actually hold you,
while in Lyngen, they often don't.
I'm not going to pretend I'm not scared.
I feel it the most
when I watch others climb.
This is a walk in the park.
But it's a walk in the park
with deadly consequences.
Agreed, and that's the worst part.
The axes aren't safe,
so you have to distribute
your weight between the axes,
and crampons, and then
almost crawl up.
It's not difficult but it is exposed.
- Okay, Vegard, I am climbing.
- Got it!
Oh, my God!
- Where did you go here?
- I went on top of it,
sliding kind of.
I can't say I am in the middle
of my comfort zone.
- You're not doing this solo, right?
- Yeah, I think so.
God damn!
This was the only section I was
not entirely sure how to do before.
But this is psycho!
And where will you abseil from?
I'm actually pleasantly surprised
at how smooth it seems.
But this last part is fairly spicy.
Yes, obviously.
I'm impressed you are free soloing this.
Yes.
- Definitely airy.
- Yes.
The route up Anderstinden, that was
the final piece in Vegard's puzzle.
But me,
I hadn't spent the past year living like
a snow warrior monk for nothing.
I still had an award to win.
Vegard still had another
month of training, though,
so it was time to bring in some
hard charging American backup.
High hopes.
High hopes of high peaks.
Fresh off the boat from the US;
coming in hot!
Does it ever bother you that,
like Powder magazine
only gives awards for like
backcountry segment of the year,
but never like human-powered
backcountry segment of the year?
- So it's always like the heli segment
- and you're like,
- is that even backcountry?
- Yeah.
Have fun.
Enjoy your day.
Game on.
I had seen this terrain
before in Nikolai's videos,
and I wanted to ski it myself
and just become curious.
Am I strong enough?
Am I skilled enough to ride these lines?
This looks properly sick.
Niko dropping!
You are a madman!
The strategy to win an award
is basically just to find
the craziest skiing
you might be able to do,
and then capture the attempt on camera.
Oh, Niko!
That was insane!
We've had
a really safe snowpack this year.
This is the first year in
as long as I can remember
where we haven't had
any avalanche fatalities.
You know, we have this snowpack,
we're chasing this award,
I figured
this might be the time to attempt
the north face of Balgesvarri.
It's huge, and the run
gets gradually steeper
towards this ice fall, this ice cliff.
If you start falling at the top,
you need to be either extremely lucky
or extremely strong
to be able to self-arrest.
And if you're not able to self-arrest,
you're going over that cliff.
But at the same time,
there's this allure, right?
There's this allure of a run where you can
push yourself
as far as you can as a skier.
You know there's people taking helicopters
to the top of mountains now?
No eight hours of hiking
through the night?
Yeah, they're not starting at 8 p.m.
We're gonna do it
10 miles of approach today.
Into the night.
- Yeah, the approach is like, it just
adds this entirely different element.
Just the endurance
capabilities you have to have.
I'm feeling really good right now,
but it's only midnight.
It might change
in like four or five hours.
And then to go ski something
super-fast and super hard,
it's just...
I would say it's not
even slightly more difficult
to ski free ride lines via human power.
It's like 10x more difficult.
It is on a different level.
It's definitely steep.
It's so steep.
Holy shit!
I mean, you're just going to go like zero
to 60 pretty fast when you drop in there.
Just don't go too far and do
not get caught by your slough.
At this point we had kind of established
that we weren't really dealing
with any avalanche problems.
Dude, I know.
So stoked.
Fucking awesome to be up here.
It's pretty fucking sweet.
So I'm pretty much ready
when you guys are.
- Wow, I'm nervous.
- Yeah.
- Let's go, Niko.
- Enjoy boys.
Fucking send it.
Oh, wind affect.
Really wind affected.
He's going pretty fast.
Holy shit that's loose.
Holy fucking shit!
Okay he kind of shut it down.
Okay now he's like properly
shut it down before the crux.
Holy shit!
That is some crux!
That was crazy.
It's definitely seen some wind
so it's pretty variable, but rippable.
The last part
into the crux is super steep.
I might try and stay ahead of the slough,
kind of similar to what he did at the top.
Yeah, go for it.
I admittedly
just got a little competitive.
And that's, I think, also okay
as long as it doesn't kill you.
Joonas ready.
Have fun down there.
Oh, fuck!
Fuck!
- Stop Jim!
- Oh my fucking god!
Dude, get it together.
Stop, Jim, stop!
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!
- Get it together, get it together!
- Please stop.
Holy shit, get it together, dude!
Are you okay, Jim?
This is Jim, I'm okay!
Oh my god!
Oh freaking hell!
Oh my god, Jim, I'm
so glad you're okay.
That's so not good.
I'm so happy he is okay.
Okay this is Jim, I have my skis on.
It's like the whole game is to
stay alive where most wouldn't.
But then when
your buddy's about to lose...
Holy shit, I just realized
how stupid it is and
like who cares about movies and awards?
Yeah Jim.
- Oh my god!
- Good work!
- Man, I am so glad you're okay.
- Me too!
Amazing, amazing self-arrest.
Oh, are you feeling okay?
I feel fine, yeah.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
Sorry about the beta. I...
You know, he came over the radio and said,
"You know, it's totally rippable."
And he was like, "Sorry I said that."
No, it's okay. I mean, you did rip it.
I was trying to rip it the same way.
And I just dug a tip in.
Rippable for Niko is one thing, you know,
and then for the rest of the world,
it's a different thing.
Big scare, big scare.
I've definitely learned a lesson.
- Yeah, it makes you think, huh?
- Yeah.
I think the speed it's okay to go at
is where you don't fall off the edge.
Balgesvarri was almost the end of Jim,
and we didn't know it at this point,
he was still just blissfully training,
but it would be the end for Vegard too.
And me?
I had sped off that edge months ago.
It's altitude training.
I'm up at 2000 now, pretty soon.
Good, good.
I'm just wrapping up some editing here.
I didn't stop doing YouTube
when I started training like Vegard
to chase skier of the year.
The amount of output created by Niko
is too much for us.
Thank you. That's great,
but could you one where it's more like
most skiers do one video
in an entire season
whereas Niko does like
10 before Christmas,
while he's working on
a feature documentary,
and he's doing a TV show on top of that?
Okay.
And I really feel like I'm trying to
balance, like two athletes' careers
with running a production company,
and I'm not doing it.
I'm failing horribly.
I'm in the car with my brother.
We're driving home for
Christmas to see the family.
Suddenly, Nikolai says:
"I need to pull over.
I can't see properly."
What happens sometimes if I work
too much, I start losing my vision.
I think it's called a silent migraine.
And I'll just have entire sections
of my vision just disappear.
So essentially, I go blind.
So I said,
"maybe you should work a bit less."
And then he looks at me with
this intensity and says:
"I just need to do one more video."
Then, I realize he has a problem.
You know, Vegard wasn't
going to stop training.
Winter happens when winter happens.
I have the budget
to do this movie right now.
If I stop, everything stops.
And I think that's a real strong
sensation that I have in my life.
What I'm saying is people
think you ski around the world,
but actually you just work all the time.
Yes, I do work all the time.
But it's a lot of fun though.
So it is a very privileged
situation in that sense.
I don't want it to stop,
and then, I will just keep pushing.
I've repeatedly over many years,
tried to get him
to see a therapist regularly.
But he does this evasive thing
where he meets them once and says,
"This person can't help me;
the only one who can help me is myself."
When I was in Canada,
I was so close
to not making it through that.
But this time around, luckily,
it was not my mental health,
it was my physical health that broke down.
I was getting sick before Christmas,
which is like a month ago.
And I've just been pushing through,
because I've had shit to do.
Oh my god, it's heavy.
I've just been sick.
I don't have a single quality
ski clip of myself
since we were in Austria.
And now there's five,
six weeks left of winter.
And I'm kind of stressing a little bit.
So I really hope today is the day.
Two, one, go...
Oh my god!
Niko dropping.
That was a big day.
And I'm feeling pretty good, actually.
Like I've said this a billion times,
But I think this is the day.
I'm sick again.
I'm not feeling like I'm Skier Of The Year
right now, for sure.
- The doctor's office.
- I stopped by six weeks ago,
- Yes.
I've had these respiratory
infections since late December,
and I haven't gotten any better.
I'll have a doctor call you to
see if we can run more tests.
Great, thank you.
In the meantime,
I look over and Vegard is just,
he's on this, like, Zen routine.
Vegard is working
on his third degree right now.
I'd get studying done first.
Two - three hours.
It's important
to change your work position.
In combination
with stretching and foam rolling.
Then, I'd go train for many hours.
Pretty monotonous.
It's the same day.
Again. And again. And again.
I like it.
You get a lot done in that mode.
Spring is coming, and I still
haven't done the sort of skiing
that I know I need to do to have
any shot at winning any sort of awards.
I'm stressing and I'm starting
to feel that that's sort of slipping.
You know, do a day on foot
that would be comparable
to a day in a helicopter.
If I ski the three Lenangstindan,
and then cap it off with the
north face of Store Jgervasstinden,
I'll have a shot here.
The coming weeks is... that's it.
After that, it's summer,
and then it's over.
I didn't have cancer.
I didn't have to be in bed.
If you just have like respiratory viruses,
you can still do everything
- it's just more painful.
There are pills for that.
I got some new pills from the doctor.
I started doing painkillers.
I'm pushing through.
Oups!
I call another doctor.
I need to take my meds.
I'm taking this antibiotics.
I'm still getting sick.
What do you think? Do you think it's
possible to do all three of them in a day?
I'm eating the pills. I'm
sneezing my way up the lines,
even if I'm not feeling 100%.
Okay.
Two out of four.
But you can't ski well if the snow is bad
and the clouds roll in.
And the clouds roll in every damn time.
I did like half of the dream
day that I was working towards.
I think if those pills start working now.
We got a bit better light,
a bit better snow.
I think there's still hope for this thing.
You know, this could be that day
I've been thinking about all season.
That's the hope.
It's clearing.
We have a cloud situation.
It's crazy, we've been so
unlucky with forecasts this year.
Like today, it was fully bluebird.
So if we see any clouds on
the mountain before we get up,
we're not going for it.
That's a big old cloud.
Hopefully the sun hasn't
cooked the snow too bad.
- It's pretty firm.
- Yeah.
- Bad.
- I'm really not sure about this snow.
- It's getting worse, huh?
- Yeah.
That first day,
if it weren't for the clouds...
but that's how it goes.
It's always one little thing.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That would have been the day.
- Fuck.
Skiing bad snow is possible,
it's just really hard
and really dangerous.
Jim dropping.
Oh that's gnarly.
That was so bad.
Holy shit, that looked so gnarly.
3, 2, 1, Niko dropping.
Oh my god.
What!
Oh man, the snow was so bad.
No way I'd risk skiing three
more mountains with that snow.
I had this whole thing,
trying to ski better,
be better, do all these things
all year working so hard.
And then it doesn't matter, because
the face is cooked, you know?
And now this is the last
shot to do it this winter.
And it's over.
I mean, yeah, I failed.
I failed.
And I understood that
when I live like Vegard,
when I live like an
athlete, when I set goals,
that means you can lose.
Even if the line I just did
was cool enough in itself.
I don't know if people truly
understand what he's doing,
because the only way that I
understood how crazy his skiing is,
is because I had just skied
that face in those conditions.
Like, it's possible to go
that fast when it's perfect.
But then I didn't understand that
it's also possible to ski that
fast when the snow is bad.
I had to see it firsthand
in order to believe it.
One mountain is not four mountains.
Fourth place is not first place.
When I set goals beyond
just having a good time,
that's not good enough.
And I had just spent a year living
like a fricking snow warrior monk,
to be not good enough.
But at the same time, all was not lost.
I might not win an award this winter,
but I could still make the movie
about the greatest ski tour of all time.
Vegard still had his huge ski tour.
I'm not even close to those
training professionally, but
the three last months I did 20 to 25
hours a week, plus strength training.
You have the level you've
earned through that process.
Spending so much time
staring at weather models.
All of a sudden, the one
looking good flips to bad,
and then the one
looking bad flips to good.
It's for sure not easy.
Vegard won't admit it on camera, but
he only really has one shot.
Once, he's made a
proper attempt, that's it.
He'll be so tired, so wrecked
that within the next month he
won't be able to regain his fitness.
Vegard needed four days of weather window.
He needed safe snow
and he needed visibility; no clouds.
- It has changed for the worse.
- Yes.
But on the other hand,
what are the chances the snow
stays good and we get another window?
This was 2023 May 1st.
This is now.
It's definitely like a lower year.
It's kind of like you're watching
this hourglass just sort of like, run out.
I need to make a call
and then I need to stick to it
knowing...
there's great uncertainty
in these decisions.
What's happening?
We're good to go from
Monday until Thursday, maybe.
Oh, my God, it looks really good here
from the toilet too.
Toilet seat approved?
Toilet seat approved.
We're gonna get it.
What's your avalanche rescue kit?
- I'll skip it.
- Yes.
Buried in an avalanche, you're
fairly likely to survive 15 minutes.
In a crevasse, you don't
suffocate the same way.
Normally you bring a
shovel, probe and a beacon,
but that's to save your buddy.
And because we're going to be
operating alone this whole trip,
it's like there's nobody to dig you out.
I'm going to get a little
head start on him here.
I think for like the first 20 hours,
that's going to be like normal to watch.
You know, people do that,
but then the next 60 is
going to get really interesting.
Here we go.
I have one hour, 15
minute head start on Vegard.
Hopefully that's enough.
Um, this peak looks okay,
but like the more technical
peaks further along the route,
are still pretty socked in.
There are so many things
that could go wrong
for Vegard on this trip.
There are crevasses he could fall into,
there are cornices that could fall.
There's rockfall this
late in the season
avalanches of course,
and not to mention the climbing.
On Anderstinden, he is free soloing.
If he slips, if he makes one mistake,
you know, he, yeah...
I'm just worried about him.
There's a million ways
that this could not work.
So many years in the making.
Now it begins:
the Greatest Ski Tour of all Time.
Vegard was supposed to
start moving half an hour ago,
but I've seen nothing on the tracker.
I hope he's not turning back.
Maybe he's turning back.
It is pretty cloudy.
Fuck this.
Oh, no, he's moving!
He is moving.
Also, this is a huge mountain.
And I find it hard to believe that
he's going to do 27 of these.
Oh, my God, this is white.
The man in the fog.
- More clouds than forecasted.
- Yes.
What do you think about the climbing then?
I guess I'll climb...
Right?
Yes.
There's this mental thing about
going into something with bad visibility.
But then there's this creative
process finding the route
that still makes it possible.
And so it begins.
First peak done.
A few left. Feels good.
Is Nallangaisi possible in bad visibility?
I think so.
On a pointy peak like Nallangaisi,
you can follow the rock
formations to the top,
even in fog.
Whereas on a dome peak
like Balgasvarri and Jiehkkevarri,
the sky and the ground
just kind of blend together
so you don't see the edge
before you're falling off it.
- Okay, I'll see you on Jiehkkevarri.
- Yes.
It really needs to clear before then,
because
I do not want to navigate a glacier
in any sort of conditions like this.
Whiteout navigation...
Big terrain,
bad visibility.
A little nasty.
Not easy.
I actually need to put the camera away.
The GPS is really good,
but even if you know you're
going in the right direction,
if you don't see that 5m cornice,
it'll hurt to fall off that,
and you can't see that on the GPS.
Even a small fuck up will end this.
The forecast didn't say the fog
would be as thick and low as it was.
I have to admit it's a bit scary
roaming around like this
in the whiteout,
and then up a fairly big mountain.
I had faith it would clear at some point.
Still in the clouds.
Airy.
The queen of Lyngen
Conditions are not perfect.
But, maybe it's possible.
Let's see.
He's doing Imbodentindeh, Tomastinden,
Store Lakselvtindan,
and then the traverse starts.
Day one, caught some kind of cold.
Big surprise.
But I still have a few hours
before I have to go anywhere.
So I'm going to sleep.
Joonas and I, we do
sort of like one massif each.
You're on a roll.
Yeah, I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling really good actually.
Legs are super fresh.
But, Jiehkkevarri won't be
possible in this fog, for sure.
It would be so nice if it clears.
I'm almost over the clouds.
So close.
Let's call it a summit.
Looks better, doesn't it?
Holy shit!
Wow, wow, wow!
That was so nice.
Enjoy!
Thank you.
It's really deep.
Climbing Store Lakselvtind.
Knee deep in snow.
Super tiring.
Let's see how this goes.
Looks a little spicy.
Let's try.
It's now 3am
and he is about to step
onto the trickiest section.
The most technical climbing,
the most exposed climbing,
so I hope he's feeling good.
A little tired.
20 hours.
A loot of bootpacking.
At this point, you know, he's
been moving for almost 24 hours.
He's by definition sleep-deprived.
You shouldn't drive a car in this state,
let alone free-solo a mountain.
I'm impressed by Vegard's scheduling.
He said it would be up
there at Anderstinden at 4.30.
It's 4.30 and he's
climbing Anderstinden,
you know, like 22 hours later.
Sketchiest bit of my trip
coming up.
But I think as long as Vegard is
doing the stuff he's doing,
I can't be like complaining too hard.
Very little snow this year.
I have to be very, very
careful through here.
I bring ice axe.
It's not for the steepness
but for if you fall in a crevasse.
Yes, would suck to be
in a crevasse with no axe.
So the plan was for me to go
to the south peak of Jiehkkevarri,
where I could shoot
Vegard on Balgesvarri,
and then join up with him for
the main peak of Jiehkkevarri.
The wind has set in.
Freaking crevasses.
It's freaking terrifying being solo.
Ah, the fog is back.
It would be ridiculous if this cloud
would break the greatest
ski tour of all time.
Jiekkkevarri is not a place
you want to be in the fog.
Trying to find my way here.
I think I can see the edge, though.
It is not a friendly environment
for a human right now.
The 27th hour.
Feeling in shape, feeling fresh now.
Ah I'm tired.
Also, there is a lot of windloading.
It'll be hard to see the avalanche slabs
in flat light, and definitely in the fog.
I have eyes on him.
Will he come up, or?
He's worked so hard for this.
I think it's gonna be pretty hard
for him to turn around.
Shooting cracks.
Not thick, but reactive.
We talk about red flags
in avalanche assessment...
A natural release on Balgesvarri.
Heavy winds.
Holy fucking wind!
- I, I turned back.
- Yes.
- The fog is so thick.
- Yes.
It's really thick up here too.
And there was a natural
release avalanche on Balgesvarri.
The worst part is my
body is feeling so good.
He's seen avalanche activity.
There's all this wind.
Of course, the snow is moving.
There is no visibility.
There is not way for him
to do safe route finding.
I've just found it really hard to accept
the fact that we were letting go of this.
Yeah, yeah, it was a good time.
We were going to make a movie
about the greatest ski tour of all time.
It's not easy, this game.
Feels like summer down here.
Protein.
Good effort.
Yeah, it was nice.
Felt good.
I was giving this,
this, you know, everything...
and...
I failed at award winning skiing,
now we failed at this project too,
but I'm pretty sure Vegard
doesn't feel like he failed.
I think he thinks he had,
like, two pretty good years.
It was so cool.
It was so damn nice.
There's more of a defined end date
on a movie project like this, maybe,
as opposed to a process where you
work continuously and it's a lifestyle,
rather than a project with an end date.
A little tweaking and it's a good route.
I would have done it again.
Or, I am going to do it again.
I had completely misunderstood
how that whole award thing works though.
Hello Mr. Schirmer.
Hope you are doing fine.
Just wanted to officially congratulate you
on being voted skier of the year.
Congratulations, what an accomplishment.
You've been killing it, and love
to see that everyone else thinks so too.
You don't win awards by
skiing well, of course.
You win awards by being popular.
And making YouTube videos
till you go blind
makes you pretty damn popular.
There's no award show though, thank you.
You can stop that.
I just staged this whole thing to have
a more snappy intro for this movie.
Hello, testing, testing.
They just send you the trophy in the mail.
But life isn't this.
I'm sad, okay?
We want more sad.
Sadder!
I'm really bad at being sad around people,
but sometimes I am really sad.
I mean, you are sad.
You're just with good friends.
So with good snow, you're happy.
Yeah.
But for me, this project
was about trying my friend's process,
who's like in the "snow
warrior monk train every day, all day,
push everything else aside."
To him, his goal is an excuse to be in
that process.
Whereas to me, I don't really love that
process so much.
And then it's kind of stupid, you know?
I think this winter has taught me that
skiing is meant to be enjoyed.
That's the reason I got into it.
And I think that's the reason
I'm gonna keep doing it.