The true culture of Rossland will be on the silver screen this fall as a new motion picture shot in the area last winter is expected to premiere.
Called Way of Life, the film by Teton Gravity Research (TGR) out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is about places on the planet that have embraced the skiing brotherhood.
Places like Rossland, said the film's producer Greg Epstein, and TGR's supervising producer, that exemplify the unspoken language of skiing.
“Rossland is a quintessential ski town even more so,” he said from TGR's offices in Jackson Hole. “The people that live there are more into the ski world, not necessarily the newest fanciest, fangled equipment, but more that mind set, just being part of that lifestyle and really being imbedded in it.”
A three-minute webisode on Rossland (at www.tetongravity.com, season five, episode eight) and Red Mountain is already on the Internet, with a trailer and the full feature film set to come.
“When you watch the part about Rossland, even though you aren’t there, you can kind of get a feel for Rossland as a place, even outside of the skiing,” Epstein said.
The webisode gives an overview of what the crew of five production crew and five athletes did in Kootenay Rockies.
Epstein thought Red Mountain was a great hill and a lot of fun, with some challenging technical terrain. And the skiers, Pemberton, B.C.'s Dana Flahr and Salt Lake, Utah's Dash Longe, agreed.
“We’re here at Red Mountain because there is a lifetime amount of terrain it seems,” said Flahr in the webisode segment.
“The terrain is all hidden, kind of tucked away in the trees,” Longe added.
There are still a couple more webisodes that have to deal with Red Mountain specifically that will appear on TGR's website, as well as its Utube channel.
The crew arrived in Rossland Feb. 16 and stayed until March 3 and then went up north to Nelson and Kaslo for two weeks.
“But we really wanted to come and explore Red Mountain, and then we wanted to explore the Kootenays a little,” said Epstein. “A lot of it was obviously based on snow conditions and we made the best of it.”
Tim Durtschi and Angel Collinson of Salt Lake and Dylan Hood from Portland, Oregon rounded out the athletic roster.
According to the webisode information, the crew went from the “powder caked slopes of Red Mountain, to the steep lines of Stellar Heli Skiing and the endless pillow lines at Selkirk Wilderness Skiing. Living in the mountains in this region of British Columbia truly defines a Way of Life.”
Way of Life premieres in mid September in Jackson Hole. The film tour then hits most major ski areas, cities and towns in the U.S. and Canada, with a Kootenay tour also being worked on.
The Almost Live series takes people around the globe with the TGR production team and athletes. It's an inside look at what goes into first descents, building and hitting massive backcountry jumps, traveling throughout the most exotic locales on the planet and the lives of the worlds top riders. Almost Live plants people on location with the TGR crew to track progress throughout the season, and watch the drama unfold.
editor@rosslandnews.com