Steven Gnam
David Steele atop a peak in 1,012,837-acre Glacier National Park.
Ill-equipped but daring skiers count among the first explorers and promoters of some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes in the United States. In 1871, Frank J. Hayden led a 29-day ski expedition through Montana in what would become Yellowstone, our first national park, a year later. And in 1929, Orland Bartholomew spent more than three months skiing from Mount Whitney to the Yosemite Valley, a publicity effort undermined by the Great Depression.
Even Ansel Adams, best known for his black-and-white photos that popularized Yosemite National Park, was an accomplished ski racer and one of the first presidents of the ski-promoting Yosemite Winter Club, established in 1927.
This history is largely unknown, even to present-day backcountry mountain skiers. In fact, two of the professional skiers featured in the new documentary, Monumental: Skiing our National Parks, confessed they were unaware of the skiers who preceded them. Monumental screens at the Barrymore Theatre Nov. 9, the 12th stop on a 19-city U.S. tour.
“I had no idea of the significance of what had been done 100 years before we got there this past winter,” said 27-year-old pro skier Connery Lundin, who is shown in the film backflipping over a tree branch at Yellowstone and jumping a huge crevasse in the Grand Tetons.
“We were the only ones out there because it’s still so hard to reach those places,” says Lundin, the 2015 Freesking World Tour Champion. “Those early-on dudes were doing insane missions on skis half as wide as ours today and in leather boots, and taking pictures with those huge, heavy cameras, too.”
Monumental connects the dots to illustrate an extraordinary evolution of the sport while honoring the centennial anniversary of the establishment of the U.S. Park Service. But the film — the first produced by Powder magazine and funded by REI — is primarily grounded in the prolific genre of short ski films (at 40 minutes, Monumental is shorter than most) showcasing epic runs down breathtaking mountainsides and shot entirely within a single season.
The action shots are all the more impressive when you realize national park rules prohibit the use of drone technology or the transport of skiers by snowmobile or helicopter. The camera operators themselves skied alongside the featured athletes and set up their long shots from across mountain valleys after making their own arduous climbs.
“The character of the film is in keeping with the parks not allowing the operation of heavy machinery in these pristine places,” executive producer John Stifter says. This meant that a crew, including skier Colter Hinchliffe, 30, had to hike 20 miles through temperate rainforest to reach a skiable glacier within Olympic National Park in Washington state. He’s seen in the film, with his skis and a huge pack on his back, walking in flip-flops through puddles along the lushly green forest trail.
“You try to cut weight any way you can,” Hinchliffe says. “Besides, my flip flops are a key player in my happiness. So I don’t go anywhere without them.”
