Mike – After months spent traversing heinous glacial fields, subsisting on food products prepared by people who have never heard the phrase “food handlers permit”, and lugging hundreds of pounds of gear through the bus stations of South America, our second summer of winter has come to an end.  Wrapping up two years in production for SOLITAIRE, I spent two weeks shooting on the world renowned slopes of Portillo Chili, while the rest of the crew, already back in the states, were fervently hacking at keyboards and bumping the refresh rate on their monitors beyond safety standards for human use.  Mark my words, there is no better way to top off a season of living in the rough than by working out of a classy hotel that serves you up with mouthwatering breakfast, lunch and dinner, with tea time thrown in between, and the icing on the cake; complimentary aquarobic classes.  Uncanny. Sure, I was still charged  to hike up the hill with an overweight angry midget clamped to my back, but then again the water pressure inherent to aquatic aerobics breaks lactic acid down quick.  The hot tub and cute ski instructors don’t hurt either.  Maybe I should feel bad for enjoying goods with the rest of the team back home, but then again, lets not forget the bounty delivered by red hot american summers; pool parties, bike rides, BBQ’ing, cold refreshing beers, and perhaps most importantly sun dresses.  The boys have been cranking the edits out, and the cuts are  looking delicious, but I know they’ve been taking a few breaks to see the sun.

Stay tuned for the return of our On The Road with SOLITAIRE series, as we drop episodes about our time at the big yellow hotel and more… and get ready for SOLITAIRE to drop September 15 at the Gothic Theatre in Denver, CO!

Thanks Frank Shine Tecnica/Blizzard for photos, Ski Portillo for accommodations!

Hotel Portillo over the Laguna del Inca

Back when skiers had class

Fun in the Sun! Photo by Frank Shine

Just desserts after a long day of skinning and booting.

Welcome to Hotel Portillo

Jesse Hoffman staying entertained while waiting for the bluebird to fly. Photo by Frank Shine

Austin Ross working the light, the snow, the love high above the lifts. Photo Frank Shine

Sweetgrass Productions presents SOLITAIRE

http://vimeo.com/27216372

Ben– Hey folks, arising from the belly of the beast, we’re back again. Bolivia– down. Peru–down. Las Lenas and Nevado de Chillan? Game over. All that’s left now is a brief stint for Mike Brown in Portillo, and the beast is in the bag.  As for our whereabouts for the next month, we expect to be deep within the Batcave with nary a glimpse of summer sunlight and little to no social interaction, editing a two-year project in two weeks. These balls are destined for the walls, things have been kicked into gear for Solitaire’s September release, and it feels like Christmas is finally coming after Santa skipped it for a year.

So in the spirit of shred-trailer holiday season, and without further ado, we present the trailer for our two-year epic South American snow-opera “Solitaire.” Enjoy, and if at all possible find yourself in Denver at 7pm September 15th at The Gothic Theater for a ski film experience unlike any you’ve ever known. And/or buy the DVD immediately thereafter. Lots of them, we’re poor.

Shot on location in the Cordillera Blancas, Peru; Altiplano, Bolivia; Las Lenas, Argentina; Caviahue, Argentina; Bariloche, Argentina; Nevados de Chillan, Chile; and Portillo, Chile:

A massive thanks goes out to our sponsors for seeing through such an off-the-wall project by a bunch of near-college dropouts. Patagonia and Dynafit, you are dear to our hearts. Clif Bar, you easily constitute 30% of my body weight. And then, of course, we celebrate Osprey Packs, Venture Snowboards, Blizzard Skis, Flylow, Backcountry.com, Gentemstick, Backcountry Magazine, and BCA. You making our rocking world go round.

Our athlete roster for the film includes:

Leo Ahrens, JP Auclair, Ryland Bell, Will Cardamone, Johnny Collinson, Forrest Coots, Stephan Drake, Jacqui Edgerly, Chris Erickson, Sebastian Haag, Kip Garre, Atsushi Gomyo, Kim Havell, Eliel Hindert, Erica Laidlaw, Jaime Laidlaw, Kyle Miller, Osamu “Ommu” Okada, Carston Oliver, Alex Paul, Thayne Rich, Dave Rosenbarger, Elyse Saugstad, Aidan Sheahan, Forrest Shearer, Ptor Spricenieks, Thomas Steiner, Drew Stoecklein, Taro Tamai, Jack Tolan… and honoring Arne Backstrom and Kip Garre. A million thanks for putting your time and sweat into an unconventional project that at times seemed to have no end.

Finally, a personal thanks to the trailer’s narrator Tata Cabral and the crew at Hostel Punto Sur in Bariloche, for helping us scrape together the narration at the last minute and tying this trailer up. And to the mighty Joseph Conrad, from whose mighty “Heart of Darkness” the narration was adapted.

See you in September, boys and girls.

Ben–So, the blog has been down for a number of months, and I’m happy to say we’re back from the abyss. We were sabotaged by an Iranian jihad hacker organization, our username renamed to mohammed, and our databases flushed. Apparently terrorism’s next step towards global domination is taking over obscure backcountry skiing blogs with less than 50 hits a day. Way to go guys, every eye counts!

In any case, yes, we are back, and we are busy, oh so very busy. In case you missed it, here’s On the Road with Solitaire Episode IV: Low Tide, chronicling our adventures and misadventures in Las Lenas last year.

While Episode V should be released tomorrow, the 21st, we’ve come to terms with the fact that we’re completely unreliable, and so the next episode will be releasing in July, and will in fact be the long-awaited full trailer for Solitaire. Our apologies, but its a bit hard to edit when we’re on the ground filming full time, down here in South Am!

That’s right, we’re back in the Solitary Southlands.  Nick and Zac have trekking through the backwoods of Peru for the past two weeks with mountaineer Ptor Spricenicks, for a secret first descent mission that if successful should blow some minds. They should be popping out of the shrubbery any day now, so we’re hoping they’re keeping their heads straight and getting the goods.

Meanwhile, Mike and I are in Bolivia with ski mountaineer Kim Havell and splitboard mountaineer Kyle Miller (along with photog Jim Harris and Argentinian superstar Alan Schwer), tackling some local glaciers, volcanoes, and salt flats. The altitude has been a bruiser, the snow has been generally horrific, and disease is rampant. But all of that is generally expected when coming to Bolivia, and we are faring rather well nonetheless, and pulling in some stunning shots! While the skiing isn’t spectacular, the segment should be a stunner, focusing on the incredible width of landscape and culture that can be found here. Really excited to put this one together– both the Bolivian and Peruvian segments of Solitaire should offer some wildly unique visuals.

We’re headed out in a few hours to tackle a last batch of volcano skiing, during our last week here. Then its back to Argentina and Las Lenas, while Nick and Zac will be heading to deep Chilean camp for a few weeks. Once those are done, Solitaire shall finally be in the can– and by August, while most film companies will just be finishing up their edits, we will go balls to the wall and finish the whole edit in under a month. It promises to be a time of little sunlight and much muscle-atrophy, but the results will undoubtedly be worth it. Solitaire will be something special indeed.

Here’s a solid deck of screengrabs from our past two weeks here in Bolivia, to whet the appetite for September’s release.

The Blood Lake

Crevasses Have Been Fun

Bolivia Digs Crosses

Kim Havell Hangs Out on Knife-Edge Peaks For Breakfast

A Miner's Cemetery, and Huyana Potosi

Uyuni's Train Graveyard

Salt Flats First Descent--Kim Havell

Train Tracks at Sunrise

Kyle Miller Guns it for the Top

Trippy Cactii Abound

Kim 1/3 of the Way Down

Kyle Chews Through Penitentes--Jagged Snow Formations, our Bolivian Nemesis

Kim and Jim Going Up Up UP

Salt Flat Sunsets are World-Altering

Salty Silhouettes

Solitaire

Nick– Here you go folks, the latest from 18,000 feet, paragliding on the edge of insanity in Peru in the making of SOLITAIRE

Episode III: The Raptor

After the chaos of Huaraz, the crew escapes the city with plans to paraglide over the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca with cameras in hand. At 18,000 feet, it’s never simple.

“On The Road with Solitaire” is a 12-part webisode series following Sweetgrass Productions in the making of their new 2-year project, the South American backcountry ski and snowboarding film “Solitaire.” New episodes will be released on the 21st of every month.

Ben– Spend too much time behind a camera and you become a junkie for light. In our trade we are simply purveyors of fine light, and much of our time is spent roaming the world for the very best of it. I vividly remember standing behind a Japanese photographer in Hokkaido, who ecstatically screamed “Now we are making the moooooneeeee!!” as a skier screamed by with the sun crashing down behind him. But as you become more used to it, your standards become higher and higher, and you push later and later or earlier and earlier into the day, holding off the shot until the last minute to capture that first touch or last glimmer of the sun. It takes more and more extremes to get that fiery red fix.

The ultimate hit is and always has been alpenglow. There’s just something about that very word that sends the blood pumping in the body of a lens-jockey. Luckily in our profession we get to witness much of this gorgeous phenomenon, but two nights ago I saw some of the best I’ve ever witnessed. Pure purple bliss.

We finished off our Haines trip with one last plane-access camping trip deep into glacier-country, and spent a few days riding out the light. On our final evening we trucked up the face behind camp, legs churning like devils to catch the dying rays. We made it minutes before it peaked, and came out with some incredible images, a perfect and cathartic end to a mission that has, all in all, defied all expectations and last year’s Haines troubles to become quite stellar. The… let’s just say “energetic” plane ride back, courtesy of Haines legend Drake Olsen, was the cherry on top to one of the best shooting trips I’ve had the pleasure to be on.

Tomorrow begins the long road home to Anchorage, and a month of editing and relative relaxation before heading down South for the final push to wrap up Solitaire. But very, very stoked on the promise of this year’s Haines piece, online and in festivals beginning this Fall! In the meantime, here’s some screengrabs from our last trip, and the mighty alpenglow that dreams are made of.

Forrest and Oskar wait on the tarmac while Stephan scouts zones

Drake, Forrest and I fly into the sun

Airborn Glacial Glory

Stephan's Spoon

Settling In

Stephan, Forrest, and Johan scope the lines above camp

Stephan en route to evening hijinx

Forrest Sprays the Purple Pow

Johan makes some money

Stephan catches last light over exposure

Happy Ending

Ben–It’s April again, and the spring snows of Alaska have beckoned me home once again. After several months holed up in the relative confines of Salt Lake City, I was happy to pack everything I owned into a board bag and hightail it for the northlands. A midnight arrival, and 12 hours later I was on the road in the Sturgulewski Fund minivan (thanks mom) and on the balls to the walls break for Canada. Crossing the border just before midnight on April Fools, I was greeted to some serious Canadian charm: a great Aurora showing to accompany lonely night driving and endless hours of navigating frost heave booters.

I made it intact through the night, navigated back into the U.S. despite much questioning and a most dilapidated passport, and arrived in Haines the next day to meet up with my amigos from last year’s short, Patagonia ambassador Stephan Drake and Swedish wunder-photog Oskar Enander, along with Solitaire veteran Forrest Shearer and Free Radicals star Johan Jonsson. A solid crew to build a little follow-up to last year’s well-received Desert River!

The mission was pulled together rather last-minute, as we’d heard nothing but horror stories about the bad conditions in AK this year. Everybody else was pulling out, but the fools we are decided to push in, and somehow it seems to have worked out for us– thus far we’ve found epic conditions, sexy spines, and few crowds. We’re in the middle of a hearty stretch of down days now, but before the rain and snow moved in we got a few great days and solid shots. Hopefully the sun shall come and there’ll be quite a few more in the 5 or 6 feet of pow that are piling up there right now… an upcoming plane-in camping trip should get us the goods! Until then, here’s a few screengrabs from the footy in the bag. Stay tuned for the whole package, coming at ya over the world wibe wed fo’ free this Fall, thanks to Patagonia!

Nick– I came across this while doing a little research on old man Warren. Enjoy.

“This now-notorious 1947 trip began by stopping to sell books and draw cartoons to order at Yosemite and Alta, then got sidetracked for three months in the parking lot at the jewel of the West, Sun Valley. The powder was so terrific and the access to the lifts so cheap: day-tickets of the right color and holding a thumb over the expired date (and later more refined methods of counterfeit.) The two knew a lifetime opportunity when it presented itself.

They ensconced car and trailer in a personal spot at the far end of the Sun Valley Lodge parking lot where they stayed for more than three months while the two rubbed parkas with the rich and famous in the lift lines and swam with them more or less intimately in the famous lodge pool, all the while subsisting on an average of eighteen cents a day. The cost-savings were mostly gained by hunting and roasting the indigenous Sun Valley rabbit, ducks, porcupine and awful-tasting birds.

The two disposed of garbage from these unseemly meals by digging it down into the snow. After the first month, they were asked to move their trailer temporarily so the lot could be plowed. As Miller recalls in Wine, Women, Warren & Skis, “The rotary snowplow came roaring through our encampment, spraying snow, milk cartons, old rabbit carcasses, bread wrappers, tin cans and pink paper napkins all over the trees behind our camp site. From then on if anyone who wanted to find our place, we just told them to go the parking lot and look for the tree with the rabbit carcasses hanging from the top.”

Warrenmiller.net

Ben–Knock on wood, but it looks like we’ve actually met a deadline, for once. This monthly webisode series is proving to be a challenge, as we are master procrastinators, but so far we’re two for two on time. A big props to Nick for powering through and subjecting himself to the soul-stealing glow of the monitor for the last 3 days and nights. As a reward for our punctuality and perseverance, its puking in the hills, and tomorrow should bring some nice fluff to restrengthen atrophying muscles.

This second episode sets the South American stage, in Huaraz, Peru, and explores the emotions of hopping off a jet plane into a world totally unlike your own… and the challenges and rewards involved with attempting to fully experience and capture it. At the end of the day, most things that go into making a ski film like this often have very little to do with skiing. Its important to acknowledge the many flavors and emotions going on behind the scenes that inform our ideas as filmmakers, and that will eventually give life and texture to the final product– even if none of those images ever show up in the film, directly. So, witness June of 2010, the genesis of Solitaire, and take the leap into Huaraz.

A line from our first film went, "But we wont pee in your hot tub, we only pee in pools."

Nick— On every film project, there’s usually 5 seconds of magic in 5 weeks or 5 months, but it is a powerful drug. Most days I look into the mirror and see a half-shaven face with stubble caked with layers of SPF and sweat, a person dragged across hamburgers, run ragged by sleep deprivation– the un-routine. And then I ask myself, “why do I do this? What’s the meaning of life? Where’s my mommy?” Then the 5 seconds arrive.

On the last day here in Switzerland with Salomon Freeski TV, we left the tourist traffic of Davos for Diavolezza. But sometimes a bad plan is a good plan— half-baked conviction is flexible. After arriving in the small town of Latsch, our minds were swayed by its stone streets and timber, of time told by church bells and the angle of shadows on cracked walls that have held many sons and daughters. While most of the trip we’ve been chasing shots, ridin the train and shreddin da pow, the narrow allies of Latsch brought me back to a familiar place: that there’s more to skiing than sliding on snow.

I have thought of making a film in the Alps for a couple of years, spending a few seasons in a place like this. I have daydreamed of a winter of wine, basking in the plaza after long ski tours, reading books by candelight, the light flickering on the stone wall behind the bed. In this year of constant travel, of missed flights and lost bags, of airport sleep, of love, of fear, of success and failure, here I was with my 5 seconds.