“Hey guys,” said the ginger-bearded messenger, “we need you to stay off of all those lines at the end of the ridge. We’ve been waiting for snow for two weeks, and we can’t have you guys skiing them.”

Chris spoke first, “Ok, just show us what you want to hit, and we’ll stay off of it.”

“All that,” he said, indicating most of the half-mile-long ridge with a sweep of his arm. “Also these pillow stacks right here and that field goal through the rocks.”

“You’re kidding right?” There was a dangerous calm in Chris’ voice that I knew, on the strength of experience, usually precipitated a Jekyll-like transmogrification from the mild-mannered Dahrkness into a head-cracking whirlwind known as Dahrkwing McFuck.

“You could’ve at least bought us breakfast before you had your way with us,” Sean said to the ginger-beard.

Having expected us to be pushovers, he shrunk backwards on his seat. When he spoke again, it was obvious that he’d changed his position from diplomat to wartime consigliere. “Listen,” he said, “you guys aren’t from here. I don’t give a shit where you’re from. If you knew what was good for ya, you’d just roll out.”

“You couldn’t roll a tire down a hill, buddy,” Delorme said. “You have no idea who you’re talking to, bro. I wish you did.”

“Well, wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first.”

This effectively ended the exchange as the kid fired up his sled, boondocking off through a stand of pines. Such big-dick pissing contests are par for the course in any backcountry locale, where tempers often run hot over territory disputes. If years of filming have taught me anything, it is surely that you have to take your shots when and where you can get them. The only real rule out there is that you can’t hit a jump built by another crew, and even that clause is sometimes subject to interpretation.

We scurried up the bootpack before the slow-boarders could rally their troops, and skied a couple of the lines that our new buddy had laid claim to. The powder had drifted into steep veins separated by towering intrusions that jutted upward from the cliff band in red rock minarets. Halfway through our second hike, I felt a weight lift as we found a comfortable cadence in the middle of the winding climb. As we dropped in there were many daps at the top and cheers from the bottom—just a few homies making some turns in front of cameras that seemed almost incidental. Anyone who believes that “no friends on a powder day” bullshit probably works in a cubicle. If anything, powder days bring the skier closer to his friends by routing out his enemies.

Watch: The Big Picture – Zero/One

As the sun began to sink and the light grew flat in the gathering umber, I watched with disbelief as Parker and Chris continued to hike, noticing for the first time how efficiently our crew worked together. No waiting for light or squabbles over angles and line choices; no “Where are you and what are you doing?” b-roll interviews or faux candid photography; and none of the contrived Warren Miller mahalo vibe which breeds footage that can be chopped and edited according to documentarian precepts: “Fun-loving ski bums embark on wild goose chase in Sahara Desert” or “Poster boy Benny Blumpkin attempts first-ever quadruple cork on record-size tabletop.” Such tautological formulas are the bread and butter of mainstay production companies, who sell the soul of skiing in the form of storyline pap that gets soccer dads hard and might even leave your sweet old grandma feeling frisky.

Of course, the plot-based ski film, in all its classic forms and modern iterations is just a means to an end. Especially now, in an age of increasing production costs when ski movies sell for as little as $10 a pop on iTunes, directors of big-time ski films toil under the millstone of reaching an ever-broadening audience in the face of shrinking margins. But as a former athlete whose career lived and died in an era when freeskiing films catered, in the main, to the freeskiers who watched them, I was glad to see that The Big Picture boys still had respect for pure forms. The nearest thing to a plot in Sean Logan’s edits is a shot of Parker wearing a Batman costume at the bar, which informs the story a lot more than any hep narrator or high-five montage ever did.

Industry grievances notwithstanding, it had been quite a day. We had walked all over the locals, stacked a few shots and had a damn good time. It was dark when we loaded up the snowmobiles and headed into town for cheap margs and Mexican food at Teocalli Tamale. Afterwards we drove back to our one-room apartment in Gunnison where I fell asleep on a bed of couch cushions spread over the linoleum kitchen floor.

The next day we headed back to Moonscape, rebating some of the lines that the snowboarders had hit. The session was interrupted when Delorme’s trick shoulder came out after a legendary cliff sender bail that would have made Seth Morrison proud. Dahrkness had to pull on AD’s arm for ten agonizing minutes before the thing slid back in, at which point old Sledneck Turbo rode his faithful horse off into the sunset with the air of a gut-shot Montana cowboy. Our crew had shrunk to five, for now.

Later on, Sammy had somehow figured out that there was a bluegrass show in Gunnison, so we shotgunned a few beers back at the spot and caught a free shuttle down to the Last Chance to see the Infamous Stringdusters. The shuttle was packed to the gills with an older group of rhinestone cowgirls that looked like they had come straight from a Tellers Union meeting at the local hayseed savings and loan.

“Well, hello,” said the one whose lap I was pretty much sitting on, “you boys look like a good time.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover. We’re all multiple felons,” I said.

“So you do know how to have a good time,” she said, touching Sammy’s thigh with ribald affection. “Aren’t they cute Brenda?”

“I don’t know sweetie, maybe you should take his word for it. They do look a little bit… rapey.” This got a big rise out of the rest of the girls, who were passing around a flask with an engraving of a bull elk that said, “The Buck Stops Here” underneath. “I’m just kidding, dear. I’ve got two daughters named Ana and Glory that are about your age,” Brenda said.

“Well, here’s to Honor and Glory,” I said in a South Boston accent. “May they never be tarnished by any rapey boys.” No one laughed. It occurred to me that these girls had probably never met anyone from Boston. Or maybe rape jokes are a one-way street.

There was more off-the-mark humor at the Last Chance, where a curly ’fro fellow spun yarns and one- liners of Israelite vintage on the smoking patio. After a while, I began to suspect that he wasn’t Jewish at all, but wore the ’fro for the comedic impunity in the same way that Jerry Seinfeld’s dentist had converted to Judaism “for the jokes.” We were all shitfaced by the time the Dusters took the stage, so we formed a circle and stomped our Doc Martins until the lights came on and the music stopped.

Outside, we found Sean Logan talking to a pretty girl. We wasted no time mumbling in her ear about what a great “cinnamon-tographer” Sean is and how his sister Devin had just won a big piece of Cossak silver at the “winner Olympics in So-She.”

“This’s the other brother right here,” Sammy told her proudly with his arm around Dahrkness. “Whole family of talented sons-a-bitches.”

“You guys are not brothers,” she said, looking skeptically between the siblings, whose skin-tone difference has long been fodder for genealogical debate and milkman humor.

“Well, there’s a funny story to that story, babe,” said brother Dahrk, leaning forward to spit on his own shoe.

“Have you ever seen that movie Face Off with Nicky Cage and John, uh, whosis name… John Leguizamos? Leguizamo? Leguizamos.”

“No,” said the girl, turning to leave.

“You got something against Cage? Everyone loves Nic Cage, dawg!” Dahrkness shouted after her as she moved off into the night with quickening steps.

“Thanks a lot guys,” Sean said. “Can’t take you skids anywhere.”

We were alone. All was quiet except for the electric hum of a single streetlamp, which flickered in and out like a dying lightning bug. Suddenly a white Tahoe caromed out of a nearby street, stopping on the rock-strewn macadam in front of us with the sound of an aluminum boat transom running aground. This is it, I remember thinking, we’re all going to be shot. We’ve pushed our luck as far as it can go in this town, and we’re going to be gunned down in the street by some local militant.

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