By: Jay Michelfelder
Day two in La Plagne dawned cool and clear, with another nine inches of snow on top of the nine inches from the previous day. Everyone knew our window for shooting was limited so we immediately found some mini-golf zones and got to work. But you can’t fly 3,500 miles to do mini-golf shit, so and Andy and Tanner began eying up some bigger lines in the bigger zones. As part of our grand excursion, Phil invited not only the four of us from the U.S. and Anders from Norway, but the entire Electric Europe team, several cinematographers and another French photographer. Working with a crew of 14 in the backcountry is like making Thanksgiving dinner with 14 relatives in the kitchen. Each chef seems to know the best way to make the gravy, and eventually the turkey just gets burned. And it doesn’t help having your drunk aunt stumbling around knocking over the pumpkin pie. The harrowing van ride to La Plagne had bonded Jimbo, Andy, Tanner, Anders and me, and immediately there was an “us vs. them” mentally with the French kids. They would want to hit one zone and we would want to hit a different one. We would want to move quickly and they would want to slow down and set up a complicated shot. How do you deal with drama like that? Simply remove yourself from the situation, which we did, leaving the French crew behind. We crushed zone after zone, much to their disappointment. They had been eying the same stuff, but hadn’t gotten there quickly enough. This made for tension, hard feelings and harsh words. But you can’t throw 14 individuals with strong personalities into a confined space, make them work 12 hours a day, and not expect there to be some drama. If I’ve learned anything from Thrasher, it’s that tension and travel go hand in hand.
In the afternoon, our crew of 14 ventured into a zone that I wouldn’t normally take a crew of four into. Stability was questionable all day, and as the snow started to heat up from the sun, the valleys around La Plagne began to release down to the rock. Given the conditions and the warning signs, we probably should have stayed clear all together. But sometimes you assess the risks and you take the gamble. I was scared watching each person ski, ready to head in for a rescue at a moment’s notice. At one point Zebulan, the quiet French cinematographer who hadn’t said a word all day looked over at me and said simply, “I don’t want to be here.” I could see the fear in his eyes that reached clear into his soul.
Tanner dropped into one line that sent my heart into my throat and chills down my spine. The line wasn’t super gnarly, but the conditions couldn’t have been more conducive to a deep burial. The kind where you ship a body home. The face was 35 degrees, ideal for an avalanche and funneled into a terrain-trap valley far below. But Tanner made turn after turn with the snow holding fast on each one. He reached the bottom unscathed and we all let out the deepest sigh of relief. It wasn’t until one of the French skiers dropped into a line directly above me, with no warning and no regard for the fact that the slide he could trigger would come right down on top of me, that I again started to bargain with a higher power for my life. I watched as he took hard turn after hard turn, kicking off a thick layer of slough, but never getting deep enough to cut that deadly slab. Again I pleaded with the powers above, hoping to live another day. I was done bargaining for my life, and I was over dealing with the French crew. When we returned to scope that same zone the following day, the whole thing had slid to the bottom of the valley.
On the third day we awoke with a sense of panic. The snow had stopped and the weather reports were predicting clear skies for the next 10 days. There were still a few lines that Andy and Tanner had eyed up the day before but hadn’t gotten to hit. We rushed to the lift and headed back to the highest bowl. The day before, Andy was skiing a casual run in the bowl – no cameras or filmers – and decided to throw a 180 off a little ridge. Turns out the ridge wasn’t so little, and Andy took his 180 about 50 feet out into the powder. We watched in awe as he stomped it and skied away, without any documentation of the huck. So it was straight back to the ridge for Andy’s mulligan. Andy is a machine when it comes to landing backwards in deep snow. He hiked higher, gathered some extra speed and took it deep, dwarfing his huck from the previous day. It was the biggest backcountry 180 I had ever witnessed. Piggybacking off Andy’s energy, Tanner hiked to a peak that didn’t appear skiable from the bottom. I watched from below wondering how he would pick his way through the jagged, exposed rocks that peppered the face. But why ski the rocks when you can jump over them? Tanner dropped in, straight lined the in-run, sucked up his legs, held them for 40 or 50 feet, and touched down a mere six inches from the last chunk of stone. It was mind-blowing. Phil freaked out and began yelling like he’d won the lottery. “That’s the craziest shit I’ve ever seen, mate!” We had two epic shots in the bag and it was only ten a.m.
By noon, the snow had been baked by the sun, tracked by the locals or had slid, exposing the rocks under the surface. A deep sadness washed over the team as the reality set in that our best days were behind us. So we did the only thing we could think of: We scraped, scratched and scrounged for anything that would resemble a photograph. At one point we found ourselves in the trees behind the hotel at 1 a.m. searching for pockets of powder to light up with flashes. At another point we found ourselves moving a few tons of snow for an in-run to a rock jib. My personal favorite was watching Rainville huck himself off a 30-foot cliff onto an inch of snow covering dirt and rocks. Even better than that? Watching him do it again. If it weren’t for hard work and random dirt hucks, the trip would have been a near wash.
Downtime is inevitable on any trip. It’s how you use the time that turns a mediocre trip into an epic journey. Our first choice of extracurricular activities was hanging out in the French bar downstairs. Sure, the liquor was good, but the best part was definitely watching the weird European guys crushing the bar scene. On the dance floor in any given American bar you’ll see guys dancing with girls. In France the guys dance with other guys. They would form tight little circles and dance with each other, showing off their sweet moves for their male companions, totally oblivious to the beautiful French women dancing five feet away. This would continue until last call. It wasn’t a gay bar; it’s just the norm in France. Much to Jimbo’s horror, one Euro guy even came up and began dancing for him at his table. The phrase “Euro Gay” was born and lasted for the duration of the trip.
When we weren’t in the bar, the cards came out and the gambling started with some hands of good ol’ American Texas Hold ‘Em. And when the money was gone, we started betting push-ups. How jock of us. Ten push-ups doesn’t seem bad when you’re wagering it on a hand, but when it’s all over and you owe 200 reps, it starts to burn. After the novelty of actually using strategy to play a hand wore off, we streamlined the system by making every player go all in on every hand. No betting, just flip the cards and accept your fate. If it weren’t for all the cheese and chocolate, we would have returned from this trip in the best shape of our lives.
The next stop on the journey was Tignes, a few valleys over, for the Airwaves slopestyle contest. We loaded everything into our race car — I mean van — and strapped in for more Jimbo-fueled mayhem. This van ride was somewhat mellow compared to the first, and we only managed to make about 15 blind passes on the mountain roads and drive through the front lawn of a McDonald’s. Jimbo likes to win, so when some French guy passed him on the road up to Tignes, the intensity was taken up a notch as he struggled to get enough power out of our diesel engine to keep up. After 15 minutes of trailing the Frenchman, Jimbo saw his opportunity to pass on a long, gravel parking lot on the side of the road. But, in an uncharacteristic stroke of restraint, he let the opportunity slide. After it became clear we had lost the race, Jimbo became visibly saddened. The grass wasn’t so green, the snow wasn’t so white and life lost a little bit of importance to Jimbo Morgan on that day.
We arrived in Tignes a few days before the contest, only to find that the slopestyle had been shortened to a big air due to a lack of snow. Downtime in Tignes was different than downtime in La Plagne. Tignes had much more of a centrally located village and is more conducive to bar hopping and heavy drinking. When you add in a ski contest and a whole bunch of European skiers you haven’t seen in nine months, things get a bit out of hand. I could write this entire story about our drunken adventures in Tignes, with colorful details about breaking glass, fighting locals and stickering the entire town at four a.m. Thankfully, we never rolled one of those little French cars down a big French hill as was suggested many times throughout our stay. But I’ve never really been a fan of talking about partying exploits — mainly because my grandmother reads this magazine. And I bet Andy Mahre’s grandmother does, too. So I’ll just say we had a hell of a time and leave the details up to your imagination. Think Mötley Crüe during their Sunset Strip days. I will tell you that we threw a blowout at The Crowded House bar (now known as the Electric bar due to the volume of stickers we put up). If you ever find yourself thirsty in Tignes, stop in and say high to Scotty. Ask him about the Electric party and he’ll give you all the details that make the rest of us red in the face to tell.
We not-so-strategically planned our blowout the night before the contest. Tanner had won the Airwaves two years earlier, so all week we had high hopes that we could cap off our epic journey with a victory, and Tanner could fly home 9000 Euros richer. But at 9 a.m. when Tanner, still drunk, went out to practice, it seemed like the day would be a wash. Fortunately, Tanner is so talented that he skis better than everybody else, even with his coordination and motor skills significantly impaired. After semi-finals he was well in the lead, and it looked as though we would have reason to celebrate yet again. The finals consisted of five skiers: Tanner and four other French kids. Noticeably absent were Andy and Anders, who had easily skied well enough to make finals. French judges and four French skiers in the finals? Seems suspicious to me — poodled. But our crew got the last laugh when Tanner threw the biggest cab 7 tail grab to mute and soundly beat Loic Collomb-Patton under the lights in the finals. Then we celebrated. And again things, and people, got broken.
We found out in the morning that the French police actually got the last laugh when they impounded our van while we were out drinking, which makes it tough to get to the airport at 8 a.m. What a way to end a trip that Jimbo, the most seasoned of ski travelers, called one of the top five trips of all time.
Link back to Thou Shall Not be Poodled, Part I
