First Descent

Alaskan snowboarding pioneer NICK PERATA launches off a crevasse in this
sports documentary about breaking the powder boundaries. Photo credit: Trevor Graves.
Copyright: © 2005 Universal Studios. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 
I went to this movie thinking that it was going to play out like the brainchild of a few marketing execs sitting around patting themselves on the back for figuring out a way to milk the last drops from the “extreme”-everything trend that has dumbed down product marketing over the last two years. I even seem to recall there was a run of “extreme” sugar-loaded kids snacks somewhere in the midst of that craze.

But no, this isn’t a film that panders to the misguided sensibilities of the execs. “First Descent” is not an insult to its core audience of snowboarding enthusiasts. It’s actually a respectable film about a respectable group of professionals who have themselves helped build and perfect a sport from the ground up, resisting convention in every stage of its evolution.

The documentary is filmed mostly in the Chugach Mountain Range near Valdez, Alaska, where five of the world’s best snowboarders have converged to take on a challenge bigger than themselves. The five include Alaskan snowboarding pioneers Shawn Farmer and Nick Peralta, three-time world champion Terje Haakonsen, and the much younger but top-ranking pros Hannah Teter and Shaun White. In addition, there are interviews of other pioneers like Chuck Barfoot, Jake Burton, and Tom Simms, as well as some historical insights from corporate industry magnates like Pat O’Donnell, CEO of Aspen Skiing.

Seeing Shawn Farmer driving a beat-up truck, wearing his baseball cap straight and high like a farmer from, and yet frequently using terms like “thrown down” is delightfully odd yet just as much a disturbing reminder how bizarre it must seem to kids when we use slang that’s popular with them. It’d be an affront to the rebellious attitude kids try to maintain if it weren’t for the fact that Farmer himself was, and in many ways still is, one of them. He’s crazy, to be sure, but he does exhibit some restraint learned, unquestionably, from more than two decades of experience, “I’m not going to try to kill myself… at least not until the end of the project!”

Terje, we are told, was raised on skis at his home in Norway. Just as well, he seems to be in perfect harmony with his surroundings when he’s moshing a halfpipe or gliding down the side of a 7000+ foot peak in the Alaskan back country. For Haakonsen and Farmer, this trip is a return to the mountain ranges where it started for them in 1989. At that time, we’re informed, snowboarding was still rejected by the mainstream and especially by the skiing industry. Most ski resorts banned snowboarders, and as a result the only way they could develop the sport was in free, and often dangerous, terrain.

Hannah Teter and Shaun White bring a different perspective to the group. They’re at the top of their form in the sport, but at eighteen years of age (both), they realize they have room to learn and improve and at the same time aren’t bound by preconceptions that might otherwise restrain them from approaching their technique from unusual angles. They’re also in the hands of very capable, experienced back country boarders who themselves aren’t so aggressively confident. One of the older boarders points out later in the film, while pondering whether to take a rather dangerous peak, that it doesn’t merely render him uncertain… it scares him.

“First Descent” alternates between the scenes of the Alaskan trek, backstory about the five athletes, and some history of the sport itself. The film doesn’t point out that most sports throughout history have emerged like that, but because snowboarding is such a young sport it offers a unique opportunity for us to look at an athletic endeavor in its infancy. Skiing, golfing, badminton, football, soccer, all certainly had to have rough starts as well. But here, we can trace the history of snowboarding directly, and in the age of video, which, as you’ll see from excerpts in the film, played a large part in promoting the sport–beginning with “underground” videos made by practitioners of the sport and eventually by the mainstream media whose tepidity turned to acceptance once they realized the ski industry was not as popular with youth and there was a cash cow to be had in this new and unusual hybrid of surfing, skiing and skating.

The various interviews point out that, depending on whom you ask, there are umpteen different stories about who pioneered the original “snurfer”… a hybrid skiing-surfing board that was larger and more unwieldy, but eventually led to the smaller, lighter and more agile designs we see today. Jake Burton, however, was one of the most instrumental in terms of winning popular recognition of the sport and thus bringing money into it to make it viable for the skiing industry to eventually support… opening up avenues for competitive and freestyle events that culminated in the emergence of both the X-games and, in Nagano 1998, the first snowboarding events for the Winter Olympics.

There are fascinating moments of cinematography scattered throughout, but a few in particular stand out and leave me speechless. One involves Terje landing and cracking the snow beneath him, causing a massive avalanche that he deftly rides down and out like the leading edge of a wave–the “breakers” almost enveloping him. Another involves a rudimentary jump the snowboarders built on one of the ledges of a long, sloping mountain. As they fly off the snow-carved ramp, some of them achieve leaps of a diagonal distance longer than they ever have made in their entire careers–including Farmer, who injures himself in a miscalculated landing. The final, and most spectacular, is Terje’s attempt at a terrifying “first descent” (referring to the fact that it appears to be untouched by other snowboarders/skiiers) of the nearly-vertical slope of Peak 7601.

I know this film will not appeal to everyone, and it does seem like a documentary more fit for television in the way it’s edited and paced. While the cinematography is certainly less awe-inspiring than that of “March of the Penguins,” I don’t feel that the frigid landscapes to behold in this film would be as interesting on a small screen. The film will probably be most entertaining for fans of snowboarding who are familiar with the elementary style of the numerous skiing movies of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. It certainly doesn’t convey the sense of speed and choreography made famous by Willy Bogner, Jr., who filmed many of the now-infamous ski sequences in the James Bond films (most notably in “A View to a Kill”)… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not a truly exciting “edge-of-your-seat” film, but the images are certainly amazing to see on a large screen.

The movie shows many perspectives… from the young to the old; domestic and foreign–a tour takes some of them to the Tokyo Dome where their exhibition is hyped-up with lasers and 40,000 screaming fans; racing competition versus freestyle; courses versus open country free-ride; grassroots versus corporate. I don’t know of many other films about sports in which the principals take time to ponder whether or not their acceptance of endorsement deals and their aid in popularizing the sport has amounted to a “sellout.” What’s evident, and most important, in this movie, is that these five, among the world’s best snowboarders, are not only willing to confront something so intimidating, but that they do so with humility, respect and even a little fear, before the geological and meterological challenges which, presented by nature, are of several orders of magnitude beyond human imagination and invention.

First Descent• Running Time: 110 minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language and a momentary drug reference. • Distributed by Universal Pictures.