ski/snowboard, skate, surf etc--films

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I love these videos. Both the documentaries and the sponsor films. The combination of the riding, the scenery, and the music just makes me feel so peaceful and happy. It seems like at least in the "good" ones the music is so perfectly tailored to whatever is going on, and I find out about so many awesome underground tracks I'd have never heard otherwise.

I own very few of these but I've been thinking about starting a collection. Snowboarding films are my favorite, because I snowboard myself and can relate to them the best, but surf and skate films blow my mind in a different sense because I cannot even fathom doing the things they do.

The best one I've ever seen is Travis Rice/Quiksilver's "That's it, That's all". Travis Rice is my favorite snowboarder ever, and it's kind of a documentary about him, but mostly it's him and a bunch of other dudes globetrotting and skiing everything imaginable. It's wildness on so many levels.

I also have a place in my heart for "Technical Difficulties", which is a video from like 1999 that was groundbreaking at the time and real influential on me back in the day when I was riding tough.

Also I just got a used copy of "First Descent" which is an awesome documentary I saw maybe 4 years ago. It's Shaun White and Hannah Teter when they were 18 or so going on a trip with old school 40-something legends to the Chugach in AK to ski mountains that had literally never been touched before. That's another of my favorites, I'm about to fire it up here shortly.

If anyone's with me on this, please discuss. Favorites, commentary, experiences, all welcome

I honestly don't pay attention that much to the videos that much but on the other hand I LOVE to snowboard. I do know that they do insane freestyle in those film even in competitions on TV are just flat out amazing.

JW where do you like to go snowboarding?

My home base is Mt Hood (Meadows for the most part). I live 2000 miles away now though and there's nowhere I can snowboard here.

And yea some of the slopestyle/freestyle general stuff is real nasty but I prefer the backcountry by far. There's a part in "That's it That's all" where they are in the middle of nowhere in the woods and grabbing/whipping spins off the top of a tree like 20 feet in the air, that s**t blows my mind. Or anytime a dude has an avalanche crack underneath and keeps their composure and rides out of it?! Madness.

If you want to see something off the beaten path, go rent the aforementioned "First Descent". It is something so completely different than the typical sponsor freestyle videos.

I came home drunk last night and insisted on watching "First Descent", and I think I made my friends watch the last scene 4 or 5 times

It's Terje Haakonsen (who was like the king of snowboarding when I was growing up) on the very top of a terrible mountain simply called "7601" because that's how many vertical feet it is, he dodges a bunch of rocks at high speed on a 65 degree slope and then peels down the open, equally steep lower face at literally 80mph+. He rips the entire 7601, including the rocks and cliffs at the top, in like a minute and a half. It is the rawest thing I've ever seen.

I imagine it's kind of a taboo in the professional snowboarding world to say "I'm scared" (of what we're about to attempt), but people at various points probably say that 8 times over the course of the film. I love it.