Edge of the Earth (2022–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Into the Void - full transcript
[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
[tense music]
- Yeah.
[all panting]
♪ ♪
Whew!
This is real deal.
To come down this?
- Yeah.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Holy shit.
I just went
from everything's fine
to, like, we need to move.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Doing something that
nobody's ever done before,
there's no guarantee
that your plan's gonna work.
- [groans]
- Once you commit,
there is no turning around.
♪ ♪
- We're entirely removed
from civilization.
- Look at this one!
- We know once we get there,
we're on our own.
- Climbing.
- We've chosen to live a life
that does have risk.
- Oh, my God.
- [sobbing]
- One mistake, and you're dead.
- [panting] Come on now.
- If you harness that fear,
you can do something that
you never thought possible.
- Yeah!
♪ ♪
- Is the pursuit worth the risk?
[wind blowing]
[splashing]
- Alaska is so different
than everywhere else
on the planet.
The most unique factors
allow for primo snowboarding.
We can do things here
that you can't do
anywhere else in the world.
But weather dictates
everything out here,
snow dictates everything,
and there's no mastering
Mother Nature.
[contemplative music]
♪ ♪
The trip started
in Juneau, Alaska,
which is... there's roads here,
but it's not connected
to anywhere.
The mountains are so radical
that the only way to get here
is on boat or plane.
So we're gonna get on a boat
from here,
take that boat about 25 hours
up into Glacier Bay
National Park.
We're gonna get dropped off
at the edge of a glacier.
Then we're gonna walk
15 miles to a base camp,
and, ideally, go and ride
one of the most beautiful
mountains in the world,
Mount Bertha.
I mean, this is certainly
one of the most ambitious
missions I've ever attempted.
You don't just walk into these
serious mountains and be like,
"That's where we want to go.
It's sunny.
We're gonna walk up to it."
It's this process.
Having the right crew
is critical.
When you're this far out
on the edge,
you have to rely on your team
to make it back.
[indistinct chatter]
- Early on in the planning
of this trip...
We were looking to go out
into Glacier Bay
and ski and snowboard some lines
that nobody else
had ridden before.
But you can't really make
a trip like this happen
on Google Earth and a couple
of old photos alone,
so from Juneau,
hopped on a fixed-wing flight,
flew around the zone,
and saw it in the light
for the first time.
[majestic music]
♪ ♪
- Yeah.
- Right?
- Oh, yeah.
- There's definitely an allure
to wanting to do something
that's never been done,
and we've honed in
on Mount Bertha
in Glacier Bay National Park.
It's a really,
really beautiful peak,
very remote,
and there's a line on it
that has never been skied
or snowboarded.
- Yeah.
- Very few people have tried
trips like this before,
and I think probably
for good reason,
where you're going in
from the ocean,
crossing these glaciers
that have crevasses
you can fall in,
and then getting onto mountains
that have avalanches
that can come down on you.
So there's no shortage
of dangers.
It's about being able
to adapt to different things
the mountain might throw at you.
- There is a lot of risks
involved,
and putting it all on the line
is where
that feeling of freedom
and excitement comes from.
It's hard not to consider
what could happen.
You know, worst-case scenario
is we don't come home.
[bird caws]
This area and these mountains
are really important to us,
but we really recognize
that we are visitors here.
And so before we left
on our mission,
we wanted to talk to someone
from the Tlingit tribe.
They've been calling this
place home for generations,
and we wanted to really learn
about their culture
so that we could be
as respectful as possible
on their lands.
- My name is Lgeik'i.
My name is the sound
that the glacier makes
right before it calves
into the water.
Our names carry our identity,
and they have
for many generations.
And it directly
comes from Glacier Bay.
[singer vocalizing]
Over 10,000 years ago,
our families lived there.
We've been through
two ice ages since then.
This is the land you're
getting ready to go into.
This is the land
of our grandparents.
[solemn music]
- All right, well, I gotta go,
but I love you guys.
- We love you too.
- Love you too.
- Love you.
♪ ♪
- You know, from a young age,
we're taught that the water
is really unforgiving.
- Tlingit people,
haashuká kwáan, our ancestors,
our past, our present,
and our future.
The relationship that we have
with our lands, with our waters,
it's something
that's bigger than we are.
It's our being.
It's our DNA.
It's who we are.
It's how we're connected.
[majestic music]
♪ ♪
Every time
you see these animals...
[seals barking]
Every time you hear
the glacier calve,
that's the spirit
that embodies
the place you're going.
And that's something
very sacred to us.
So please keep that with you,
because you're gonna need that.
You'll need that strength
at some point
during this journey.
- Epic.
Look at the glacier over there.
We're in it now.
- Wow.
- Jer has been in the game
for 25 years,
and he's kind of the guru
of this style of trip.
- On belay.
- I don't know
if there's any other person
in the ski or snowboard world
that I look up to as much,
and his approach
to planning a ski trip
more like a climbing expedition
really changed the game.
- [exhales sharply]
[panting]
Okay.
- At a very young age,
I just fell in love
with going really fast
on a race board.
- Next at the top,
Jeremy Jones, 16 years old.
- By 21, I had success
at every level,
but pretty quickly,
I got burnt out on it.
My brothers went to Alaska
and were like,
"You need to come to Alaska."
[bird calling]
I get brought to this peak
right near the helipad.
I'm terrified, and I drop in,
and it's like coming
over the edge of the world.
And I see this... like,
the longest, steepest,
most beautiful run of my life,
and I just...
I'd never felt that feeling
snowboarding.
[stirring music]
♪ ♪
It's like freefalling
down the mountain.
You're totally in control
but hanging on to the earth
by just this narrow edge
of your snowboard.
That just opened up this world,
this universe
that I didn't know existed.
No question,
like, this is
where you'll find me.
The size of that mountain is
a little more substantial
if we're looking at it
from down here.
Eventually, I got really good
at filming snowboard movies
in Alaska with a helicopter.
And over time,
more people started coming.
We started racing people
to mountains.
You know, it changed with that.
I had been wanting to get
past the heli boundaries,
expand my snowboard universe.
That's what led
to this new phase,
which was
this foot-powered snowboarding.
- Jeremy Jones
dropping in ten seconds.
- I've been all over the state
to a variety
of different mountain ranges,
and this area in Alaska, to me,
is just the most spectacular.
- It's feeling
more and more real.
- A little bit of swell
in the ocean.
[birds calling]
- "Gulf low continue
to bring onshore flow
"Thursday, Friday.
Bigger storm
with 3 to 4 feet of snow."
- We know we got a significant
storm coming in...
and the question is,
is there a end to it?
- End in sight?
- Yeah.
- And if there's not
an end to it,
things get more complicated.
We thought we were
getting on the boat
for, like, a 25-hour boat ride
to where we were gonna launch.
And then this small storm
that was coming in
totally elevated,
and we had to retrace our steps
to hide in an inlet
while the weather just cranked.
A lot of traditional
pro snowboarders
snowboard when the camera's
there, rest when it's not,
but the people that I end up
spending time with
and snowboarding don't just
need perfect conditions...
Like, enjoy the process,
love putting in the time.
With Elena,
she is all those things.
[gentle music]
- I started snowboarding at six.
I started competing.
- Elena Hight, right here...
[continues indistinctly]
Only 11 years old.
- When I was 12 years old,
I was watching
the 2002 Olympics.
I watched Kelly Clark
win the Women's Halfpipe.
That was, like,
all I wanted to do.
- Never been done,
female or male.
- Started winning contests.
I went to two Olympics
and didn't have
an Olympic medal.
On the last Olympic year,
I was like, this is it.
I had the tricks,
but I totally cracked,
and I didn't even come close
to qualifying.
For whatever reason,
I was just like...
Couldn't get my head
in the game.
I don't know,
maybe this is the end
of my snowboard career.
And then about a month later,
I got a call from Jeremy
to go on this trip
for a film he was making.
I've never been winter camping.
It was totally
out of my comfort zone.
Sounds like a good idea
in theory.
We'll see.
- You're like,
"What am I doing out here
with this guy?"
[both laugh]
- But I was like, this
is the perfect opportunity.
I'm gonna go walk
through the mountains
and figure out
the rest of my life.
[laughs]
Like, this is it.
On the last day,
I realized I hadn't
thought about it much,
any of it, at all.
You know, you could
stay out here forever.
It was a new focus for me
beyond competition
that I had never had before.
That trip completely
altered my future.
This is definitely
what I want to do.
Woke up to... that.
Look at that.
The storm is here.
This mellow boat ride
turned into quite
the experience.
We hunkered down
for a couple days
because there was no way
we'd be able to get on land,
and we couldn't really hike
in that type of storm anyways.
- We're just pinned
in this cove.
Hoping to go to the next phase
of the mission,
but that's been hard... harder
than I would have thought.
This is, like,
day four on the boat.
- Boats and snow
don't really mix.
The extra weight
is a hazard for sinking
or just for leaks.
We had to keep
shoveling the boat
because it was just coming down.
- Well, I've been on this boat
since I was six years old,
and in 51 years,
I've never seen this much snow
on this boat
in my entire life, ever.
I'm just absolutely
freaking stunned, man.
I wouldn't say
it's the worst-case scenario,
but it's about
as bad as it gets, you know?
- Apparently,
that's how boats sink
is you get a bunch of snow
on it,
and then it starts rolling,
and it just rolls over.
And you could feel it
on the boat.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Days kept rolling by,
and it became clear
that we needed a window
or we were gonna have to
abandon the mission altogether.
♪ ♪
- We are, like,
threading the needle
between two storms.
We are waiting
for the perfect moment
because we got north winds.
It's gonna switch
to south winds.
We're gonna barely
be able to make it
into our landing zone.
- To get to shore,
we have to jump
into this little Munson
or smaller boat.
You realize
how big the waves are
when you're in, like,
a boat that size.
- This'll be, I think,
an impossible launch
as well as
an impossible landing.
You know, I can get
across with that Munson,
but I can guarantee you that
everybody will be soaking wet
and all our stuff'll be wet.
- The classic pro skier route
is figuring out
you have what it takes
when you're maybe 15 or 16,
but I was the opposite of that.
I didn't even really
become a pro skier
until I was 23 or 24.
Before that, it was all about,
you know, going to school.
I got my MBA
from the University of Denver,
which gave me
a lot of good assets
to approach the business
and skiing world.
It was only the last
couple years of college
that I realized there
could be a different path.
The first free skiing contest
I entered, I won,
and I was like, well,
maybe this skiing thing
can, you know, work out.
- Griffin has made
major descents
in some of the most
remote places on the planet
and is just voracious studier
of maps and routes and weather
and just every little detail
on a mission like this.
- Big mountain skiing
has that combination
of being in nature,
that adrenaline rush,
and that challenge...
It checks all the boxes
of what really does it for me
in life.
- It's like
we finally see the sun
for, really, the first time
since we've been here,
and we got a really stiff wind
that we can't really move in.
All we can do is be
right on the doorstep,
and we're on the doorstep
right now.
- Yeah.
- [laughs]
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Okay.
What about tomorrow?
- How about Monday?
- My concern with not going,
even though
that sounds not ideal...
[chuckles]
Is waking up
and it not being calm tomorrow.
- Yeah.
- What if that's our chance?
If it's forecasted
to be nice tomorrow,
we have to wait,
but it's after that
that it gets sketchy,
because now there's
another storm coming in,
and that storm is
gonna be three days plus.
We can't walk across
the glacier in a whiteout.
We get on land at...
if everyone's up
and moving in the dark,
we get on land
as soon as day breaks,
'cause it's supposed to be nice.
And if we just fucking walk
for 15 hours,
we probably can make it to camp.
- Winds have calmed down
finally.
Hopefully push to base camp,
which is about 15 miles
and 4,000 feet,
before this next storm hits,
so not gonna be an easy day
by any means.
All right.
- Thank you, Pamela Rae.
Whoo!
[epic music]
♪ ♪
Whoo!
- Wow!
- First steps.
Let the games begin,
ladies and gentlemen.
- In order to take on
an objective of this size,
we had a pilot drop a gear cache
with supplies and food,
and what we're walking in with
is enough to sustain ourselves
for a day or two, tops.
- Going into the trip,
we always looked at
the hike to our gear stash
as two big days
in the mountains,
but due to this really tight
break in the weather,
we're gonna have to do it
in a single push.
And as soon
as we started walking,
we realized this was gonna be
even harder than we thought.
- [exhales sharply]
Freaking hard going, man.
You'd think it'd get easier,
but it doesn't get easier.
- See that mountain way out
there that looks really small?
We're going behind that,
so we got a ways to go still.
It's just exhausting.
We've been breaking trail
in shifts,
probably 15,
20 minutes at a time,
'cause that's about
as much as you can handle.
- Whew!
My hip flexors are on fire.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- We've been moving
for nine hours.
We're really kinda...
slowing down.
We're still a ways out.
- Here comes the storm.
Right on time or little early.
Pretty far from camp still.
Not really
what we were looking for.
♪ ♪
- Man,
when it gets white out here,
you could miss, like,
a milewide glacier
and walk right by it,
which is concerning.
- Being out in the glacier
on a cloudy day
is like being on the inside
of a ping pong ball.
You could just walk
into a crevasse or a hole
that will swallow you up,
and so it's not an option
to move during storms.
- The reality set in that
this storm that's coming in
could really pin us
on this glacier.
That is worst-case scenario.
We don't have the supplies to
stay out here for that long,
and we're really in the middle
of no man's land.
There is no other option
but to keep going.
14 hours now.
Working really, really hard.
We haven't even really stopped.
- It was the most tired
that I've ever been,
and all I wanted to do was stop,
but it was not an option.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
- Oh, my God.
- [chuckles]
- [exhales sharply]
- Nice work.
- Yeah. Ha.
Holy...
Big push.
- [exhales sharply]
- Really looking forward
to being horizontal.
Mm.
[chuckling]
- Rule number 32:
sleep with your shovel.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- [sighs]
Just the most epic snowstorm
you could ever imagine.
- It's not often your skis
almost get buried vertically.
[chuckles]
- And all we did was
dig our tents out,
eat some food,
sleep, and repeat.
[sighs]
I've never been in a camping
winter storm situation
like that.
We were very just far
from civilization.
Unlike anything
I've ever experienced.
- You get in your tent,
and it's a safe little bubble.
You can hear the storm
raging outside.
[wind whooshing]
Then all of a sudden,
the storm stops.
But it's not that it stopped.
It's that you're buried.
- I go to push on the tent,
and it's solid.
Then I'm looking at the poles,
and I see that
they're, like, sagging,
and I'm like,
I got to get out of this tent.
That is not good.
- So you'd sleep
for a few hours,
get out
and shovel for a few hours.
- 200 centimeters of new snow
and counting rapidly.
I would assume
it'll be more of the same
when we wake up tomorrow.
- At this point, almost
two weeks in on the trip
with the boat ride
and being in Juneau,
it's been a constant beatdown.
- I need to deal.
The house is falling over.
Not doing so good.
We still haven't seen
the mountains,
and we're there for days.
This stuff gets a little bigger.
That stuff is...
- Here? Yeah.
- And we're over here.
- Yeah, it's a little bigger.
- Someday, we'll strap in
and make a turn
on our snowboard,
which, apparently,
is why we're here...
But I think I'm here
for the storms just as much.
My life is based
around these storms,
so to actually,
like, be out there
and feel the power of nature...
[wind whooshing]
I love it.
[serene music]
♪ ♪
[zipping]
- [sighs]
Whoa!
[singer vocalizing]
- First time actually
seeing the mountains,
and it's so caked
with so much snow.
It's like the curtains being
drawn on this amazing stage.
Pretty special place to wake up.
♪ ♪
- Spectacular.
Beyond imagination.
We've spent so much time
trying to get here.
And then you see this view,
and you're like,
oh, that's why we spent
that much time, 'cause...
You just don't see mountains
like this every day.
- It's crazy,
having been posted up here
for three days and not
seeing anything around us
and just waking up
to, like, heaven.
It's pretty surreal.
♪ ♪
It's all becoming real.
♪ ♪
- That feeling when you have
that objective finally,
like, at your fingertips
and you're able to arrive
at your destination
makes all that work so worth it.
♪ ♪
[rumbling]
- For as beautiful as it is,
we can't go up
into the mountains
because they're so
avalanche-prone at that phase.
You need to let
the mountains heal.
- The snow is actively
falling off of the mountains...
- Without our weight.
- Without our weight,
and we want to be
nowhere near that.
[rumbling continues]
- Here it comes again.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
We've been waiting two weeks
for sun.
Now we have it, and now...
we're afraid to move.
- In 12 hours of daylight,
we watched 200 avalanches fall.
It just was
the perfect combination
of a lot of snow
over a short period of time
and then
quickly rising temperatures
and a lot of sun.
- This whole perfect place
turns into this sloppy, dirty,
dangerous mass of wet snow.
- Yeah, it's scary,
but really,
it's just more heartbreaking
thinking you've come
all this way
and might go home with nothing.
- High record temperature
for Juneau
got smashed yesterday.
- Wow.
- Yeah. It was 70 degrees
in Juneau yesterday.
- Holy...
- Whoa.
- We might 80, like,
once or twice a year...
- Damn.
- So to have 70 in April
is smashed.
[pensive music]
- As someone who spends
most of my time
in the outdoors,
I see these changes happening,
and to be standing here
in these mountains
in this crazy heat
after we just went through
one of the biggest snowstorms
I've ever been in,
it's a very real reminder
that climate change is real,
and it's here,
and there's no escaping it.
- I fell in love with winter
at a really young age,
and my life revolves
around winter.
I started seeing changes
to winter
that coincided with what
scientists were talking about,
that the climate was changing
and that humans played
a huge role in that.
Those things were
just screaming at me,
and I could not quiet the noise.
You know, when I started
Protect Our Winters,
I had no idea
that the frontlines
would be here
in Washington, D.C.,
but it just became clear
that real action needs to happen
at the policy level,
at the federal level,
at the international level.
We represent a huge audience,
and they want action on this,
but we are running out of time.
As I've learned
about the science
and how critical snow is
to humanity,
I'm like, if we don't have snow,
the least of our problems
is gonna be that
a chairlift isn't spinning.
The ripple effects on that
and the disruption of that...
I can't even imagine
what that means
on society on a whole.
[chanting]
The only way I'm looking
my kids in the eye
in 20 years is going,
"I fought like hell to try
to get us on the right path."
♪ ♪
[soft music]
- At this point,
there's a lot of concern
with what we were gonna do
and how we were going
to adjust our plan
to be able to still have
a successful mission.
♪ ♪
- We did a recon skin up valley,
and walking around,
you could tell it was
so hot, humid.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- We got a view of Bertha
and really spent time
just sitting there watching it.
- How's it look?
- You know,
that summit ridge is, um...
that's pretty real right there.
That is gonna be...
- That's pretty real.
- Rated R.
- Yeah.
It's really just a matter
of what's snow
and what's white ice.
Won't know until we're up there.
- Yeah, hitting, like,
unedgeable ice
on a mountain
means you lose your edge
and accelerate super fast
and it'd be really hard
to catch a fall.
It's like black ice
on the highway.
- What would it be?
5,000 vert from top to bottom?
- Nah, it's like 7.
- 7?
- Do we wanna go to the saddle?
[epic music]
♪ ♪
- That serac is insane.
- Yeah, it seems like
it's pretty cold
up there most days.
- It dropped.
The temp, just...
getting right here.
Whoo!
There's definitely
a line that goes.
- There is a line that goes
in that madness.
Now, that is a mountain.
[energetic percussive music]
♪ ♪
Yeah.
Serious mountain, man.
I mean, that's, like,
next-level stuff.
But I think with
the current snow situation,
like, we just gotta put
all our attention towards it
and just...
one puzzle piece at a time,
and we can turn, like,
a bunch of noes into yeses.
We might be able to stand on
that thing and ride down it.
- I mean, there's a shot,
for sure.
If one person's feeling bad,
like, turn around.
- Yeah, and we should do
a little more scoping down there
and then really think
about timing with the heat.
- Mm-hmm.
[rumbling]
- Oh, my God!
- God!
- Look at that thing.
Oh, my God.
- Oh.
- Ooh.
[exhales]
Look at it.
- It's still going.
- That was humbling.
- That's why we don't hike
under seracs.
- Yeah.
- And we give 'em a wide berth.
- Crazy.
- What do you guys think
about the route up?
- It seems like we have to move
in the twilight,
and that means hiking
that thing in the dark.
That one really narrow,
steep section
just definitely turns
my stomach to think about.
- The earth is just falling
away on both sides of you.
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Due to these, like,
extreme, warm temperatures,
we were only comfortable
moving in the mountains,
like, really early in the
morning and late in the day,
'cause in the middle of the day,
that's when things
get really warm
and they become
very avalanche-prone.
- We decided it would be best
to leave camp in the evening,
climb the first half
of the mountain,
have a quick nap at the ridge,
to the final approach.
- We're leaving at 5:00 p.m.,
which is so counterintuitive,
and it's just a matter of time
before you're engulfed
in darkness.
Are we doing this?
- Let's do it.
Here we go.
- Yeah.
- Snow is firmer than expected.
Highest altitude
we've been at yet this trip.
It feels good to be up high.
- Everybody still likes the
look of the right ridge, right?
- We could potentially
cross the schrund
with the debris.
- Okay.
- Being in the mountains
in the dark
is... scary.
You just get this feeling
of, like,
you should not be here
right now.
It's the schrund.
Ooh!
When you cross
the bergschrunds in Alaska...
That's where the glacier
and the mountain meets...
And you gotta cross this crack,
and that's generally
when things get real.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- This ridge is safe, right?
- When in doubt, go right.
May be a good time
to get out one axe.
- Not the trail that gives you
warm and fuzzy feelings.
45-degree slope that's ice,
and if you fall, you're...
yeah, you don't want to fall.
Boot-packing up this slope
that was refrozen
with a bunch of crevasses
on the wrong side of darkness
was by far the sketchiest part
of the day.
You have no idea
what's off the back side.
You don't know if you're
walking onto a corner.
Someone could fall
several thousand feet.
And so you're just gingerly
making those last steps
and hoping that
all your guesses are right.
[boots scraping ice]
- Whoo!
11:30 at night.
Took us about eight hours
to get up here.
- This is gonna be
where I sleep tonight.
Gonna be a little cold,
but we're only here
for, like, four hours,
so just enough time
to get a little shut-eye,
make some water, hydrate again,
and get going
for the main objective.
- That was a good push.
We can see like the outlines
of our surroundings,
but it'll be
an exciting morning.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
When I go on a trip,
it's like I have my family
with me.
And, you know, I don't hide
from that weight,
and I think, if anything,
it makes
for better decision-making.
[chuckles]
That's why
we're so proud of you.
It's the coolest thing
in the world, being a dad.
We're gonna get dropped off
hopefully right here,
and we'll see when we get there,
but we'd probably come in
right... like this.
I've done a lot
of radical snowboarding
in the 15 years
that I've had kids,
and it adds weight to it.
You know, it's not just
about me out there now.
I'm gonna go down on this rock
so I can scope everyone.
Nice!
Oh!
[chuckles]
Butter 3.
Now my kids are in the mountains
and we're in the back country
together,
but we talk real.
That's a no fall zone.
No fall zone means no fall,
or you die.
I don't hide them from that.
I hope to instill in my kids
that life's
this incredible opportunity.
Find things that you become
super passionate about
and, like, go towards that.
We're not gonna be here forever,
and get the most
out of each day.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[all panting]
- We're moving by 6:00 a.m.
We got to the bootpack
pretty quickly.
That entire next section
was crampons and ice axes.
We knew we were gonna be
facing a lot of variables.
- Hopefully our timing's right.
- This is just...
it's just like disintegrating
underneath me.
- Proper tilt to this thing.
Holds its pitch.
- There's definitely ice
under there.
- Yeah, definitely some ice.
- It's gonna be sketchy
on the way down, huh?
- Oh, yeah.
A little firmer.
- There were some firm spots
back there,
but not this firm.
Definitely some white ice.
A little concerned
about how we were gonna
get down that section
without hitting ice and falling.
Hoping that the temps warm up
just a little bit
so that that snow is edgeable
on my snowboard.
- We're just getting
to the crux.
Once we get off this little
bit, it'll feel way better.
The last 300 or 400 feet
of Bertha,
it's this really narrow strip
that we call the Plank.
- [sighs] So hot.
- Holy shit.
I just went
from everything's fine
to, like, we need to move.
The Plank is, like,
10 feet wide.
On your left side,
you got a bunch of rocks.
On your right side,
you have 5,000 feet of air.
You fall anywhere on that,
there's no rescue.
It's just a recovery mission.
- [groans]
This is real deal.
To come down this?
- Yeah.
- All of Bertha
is a no-fall zone.
Every step you take has to be
a very sure step.
- The snow gets
a little better over here.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- [panting]
Holy shit!
[chuckles]
- Yes.
- Yes!
[singers vocalizing]
♪ ♪
- There's a feeling
you can get late in trips
where you can almost, like,
feel the mountain's breath.
To be able to walk
up these mountains
and to sleep under them...
See every breath of wind
and snowflake.
[stirring music]
♪ ♪
The intimacy that you now have
with the mountain
is so much greater.
These highs are on
a totally different level.
- It makes you feel so small...
But at the same time,
so connected
to everything around you.
You feel like you're standing
on the edge of the Earth.
- It's pretty indescribable,
but you can't forget
that the most dangerous part
is ahead of you.
- The ice
kind of worries me a bit.
- Well, it should.
Even though we climbed the line,
there was so much firm snow
under the surface
that we're like,
how's this gonna ride?
We needed to section it out.
Good in here.
You know, speed is your friend.
And then...
- Mm-hmm.
- Most accidents happen
on the way down.
If one person
goes from top to bottom
and something happens
to the next person,
they're not in a position
to provide any rescue.
And so there was
three very natural points
to stop and regroup.
- [exhales]
Okay.
Yeah, guys.
- Yeah, Elena.
Whoo!
- Whoo!
- Elena drop in three, two, one.
- Whoo!
[tense music pulsing]
♪ ♪
- Snow's edgeable.
Elena clear.
Yeah, Griff.
Whoo!
Nice.
- Whoo!
Yeah, team.
Trending skiers left
along this ridge line,
and then drop and fall line.
- Yeah.
- Watch the rocks on the right.
It's gonna be really exposed.
- Yeah.
- Griffin dropping.
[singer vocalizing]
♪ ♪
- Here the ice
is really grippable,
so you'll have confidence
riding with that.
- So the ice was pretty
edgeable?
- Yeah, for sure.
- That's good news.
[intense music]
♪ ♪
- Whoo!
- Nice, dude.
- [laughs]
- Elena, the ice is edgeable,
but the exposure's no joke.
- Copy that.
- Oh, yeah!
- Whoo!
[laughs]
- Yes, Elena.
- Heck yeah.
- [panting] Thanks.
- Touching the void.
Yeah, we need to, uh...
evaluate.
- You guys wanna try to take
her all the way down, or...
- Whoo.
- Reset?
- Yeah, legs are tired.
- Let's keep this moving.
- Yeah.
- Why don't you guys drop?
I'll bring up the rear.
Link up before those big seracs.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay.
[intense percussive music]
♪ ♪
- Yeah, cut left.
- Griff, snow is good.
- Copy that.
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- Yeah!
I'm gonna kind of ride
more fall line.
- Yeah.
- Okay. Good call.
Yeah, Jer.
- Whoo!
- Yeah!
- Clear to drop?
- Elena, it's rippable.
Give her.
- Copy that.
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- How fun is that?
- That was fun.
The top part was kinda scary.
- Oh, yeah, for sure.
- [laughs]
- Dude, that is so incredible.
- Just like... surreal.
- Totally.
It's like make believe land.
- Make believe land.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- A lot to be proud of today,
ladies and gentlemen.
- There's really nothing like
climbing a mountain
and standing on top of it.
That feeling
of just complete presence.
Knowing
that you can achieve things
that you may have not
thought possible,
I think,
is like a sense of, like,
courage and freedom.
- Packing up.
Heading to the ocean.
- Really excited
to see my family.
But I will always
remember this place.
- Once you're out here,
you really settle in
to this state of presence
that I think is hard to find
in our everyday lives
just because
there's so many distractions,
and out here,
we're completely
in tune with the mountains
and our surroundings.
You definitely find yourself
feeling like it's home here.
- Skiing something
from the ocean
was something
I'd never done before,
and I think 10,200 feet
would take it
as the longest run of my life.
And knowing that you earned
every single foot
from sea level
is pretty rad to know.
I think that'll make me smile
for the rest of my life.
[laughter, chatter]
- With my snowboard
in the mountains
is where I can kind of go
to this different space,
this real special place.
That's where life feels
the most pure,
the most rich,
the most real to me.
[majestic music]
♪ ♪
[singer vocalizing]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]
[bright tone]
[tense music]
- Yeah.
[all panting]
♪ ♪
Whew!
This is real deal.
To come down this?
- Yeah.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Holy shit.
I just went
from everything's fine
to, like, we need to move.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Doing something that
nobody's ever done before,
there's no guarantee
that your plan's gonna work.
- [groans]
- Once you commit,
there is no turning around.
♪ ♪
- We're entirely removed
from civilization.
- Look at this one!
- We know once we get there,
we're on our own.
- Climbing.
- We've chosen to live a life
that does have risk.
- Oh, my God.
- [sobbing]
- One mistake, and you're dead.
- [panting] Come on now.
- If you harness that fear,
you can do something that
you never thought possible.
- Yeah!
♪ ♪
- Is the pursuit worth the risk?
[wind blowing]
[splashing]
- Alaska is so different
than everywhere else
on the planet.
The most unique factors
allow for primo snowboarding.
We can do things here
that you can't do
anywhere else in the world.
But weather dictates
everything out here,
snow dictates everything,
and there's no mastering
Mother Nature.
[contemplative music]
♪ ♪
The trip started
in Juneau, Alaska,
which is... there's roads here,
but it's not connected
to anywhere.
The mountains are so radical
that the only way to get here
is on boat or plane.
So we're gonna get on a boat
from here,
take that boat about 25 hours
up into Glacier Bay
National Park.
We're gonna get dropped off
at the edge of a glacier.
Then we're gonna walk
15 miles to a base camp,
and, ideally, go and ride
one of the most beautiful
mountains in the world,
Mount Bertha.
I mean, this is certainly
one of the most ambitious
missions I've ever attempted.
You don't just walk into these
serious mountains and be like,
"That's where we want to go.
It's sunny.
We're gonna walk up to it."
It's this process.
Having the right crew
is critical.
When you're this far out
on the edge,
you have to rely on your team
to make it back.
[indistinct chatter]
- Early on in the planning
of this trip...
We were looking to go out
into Glacier Bay
and ski and snowboard some lines
that nobody else
had ridden before.
But you can't really make
a trip like this happen
on Google Earth and a couple
of old photos alone,
so from Juneau,
hopped on a fixed-wing flight,
flew around the zone,
and saw it in the light
for the first time.
[majestic music]
♪ ♪
- Yeah.
- Right?
- Oh, yeah.
- There's definitely an allure
to wanting to do something
that's never been done,
and we've honed in
on Mount Bertha
in Glacier Bay National Park.
It's a really,
really beautiful peak,
very remote,
and there's a line on it
that has never been skied
or snowboarded.
- Yeah.
- Very few people have tried
trips like this before,
and I think probably
for good reason,
where you're going in
from the ocean,
crossing these glaciers
that have crevasses
you can fall in,
and then getting onto mountains
that have avalanches
that can come down on you.
So there's no shortage
of dangers.
It's about being able
to adapt to different things
the mountain might throw at you.
- There is a lot of risks
involved,
and putting it all on the line
is where
that feeling of freedom
and excitement comes from.
It's hard not to consider
what could happen.
You know, worst-case scenario
is we don't come home.
[bird caws]
This area and these mountains
are really important to us,
but we really recognize
that we are visitors here.
And so before we left
on our mission,
we wanted to talk to someone
from the Tlingit tribe.
They've been calling this
place home for generations,
and we wanted to really learn
about their culture
so that we could be
as respectful as possible
on their lands.
- My name is Lgeik'i.
My name is the sound
that the glacier makes
right before it calves
into the water.
Our names carry our identity,
and they have
for many generations.
And it directly
comes from Glacier Bay.
[singer vocalizing]
Over 10,000 years ago,
our families lived there.
We've been through
two ice ages since then.
This is the land you're
getting ready to go into.
This is the land
of our grandparents.
[solemn music]
- All right, well, I gotta go,
but I love you guys.
- We love you too.
- Love you too.
- Love you.
♪ ♪
- You know, from a young age,
we're taught that the water
is really unforgiving.
- Tlingit people,
haashuká kwáan, our ancestors,
our past, our present,
and our future.
The relationship that we have
with our lands, with our waters,
it's something
that's bigger than we are.
It's our being.
It's our DNA.
It's who we are.
It's how we're connected.
[majestic music]
♪ ♪
Every time
you see these animals...
[seals barking]
Every time you hear
the glacier calve,
that's the spirit
that embodies
the place you're going.
And that's something
very sacred to us.
So please keep that with you,
because you're gonna need that.
You'll need that strength
at some point
during this journey.
- Epic.
Look at the glacier over there.
We're in it now.
- Wow.
- Jer has been in the game
for 25 years,
and he's kind of the guru
of this style of trip.
- On belay.
- I don't know
if there's any other person
in the ski or snowboard world
that I look up to as much,
and his approach
to planning a ski trip
more like a climbing expedition
really changed the game.
- [exhales sharply]
[panting]
Okay.
- At a very young age,
I just fell in love
with going really fast
on a race board.
- Next at the top,
Jeremy Jones, 16 years old.
- By 21, I had success
at every level,
but pretty quickly,
I got burnt out on it.
My brothers went to Alaska
and were like,
"You need to come to Alaska."
[bird calling]
I get brought to this peak
right near the helipad.
I'm terrified, and I drop in,
and it's like coming
over the edge of the world.
And I see this... like,
the longest, steepest,
most beautiful run of my life,
and I just...
I'd never felt that feeling
snowboarding.
[stirring music]
♪ ♪
It's like freefalling
down the mountain.
You're totally in control
but hanging on to the earth
by just this narrow edge
of your snowboard.
That just opened up this world,
this universe
that I didn't know existed.
No question,
like, this is
where you'll find me.
The size of that mountain is
a little more substantial
if we're looking at it
from down here.
Eventually, I got really good
at filming snowboard movies
in Alaska with a helicopter.
And over time,
more people started coming.
We started racing people
to mountains.
You know, it changed with that.
I had been wanting to get
past the heli boundaries,
expand my snowboard universe.
That's what led
to this new phase,
which was
this foot-powered snowboarding.
- Jeremy Jones
dropping in ten seconds.
- I've been all over the state
to a variety
of different mountain ranges,
and this area in Alaska, to me,
is just the most spectacular.
- It's feeling
more and more real.
- A little bit of swell
in the ocean.
[birds calling]
- "Gulf low continue
to bring onshore flow
"Thursday, Friday.
Bigger storm
with 3 to 4 feet of snow."
- We know we got a significant
storm coming in...
and the question is,
is there a end to it?
- End in sight?
- Yeah.
- And if there's not
an end to it,
things get more complicated.
We thought we were
getting on the boat
for, like, a 25-hour boat ride
to where we were gonna launch.
And then this small storm
that was coming in
totally elevated,
and we had to retrace our steps
to hide in an inlet
while the weather just cranked.
A lot of traditional
pro snowboarders
snowboard when the camera's
there, rest when it's not,
but the people that I end up
spending time with
and snowboarding don't just
need perfect conditions...
Like, enjoy the process,
love putting in the time.
With Elena,
she is all those things.
[gentle music]
- I started snowboarding at six.
I started competing.
- Elena Hight, right here...
[continues indistinctly]
Only 11 years old.
- When I was 12 years old,
I was watching
the 2002 Olympics.
I watched Kelly Clark
win the Women's Halfpipe.
That was, like,
all I wanted to do.
- Never been done,
female or male.
- Started winning contests.
I went to two Olympics
and didn't have
an Olympic medal.
On the last Olympic year,
I was like, this is it.
I had the tricks,
but I totally cracked,
and I didn't even come close
to qualifying.
For whatever reason,
I was just like...
Couldn't get my head
in the game.
I don't know,
maybe this is the end
of my snowboard career.
And then about a month later,
I got a call from Jeremy
to go on this trip
for a film he was making.
I've never been winter camping.
It was totally
out of my comfort zone.
Sounds like a good idea
in theory.
We'll see.
- You're like,
"What am I doing out here
with this guy?"
[both laugh]
- But I was like, this
is the perfect opportunity.
I'm gonna go walk
through the mountains
and figure out
the rest of my life.
[laughs]
Like, this is it.
On the last day,
I realized I hadn't
thought about it much,
any of it, at all.
You know, you could
stay out here forever.
It was a new focus for me
beyond competition
that I had never had before.
That trip completely
altered my future.
This is definitely
what I want to do.
Woke up to... that.
Look at that.
The storm is here.
This mellow boat ride
turned into quite
the experience.
We hunkered down
for a couple days
because there was no way
we'd be able to get on land,
and we couldn't really hike
in that type of storm anyways.
- We're just pinned
in this cove.
Hoping to go to the next phase
of the mission,
but that's been hard... harder
than I would have thought.
This is, like,
day four on the boat.
- Boats and snow
don't really mix.
The extra weight
is a hazard for sinking
or just for leaks.
We had to keep
shoveling the boat
because it was just coming down.
- Well, I've been on this boat
since I was six years old,
and in 51 years,
I've never seen this much snow
on this boat
in my entire life, ever.
I'm just absolutely
freaking stunned, man.
I wouldn't say
it's the worst-case scenario,
but it's about
as bad as it gets, you know?
- Apparently,
that's how boats sink
is you get a bunch of snow
on it,
and then it starts rolling,
and it just rolls over.
And you could feel it
on the boat.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Days kept rolling by,
and it became clear
that we needed a window
or we were gonna have to
abandon the mission altogether.
♪ ♪
- We are, like,
threading the needle
between two storms.
We are waiting
for the perfect moment
because we got north winds.
It's gonna switch
to south winds.
We're gonna barely
be able to make it
into our landing zone.
- To get to shore,
we have to jump
into this little Munson
or smaller boat.
You realize
how big the waves are
when you're in, like,
a boat that size.
- This'll be, I think,
an impossible launch
as well as
an impossible landing.
You know, I can get
across with that Munson,
but I can guarantee you that
everybody will be soaking wet
and all our stuff'll be wet.
- The classic pro skier route
is figuring out
you have what it takes
when you're maybe 15 or 16,
but I was the opposite of that.
I didn't even really
become a pro skier
until I was 23 or 24.
Before that, it was all about,
you know, going to school.
I got my MBA
from the University of Denver,
which gave me
a lot of good assets
to approach the business
and skiing world.
It was only the last
couple years of college
that I realized there
could be a different path.
The first free skiing contest
I entered, I won,
and I was like, well,
maybe this skiing thing
can, you know, work out.
- Griffin has made
major descents
in some of the most
remote places on the planet
and is just voracious studier
of maps and routes and weather
and just every little detail
on a mission like this.
- Big mountain skiing
has that combination
of being in nature,
that adrenaline rush,
and that challenge...
It checks all the boxes
of what really does it for me
in life.
- It's like
we finally see the sun
for, really, the first time
since we've been here,
and we got a really stiff wind
that we can't really move in.
All we can do is be
right on the doorstep,
and we're on the doorstep
right now.
- Yeah.
- [laughs]
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Okay.
What about tomorrow?
- How about Monday?
- My concern with not going,
even though
that sounds not ideal...
[chuckles]
Is waking up
and it not being calm tomorrow.
- Yeah.
- What if that's our chance?
If it's forecasted
to be nice tomorrow,
we have to wait,
but it's after that
that it gets sketchy,
because now there's
another storm coming in,
and that storm is
gonna be three days plus.
We can't walk across
the glacier in a whiteout.
We get on land at...
if everyone's up
and moving in the dark,
we get on land
as soon as day breaks,
'cause it's supposed to be nice.
And if we just fucking walk
for 15 hours,
we probably can make it to camp.
- Winds have calmed down
finally.
Hopefully push to base camp,
which is about 15 miles
and 4,000 feet,
before this next storm hits,
so not gonna be an easy day
by any means.
All right.
- Thank you, Pamela Rae.
Whoo!
[epic music]
♪ ♪
Whoo!
- Wow!
- First steps.
Let the games begin,
ladies and gentlemen.
- In order to take on
an objective of this size,
we had a pilot drop a gear cache
with supplies and food,
and what we're walking in with
is enough to sustain ourselves
for a day or two, tops.
- Going into the trip,
we always looked at
the hike to our gear stash
as two big days
in the mountains,
but due to this really tight
break in the weather,
we're gonna have to do it
in a single push.
And as soon
as we started walking,
we realized this was gonna be
even harder than we thought.
- [exhales sharply]
Freaking hard going, man.
You'd think it'd get easier,
but it doesn't get easier.
- See that mountain way out
there that looks really small?
We're going behind that,
so we got a ways to go still.
It's just exhausting.
We've been breaking trail
in shifts,
probably 15,
20 minutes at a time,
'cause that's about
as much as you can handle.
- Whew!
My hip flexors are on fire.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- We've been moving
for nine hours.
We're really kinda...
slowing down.
We're still a ways out.
- Here comes the storm.
Right on time or little early.
Pretty far from camp still.
Not really
what we were looking for.
♪ ♪
- Man,
when it gets white out here,
you could miss, like,
a milewide glacier
and walk right by it,
which is concerning.
- Being out in the glacier
on a cloudy day
is like being on the inside
of a ping pong ball.
You could just walk
into a crevasse or a hole
that will swallow you up,
and so it's not an option
to move during storms.
- The reality set in that
this storm that's coming in
could really pin us
on this glacier.
That is worst-case scenario.
We don't have the supplies to
stay out here for that long,
and we're really in the middle
of no man's land.
There is no other option
but to keep going.
14 hours now.
Working really, really hard.
We haven't even really stopped.
- It was the most tired
that I've ever been,
and all I wanted to do was stop,
but it was not an option.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
- Oh, my God.
- [chuckles]
- [exhales sharply]
- Nice work.
- Yeah. Ha.
Holy...
Big push.
- [exhales sharply]
- Really looking forward
to being horizontal.
Mm.
[chuckling]
- Rule number 32:
sleep with your shovel.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- [sighs]
Just the most epic snowstorm
you could ever imagine.
- It's not often your skis
almost get buried vertically.
[chuckles]
- And all we did was
dig our tents out,
eat some food,
sleep, and repeat.
[sighs]
I've never been in a camping
winter storm situation
like that.
We were very just far
from civilization.
Unlike anything
I've ever experienced.
- You get in your tent,
and it's a safe little bubble.
You can hear the storm
raging outside.
[wind whooshing]
Then all of a sudden,
the storm stops.
But it's not that it stopped.
It's that you're buried.
- I go to push on the tent,
and it's solid.
Then I'm looking at the poles,
and I see that
they're, like, sagging,
and I'm like,
I got to get out of this tent.
That is not good.
- So you'd sleep
for a few hours,
get out
and shovel for a few hours.
- 200 centimeters of new snow
and counting rapidly.
I would assume
it'll be more of the same
when we wake up tomorrow.
- At this point, almost
two weeks in on the trip
with the boat ride
and being in Juneau,
it's been a constant beatdown.
- I need to deal.
The house is falling over.
Not doing so good.
We still haven't seen
the mountains,
and we're there for days.
This stuff gets a little bigger.
That stuff is...
- Here? Yeah.
- And we're over here.
- Yeah, it's a little bigger.
- Someday, we'll strap in
and make a turn
on our snowboard,
which, apparently,
is why we're here...
But I think I'm here
for the storms just as much.
My life is based
around these storms,
so to actually,
like, be out there
and feel the power of nature...
[wind whooshing]
I love it.
[serene music]
♪ ♪
[zipping]
- [sighs]
Whoa!
[singer vocalizing]
- First time actually
seeing the mountains,
and it's so caked
with so much snow.
It's like the curtains being
drawn on this amazing stage.
Pretty special place to wake up.
♪ ♪
- Spectacular.
Beyond imagination.
We've spent so much time
trying to get here.
And then you see this view,
and you're like,
oh, that's why we spent
that much time, 'cause...
You just don't see mountains
like this every day.
- It's crazy,
having been posted up here
for three days and not
seeing anything around us
and just waking up
to, like, heaven.
It's pretty surreal.
♪ ♪
It's all becoming real.
♪ ♪
- That feeling when you have
that objective finally,
like, at your fingertips
and you're able to arrive
at your destination
makes all that work so worth it.
♪ ♪
[rumbling]
- For as beautiful as it is,
we can't go up
into the mountains
because they're so
avalanche-prone at that phase.
You need to let
the mountains heal.
- The snow is actively
falling off of the mountains...
- Without our weight.
- Without our weight,
and we want to be
nowhere near that.
[rumbling continues]
- Here it comes again.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
We've been waiting two weeks
for sun.
Now we have it, and now...
we're afraid to move.
- In 12 hours of daylight,
we watched 200 avalanches fall.
It just was
the perfect combination
of a lot of snow
over a short period of time
and then
quickly rising temperatures
and a lot of sun.
- This whole perfect place
turns into this sloppy, dirty,
dangerous mass of wet snow.
- Yeah, it's scary,
but really,
it's just more heartbreaking
thinking you've come
all this way
and might go home with nothing.
- High record temperature
for Juneau
got smashed yesterday.
- Wow.
- Yeah. It was 70 degrees
in Juneau yesterday.
- Holy...
- Whoa.
- We might 80, like,
once or twice a year...
- Damn.
- So to have 70 in April
is smashed.
[pensive music]
- As someone who spends
most of my time
in the outdoors,
I see these changes happening,
and to be standing here
in these mountains
in this crazy heat
after we just went through
one of the biggest snowstorms
I've ever been in,
it's a very real reminder
that climate change is real,
and it's here,
and there's no escaping it.
- I fell in love with winter
at a really young age,
and my life revolves
around winter.
I started seeing changes
to winter
that coincided with what
scientists were talking about,
that the climate was changing
and that humans played
a huge role in that.
Those things were
just screaming at me,
and I could not quiet the noise.
You know, when I started
Protect Our Winters,
I had no idea
that the frontlines
would be here
in Washington, D.C.,
but it just became clear
that real action needs to happen
at the policy level,
at the federal level,
at the international level.
We represent a huge audience,
and they want action on this,
but we are running out of time.
As I've learned
about the science
and how critical snow is
to humanity,
I'm like, if we don't have snow,
the least of our problems
is gonna be that
a chairlift isn't spinning.
The ripple effects on that
and the disruption of that...
I can't even imagine
what that means
on society on a whole.
[chanting]
The only way I'm looking
my kids in the eye
in 20 years is going,
"I fought like hell to try
to get us on the right path."
♪ ♪
[soft music]
- At this point,
there's a lot of concern
with what we were gonna do
and how we were going
to adjust our plan
to be able to still have
a successful mission.
♪ ♪
- We did a recon skin up valley,
and walking around,
you could tell it was
so hot, humid.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- We got a view of Bertha
and really spent time
just sitting there watching it.
- How's it look?
- You know,
that summit ridge is, um...
that's pretty real right there.
That is gonna be...
- That's pretty real.
- Rated R.
- Yeah.
It's really just a matter
of what's snow
and what's white ice.
Won't know until we're up there.
- Yeah, hitting, like,
unedgeable ice
on a mountain
means you lose your edge
and accelerate super fast
and it'd be really hard
to catch a fall.
It's like black ice
on the highway.
- What would it be?
5,000 vert from top to bottom?
- Nah, it's like 7.
- 7?
- Do we wanna go to the saddle?
[epic music]
♪ ♪
- That serac is insane.
- Yeah, it seems like
it's pretty cold
up there most days.
- It dropped.
The temp, just...
getting right here.
Whoo!
There's definitely
a line that goes.
- There is a line that goes
in that madness.
Now, that is a mountain.
[energetic percussive music]
♪ ♪
Yeah.
Serious mountain, man.
I mean, that's, like,
next-level stuff.
But I think with
the current snow situation,
like, we just gotta put
all our attention towards it
and just...
one puzzle piece at a time,
and we can turn, like,
a bunch of noes into yeses.
We might be able to stand on
that thing and ride down it.
- I mean, there's a shot,
for sure.
If one person's feeling bad,
like, turn around.
- Yeah, and we should do
a little more scoping down there
and then really think
about timing with the heat.
- Mm-hmm.
[rumbling]
- Oh, my God!
- God!
- Look at that thing.
Oh, my God.
- Oh.
- Ooh.
[exhales]
Look at it.
- It's still going.
- That was humbling.
- That's why we don't hike
under seracs.
- Yeah.
- And we give 'em a wide berth.
- Crazy.
- What do you guys think
about the route up?
- It seems like we have to move
in the twilight,
and that means hiking
that thing in the dark.
That one really narrow,
steep section
just definitely turns
my stomach to think about.
- The earth is just falling
away on both sides of you.
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Due to these, like,
extreme, warm temperatures,
we were only comfortable
moving in the mountains,
like, really early in the
morning and late in the day,
'cause in the middle of the day,
that's when things
get really warm
and they become
very avalanche-prone.
- We decided it would be best
to leave camp in the evening,
climb the first half
of the mountain,
have a quick nap at the ridge,
to the final approach.
- We're leaving at 5:00 p.m.,
which is so counterintuitive,
and it's just a matter of time
before you're engulfed
in darkness.
Are we doing this?
- Let's do it.
Here we go.
- Yeah.
- Snow is firmer than expected.
Highest altitude
we've been at yet this trip.
It feels good to be up high.
- Everybody still likes the
look of the right ridge, right?
- We could potentially
cross the schrund
with the debris.
- Okay.
- Being in the mountains
in the dark
is... scary.
You just get this feeling
of, like,
you should not be here
right now.
It's the schrund.
Ooh!
When you cross
the bergschrunds in Alaska...
That's where the glacier
and the mountain meets...
And you gotta cross this crack,
and that's generally
when things get real.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- This ridge is safe, right?
- When in doubt, go right.
May be a good time
to get out one axe.
- Not the trail that gives you
warm and fuzzy feelings.
45-degree slope that's ice,
and if you fall, you're...
yeah, you don't want to fall.
Boot-packing up this slope
that was refrozen
with a bunch of crevasses
on the wrong side of darkness
was by far the sketchiest part
of the day.
You have no idea
what's off the back side.
You don't know if you're
walking onto a corner.
Someone could fall
several thousand feet.
And so you're just gingerly
making those last steps
and hoping that
all your guesses are right.
[boots scraping ice]
- Whoo!
11:30 at night.
Took us about eight hours
to get up here.
- This is gonna be
where I sleep tonight.
Gonna be a little cold,
but we're only here
for, like, four hours,
so just enough time
to get a little shut-eye,
make some water, hydrate again,
and get going
for the main objective.
- That was a good push.
We can see like the outlines
of our surroundings,
but it'll be
an exciting morning.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
When I go on a trip,
it's like I have my family
with me.
And, you know, I don't hide
from that weight,
and I think, if anything,
it makes
for better decision-making.
[chuckles]
That's why
we're so proud of you.
It's the coolest thing
in the world, being a dad.
We're gonna get dropped off
hopefully right here,
and we'll see when we get there,
but we'd probably come in
right... like this.
I've done a lot
of radical snowboarding
in the 15 years
that I've had kids,
and it adds weight to it.
You know, it's not just
about me out there now.
I'm gonna go down on this rock
so I can scope everyone.
Nice!
Oh!
[chuckles]
Butter 3.
Now my kids are in the mountains
and we're in the back country
together,
but we talk real.
That's a no fall zone.
No fall zone means no fall,
or you die.
I don't hide them from that.
I hope to instill in my kids
that life's
this incredible opportunity.
Find things that you become
super passionate about
and, like, go towards that.
We're not gonna be here forever,
and get the most
out of each day.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
[all panting]
- We're moving by 6:00 a.m.
We got to the bootpack
pretty quickly.
That entire next section
was crampons and ice axes.
We knew we were gonna be
facing a lot of variables.
- Hopefully our timing's right.
- This is just...
it's just like disintegrating
underneath me.
- Proper tilt to this thing.
Holds its pitch.
- There's definitely ice
under there.
- Yeah, definitely some ice.
- It's gonna be sketchy
on the way down, huh?
- Oh, yeah.
A little firmer.
- There were some firm spots
back there,
but not this firm.
Definitely some white ice.
A little concerned
about how we were gonna
get down that section
without hitting ice and falling.
Hoping that the temps warm up
just a little bit
so that that snow is edgeable
on my snowboard.
- We're just getting
to the crux.
Once we get off this little
bit, it'll feel way better.
The last 300 or 400 feet
of Bertha,
it's this really narrow strip
that we call the Plank.
- [sighs] So hot.
- Holy shit.
I just went
from everything's fine
to, like, we need to move.
The Plank is, like,
10 feet wide.
On your left side,
you got a bunch of rocks.
On your right side,
you have 5,000 feet of air.
You fall anywhere on that,
there's no rescue.
It's just a recovery mission.
- [groans]
This is real deal.
To come down this?
- Yeah.
- All of Bertha
is a no-fall zone.
Every step you take has to be
a very sure step.
- The snow gets
a little better over here.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- [panting]
Holy shit!
[chuckles]
- Yes.
- Yes!
[singers vocalizing]
♪ ♪
- There's a feeling
you can get late in trips
where you can almost, like,
feel the mountain's breath.
To be able to walk
up these mountains
and to sleep under them...
See every breath of wind
and snowflake.
[stirring music]
♪ ♪
The intimacy that you now have
with the mountain
is so much greater.
These highs are on
a totally different level.
- It makes you feel so small...
But at the same time,
so connected
to everything around you.
You feel like you're standing
on the edge of the Earth.
- It's pretty indescribable,
but you can't forget
that the most dangerous part
is ahead of you.
- The ice
kind of worries me a bit.
- Well, it should.
Even though we climbed the line,
there was so much firm snow
under the surface
that we're like,
how's this gonna ride?
We needed to section it out.
Good in here.
You know, speed is your friend.
And then...
- Mm-hmm.
- Most accidents happen
on the way down.
If one person
goes from top to bottom
and something happens
to the next person,
they're not in a position
to provide any rescue.
And so there was
three very natural points
to stop and regroup.
- [exhales]
Okay.
Yeah, guys.
- Yeah, Elena.
Whoo!
- Whoo!
- Elena drop in three, two, one.
- Whoo!
[tense music pulsing]
♪ ♪
- Snow's edgeable.
Elena clear.
Yeah, Griff.
Whoo!
Nice.
- Whoo!
Yeah, team.
Trending skiers left
along this ridge line,
and then drop and fall line.
- Yeah.
- Watch the rocks on the right.
It's gonna be really exposed.
- Yeah.
- Griffin dropping.
[singer vocalizing]
♪ ♪
- Here the ice
is really grippable,
so you'll have confidence
riding with that.
- So the ice was pretty
edgeable?
- Yeah, for sure.
- That's good news.
[intense music]
♪ ♪
- Whoo!
- Nice, dude.
- [laughs]
- Elena, the ice is edgeable,
but the exposure's no joke.
- Copy that.
- Oh, yeah!
- Whoo!
[laughs]
- Yes, Elena.
- Heck yeah.
- [panting] Thanks.
- Touching the void.
Yeah, we need to, uh...
evaluate.
- You guys wanna try to take
her all the way down, or...
- Whoo.
- Reset?
- Yeah, legs are tired.
- Let's keep this moving.
- Yeah.
- Why don't you guys drop?
I'll bring up the rear.
Link up before those big seracs.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay.
[intense percussive music]
♪ ♪
- Yeah, cut left.
- Griff, snow is good.
- Copy that.
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- Yeah!
I'm gonna kind of ride
more fall line.
- Yeah.
- Okay. Good call.
Yeah, Jer.
- Whoo!
- Yeah!
- Clear to drop?
- Elena, it's rippable.
Give her.
- Copy that.
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- Whoo!
- How fun is that?
- That was fun.
The top part was kinda scary.
- Oh, yeah, for sure.
- [laughs]
- Dude, that is so incredible.
- Just like... surreal.
- Totally.
It's like make believe land.
- Make believe land.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- A lot to be proud of today,
ladies and gentlemen.
- There's really nothing like
climbing a mountain
and standing on top of it.
That feeling
of just complete presence.
Knowing
that you can achieve things
that you may have not
thought possible,
I think,
is like a sense of, like,
courage and freedom.
- Packing up.
Heading to the ocean.
- Really excited
to see my family.
But I will always
remember this place.
- Once you're out here,
you really settle in
to this state of presence
that I think is hard to find
in our everyday lives
just because
there's so many distractions,
and out here,
we're completely
in tune with the mountains
and our surroundings.
You definitely find yourself
feeling like it's home here.
- Skiing something
from the ocean
was something
I'd never done before,
and I think 10,200 feet
would take it
as the longest run of my life.
And knowing that you earned
every single foot
from sea level
is pretty rad to know.
I think that'll make me smile
for the rest of my life.
[laughter, chatter]
- With my snowboard
in the mountains
is where I can kind of go
to this different space,
this real special place.
That's where life feels
the most pure,
the most rich,
the most real to me.
[majestic music]
♪ ♪
[singer vocalizing]
♪ ♪
[bright tone]