As everyone probably knows to get a movie worthy shot these days takes hours/days/weeks of effort. The conditions have to be right for that particular feature, especially a feature as large and high consequence as Chad’s Gap. Spring in snow country is always a gamble, it can be blue bird one day and pounding 20+ inches of snow the next, making it very difficult to plan a shoot and maintain the feature (Chad’s is the most work). Over the past couple days I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of great people behind the scenes especially in the case of chad’s gap, a feature of this much history, you never know who will show up to help out. Though I will not show photos from the actual shoot (don’t hate) in respect of the filmers, photographers and athletes that put so much on the line to produce the high quality video and print each season. I will share pictures of the different perspectives that I was able to capture throughout the past week.
Dan Brisse and BJ Leines waiting for the weather, unfortunately the weather didn’t end up clearing this day and it was BJ’s only window before leaving for another trip (frowny face). I have looked up to that dude forever you should probably watch his video gangs segment before going out to shred.
No matter where you are in the Gulch Mt. Superior is the background fixture that has made so many jumps famous, for the back drop alone makes the shot.
“ah folks this is your captain speaking, if you look below you will see skiing’s most famous gap.”
A couple angles from different days. This one below is from the day after it snowed 20+ inches and the in-run was completely filled in again, dig dig dig. Standing there is Brent Benson, Steve Rosenthal and Tim Durtschi.
I took this 30 second exposure at 6:00 am one morning when I arrived at the jump, it was really a cool experience to watch the sunrise over the gulch. While I was hiking I kept noticing headlamp flickers all the way over on superior in the background, not just one but a few groups of people spread out all over the mountain, dawn patrol for real.
A view from a little bit closer than the last two, you can see Austin standing on the track to give it some perspective.
An in-run perspective.
Dan Brisse usually known for his jib game came out and gave the gap a second look.
Better be conditioned, Brisse shows he’s not scared to hike.
Durtschi has shiny stickers on his helmet.
