Ben Atherton has built a career that proves you don't always have to choose between a conventional profession and an obsession with the mountains. While holding down a traditional career, he carved out opportunities to work at the very highest level of mountain sport, spending years with the Freeride World Tour before becoming involved with the British Ski Mountaineering Team. Along the way he's also become part of the team behind Backdrop Journal, helping tell authentic stories from the backcountry community. In this episode we talk about creating a life that leaves room for adventure, working behind the scenes in elite mountain sports, and why some of the most rewarding careers aren't always the most obvious ones.
Key Takeaways & Insights
Ski mountaineering was ratified for the 2030 Olympics on recording day, Ben says.
The IOC and the International Ski Mountaineering Federation ratified it for the Games in the French Alps. Ben says it was a sort of trial at Milano-Cortina. In 2026 he was on the steering group of the British Ski Mountaineering Team.
Advertising work on Swatch took Ben into freeride films.
In the '90s, in advertising, Ben was partly responsible for the Swatch budget, and media money meant for ads ended up on TV shows, including Freeride, which he thinks ran to 104 episodes on Eurosport. He later answered a British Mountaineering Council advert for a voluntary sponsorship and partnerships role.
The British Ski Mountaineering Team got its first top 30 on a tiny budget.
The British Mountaineering Council gave it a budget and helped with administration, but race registration fees and the rest left next to nothing. The team had 9 elite athletes for 2026 and 2027, and Iain Innes got 27th out of 30. Some athletes were living out of their vans, and Ben's goal was a transport partner.
Ben credits the backcountry boom for new ski mountaineering kit.
An audience of tens of thousands who spend a lot on kit lets Sportiva, Scarpa and Dynafit invest in new products. Ben says many ski mountaineering races go back to the Second World War, when the Alpine countries' mountain troops had their own races. Team manager Tom Burnett compared the sport to cycling, with 'a bit of everything'.
Backdrop, which Ben is part of, makes films and does avalanche awareness on trips.
The crew, mostly splitboarders, about 7 or 8 people with a few skiers allowed in, does a yearly trip to the Val d'Anniviers. Its films have been shortlisted at Banff. At the time of recording, Ben says, a film on the history of snowboarding in Kosovo, funded by the Kosovan Tourist Authority, was about 95% done.
A 2015 heli trip from Terrace, Canada, had no road to walk out to.
A 25-minute heli ride took the group to mountains with no roads at the bottom. Walking out would be 'a massive epic', Ben says, whereas in the Alps you can let gravity help you to somewhere, then thumb a lift to hospital. A bear near camp followed a skin track, and the trip was cut short.
Complete podcast transcript
Hi, and welcome back to A Guide In Life: The Outmap Podcast. Charlie Boscoe here, and today I'm joined by a fellow northwest of Englander. We grew up about half an hour apart from each other. Ben Atherton. And Ben has built a career that proves that you don't always have to choose between a conventional profession and an obsession with the mountains, because while holding down a traditional career, he carved out opportunities to work at the very highest level of mountain sport, including with the Freeride World Tour, before becoming involved with the British Ski Mountaineering team. And along the way, he's also become part of the team behind Backdrop Journal, helping to tell authentic stories from the backcountry community.
0:52 And in this episode, we talk about creating a life that leaves room for adventure, working behind the scenes in elite mountain sports, and why some of the most rewarding options, aren't always the obvious ones. I should warn you, we took quite a few digressions. That's often where the interest lies. So this was a really, really enjoyable chat for me, but we wander all over the place from topics such as which country has the best cheese to the minutiae of climbing in the northwest of England.
1:29 So if you like a rambling, interesting conversation with a guy who has seen a lot of the world and had a lot of very diverse experiences, you will enjoy hearing from Ben. Ben, welcome along. Thank you for joining me. Where are you? A very, very hot London by the sound of things.
Yeah. It's 32, very humid. It was even hotter yesterday, and it's gonna cool down on Saturday. We're all looking forward to it. Yep.
Yeah. London, it does not cope that well with the heat, hey?
It's Britain, isn't it? We're gonna have to get used to a whole new paradigm when it comes to what happens in the summer months.
I know. It's slightly worrying, but hopefully if it cools down to high 20s, that's pretty civilized.
Yeah. Well, I'm thinking there's also an opportunity for people who wanna do new things, I don't know, vineyards in Britain. That's what I'm thinking. There's gotta be new opportunities.
Your fizzy wine, apparently in the UK, is pretty good. You can't call it champagne, but apparently it's pretty good.
Yeah. It's a little-known fact, or maybe it's a well-known fact. I cycle a lot, and I cycle out of here I'm like nine miles in the countryside, and if I go south towards Sevenoaks, that area, is it the North Downs? I don't know.
2:51 You get to south-facing chalk fields that have been bought up by LVMH, so the French, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy group, in the last 10 years, because a lot of the British champagnes, I'm trying to think of names, but I can't think of any off the top of my head, actually beat, famous French names in blind, sparkling wine, contests over the last 10 years.
Oof. Bet that wasn't very well received by the French.
Well, they ended up buying all the land where a lot of this wine was made. So they've seen the way the climate is affecting the way wine is produced, and they've just thought, "Well, there's nothing we can do about this apart from buy up all the English chalk lands."
Yeah. Well, they're on the probably onto something. We all know that Britain's got the best cheese already, but it sounds like Britain's now got the best wine as well.
That's an interesting debate, Charlie. If you have a French guest on, maybe you have, a French English, you know, cheese, to see, you know, how true that statement might be for other, other non-Brits.
Well, it's true in my heart, so.
Yeah. No, no, I'm with you. But, you know, I'm
Agreed
I'm saying the French might disagree.
They might have one or two things to say, but luckily they're not here, so I can just say that it's a fact.
There you go
What's your. I'm hearing an accent that isn't South London.
I'm from Liverpool. Yeah.
Where, whereabouts in Liverpool are you from?
I'm from South Liverpool. None of our listeners are gonna be able to work this out apart from you and me, right? So I'm from a place called Garston in South Liverpool.
Okay. I know what you mean. Yeah. So I grew up just near Ormskirk.
There you go. You're a Wool then, yeah?
Yeah.
Sorry, we're gonna have to explain that as well.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, there could be one or two in-jokes. Are you I mean, the are you red or blue?
I'm a Liverpool fan. Yeah.
Yeah, a Liverpool fan. Okay. Yeah. My family are
And you?
Well, family are all diehard Liverpool, but I ended up with Blackburn.
Well, nothing wrong with that.
No, no. But, if I was gonna cheer for one of the big teams, for sure it's Liverpool, and been to a couple of games and, yeah, it's a pretty special team and,
Yeah. It's very difficult to get into the match. I did manage to go in January. A mate of mine got me a ticket for FA Cup, and I hadn't been to Anfield for like 10 years, and it's just transformed into a very modern and very impressive stadium.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I'm guessing our roots might not be dissimilar. You so you grew up in the northwest. How did you get into kind of outdoor sports and what you're into now?
So I remember going to climb at Huyton Quarry. Do you ever been there?
Yeah, I've been to Huyton Quarry.
Yeah. So I remember skiving off school when I was 16 with a guy called John Retty, who, I think became quite a good climber. I think he moved to America. I haven't seen him since school. And we skived off on a Wednesday afternoon because, obviously, in Britain, Wednesday afternoon was when we did our sports, right, at school. And we got on the train and we went to Huyton Quarry. I also went there with another guy, whose name's gonna come back to in a minute, who you would've heard of.
6:04 And I remember that was the first time I ever climbed and Huyton Quarry was full of syringes and broken bottles, other stuff that doesn't even bear thinking about.
Yeah. So for people who've never experienced Huyton Quarry, let's say it's not Yosemite.
It's not Yosemite. It's bullet sandstone. It's, I don't know, 25 feet tall, and there's these big moon pockets that you have to dino between, right?
Yeah.
And I never really had the bottle to properly dino between them, but I went with a couple of mates who did at the time. Yeah.
And that was your way into that world?
That's how I started, but, like a lot of people, I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people, their family would've got taken into the mountains. So, and, as you know, if you're Liverpool, you can go north to The Lakes, even quicker for you from Ormskirk.
6:48 Or you can go, south and west into North Wales. And North Wales in particular is only like an hour away from South Liverpool. So you can get onto Snowdon in like an hour and a half, or you can run up Moel Famau in 45 minutes.
Yeah.
Go through the tunnel, go down the Wirral, you know, you're over, Queensferry Bridge, and then Moel Famau is now a tourist attraction. It never used to be. I don't know how relevant this is for
No, no.
The listeners, but yeah. So that's how I started. Family, my dad was a big outdoors guy, so we'd go there. My best mate, they had a cottage in North Wales, near Ruthin, and we'd go there and my best mate's brother was a really amazing athlete, and he'd just go, "All right. We've all gotta run up the nearest hill," and go, like, a route, you know?
7:36 And yeah, that was really the environment. And I'd, like I said, had a couple of mates who were into it as well.
Yeah. And actually, joking aside, 'cause Huyton Quarry maybe isn't a world-class climbing destination, but down the A55, North Wales really is a world-class climbing and mountain destination. Certainly for rock climbing.
Yeah. I'm very amateur. It's very important that the listeners know that I'm strictly amateur on all of this. I'm an enthusiast. I never did it to professional level. Although I climb today, very regularly, and I get out and about across Britain and Europe and in the gym. But I'm strictly, strictly average, so I don't want anyone to think, otherwise.
Oh, in the intro, I was telling them about how you were new routing and h-hacking at the business end of comps, and that's all. I said you were One of Britain's best climbers in the intro. We
I think that was a different podcast, Charlie.
Oh, that was it. Sorry, yeah. No, no. But tell me about your career, 'cause from what I understand, the bulk of your career wasn't in the outdoors.
No, not at all. So I'm here 'cause I bumped into Igor, who's the founder of Outmap, because I was reaching out to people who were building products that I was really interested in. So I spent most of my career building products that weren't necessarily related to the outdoors. They were in tech.
9:03 So that's one reason I got to speak to Igor, and I suppose why it's relevant for me to be in this pod. And then a couple of other reasons just for everyone to cover the big, topics is, one, I'm on the steering group of the British Ski Mountaineering Team. Today is a great day because ski mountaineering was ratified by, the IOC and the ISMF, which is the governing body of skimo, to be in the Olympics in the French Alps in 2030, which is awesome.
Wow.
Yeah. It's awesome 'cause so they had it as a sort of trial in Milano-Cortina, and now they're expanding it and really committing to it for 2030. So I'm really chuffed that's happening, so that's the second reason we can dig into that. And then the third reason is I'm part of this crew, and this crew is called Backdrop, and we're a crew of backcountry, mostly splitboarders. We allow some skiers in, like myself.
9:53 And we make films, and we do trips, and we do avalanche awareness on trips. And we're a community that's basically saying to people, if you think about the breadth of people who go into the mountains, there's a bunch of people at the top here who are doing that, high-end stuff.
10:09 The people in the skimo team, for example, right? They're at the top of their game, or there's professionals like yourself who've got qualifications as mountain guides and they're really embedded in that world, and most of their professional environment is in that world. And then there's people at the other end who might spend a week, in Meribel a year, right?
10:27 And I'd say we're in the middle, right? We invest a lot of time in the mountains. Most of us spend maybe a month or two in the mountains every winter, and again, we tend to go back in the summer, spend a lot of time there, and we'll do a combination of backcountry stuff, and we'll do family stuff, and we'll do climbing and walking and scrambling and via ferrata and all that stuff. And we're a community where if you're on that end of you maybe doing one or two weeks and you wanna find people you can go in the mountain with who are a bit more like you then we do trips and we have a community on WhatsApp and other places where people can find an easy entry into how can I teach myself to safely splitboard in, in the backcountry, for example.
Yeah. Okay. There's so much to dig into there. The first thing is just, obviously when unusually, most of the people we speak to here have made a career in the outdoors. You had a career and were into the outdoors. What was combining, a traditional career with a big passion like?
Well, I was quite lucky in the early days 'cause I got to work with Swatch on a Swatch Freeride Tour when that came about in the '90s. So that was my first thing. There's a guy called Bernie Bernthal. I don't know if you've heard of him. Rob Bernthal.
I've heard the name.
He's a really interesting dude, right? He was a pro footballer in Europe, and he got hired by... I don't know if you know the history of Swatch, but it's a really interesting company. It's basically a Lebanese immigrant into Switzerland, and it stands for Swiss Watch, right? Swatch.
11:59 And he would've immigrated to Switzerland, I don't know, let me say '50s or '60s, and his name's Hayek And he basically built this company that became one of the largest, companies in the world in the watch space by scratch. So they own a whole host of other brands as well.
12:15 And their mission was always, I thought, pretty interesting. It was to keep high-quality jobs in Switzerland. It wasn't to create fashion watches. It was about doing something that really supported the community. And they were instrumental in snowboarding really growing from Laax, which is the first place that allowed boarders onto lifts in Europe, and then building the Boardercross Tour and helping the Freeride World Tour grow.
12:42 So I got this amazing opportunity to basically work on their media because I was working in the advertising world at the time. And I got to meet these guys. I felt like I really belong in this space and more embedded in this space.
12:55 And we started making films. So we started making films with the likes of Eurosport. And they were early freeride films. We had a show called Freeride. I think it had 104 episodes on Eurosport back in the '90s. And we were inspired by, oh, there's a couple of guys you might know. I've forgotten their names. You must know them, but some of these really amazing early producers who were just creating stuff from nothing, and they were distributing it somehow on Trans World Sport or those type of platforms.
People like Blizzard of Aahhh's and films like that, like the classic.
Yeah, and it was after Blizzard of Aahhh's. I think Blizzard of Aahhh's was like '87, wasn't it? I'm thinking about people who were full-time producers who were getting deals that were distributed. And you will know these names. I just can't think of them off the top of my head.
Warren Miller, people like that?
No. British and European people.
Oh, man. It's gonna annoy me now.
Yeah. Yeah. I'll find it
All right. Yeah
And I'll dig it out and I'll send it to you. We'll stay in touch, right? So, and then I got to know some of these people, and I thought they were all awesome. And I was in advertising. I was, I was partly responsible for the Swatch budget. I was working on Nike as well. So they were like, "Okay, let's speak to this guy. Let's invite him out." And then we ended up spending all this media money that was supposed to be on ads on basically on creating TV shows, right?
14:06 So it was a huge amount of fun, and we were out all in a Swatch Freeride Tour every winter, and it was just so much of a laugh. And I thought, "This is perfect," 'cause I can get paid a living wage, right? I could potentially even get a mortgage.
14:19 But I can spend all this time working in the Alps. This is magic. And then I was at Orange and Orange sponsored the Brits, for a number of years, so there was a bit more carry on there. So, I've always got this thread of sport, but then I went to other sports as well that I don't need to go into. I lived in Jamaica for a few years and dealt with the, like West Indies cricket team and Fiji rugby and all sorts of other sponsorships. So, but then I was like, "Okay, that's great, but I wanna find a reason to be working back in the mountains." And that's one of the reasons I got in touch with Igor, was to say, "Look, I know something about apps.
14:54 Used to work at Meta on apps, right? I can just help you pro bono do some stuff," right?
Okay.
And that's why I got involved in the Skimo was the BMC was looking for someone for sponsorships and partnerships. And I said, "Look, I've thrown my hat in the ring. Professionally, I've done this work, but I'm equally passionate about the mountains, and I've got some time so I can put these two things together." And I'm super stoked about that journey. I really am. We've got nine elite athletes for '26, '27.
15:19 We've got our, we got our first top 30. So if you remember the journey of Dave Ryding, right?
Yeah.
He got
Britain's first World Cup winner. Ski World Cup.
Exactly. I think he
And from the Northwest, of course. Lived, skied
Yeah, he is actually. He's from close to you.
Well, he learned to ski on Pendle Dry Ski Slope, didn't he?
Which must be really close to Ormskirk, right?
It's about 40 minutes away. But people from places with real mountains, nothing against the British mountains, but people from countries with real mountains probably cannot picture what Pendle Ski Hill looks like. It looks like a big brownie green lump with a strip of white on it, and the strip of white is kind of upturned toothbrushes that people ski on. To think that a World Cup winner was produced there is mind-blowing. I'm sure you learned to ski on one as well. I remember, you fall
I want
And your fingers would go in between the bits and, oh, it was awful.
Do you must have gone to Rawtenstall, right? That's not that far from you.
We're Rossendale. Is that Rossendale?
Yeah. Rossendale, Rawtenstall. Same place.
Yeah, that's where I learned to ski. Ski Rossendale.
Same. And I remember I'd come back. I didn't ski till I was 14, and we went on this coach trip to Austria, and it was like, cost 100 quid all in, right?
Yeah.
This was back in the '80s. I got back and I was on my dad's case like, "You got..." You know, he was just taking me to Rawtenstall or Rossendale all the time. Not all the time, but like a few times. And it was the closest place to Liverpool, and it was probably, what, an hour and 10 minutes away.
16:47 And yeah. So anyway, Dave
Sorry, yeah
Made the
We digress.
Yeah, we digress. The parallel I was gonna draw was the fact that we had this guy, you've described his background perfectly, who ended up being on the podium, top of the podium for an FIS race. I think it was at Kitzbühel a few years ago, and then multiple other podiums, and he'd come from this background. And the parallel I was gonna make is we just had our first, athlete, a guy called Iain Innes, who's a Scottish athlete, who got 27th out of 30 this year in February or March. And we're coming from a background where we can afford, as the British Skimo team, we've got a tiny budget.
17:24 The BMC's supporting us, which is awesome.
The BMC being the British Mountaineering Council.
Correct. Yeah, exactly. And they give us a budget and they help us with all the administrative side, but by the time you pay for race registration fees and all the rest of it, you've got next to nothing left. So, and then we don't have much money for training camps and all the rest of it. So for someone to compete against the Frances and the Italys and the big dogs who go multiple times away a year for training camps and have professional coaching and all the rest of it, that's an amazing trajectory. So me and the rest of the team are super stoked about this possibility to be really competitive at the Olympics in four years' time.
Yeah. That's amazing. I actually watched Iain's video not long ago about him steep skiing in Glencoe.
Well, there you go. So, Iain, it's a small world, right? So yeah, he's one of them, but there are eight other elite athletes we've got there. And yeah, like I say, I'm super stoked about the journey.
So that just happened today, the news about the Olympics?
Yeah, I think people were confident that it would But it hadn't been ratified, and it's released on the IOC site, but it's also released on the ISMF site, which is the, whatever, International Ski Mountaineering Federation, who are the governing body for skimo.
What was it about skiing that gripped you? 'Cause obviously it sounded like you started out climbing and then skiing came into it. Where do your real passions in the mountains lie. Why do you think that they are what they are?
Yeah, it just, I don't know, you grow up in Liverpool, you're seeing North Wales, right? You're seeing Snowdonia, you're seeing a bit of the lakes, but you're not really seeing snow to speak of. Not snow that sticks around for longer than 12 hours, right? Snow is snowball fights, right?
Yeah.
Snow is when you're a kid. And yeah, I just went out and I just thought, "Wow, this is just so beautiful." I was just completely taken by it. I wasn't expecting it. And the sport, like I said, I'm strictly average, but I just love doing it, well, I didn't find it very difficult. And I just loved everything about it. I just loved being out, out and about in the mountains.
And how's that evolved over time? Are you a skimoer yourself or are you a backcountry ski tourer? Which is very different 'cause it's backcountry Tourer is using, in inverted commas, proper skis and focused on the descent as well as the ascent.
Yeah, so I morphed into backcountry. So I got my first pair, I think I bought a pair and then what, crazy, you'd never buy this if you bought this now. I think it was in Argentière in 2008. I bought, I had a pair of Dynastar Mythic Legends, right?
Oh, yeah, I remember them.
Which are quite heavy. And a pair of the Fritschi Freeride where the whole binding comes up, so it's very robust. You know those.
Yeah, yeah. But that was my first pair of touring skis as well, but that was what everyone had. When pin bindings came along it was a revelation.
Yeah. And I've got a funny story about pin bindings. And I just walked out the store and I didn't know where to go, and I just went up to Argentière. And without even knowing where I was going, I went past the Crébry, went past the helicopter and just ended up on the Argentière glacier.
20:33 And then I thought, "Hang on a minute, I'm on my own. There's crevasses. I'd better be a little bit careful." So that was my first day on skins. That was, like, 18 years ago. And then I started persuading my mates. So I've got a really good mate called Romi who's ex-British ski team, and he's strictly boot pack and lift access kind of guy.
20:52 And I persuaded him to come and do, I think it was the Marbrée or something like that, off the back of just before you get to the Dent du Géant. So you're coming up from the Torino hut. I'm sure you've done it many times. And then we did that with someone you probably know, Neil Brodie, if you know who Neil Brodie is.
I know of him, yeah. I'd, I mean, yeah, I know who he is, yeah. A French English guide.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Lives in Cluses. And then started doing more and going onto the Pavillon side and doing more and more on our own. And just really getting into it. And that was mostly because I just thought, for all the reasons everyone else gets into it's so peaceful. You can have huge tracts of mountain all to yourself, you can find the best snow that isn't tracked, and there's the great sense of adventure. And there's a bit of risk involved, which gets your heart racing, and as long as you know how to manage that risk, I'm still here.
21:45 I haven't done anything that stupid. Touch wood. But yeah. And the pin bindings you mentioned. So yeah, the next pair of skis, a pair of DPS's with pins on, and I bought them 'cause I just bizarrely I was skiing in Verbier, I was in Chamonix, 'cause I have a house in Chamonix.
22:03 And I got to the bottom of the, the big train thing, whatever it's called, that goes up from Verbier, the massive kind of
Down in the bottom of the valley.
Oh, not the Châble, but the one from the big, massive kind of it's like they're everywhere now. They didn't used to be around, but it's like a mix between a gondola and a cable car.
Oh, I know the thing you mean. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I thought you meant an actual train. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I don't know what those things are called, but they're everywhere now, right?
Yeah.
In Zermatt there's a big one, and they get a lot of people up the mountain very quickly, and they're very spacious, and they're fast. Anyway, I was coming down there with a mate, and I turned round and behind me was this bloke. I looked at his skis and his ski bindings, and I think he was wearing Scarpas, and I think it was a pair of Elans. And I looked up and it was none other than Glen Plake.
22:47 And yeah, I don't know Glen Plake, so I didn't say hello, but I thought to myself, I watched Blizzard of Aahhh's, which you've obviously talked about religiously. I'm sure you were like me. I was like, "Let's watch Blizzard of Aahhh's again for the 100th time," right?
Exactly.
And I just thought to myself, well, if he can ski on pin then that's more than good enough for me.
Yeah. They're not that's a good point, yeah. The person on top of the skis always matters than the ski. And yeah, but you're right, if Glen Plake can do it, then if they're good enough for Glen Plake, they're probably good enough for you and me.
Exactly. But now I like to ski with an all-mountain ski that's built for all-mountain. So, I have a Line Bacons and I put a Shift on it. And then I also have a 4FRNT Switch that have a Shift on it, which is like an American park ski that's a bit fatter, so you can go everywhere with that as well.
23:39 'Cause I don't mind, it's like, what is it? A few hundred grams more, but you get massive performance benefit on the way down.
Yeah, I've got a pair of Shifts as well. I like them. Did you say you got a house in Chamonix?
Yes.
Whereabouts?
It's by Les Gaillands, it's by the crag. Yeah. Yeah. You probably know it. Most people know it. So people say it's the pink house. You go up the road past the Les Pèlerins Station, it's on the right, and it's pink.
I know exactly which house that is.
Everybody who lives in Chamonix knows that house. And I just found out they're building the headquarters of the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc right next door on the plot.
Okay. Is that gonna be a good or a bad for you, or ambivalent?
Well, France is very good at a lot of things, and one of them is you get the full planning documents with all the architect's drawings. And they send them to you in the post in another country, and they say, "Dear Mr. Atherton, if you don't like this, you have X number of days to complain to the mayor about what's being built next door to you."
Really? Okay.
Yeah. And it looks pretty cool, actually. It's pretty low-slung. It's nice materials. Yeah, it looks great.
Okay. So how much time do you get to spend out there?
Well, I've been out last month. I'm going out next month. It depends what year it is, but in a good year I'll be back and forth quite a lot.
That's a pretty great place to have a house, I gotta say.
Yeah. I got it a long time ago. I first went when I was 19, in 1990 when I was a teenager with probably my best mate, and I remember saying to him then, I'm gonna buy a house here." And it's probably the only thing in my life that I've done that I said I was gonna do.
I bet it's changed a lot in the, in 36 years.
Yeah. I was gonna ask you why you moved, because I've got your... Where is it? So for listeners who don't know, and this is not video, this is an amazingly good book. It's the Chamonix Guide Book, written by Charlie,
Oh, brilliant
With,
With Jack
Jack Geldard. Yeah. I just, yeah. And this is just a fabulous, fabulous guide book. It's a Rockfax book.
Oh, thank you. A loft. Cheque's in the post.
It's got everything. It's got mixed, it's got rock, it's got beautiful photography. The descriptions are fantastic. I've got all the old, the Piola And all the fabulous historical ones as well. But this kind of brings it all together in and really reveals the routes to you. So anyway, that's a plug. I'm
26:04 A plug for you 'cause it is
Thank you
Fabulous, fabulous book. So I was gonna ask you know, why you went from, I was curious, you know, 'cause the people do move. People go to Chamonix for this, it feels like an 8 to 10-year period, and a lot of them move on. What's your story?
I just felt like it had run its course. I went when I was 23. I left when I was 31. It's a pretty formative period of your life, and I think it's a small town and a small valley, and I got the small town itch of like, "I wonder what else is out there?" I mean, you never, I knew when I left you're never gonna live anywhere with that atmosphere and with that density of things to do, but I wanted a little bit more peace. It is busy.
26:50 Is really busy. Wanted a bit more of a real place, 'cause it's slightly like Disneyland, isn't it, in a way? It's like, it's not quite real. So I just felt like it had run its course. Like you're never gonna have done every ski tour or every route, but I just felt like I'd really done the Chamonix experience.
27:10 And yeah, just I was interested in what else was out there. And it's funny, you know, I do, I miss that time of my life, but I don't miss Chamonix that much. It was absolutely brilliant. Don't regret a second of being there, but it had just ran its course.
27:28 And, Yeah, it
And you're in Canada now. You're in the Rockies, is that right?
Yeah. Well, we had five years in Innsbruck after that. Which is
And
Magnificent place, as I'm sure you know.
I have to say, I have been to Innsbruck, and I have skied around there, but I really don't know it that well. I know it's incredibly well-connected. You can get a train to Zurich
Yeah, you can just go anywhere
And just step off.
But I think people underestimate how much is near Innsbruck. There are literally hundreds of mountain huts. Not all high mountain huts like France, either. Lots of low-level ones that you can hike up to with kids. And it's just a very easy place to have nice days out in the mountains. But it's obviously it's not, it's nowhere like Chamonix in terms
And the,
The how hardcore people are. I always say no one in the world has ever said the sentence, "This reminds me of Chamonix." There is nowhere like Chamonix with the intensity of it. I think Drew Tabke, who I'm sure you'll know from the Freeride World Tour, I think he won it in 2012, '11, '12. He said living in Chamonix is like living in an IMAX theater.
28:37 And it really is. Went to Innsbruck after that, and that was great. But yeah, it's not Chamonix.
Yeah, I think there's an element of be careful what you wish for in Chamonix, because the consequences are so significant.
And it's easy to get egged on to do more. And I had some really good friends who didn't make it out of Chamonix, and that was another factor. I just thought, "I think I just wanna go skiing. I don't Carry a rope in my bag and do a rappel and worry about crevasses." And maybe I just wanna go ski some powder and just, I don't need this, basically.
29:14 Yeah. Yeah, you gotta be careful what you wish for in Chamonix. If you try and keep You will come unstuck. There, you got it. Work on your own level. Don't try and be the raddest person there, 'cause you'll get eaten, basically.
Yeah, makes sense. And what were you doing in Innsbruck?
Well, I'm supposed to be interviewing you, but you're very, very kind to give me such a plug for the book and to ask. I was working for the International Climbing Federation doing their commentary. Yeah. I was away a lot. Got to know Innsbruck and Frankfurt Airports pretty well. But when I was there, I was basically free, and then also working at FATMAP, part-time. So, but a lot of free time, so.
29:58 Having a lot of free time in Innsbruck is a very nice position in which to find yourself, so yeah, I had a lovely life there, but Canada now.
I'd like to do the... Sorry, go on.
No, I was gonna say, Canada now and Innsbruck's, but Innsbruck is a place that I would really advise people to spend time, 'cause you've got that lovely European But then you walk 20 minutes from the town center and you're in real mountains. It's great.
Yeah. I was 'cause I've bought AAC insurance in the past and you get the Austrian Alpine For people who don't know it, I wasn't aware of how huge an organization it is. And you mentioned the huts, and that the fact that a lot of them are accessible, they're not necessarily over difficult ground, they're not at massive altitude. You can go if you've got kids, and that's definitely on my bucket list is to do a decent part of Austria.
30:52 Kids are a bit older now, but you know, I think they'd still like to come on those kind of holidays.
If they're anything like every kid I've ever met, they'll never say no to a free holiday. I don't know, whether it's true or not, but I heard that the Deutsche Alpenverein, the DAV, is the fourth largest sporting organization by members in the world. So it's like Barcelona, which is owned by the fans; the Green Bay Packers, which is owned by the fans; some other random thing probably in China; and then the Deutsche Alpenverein, the German Alpine Club. So they are massive organizations.
31:33 Yeah, amazing. Yeah, Austria, I got so much, so much love for Austria and yeah, check it. It's hard, right? You've got a house in Chamonix. It's hard to want to go anywhere else.
Yeah, but why not? I'm sure I can find an excuse one day or another.
Oh, God, maybe I do miss Chamonix. You've got me reminiscing now. But anyway, sorry. We're getting back on track. I love digressions. I've done lots of podcasting and some of my digressions have been, fairly vast, but I always enjoy it. I think it's part of the fun. Yeah, the skimo thing, how did you go from backcountry skier to skimo? 'Cause my perception of it, maybe it's from living in Chamonix, which is a bit of an elitist,
32:22 Elitist town Like,
So I don't do skimo, just to clear that up. I don't do skimo.
But no, it's a bit like skateboarding and rollerblading. You know, there's a bit of a cultural clash there where backcountry skiers see themselves as a bit superior to... Mind you, backcountry skiers see themselves as a bit superior to everyone. But you know, like a bit superior to skimo people. How did you get involved in skimo?
It's really simple. Earlier this year, for some reason, I was pootling around on the BMC site, which never happens, right? I don't know, maybe it was something to do with renewing my insurance, right? 'cause I don't really spend any time there. And I just saw this ad for a steering committee, and they wanted someone to do sponsorships and partnerships, right?
33:06 And I sent an email. I said, "This is my professional experience," and I think that was reasonably compelling, right?
Yeah.
'Cause, you know, I've dealt with a lot of stuff, you know, a lot of events, a lot of stakeholders, blah, blah, blah, like I mentioned earlier in the pod. And the, and that was the kind of like, okay, this is the credibility part of the email. And the other part of the email was simply passion. So I had to say, "I've done this since I was young. I worked at the Swatch Freeride Tour when... I worked at the Boardercross tour when it wasn't in the Olympics." You know, all that kind of stuff, right?
33:36 And there's a thread running through all of this, which is just combining this professional with the passion. And "I know it's a voluntary role, but I'd love to help," and it was that simple. And then there's a guy who runs it called Andy Bryce, who's in the military. He's, he's the chair. He's really great guy. He's a ex-skimo racer himself.
33:52 And extremely knowledgeable and connected and a, you know, excellent chair and has built this kind of steering group around him. I just joined the team then. And also, I can't announce it yet, but we've got a great partner who's, who's gonna supply us with kit.
34:09 Apparel partner. Yeah. And that was my first job that I had to do, that I was tasked with in February. And as of today, we had a great meeting with the athletes. The reason I'm just being a bit secret squirrel about this is 'cause I don't have a contract in writing and I don't have their permission to say this publicly, and it would just
Oh, no, Not at all.
Yeah. I wouldn't want someone to do that to me, so I'm not gonna do it to them. But they are someone we're super happy with who can take us hopefully to the journey to 2030 and be competitive in the sport. So I'm super stoked about that.
34:42 And I'm not at all snobby about these things, right? I'm like yeah, I was doing backcountry skiing a while ago, but I'm like, I do it for my right? Which is just to get away. But also to get away in a gang, which is what the Backdrop thing is about.
34:59 Sometimes on my own, but mostly in a gang. And to get that peace and quiet that you were talking about that's similar to why you left Chamonix. So yeah, there's no conflict for me there. And it's so exciting 'cause this is a new sport, right?
Yeah.
And you have these other federations, the ones that you would expect who are heavily supporting the sport. And we're doing the classic British thing of like bootstrapping it. And volunteers and all these athletes who've come from other disciplines. Most of the athletes have come from other disciplines. Some of them have come from long distance running or UTMB type stuff or different skiing disciplines.
35:41 And we're good at that. We've proven in the Olympics, over the last loads of cycles that we've been able to move people from one sport to another. Admittedly with sports that are way better funded like cycling and rowing, right?
Oh, yeah.
That are, you know, a thousand times better funded. But still, we have this big history as well in fell running and other types of activities. So yeah, we're, we're on this quite exciting journey and I'm just really happy to be part of it. And you know, if I've hopefully I've made some impact already and hopefully I'll be able to make some more impact. I mean, my goal if anyone's listening, right, is I want a transport partner.
36:17 So if you have vans, we'd love a van Right? If you have electric vehicle, we'd love an electric vehicle, right? 'Cause a lot of the athletes are based out of Chamonix. If you have accommodation in the Alps, if you're like a Crystal or someone, we'd love to have some accommodation. We don't have any budget for any of this. Some of the athletes are living out of their vans, literally. Their vans are nice, but some of them have got van life. That's how they get by.
36:38 So anything you can do, if you are listening, any sponsors in the UK or beyond and wanna be part of a really exciting journey, then, hit me up.
Okay. I'm sure it's a pretty compelling case for newly minted Olympic sport. It's amazing really 'cause I remember when I was in Chamonix, so it must've been 2007 when I first got there. Skimo wasn't really a thing. No one wore Lycra and had 60 mil skis. I don't know how narrow they are. I know carbon fiber boots, and it wasn't a thing, and it became a thing very, very quickly.
37:14 It's pretty remarkable really how it we're now talking about it going to the Olympics.
I think we've got backcountry skiing and splitboarding to thank for bringing us an audience of tens of thousands of people who are willing to spend quite a lot of money on kit, which means the R&D budgets of Sportiva and Scarpa and Dynafit and all these guys they can invest in actually building new product.
37:38 Because without that, you wouldn't have these super lightweight Sportiva or Scarpa, or other branded boots. But there's pioneers, aren't There's like Trab, people who've been around for a long Who've been developing and, yeah, it's fantastic. It's all come together. So you've got this tailwind of the backcountry revolution that's really been able to put in that investment to actually allow those athletes to have the kit they need. But you also have the history, as I'm sure you know. You have these races like Patrouille des Glaciers, which for people who don't know is out of Saas-Fee, and it's the one that Alistair Brownlee took part in earlier this year with a crack team. And for those people who don't know, Alistair Brownlee was Olympic, medalist, I think gold medalist, him and his brother, in a triathlon.
38:26 And so you can see this switching from one sport to another and using background in those sports to maybe move into other sports. And so you do have this long history, and I've been looking into this. I didn't really know this myself earlier this year, but a lot of these races go back to the Second World War, when they have the mountain, outfits of the national armies of the Alpine countries, and probably the Nordics as well would have their own races.
38:50 So you do have this history that's outside the ISMF and outside the Olympics and outside this more structured, competitive environment. And the team manager, a guy called Tom Burnett, when he was describing it to me earlier this year, he said, "Think of it like cycling, Ben. You've got your Paris-Roubaix. You've got your Tour de France. You've got your classics one days.
39:08 You've got your gravel racing. You know, you've got a bit of everything."
Yeah. It's a broad church, Long, long may it remain that way. By the way, you should go back and listen to the Outmap podcast with Pyry Hyppölä. He, did. He's this, Finnish skimo champion, so he's in good shape. He did the first continuous traverse of the Lyngen Alps on skis.
39:31 And I don't know if you've been up to Lyngen, but there's a big fjord that splits it, and he swam, like he swam the fjord.
It's, these
But
Crazy Finns
Yeah, I know. But he had a rule. I said to him, "So what? Someone meet you at the edge and drive your skis around?" He goes, "No, I have a rule that whatever I set off with, I have to carry the whole way." So I said to, "You taking a wetsuit?" "No, I'm not going to take a wetsuit." I said, "What?" "You've got to take a wetsuit." So he swam it in his skids.
No.
Yeah, and got out
No way
Got out the far side and carried on ski touring. It's 900 meters. I
That is astonishing
I hate the word unbelievable, but that is the thought of doing, like a 20-hour ski tour and then swimming a kilometer in frozen fjord and then doing another 20 hour ski it's amazing. He did it. But I interviewed him before he did it, and he has, he did do it.
What time of year was that?
I think he did it in May. But I
I thought you but it's still cold in May. I've been up to Lofoten and I've looked over the Lyngen Alps and the Backdrop crew were actually up with, I think, Stranda Snowboards there for some testing, last year and again this year actually.
Yeah. I mean, it's like snow down to the sea
So I've seen them from Lofoten and it just looks like there's a lot of them.
There's a ton of them. Yeah. And the first time I went to Lyngen, it was first week of May and we're skiing to the sea. So it's been below freezing for probably seven, eight months and he's hopping in The fjord would be one or two degrees maybe.
That's incomprehensible to me.
Yeah. I mean, I
That's like caving. It's another thing that I find incomprehensible. That's on the list, same list for me.
Oh, yeah, we're gonna get on just fine. Yeah, honestly, if I get in a hot tub that's not warm enough, I don't like it. Like, this guy's jumping. Yeah, but cave, we agreed on caving. God, I was an outdoor instructor, was my first job in the UK, and I never led them. I'd sometimes be like a competent second doing a bit of rope work, caving days. Geez, I was miserable. I can't believe that's people's hobby.
41:39 Yeah.
Oh, it's astonishing. To make a complete digression, seeing as you allowed them earlier on I went with some mates to climb at a place called Fairy Cave Quarry near Bath earlier last year, and again this year. I don't know if you've heard of it.
No.
It's a limestone quarry. But actually it's called Fairy Cave Quarry because it's a bunch of limestone caves. And we went in, and I wasn't expecting much, but it's like there's a gate. The BMC has a code, so there's not many people in there. It used to be a working quarry, and we thought, "Okay, we'll camp overnight." Got told off in the morning, but we were like, "Well, it wasn't obvious." So you know, there was, you know.
42:16 Anyway, cut a long story short, it was like this beautiful, positive slabs of limestone and crack climbing trad. And then this caver came in the morning, and after telling us off, actually we got on quite well, and we started saying, "What's the history of this place?" And then he said, "You wanna look at the photos?" And it's just unbelievable. Not just what they do, but what it actually looks like inside. 'Cause we were expressing all this kind of climber skepticism, like, "Why would you go under the ground? Why would you go in a confined space? It's all dark, it's dank, it's wet, it's very dangerous." And they'd be like, "Well, have you seen the photos?" And then you'd look at it and you go, "Okay." It's like a cathedral.
42:54 You know? It
So I had a good friend in Innsbruck who was one of the who was a nat geo cave photographer. And I was thinking, I'd like to go and see that. What I don't wanna do is spend six days living underground to see that. If you could just teleport me to that place, then I'm with you. But, yeah.
43:13 Days banging my head in the dark, I just thought, "Nah, I'm good." There's enough beautiful places. But still, see, did you go for a look in the cave?
No. No need.
So had a look at his iPhone pictures.
Exactly. That's enough for me.
Oh, gosh. I'm actually in a windowless room in my house now that I use as a studio, and that's as close to caving as I ever wanna get. It's got a carpet, electric lights, yeah. Drum kit. The other thing I was, yeah, I wanted to ask you about was again, changing tack a little, was Backdrop, the filmmaking.
43:51 Tell me about That sounds a really interesting project.
Yeah, so it's a passion play. There's about seven or eight of us, so I'm gonna shout out some names so that when I tell everybody to listen to this podcast they'll have a shout-out. They'll have a good, good reason to listen. So, it's a passion play. So there's Pete, Pete Coombs, ex-snowboard instructor.
44:10 The kind of guy who's done like 24 seasons in a row when he was in his 20s. You know the kind of guy. You've met this guy. So, and he's a lovely guy. He's a really good mate of mine. There's Zak, who's a filmmaker. He's a commercials filmmaker, makes amazing films. We're just about to release a film. I'll come onto that. I'll go through. There's Zak, there's Marty, there's Andy. They're all split boarders, right?
44:29 And then there's Andy Swan, who's up in Liverpool. He's, ex-military. Also a split boarder. And then there's a couple of skiers who are allowed in, so there's me and this guy Romi, who I mentioned earlier on, and there's another guy who's a really good climber called Will Crick.
44:44 And there's a few other people, like Lou as well, who come along, and she's a skier. But she's injured her knee. So we've all got kids, we've all got families, we've all got some kind of way of getting by. Not many people have got a real job where they go nine to five. People have got these jobs. We've got a BAFTA winner in there, two-time BAFTA winner, in there in Marty.
45:04 So, and it's a passion play. And it's really about that space that I mentioned before, right? Can we find the excuse to spend time together? But can we also create some quite beautiful things in terms of films? There's a film I definitely wanna namecheck in a second.
45:20 And lastly, can we help other people get into the mountains? So we do this yearly trip. We've been up to the Val d'Anniviers for the last two, three years, getting to know the guides there. Doing a weekly trip with lots of proper briefings and avy briefings and education from professionals. And then going out and taking that theory and doing the stuff you're supposed to do with avys. And my experience of avys is the Canadians are probably the leaders globally in...
45:45 One of my mates is a Canadian, guide and we were up in the Kitimat Mountains, actually. That's another story. And there was a bear. That's another story and a film. Which maybe I wouldn't mind actually mentioning as well. So it's about those three things. It's about, it's an excuse for us.
46:03 We wanna create stuff, like films. So our films have been shortlisted at Banff, and other places. And we've got this amazing film coming out that has been funded by the Kosovan Tourist Authority. So they've given us money to make this film. Zak's done most of the filming, but Marty's done filming as well and stills. And it's about the history of snowboarding in Kosovo in the Accursed Mountains. So for those who don't know, I'm sure you do, Charlie, right at the end of the Alpine Arc, going all the way down, into the Balkans is this corner of Kosovo, Macedonia, and North Macedonia, and the third place is Serbia, where you have these mountains called the Accursed Mountains. They're really called that.
46:45 And there's a guy called Super Handa, and he and a mate of his basically created snowboarding culture in Kosovo. And it's really, it's gonna be a fantastic film. There's coverage of the Accursed Mountains, of course, and there's Accursed Mountain, beautiful shots and drone shots and film shots and all sorts of other shots. But really it's a heartfelt story about how this guy overcame the end of the Balkan War and created something quite beautiful in Kosovo.
47:16 And he's a very compelling character. And how he had to fight authority to build this lodge in the middle of nowhere that's, like, two and a half hours on a Ski-Doo. You should go. It's amazing.
I've skied in Kosovo and Macedonia. It's amazing. We skied at Brezovica. And Popova Šapka. I was blown away.
I don't know those places, but yeah.
I thought it was
Did you get a good welcome?
Oh, the people are just fantastic. We were walking around, Pristina, capital of Kosovo. And some guy heard us talking, "Oh, thank you for saving us." 'Cause obviously Britain intervened. And I was thinking, "Well, it wasn't me, mate, but no problem." Brought us... "I must buy you a coffee, and I will show you my city," showed us around. The friendliest, kindest people maybe I've anywhere I've ever been was Kosovo.
48:08 I thought it was fantastic. We also got a free ride in a cat for cat skiing. We were ski touring off the back of Popova Šapka, ski down and saw this cat coming. I said to my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, said, "I'm gonna thumb it." Like, "Let's just put a thumb out-" "... See what he does." He pulls, guy pulls over.
48:27 And he said, "You are ski tourer." I said, "Yeah, we're ski tours." "Oh, You don't pay." So we were cat skiing. It was amazing. Yeah. Sorry.
That's
Fantastic people.
No, no, that's awesome.
They're fantastic
It's great 'cause you just underlined a big theme of my story. Yeah, it's a really special place. And, you know, they need supporting, these guys. It's not, they're not, it's not Val-d'Isère, right?
No.
They're not putting it in at nine euros for a portion of frites. So that's the film, and I'll definitely send that to you once we're done. And I think it's gonna be a really great film.
Yeah. Oh, That's great. And what, Kitimat, I mean, Kitimat, Coastal BC Kitimat.
Yeah, Terrace. Up there. So yeah, in 2015, I'll tell this story. I dunno how long we've got, but I do love this story. My family bore to tears with it, so I'll get a chance to tell someone the story. Do you know Northern Heli Skiing? It's an outfit up
49:26 North of Terrace. Yeah. So we have a guide friend called Owen Day who you may or may not have heard of, and he was guiding for Northern Heli Skiing for years, but he's based in London. These days I think he still does Canada, but he does, Japan, does Iceland, he does all sorts of places.
49:42 And he's a good mate of ours. And he's a sort of honorary member of the Backdrop crew. And that was our first trip, was out there. We did a little trip to Iceland before. I wasn't on that, but it wasn't the whole crew. And so we flew out to Terrace. I'm sure you've been there, right?
I've not been to I always wanted to ski there in Smithers. Never been. I could have left.
Well, they've got an amazing little hill that's like an hour out of Terrace that's a community hill, and they've got a chair from some Austrian resort and a from some Austrian resort, and they have the backcountry the size of Wales.
Yeah, so the scale is so vast. It's
It's insane. So we went out there on a trip. The plan was we spend a week out in the backcountry, on a proper organized trip, which we hadn't really done as a crew before. And it was just a, it was You know, it was a holiday, basically.
50:35 And we were gonna make a film of it and blah, blah, blah, but I'll come onto that in a second because we went out there and we flew from the northern, from the no, actually, we flew from the airport, I think, in Terrace. And it was a 25-minute heli ride, so you can imagine how far that gets you. Pretty much due, due north.
You're in the middle of nowhere.
So, and for those people who don't live in Canada and have grown up in the Alps, we're so used to if anything happens, there's a road at the bottom of every mountain. And Canada, that was the first time I went there and I was like, "There are no roads at the bottom of the vast
No
Of these mountains."
You're just getting further away. Down a valley, yeah.
So the idea of walking out is a massive epic, whereas in the Alps, you can basically let gravity help you to somewhere, then thumb somebody and end up in a hospital if you need to, right? That's the kind
Well, I actually said to someone from the Alps, "Can you think of a single valley of in the Alps..." I lived in the Alps 15 years. "Can you think of a single valley in the Alps that has nothing in it? No hut, no road, no Jeep track, no shepherd's hut, nothing. It's literally empty." And I actually couldn't think of one. I'm sure they exist.
51:52 You're right. In the Alps, if you go downhill, life's probably getting better. You'll be fine.
So we went out there, and we're all really juiced for this. And we got a couple of heli drops. You've done this. We built a snow cave just for the beer, right? That was exciting. And then we built this amazing platform for the canteen, and we had a chef.
52:15 And she was a German woman who moved to Terrace, who was really cool, and she had this amazing Jaguar knife in a holster on the back of her kit, right? And this is end of March, so, and middle
It's cold
Kind of like... Yeah. It's still quite cold and it's middle of grizzly country, obviously, up there. So we set out the camp, and that takes us hours. And then we get up in the morning and we're absolutely stoked because it's knee-deep beautiful pow, right?
52:44 And we get to the top of the mountain, but we split into two teams, there's two guides, right? So there's Owen and there's another Canadian guy who's a really cool guy, actually. Decided to retrain as a guide at the age of 50.
Wow
He's from Squamish. Is that pronouncing it correctly?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Lovely guy. I've forgotten his name, but a lovely, lovely guy. And I was like, "Wow, maybe I should do this." Anyway, cut a long story short, we've just skied this, we've just skinned up and we've gone through the glades and it's literally all time, right? We're like, "This is just ridiculous." And then we start hearing this crackling on the radio on the skin back up to camp. So we're camped at maybe 800 meters, 1,000 meters. And we've already got another 200 meters of vert on top of that, right?
53:25 Because the mountains aren't alpine size. And we hear this crackling on the radio and it's like, "Oh, There's a bear." And we're the group that doesn't see the bear, and we're below camp. And we're just looking at each other going, "Ah, there's a bear. Great, we get to see a bear." "We go to the mountains, we get to see a bear," right? We're so stupid, right?
53:42 So naive. And then the guy's like, lovely guy. He's smiling and he's laughing, and then he goes quiet whilst we're hearing these kind of messages coming through the radio. And then suddenly the atmosphere completely changes and we're like, "Oh, it's not a cuddly bear," right? "It's a bear." So we go back up to camp.
54:01 Takes us like a 25-minute skin. And someone's got it on Strava and it's probably the fastest skin we've ever done. It's brr. And then, the other crew, so there's the other bunch of people in the crew. There's like five or six other guys in the crew plus Owen, the guide. They come into camp and, you could see by the body language something's happened. You must have You would've been
54:20 You were a guide for a long time. You don't even need to speak to people. You can tell by the body language something's happened. And as it turned out, what happened is that they'd started skinning up. We'd woken up a bear in camp. Literally pretty much in camp where
What are the chances?
What are the chances? Yeah. It's the size of Western Europe or whatever up there, right? And then it had followed the skin track.
No.
Yeah, up. And Owen had done all the brave things that you're supposed to do as a guide, like go to the back and banging on the skis and making all the noise, and the bear was just like, "Whatever." And then the bear had started cutting off the corners of the skin track,
54:58 Towards the party, right? And anyway, the stories came tumbling in. Cut a long story short, the bear then ran off into another valley, right? We were totally freaked out. It was like we had a bit of a pow-wow. We're like, "No, we gotta pack up camp, go back to Terrace." And that's just the start of the story, 'cause what happened next is actually the film for which we have quite a lot of coverage that me and Zak, and a few other guys, Romi and Marty, and Andy are all still working on the treatment and a script might look like, and the storyboards.
55:39 'Cause we've got a whole bunch of film. We've got film from a session. We went into a therapy session afterwards, right? And the reason why the you'll know this, being in Canada, there are therapy sessions because a lot of the native Canadians have been introduced to access to drink for the first time in ever.
55:59 And there's no social mores that there are around drinking like there are in Italy. Like, in Italy, it's like they know how to drink, right? 'Cause they've got thousands of years of working out how to drink. Yeah. You have an aperitif, you have a glass of wine. You might have a digestif, that's it. You know how to drink. There's a social taboo around getting hammered, right? So you have this counseling available. So we went to this counseling. It was it's gonna be amazing footage.
56:23 Then we wanted to meet people who knew more about bears. And when you look about Terrace, right, you don't really notice it. You start seeing bears everywhere, 'cause there's sculptures of bears in the streets, and there's, there's a stuffed bear in the airport. And you don't notice them till you've had this bear thing.
56:36 So then we found out that there was a guy called Chief Great Bear who was coming to town, right? And the way we found it out, I don't even remember, but we ended up chasing around town, and we would go to the supermarket. We found out that Great Chief Bear's, like, niece, she worked at the checkout. So we went to the checkout. We found her.
56:54 And we said, "Is Great Chief Bear coming? When's he coming?" And she's like, "I think he's coming next week. Let's stay in touch." And then the manager comes over and goes, "What are you doing? Get out." So we got chucked out of there, and then we went to the bear ranger, who's a guy called Tracy. So there's a bear ranger in Terrace. Obviously you're in Canada, you know all about this, but we don't have them.
57:11 And we interviewed him. And then we eventually found Great Chief Bear, who was staying at the Bear Hotel in Terrace.
Oh, man. This just gets better.
It gets better. And we've got all this coverage. So imagine, you're making a film. You've made films, I'm sure. You've got this jumble of stuff on the floor. You've got some ideas. You've got some treatments. You've got some footage. And that's a kind of passion play that once we've got the Kosovo film out, maybe I should use this as motivation to get back on that project and trying to...
57:38 I'm not the main protagonist. Zak is the main filmmaker, but I can help him on bits and bobs. So that's the next film.
Oh, that's amazing. That is amazing. Oh, it's high on the bucket list, getting up there, by the way. Are you gonna go back?
I'd love to go back. Obviously I've some contacts there. It's a long flight to Vancouver, obviously, and then you get up to Terrace, and it's money. But I do feel like it's unfinished business to just be in that environment.
Yeah. Well, I've been trying to organize a fly-in trip for a while now, 'cause I think that's such a great way of experiencing the mountains. You use the modern technology of the heli to get you in, but then you're on your own after that. I think that's a really fantastic way of exploring.
It was cut short, and then we went... The name of the resort is called Shames. You heard of Shames?
Yeah, yeah. No, I've heard Real Men Ski Shames. Yeah.
Well, the back country, yeah, but the resort itself is just a You Couple of runs. But yeah, so that's. I just wanted to say that 'cause it's a really cool community resort owned by Terrace, owned by the town. And I think they can afford to, like, hire one person, and everyone
58:48 Is a volunteer.
Yeah. It's like this place called Powder King, between Prince George and Fort St. John. Similar thing. One chair, one T, tons of stoked people in the middle of nowhere skiing the best snow in the world. Amazing.
It is great that these places still exist, you know?
Yeah.
And only shouting out Shames because I don't think it'll ever get overrun. If they can just get another 100 people buying a lift pass a year, that would probably help them.
Yeah. Terrace is not suddenly gonna be the next Squamish. I don't think we need to worry about that. Or the next Whistler. But Ben, I've taken up enough of your time, and I really enjoyed just riffing. One of my least structured interviews, and I think that generally is a sign of a good one in my book. I can't, can't stand question and answer. That was a lot of fun, and I'm really psyched to see the movies.
Yeah. I loved it, too. I'll definitely send you the link. I'll see if we can actually send you the rushes to the Kosovo one. I have to ask Zak 'cause he's the main director. But if we can, I could send you that, and it's nearly ready. It's, like, 95% of the way there.
59:59 And it'd be amazing for you to see that 'cause I think you'll really appreciate it, especially given your experience of hitchhiking on a cat.
Yeah. Oh, man. That was one of... You have those trip. We were only there 10 days, but you know when you sometimes have a trip and it just works. Some trips you go on, it's eh, whatever. Just everywhere we went was interesting. Snow was good.
1:00:20 We didn't have any epics. We ended up sleeping in the car. It's like everything just worked, and we just had great day after great day. It was just a really special trip and a special part of the world. So yeah, I'd love to see that.
Awesome
All right. I'll let you go and just starting to cool down now. 7:00 PM at night. I'll let you go and An evening.
Thank you very much, Charlie. Really enjoyed it. And yeah, I'll follow up with the film.
