TERRA 812: Fly Fishing Is A Joke from TERRA on Vimeo.
This film is as much about the insurmountable distance between the camera and the subject as it is about the indefinable draw of fly fishing. This film was compiled in large part from the filmmaker’s library of footage collected over several years making fly fishing oriented films. Produced by Henry Harrison.
TERRA 804: Alpinas Maneras from TERRA on Vimeo.
A short non-fiction film exploring the human experience of international mountaineering. Shadowing a 2009 expedition to the Bolivian Andes with community based non-profit, the Montana Mountaineering Association, this film takes flight with a small team of students and instructors to better understand this cross-cultural experience.
Athabaska in the Cree language translates to “Where There Are Reeds”, a geographic note of these first peoples’ early connection to Lake Athabaska and the surrounding terrain. Keeping with the tradition of pre-school wandering in the Canadian Rockies, join us as we explore glaciers and their significance from the unique perspective of climbing in the high alpine and glaciated environment of the Athabaska Glacier.
Just in time for the spring runoff, Bill Cummings, renegade canoeist from Montpelier, Vermont, arrives to usher in the next greatest trend in river sports . . . canoe-poling. Cummings stands in his canoe. He uses only an inch-thick pole to brave the whitewater. And he goes upstream.
The final installment of “A Dozen More Turns” sees Sam being airlifted to Bozeman hospital at the conclusion of two horrible days on the mountain. His recovery would take 17 days in hospital, 10 painful operations and many months of physical rehabilitation. Many of us love the outdoors and some of us are lucky enough to live in places where we get the best snow, best white water, best walls or best surf. But with this privilege comes the responsibility of treating these natural resources with respect. There is always the risk of something going wrong when you push the boundaries and perhaps the best lesson to be learned from “A Dozen More Turns” is summed up by Sam: “Don’t put yourself in the situation where all of a sudden you’re flirting with the 50/50. If everything goes right it’s going to be great. If everything doesn’t go quite right, it could be really bad”.
After the avalanche took the life of Blake Morstad, it also left Sam Kavanagh hanging on by a thread in very dangerous circumstances. Still deep in the backcountry, Sam was hemorrhaging blood from his mangled leg. With weather conditions remaining unfavorable for rescue, the odds were mounting against his survival. In Part Two, Sam retells the story as it unfolded around him. Also, Doug Chabot of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, first on the scene after the avalanche hit, walks us through the chain of events leading up to the accident. What natural forces triggered the avalanche? What exactly is “buried surface hoar” ? Most importantly, what is “the human element – the stoke of the day,” as Sam calls it, and how can we be aware of it?
“What we see is people with a lot of backcountry experience who understand the science of avalanches, understand why avalanches form, why slopes are dangerous and know what to look for. Yet they still get in trouble. They get hungry for powder and don’t look at the situation objectively. They want to ski the run.” – Doug Chabot (director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center) When five skiers set off to celebrate New Year’s Eve 2005 in the backcountry of Montana’s Centennial Range, no one thought that the trip would take Blake Morstad’s life and leave Sam Kavanagh minus a leg. Camera footage buried during the avalanche was miraculously recovered months after the accident – and out of the ashes of this tragedy came a powerful film. “All of us that watch this movie will see ourselves in it,” Chabot said. “We’ve all made similar mistakes – the difference is we got away with it.”
