Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last two years, you’ve probably heard about Deeper. You’ve probably watched the trailers, and the “unplugged” teasers. And you’ve been chomping at the bit waiting for your chance to see it. Well the wait is over, the premieres are going off around the world, pre-orders have shipped and you can get your own copy now.
Overview:
Teton Gravity Research collaborated with Jeremy Jones to bring us the world’s most epic backcountry snowboarding movie, ever. They do not fail to deliver. Deeper is a documentary about the ultimate adventure. And you will hear the word “gnarly” more times than you would’ve thought possible.
The riding is world-class; the lines are insane, with names like “The Impossible Wall” (Xavier’s line was so gnarly it hurts!) and “The Spine Institute”, the term harrowing doesn’t begin to describe some of these descents.
The soundtrack rocks: Pearl Jam, Fugazi, Jane’s Addiction, and a double-dose of Mastodon. The film clocks in at a little over an hour long, not counting several hours of bonus footage on the second disc so there’s plenty to keep you watching until it actually starts snowing wherever you live or ride.
My take:
If I had to sum it up: never have so few worked so hard for so little. I don’t mean to discount the Herculean efforts that Jones & crew put forth to bring us “Deeper”. And I don’t mean that this film is just footage of dudes camping in tents and hiking steep faces with the occasional descent — it’s got plenty of snowboarding to go around.
Quite the contrary. It’s about context: how much work and waiting goes in to riding just one of those lines, once.
Few of us mere mortals would ever attempt such an odyssey. When you watch these guys, mountaineering their way up insane lines setting up bivy sacks to spend the night on the top of some godforsaken spine in the middle of East Bumf*ck Nowhere just so they can get that one impossible descent in the morning, you’re probably thinking to yourself: there is no way in hell that I’d do that. Most people — even accomplished riders — would be scared and I don’t blame them. Some (i.e., all) of those lines were monstrous.
Consider the first trip to Haines, AK where they went in with 10 days of food and got marooned in a snowstorm and were unable to ride (or replenish their food supplies) for 12 days!
I made my wife, a beginner snowboarder, watch the trailer and she basically said “I do not understand how anyone, anywhere, ever, could think that looks like fun. Why would anyone want to do that? Nothing about that looks ‘fun’.”
Jeremy Jones’ Deeper Trailer – A Snowboard Film from Teton Gravity Research on Vimeo.
Even if you say you’re not scared most most of us will still never leave the comfort of a chairlift or gondola because hiking is hard work and mountaineering is harder still. Oh and it’s incredibly dangerous. But think about it: if you were good enough, strong enough, conditioned enough, experienced enough to ride these lines, wouldn’t you want to? What would stop you?
I think the only thing that would stand in my way is if I didn’t know the payoff was worth the risk. Most of us don’t think it’d be worth it, because we simply can not accurately estimate how incredibly epic that experience will be.
This is what I mean by context. Never have so few worked so hard for so little — but the reward — the reward is worth the risk, the backbreaking, the snowblindness, the days or weeks of boredom and insanity, all the fear and risk.
Jones & the rest of the Deeper crew know it’s worth it, because they gambled and won. They blazed that trail and what’s certain is that their bet paid off big-time. Knowing that it’s worth it is what brings them back.
If you ever thought the payoff wasn’t worth it, Deeper should give you pause to reconsider.
EPIC!!!
