Wendy Fisher in Crested Butte. Photo by Chris Segal courtesy of Warren Miller Entertainment.
By Helen Olsson
When Colorado skiers go to the annual Warren Miller movie, inevitably the cheers for our hometown hills are the most enthusiastic. I had a chance to get a sneak peek of this years Warren Miller flick, Here, There & Everywhere, which features a segment filmed in Crested Butte with incredible ski mama Wendy Fisher. The Olympian and longtime big mountain skier shows a 7-month pregnant Ingrid Backstrom around the mountain.
The two prove that motherhood and being a ripping skier are by no means mutually exclusive. In the movie, Fisher charges down Crested Butte’s famously extreme terrain and then heads to the frontside to go head-to-head in a dual racecourse against her 9-year-old son, Aksel. The Crested Butte segment also features halfpipe skier and Olympian Aaron Blunck, a third-generation CB local, who ends the segment with a milk down Robels, a trail named for his grandpa.
Here, There & Everywhere also features a segment shot in Steamboat with Olympian Daron Rahlves. As a big fan of Rahlves and of ski racing, I wish there had been more footage of him and a little less pond skimming, but undoubtedly moviegoers will love the springtime revelry and movies perennial dose of humor. You cant really argue with a skier dressed in a blow-up sumo costume skimming across a pond of frigid water and crashing righteously.
Heres a look at other Colorado segments from Warren Miller movies past:
A-Basins annual Cardboard Downhill Derby makes for classic Warren Miller-style humor. The crafts are elaborate, the costumes priceless. Teams spend hours making crafts entirely from cardboard all for the purpose of crashing them in 20 seconds or less, the narrator explains. The Energizer Bunny keeps going and goinguntil it doesnt. And the yellow submarine goes down quickly. It wasnt Warren narrating, but the commentator offers great one liners. Oh, the humanity.
Chris Davenport and the Warren Miller film crew head for The San Juan Mountains, home to 14 peaks that reach over 14,000 feet and to Telluride mountain. Jagged peaks, blue skies, and steep descents are the draw.
The 2013 Warren Miller movie, Ticket to Ride, hails the virtues of skiing and riding at Aspen, with footage of spectacular tree skiing and high-flying tricks starring athletes Chris Davenport, Gretchen Bleiler, Peter Olenick and Aidan Sheahan.
In this Steamboat segment from the 2015 Warren Miller movie, pro skier Chris Anthony wears cowboy hat and chaps and ropes a goat and then hits a bump-riddled dual slalom racecourse, still in his chaps.
For more on the ritual of the annual ski movies, see our blogpost Movie Night.
Helen Olsson is the author of The Down & Dirty Guide to Camping with Kids. She blogs about outdoor adventures with kids at maddogmom.com.
