[by Brian Hockenstein]

High above the village of Whistler BC, the Horstman Glacier on Blackcomb is a flurry of activity almost every day of the summer, despite the fact that getting there requires three chairlifts and a ride in a school bus. This is mostly due to the handful of ski and snowboard camps that welcome riders from all over the world, the most notable being The Camp of Champions (CoC), owned by none other than snowboard pioneer Ken Achenbach, and the place to find pretty much every pro rider practicing their tricks and stoking out some kids all summer long. It's a fun time for sure, but to really get anything done production-wise, you need to have the keys to the VIP room, so to speak, in this case enough hook-ups and owed favours to get your very own private sunset session after everyone has already left.

Jesmond Dubeau warms up with a lofty seatbelt grab.

On July 14th, Alterna Films, in collaboration with the Voleurz crew, organized just such a session, bringing up a group of riders (and even a few skiers for good measure) to have at it on the biggest jump in the CoC park, a giant gap constructed for the recently held Billabong Ante Up TTR Event. And just to make things even more interesting, Carlo Wein, Alterna owner, brought along two RED One camera's, capable of shooting and incredible 120 frames-per-second in a format and quality level used on feature films in theatres right now, and rarely seen in the action sports arena. Oh yeah, besides the dozen or so cameras shooting all the action on the ground, there was a helicopter to capture all the action from the air, on a RED camera. Did someone say hell yeah?

Alterna riders Chris Dufficy (pulling a 15+ hour day as the Camp of Champs head coach in addition to the shoot), Jesmond Dubeau and Chris Rasman sessioned the hell out of the jump for a solid few hours. Low/highlights included Rasman sketching out on the takeoff and almost sending it off the side of the whole jump, Dufficy's double-backflip-backside 180 and Jesmond's insatiable pursuit of the perfectly landed double-cork something-or-other (hey, I'm turning 30 next week, I can't be expected to actually be able to keep up with this shit). Everyone absolutely killed it and from what I saw on the small review screen, the aerial footage from the shoot will absolutely blow your socks off.

Warren Williams tossing a hilarious, and awesome, super laid-out backflip in the fading light.

It was awesome to see two different crews come together to make an epic session happen, as these things take way more time, prep work and, most of all, money to make happen than I think most people realize. And this was the Voleurz guys' first heli shoot to boot, so that added a whole extra level to the session. Darren Rayner, Voleurz head honcho, was so stoked; it was really awesome to see. Their riders Andrew Jackson, Warren Williams and Braden Dean all also threw down really hard.

Planting myself squarely inside the gap with my ultra-wide in hand for most of the session, I had an incredible view of all the action with the riders and of course the helicopter flying directly over my head. The sheer noise of the helicopter can be overwhelming at times but the rush for anyone involved in one of these shoots never seems to get old.  If there is a cooler toy/tool/whatever in the world than a helicopter, I don't wanna know about it, because I definitely will never be able to afford it.

Bryant shooting on the RED One as the heli flies overhead. Picture the loudest thing you've ever heard, now double it... that's what was going on in my ears when I took this photo.

"Conditions were great, the pilot was amazing and everyone came through with some tricks," said Carlo after the session was done. "This shoot was a last minute thing. I talked to Darren from Voleurz and he had some time available, and I had wanted to do something on the glacier because we haven't shot that much with the new camera we just bought [the RED camera] and we wanted to use it as much as possible, try some high frame-rate stuff. It was surprising how smooth and stable it was. We didn't get any vibrations from the helicopter because the camera has some good weight to it. I don't think we'll have to do anything to it."

Resident Push Video Guy Lenny Rubenovitch and myself were filming video the whole time as well to produce an exclusive Push.ca behind-the-scenes video for you guys, so you won't even have to wait till the movie drops to check out the action. We'll get that to you in the very near future but for now, check out this fresh batch of photos.

All photos: Brian Hockenstein

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Related:
Hello World: A Grouse Park Shoot In May
In The Editing Room with Alterna Films