The following article was originally printed in the October 2024 Issue of Slush. To access the full article click here.
Words by Jeff Pensiero
Photos by Celia Miller
When Torstein Horgmo says, “Jump,” I say, “How many? Who's building them? What's your budget? And who's the crew?” As usual, the Norwegian Uberchiller had all the right answers.
Years back, Tor and I worked together to create some really fun jumps for a project called Light. We built the biggest jumps we could at Baldface above natural (sometimes naturally enhanced) landings and got to film with drone guru Gab Kocher and Tim Manning in some incredible spring conditions. The all-star crew (Iikka Backstrom, Danny Davis, Werni Stock, Jamie Anderson, and Torstein helped to make one of my favorite parts ever filmed at the Lodge. It was an incredible few days, but inevitably it warmed up, and we left the build to slowly melt away as summer won the battle with spring that year.
Torstein and I kept in touch, and we hung out at Natural Selection at Baldface, and he knew we had acquired the new tenure “Valhalla.” The Viking in him couldn’t resist the urge to re-up the ideas from Light in the new zone. We talked about it. He fixated on two critical pieces:
1. A winch cat (A snow cat that anchors via winch cable to a tree, rock, or other anchor, and then uses the tension in the cable to move up and down steep slopes.)
2. Charles Beckinsale. (One of the greatest jump builders of all time)
He wanted to build the features with Charles and one of our park cats mid-season and let it snow on them so they could come back and shoot it all fresh. Epic idea, I thought, but that's a big pull. Real big. Valhalla is massive and much more alpine than Baldface. A way more complicated build for sure, but… I’m not one to say no to complicated builds and projects, so I enthusiastically encouraged Torstein to start finding a way to get the pieces to the puzzle on the table so we could start putting this thing together.
It started on the ground in early February last year. Tor and Mike Ciccarelli showed up with their sleds to scope the terrain. We took a helicopter, grabbed Dustin Lalik and Demian Whitley, and flew the entire tenure (while sampling some very tasty lines along the way). Eventually, we found the zones we wanted to build these jumps in. Let me tell you, between Mikey and Torstein, the definition of “THINK BIG” was expanded considerably in my mind. We followed that scout day up with a few days on the sleds getting our actual feet on the ground, and the stage was set for Charles to show up with his winch cat a week later.
As many can attest, Charles Beckinsale is a beast. Not only can the guy build the best and biggest jumps on the planet—but he can hit them too. We had to pack a lot of the zones and harvest a ton of snow from all over to get him the material he needed to build the jumps so high in the alpine. Thank goodness I had Mac Whillans and a park bully on hand to help with the build. Charles and Mac got to work and built the jumps in one of three zones we selected over the course of a snowy week in February.
The stage was set.
Torstein and Mikey took off for Revelstoke to DOMINATE the Natural Selection Competition, and it snowed like crazy while they were gone. We had to do a bit of avalanche control to ensure the safety of the crew but were ready for their return after the comp. The boys rented a place in town, assembled the crew, and waited for optimum conditions. While waiting of course, we freerode the bejeezus out of the Valhalla tenure...