Steep

Introduction

I went skiing once, to the Bavarian Alps with my Forces school (John Buchan Middle School, Sennelager) when I was 12. After a couple of days I was traversing down one of the beginner slopes (we pretended at the time that it was an intermediate and that we were ace skiers) nonchalantly and hit a patch of grass. My 'expert' skiing swiftly came to a halt as I lost my balance and rolled part way down the slope, coming to a halt with a sprained ankle. I had to sit out the rest of the week's skiing and spent the rest of the week in the company of one of the female teachers in local café's. What a life, the other boys were quite jealous.

I suspect that without that tumble I might well have gotten into skiing a bit more, I had the opportunities with British Forces schools and then with the British Army but never attempted to go for it again. I also have to say that I've never been interested in extreme sports and the adrenaline rush that seems to push these sportsmen (and women) to greater extremes. Steep therefore seems at face value a strange choice for me to volunteer to review, but then I knew it was going to be a documentary rather than a ski flick and would thus give me more of an insight into the sport and motivations rather than just endless skiing shots.

Steep does indeed have many 'show-off' shots of some impressive runs and tricks, particularly at the end with the base jumping skier Scott Schmidt, but it focuses more on the history of the sport and the main innovators of the extreme skiing rather than just going for the glory shots all the time. This makes it a quite interesting experience and a visually attractive one as well. It's obvious that this is a sport for the rich, some openly state that they tried to get a job and have a normal life but just couldn't cope with it, and then went off back to the mountains again. Not everyone can afford to hire helicopters to carry them to the top of mountains either or move to Alaska for a couple of years to ski off all the mountains. I don't hold that against them though.



There's a lot of cod philosophy amongst the extreme skiers, who all talk about losing a lot of friends but outweigh the enormous risks with the adrenaline rush of skiing the impossible, even just once. What brought this home was the realisation after a lot of interview footage from Doug Coombs and wife Emily that Doug had actually died on the mountains. That he died trying to rescue a friend at least adds some meaning to it all, but everyone including his wife seems to accept that at least he went out doing what he loved. On the other hand, you also had one of the American pioneers in Bill Briggs still giving interviews when he must be in his 60's or 70's by now.

Visually impressive and a solid insight into one of the extremist of sports.

Visuals

Some absolutely stunning photography from Erich Roland with some frankly gorgeous shots of the main mountainous regions covered in this film. As you would expect, there is a mass of helicopter shots but also a large amount of close steadicam shots to get you as close as you feel you need to be to the action.

Extras

Blizzard of Aahhh's - full original film included as an extra on the second disc in this set with a superb soundtrack that was produced in conjunction with ZTT so we get tracks by Act, Propaganda and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. BoA showcases the extreme skiing talents of Scott Schmidt, Glen Plake and Mike Hattrup as they do their stuff in Chamonix, France.