Winter Park resident Trevor Kennison’s life changed forever, when he took a 40-foot jump in Vail’s backcountry and caught an edge. He crashed on his back, forced to wait paralyzed for hours in a blizzard until first responders arrived to save him. He arrived at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital to undergo the rigorous journey of physical therapy.
Decades before Kennison arrived at the hospital, an athlete and outdoor filmmaker named Barry Corbet also underwent physical therapy there. Many ski and snowboard enthusiasts know Corbert by his namesake – Corbert’s Couloir near Jackson Hole Resort. He gained fame when he first viewed the steep drop and declared – “someday, someone will ski that” – then did just that.
However, not everyone knows that Corbert himself suffered a spinal cord injury in 1968, rendering him paralyzed from the waist down. Corbert went on to champion advancements in the spinal cord injured community, serving as an example for adaptive athletes like Kennison. After his Vail accident, Kennison wasn’t able to walk again. But he discovered sit skiing, allowing him freedom through snow and up mountains.
Film director Josh Berman of Level 1 Productions initially set out to tell only Kennison’s story in the documentary “Full Circle.” The film recently showed at the Foundry Cinema & Bowl in Fraser. During the film-making process, Berman followed Kennison as he stretched the limits of sit skiing. One of Kennison’s greatest’s milestones was being one of the first sit skiers to drop into Corbet’s Couloir.
Berman chronicled Kennison as he took the leap between cliffs and successfully made it to the bottom of the chute. Then Berman learned that the couloir’s namesake blazed the trail that Kennison followed. That’s when the film expanded into something greater.
“Full Circle follows Trevor on a path towards post-traumatic growth in parallel with Barry, 50 years later,” Level 1 Productions writes on their website. “Their stories mirror each other, connected through time and space by common locations and motifs; injuries in the Colorado backcountry, rehab at Craig Hospital, fame in Jackson Hole; but also, through their shared resiliency and refusal to let their passion for life be limited by their injuries.”
This November, Kennison and Berman celebrated a showing of “Full Circle” in Fraser. Both men attended the showing for a Q&A, where audience members completely filled the theater. The audience commiserated with his struggles post-accident, and cheered and clapped for his victories.
The film is being shown around the country, but Kennison was most excited to bring the film to his home turf of Grand County, where his friends and fans could watch the film with him. Kennison is originally from New Hampshire, but after his accident, he moved to Winter Park to train with the National Sports Center for the Disabled. The film also documents Kennison’s growth at Winter Park Resort, from tackling small jumps, to flipping and hitting gap rails. Much of this is in preparation for his greatest feat – completing a double backflip in his sit ski.
“Barry shows that growth after spinal cord injury is possible for everyone, not just adaptive athletes. And yet his legacy paves the way for Trevor’s superhuman feats,” Level 1 writes. “Six years after his accident, Trevor returns to the site of his life-changing accident in the Colorado backcountry with the goal of landing the world’s first double backflip on a sit-ski – the culmination of his own personal growth and reinvention.”
“Full Circle” speaks to many people, from adaptive athletes, to recreational skiers, to individuals who have just experienced a spinal cord injury and are forging a new path through life.
The film culminates with a narration of Corbet’s owns words, from his groundbreaking book, “Options: Spinal Cord Injury and the Future.”
Corbet explains that life will not “become easier,” or “the choices simpler” for individuals with parapalegia, at a time when few resources existed for them.
“I do want to tell you that this monumental inconvenience can be lived through, lived with, loved with, laughed with, surmounted, shared, transcended, and that you have not been deprived of choice,” Corbert writes. “You do have a lot of options. You can be OK if you choose to be OK. The future, however unfathomable, is yours.”
Kennison chose to be OK – or even better than “OK.” Formerly, he was just an average snowboarder. Since his accident, he has performed feats that very few athletes have, including those who are not disabled. Proof that people can come “Full Circle.”