{"id":36028,"date":"2019-11-22T17:26:40","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T00:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=374869"},"modified":"2019-11-22T17:26:40","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T00:26:40","slug":"podcast-tanner-rainville-of-breckenridge-reflects-on-globe-trotting-powder-skiing-that-led-to-powder-poll-nomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/podcast-tanner-rainville-of-breckenridge-reflects-on-globe-trotting-powder-skiing-that-led-to-powder-poll-nomination\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: Tanner Rainville of Breckenridge reflects on globe-trotting powder skiing that led to Powder Poll nomination"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Tanner Rainville of Breckenridge skins in the high Alpine of Switzerland during filming for the ski film “121” last winter.<\/strong>
Courtesy Pally Learmond<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 It\u2019d been a few years since Tanner Rainville of Breckenridge had skied Japan in January. He wasn\u2019t going to let a torso injury, which he later found out was broken ribs, cut short his freeskiing escapades on the snow-saturated rolling hills and iconic birch trees of Japan\u2019s north island of Hokkaido.<\/p>\n

When watching Rainville\u2019s buttery lines through the Hokkaido coastal powder featured in his latest ski film, \u201c121,\u201d you\u2019d never know the 34-year-old Vermont native had gulped down Advil to curb the chest pain. The pain came while Rainville followed fellow Volkl pro skier Ahmet Dadali skiing a limb of one of those famous birch trees. Following Dadali, a layer of snow suddenly crumbled from a half-buried birch tree, throttling Rainville\u2019s torso into the cold, hard wood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe snow was so good I couldn\u2019t not ski,\u201d Rainville said with a smile. \u201cThe last two days, it snowed for 48 hours straight \u2014 4 feet of new snow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even for a lifelong pro skier like Rainville \u2014 a guy who grew up on the slopestyle competition scene and has filmed with Matchstick and Level 1 Productions and Teton Gravity Research \u2014 returning to Japan was a special experience. He\u2019d first been there the year he moved to Breckenridge, in 2007, as a bright-eyed, 22-year-old pro.<\/p>\n

He remembered the one-of-a-kind feel of Hokkaido\u2019s bottomless pow and the natural tree jump-like features the birch branches presented, poking up randomly along a line. But only by putting Volkl skis to snow filming for \u201c121\u201d did the specialness of it come back into perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard not to get chest-deep powder,\u201d Rainville said. \u201cThe snow, it sticks to everything. And your skis hit the layer down below, but you\u2019re going through whatever new snow. It feels like there\u2019s no resistance with a light and amazing quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rainville\u2019s ibuprofen-aided lines in Japan and his high-Alpine freeskiing in Switzerland and Austria earned him a nomination for Powder Magazine\u2019s 20th annual Powder Poll awards.<\/p>\n

The public can vote for Rainville<\/a> through 12:59 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 28, to be one of the top-three skiers honored with a Powder Poll Award. The 20th annual Powder Awards is Dec. 7 at the Hotel Jerome in Aspen.<\/p>\n

For the freeski film veteran, Rainville said he thought the togetherness element of \u201c121\u201d earned him and a couple of his Volkl counterparts nominations for the Powder Poll. The film gathered together Volkl pros from across the globe: Rainville, Dadali, Markus Eder, Paddy Graham, Colter Hinchliffe, Bene Mayr, Hidemitsu Okada, Tom Ritsch and Fabio Studer.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s goal was to ski Japan, Austria and Switzerland as best as they could as a group all while providing feedback on Volkl\u2019s new Revolt 121 powder ski. After last winter\u2019s freeskiing on 121 prototypes, Rainville said the new model features more of a camber underfoot thanks to the athlete input.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are all kind of similar attitudes and have similar views of skiing,\u201d Rainville said. \u201cWe enjoy the same style of skiing, but everyone is slightly different. And it brings different styles to the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole thing was built together.\u201d <\/p>\n

So was the film \u201c121.\u201d At the end of the film\u2019s Japanese sequences \u2014 which are full of butters, 360s, birch tree taps and flips on Hokkaido\u2019s rolling hills \u2014 Rainville and the other Volkl skiers hold up Japanese calligraphy. The letter, translated, reads \u201ctogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

That togetherness shone through last winter in Switzerland. In the high Alpine of the Alps, the crew built backcountry jumps for bigger terrain-park-like tricks. They also scouted those Swiss spines for the best powder lines for the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just awesome to be up there, way up in the mountains, and touring,\u201d Rainville said. \u201cYou\u2019re really feeling pretty small out there. The mountains in the Alps are incredibly large, so it\u2019s pretty cool to pick out this face, hike up it and stare at it the whole way. You really feel like you are connecting with the mountain that way more so than heli skiing or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

In one of those shots, an avalanche triggers under Mayr as he skied over a pocket of somewhat precarious wind loading. Rainville, who had already skied the line, held his breath as Mayr hit 60 miles per hour skiing 600 feet to a flat out and away from the slide. The Volkl crew called it a day after that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe left a lot of things that we wanted to do on the face,\u201d Rainville said. \u201cIt\u2019s just never worth it when you see signs that loud.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Rainville manning the wheel, the crew drove across Europe to surprise Volkl team member Markus Eder at a Freeride World Tour big mountain competition. Eder won it, securing the series championship, for which the team gladly celebrated.<\/p>\n

After all that globe trotting, Rainville does say this: For all that talk of bottomless pow in Japan, in all of his dozen years living here in Summit County, March\u2019s skiing was the closest thing to a January in Japan he\u2019s ever had.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a few days last year,\u201d he said before adding a vital qualifier, \u201cmaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n