If I start writing about the last winter now, some will surely shrug with disappointment and anger. Nevertheless, I would like to take up the vexed topic briefly, as a small moving picture contribution to the subject has just emerged.
The World Cup and Olympic season was just history, when the Nordmanns moved out of Field Production to produce a few delicacies of the ski film together with ski star Aksel Lund Svindal. This time, for mainly pragmatic reasons, the local Northern Alps should be the stage for this. But last winter was relentlessly mild and low in snow compared to the Norwegians, who with Bene Mayr, Asmund Thorsen, and Matthias Haunholder had three other high-calibre players of the gliding wood sport in tow.
Unfortunately, the idea of helicopter-assisted skiing in the Swiss Alps failed due to unsatisfactory snow conditions. So the team quickly turned around and decided to put the classic freeriding a little behind and sniff into the ski mountaineering.
With the Grossglockner, the project manager Bernd K. immediately shook a suitable destination for the group out of his sleeve and went off to Kals in East Tyrol, where our paths finally crossed.
As you know, a film crew does not travel with too light luggage. So the frighteningly expensive cameras, lenses and ”rigs” had to be stored in the backpacks before we started. Inhibited by all sorts of reception slurs and bubble bonding, we finally arrived at sunset at the Stüdlhütte.
Since especially in the film business only the early bird catches the worm, we started the ascent to the summit very early the next morning. A second camera team, however, climbed from Heiligenblut to the Franz Josefs-Höheto film our descent over the Hoffmannskees from the opposite slope.
Despite the windy conditions, we soon reached the upper ”station” under the ”Leitl”, where the difficulties begin. The boys then mastered the steep and sometimes quite exposed summit ridge with a little sloping knees, but nevertheless mastered it confidently. Only Aksel – the information about his presence has spread silent-post-moderately on the mountain – was besieged here and there by photo-greedy fans on the edge of the abyss. Happy and rightly a little proud, we all stood on the roof of Austria a little later!
The descent, on the other hand, again showed its grim side. The original line over the demanding ”Lammer Eisfeld” directly down to the Pasterze we put over the knee-high windgfishing ad acta. But even over the Hoffmannskees, in rather harsh snow conditions rather than great joy, a shaking trauma arose. However, this did not prevent the cameraman from taking the 150 thousand Euro camera in his hand and heating it backwards down the glacier. The expert rests in himself and does not seem to be intimidated by expensive equipment.
With the wise realization that film crews are not only driving in powder, we finally trudged into Heiligenblut after several hours of pushing across the Glocknerstraße. A little drawn by the strains, the boys finally admitted that they will probably approach the remaining two to three days rather a little quieter: ”Post Production” is probably called this.
The video for the just described: CLICK HERE 4 VIDEO!
