Banff ski teams have long bemoaned the recent dearth of homegrown world cup ski racers from what was once a productive hub.
Jan Hudec, Erik Read and Trevor Philp still maintain ties to the Bow Valley, but the reality is many of Banff’s best skiers have traded in their speed suits for big lines and GoPros.
Instead of hours chasing milliseconds on frozen slopes, big mountain skiers are following the lines forged by ski pioneers, and finding a few of their own as well.
Noah Maisonet may be the only man on the planet who has co-starred in a ski film alongside his mom and 88-year-old grandfather. He and Banff legend Eddie Hunter got the opportunity to ski together in Sherpa Cinema’s films showcasing the local mountains, which became an instant hit.
“I had an amazing experience filming with Sherpa Cinema in early April this season at Mt. Norquay with my mother and grandfather (Hunter). I got to shred under a helicopter alongside my grandpa and ski terrain I have been dreaming about for years,” Maisonet said.
(That may have included catching air off of the Norquay teahouse, but you’ll have to watch the Sculpted in Time film to find out.)
The film garnered Maisonet international attention to the point where he’s currently bound for Japan to ski the untouched slopes of the land of the rising sun. As a teenager, he won big mountain comps on nearly every mountain he tried, was nominated as Banff Mountain Film Festival Mountain Idol in 2011 and finished second at the 2014 Lake Louise Big Mountain Challenge. On film, his career is just beginning.
Garrett Capel, 17, is one of the Bow Valley’s dirty dozen shredders with Rocky Mountain Freeriders. He first started skiing at Mount Norquay at the age of two, shot his first home ski movie at 12 and rose to prominence with his older brother Keegan shooting at Lake Louise. Keegan is also appearing in Sherpa Cinemas films, while his younger brother is finishing high school.
“Skiing with Keegan is definitely why I kept going and how I got good. I followed him around and his older friends, watching and trying what they could do,” Capel said.
But it was a junior free ski competition at Crystal Mountain, Washington where he got hooked.
“Myself, my dad and my brother had to hike up to the top of Silver King Peak to get the the venue for the finals on Day 2. Midway up the peak, we started to get winds measuring up to 100 km/h, which almost blew my 80 pound self off the ridge. I had to strap my skis to my pack and crawl the rest of the way up, which I was stoked on because it felt like I was on some crazy expedition.
“Hiking the rest of the way was rough, but once I got there, I remembered that we had gotten nearly three feet of snow overnight and shredding that all the way down made me forget about the hike up,” Capel said.
In Big Mountain competitions, he reached the podium twice last year, finishing third in the Lake Louise Junior Big Mountain Challenge and the Whitewater Junior Freeski open. He also nabbed a fifth-place finish at the Kicking Horse junior freeski competition, and has sponsors tracking him down.
This year, he’s targeting Big Mountain competitions at Fernie, Whitewater, Lake Louise and Kicking Horse. Competitions are fun, he said, but it’s all about freedom for Capel.
“There are so many things you can do with skiing. You can focus on park technique. I just want to focus on being an all-around skier,” Capel said. “It’s super fun. We’re serious when we compete, but you’ve always got a crew of cool people to ski around with. There’s a huge group of us, 12 of us skiing fast.”
Watching his brother got him far in the sport, but skiing with the Rocky Mountain Free Riders took his skills to the next level.
“You can do whatever you want. With Rocky Mountain Freeriders, you get there at nine, decide what to ski and go. Ski racing is more structured, but we still do drills, work on body position and technique. So far, I’ve had no major injuries,” Capel said.
Along with Pat Brown, Alex Barrett, Ryan Statham and a host of others, Capel will create several ski webisodes to air on his vimeo channel over the ski season. He’s got support from Monods and the talent to pull it off.
“Pat is a good filmmaker. We all made season edits and thought it would be cool this year to film a lot each month, and put out a webisode every month,” Capel said. “It depends on conditions and it’s quite a bit of work. A two-second clip could take five takes, and there’s the time setting it up.”
A Grade 12 student at Banff Community High School, Capel says his best trick so far is a Cork 7 and he’d love to tour the globe shredding mountains and making films.
“That would be super cool. You have to do what you love. It would also be cool to get into the business side of things, testing gear …” Capel said.
