By Curt Schleier

Let’s get to the main point right away:  STEEP is one of the most exciting, heart-in-your-throat, films your likely to see.  Ever.

It is a documentary about extreme skiing, about people so obsessed with a sport that taking a lift to the top of a double black diamond run is not enough.  They physically climb mountains so they can schuss where no one has ever schussed before.  They live life on the edge – figuratively and literally (as skiers know).  And because this is a documentary, there are no computer-generated special effects.  So it makes their death- and gravity-defying runs down mountains with 40% drops even more spectacular.

The footage is unbelievable.  The real heroes here are the cinematographers, who I assume are at least as crazy as the skiers themselves.  While some of the footage is archival, there is a substantial amount of fresh film.  And the camera people have to go to the same places as the skier, ski down a bit, turn around to use their cameras, their backs facing down slope.

There is one especially spectacular scene of a group of skiers unsuccessfully attempting to outrace an avalanche.  No one was seriously hurt there and it looked as though the scene was filmed with a telescopic lens. Still, if I were filming that close to an avalanche I’d be up the next morning looking for wedding and bar mitzvah work.

Extreme skiing started as an outgrowth of the popularity of skiing.  In the 1950s and ‘60s, equipment became better and, thanks to mass production, cheaper, as well.  The first plastic ski boots were manufactured in 1957; the following year, the first Look step-ins came on the market.


Between 1955 and 1965, the number of ski areas in America increased by more than a factor of eight – to 662 from 78.  Grooming and snow making machines extended skiing’s reach further – but they also flattened the experience for many.  We’re a litigious society, so insurance company rules were added about where you could ski and when and how fast.  Early adherents of the sport soon began to look elsewhere to be able to ski with the kind of abandon they once did.

One of them was Bill Briggs.  “I tried to become a normal person and have a normal job, but it didn’t work out,” he told the filmmakers.

Briggs left Dartmouth College in 1953 and pursued two of his passions, mountain climbing and skiing.  He became a legend in 1971 when he was the first person to climb up and ski down Grand Teton Mountain.  Accumulating what is known as first descents became a kind of red badge of courage for extreme skiers. 

“You can either live your life like a lamb or like a lion,” Doug Coombs said, speaking for all the adrenalin junkies. 

“The ultimate paradox is that the closer you come to dying the more alive you feel,” said Eric Pehota, who consistently seems to do the impossible on snow.

When you look at the film, it is way at first to categorize them as people with a death wish.  In fact, they all seem intelligent, understand the dangers of what they do and, except for this obsession, lead relatively normal lives.  Many are married. They run ski –related businesses that give them the financial and time freedom to do what they love doing and very often get sponsorship money, as well. 

You can live a worse life.


Sadly, one young skier dies in a tragic accident off camera shortly after his last interview. He was skiing with friends, one of who seemed to have fallen badly.  In a rush to get to his friend, Doug Coombs slips and goes over a cliff leaving behind his wife and young son.

“I just can’t imagine a better way for Doug to have gone,” someone says, “even though it was too young.”

You can die a worse death.