Outdoors/Adventure

'Most insane ski line ever' pierces vertical chasm in Alaska's Tordrillo Mountains

The camera-wielding owners and athletes behind Crested Butte's Matchstick Productions had been eyeing a line in Alaska's Tordrillo Mountains for years.

Last winter, snow conditions were perfect in the mountain range 75 miles northwest of Anchorage that includes volcanic Mount Spurr and 11,413-foot Mount Torbert, and the crew put the line on the to-do list. Professional skier Cody Townsend stepped up and dropped into the ridiculously narrow chasm, plummeting more than 2,000 vertical feet through a cliff-lined choke that seems too tight. The 31-year-old skier's segment in MSP's "Days of My Youth" is storming the Internet, with more than a million views and Townsend's debut on ESPN's SportsCenter. Stories appeared nationwide, including this one in The Denver Post.

MSP co-founder Murray Wais was behind the camera in the helicopter hovering above the dark funnel of snow and rock. He had full trust in Townsend, but the line was sketchy. He worried about barely covered rocks in the gorge.

"If you hit those rocks, it would be all over," Wais said. "No one else dropped into it. Just Cody. In all honesty, there was quite a bit of danger but it was still straightforward. If you just went for it, it would be all good. He just had to go straight."

Wais wasn't overwhelmed with the footage he captured from the helicopter. Then he watched the POV footage from Townsend's helmet-mounted GoPro.

"We knew that was one of the most special POV shots ever captured, that's for sure," Wais said. "So unique, so fast, so gutsy."

While it's impressive that Townsend even dropped into the precipitous, committing line, the skier's bold high-speed check turns in the choke -- a span mere feet wide -- are downright heroic.

ADVERTISEMENT

The segment earned Townsend "Line of the Year" award and fueled his "Best Male Performance" nod at the 15th annual Powder Magazine Video Awards earlier this month in Utah.

Wais and MSP partner Steve Winter ignited the "Dayum, Cody rips" stoke by releasing the 90-second clip of the daring descent, appropriately titling the segment "Most insane ski line EVER."

In two days, the video harvested more than 1.1 million views, with countless posts linking to the YouTube segment.

"I didn't expect this at all. It has gone everywhere so fast," Wais said. "I knew it was cool and I knew it was unique, but I didn't think that it would become this thing that it has over the last 48 hours."

Jason Blevins is a reporter for The Denver Post, where this story originally appeared.

ADVERTISEMENT