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The Otter Body Experience

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Last week, the inimitable Doug Coombs was inducted into the Ski Hall of Fame. To mark the occasion, here’s the Grand Teton ski film that DC, Andrew Chapman, John Griber, Rick Hunt, Doug Workman, and I produced in the spring of 2005. It was accepted into, and shown at, the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 2006.

A few notes: This production was as seat-of-the-pants as it gets. Basically we borrowed some cameras from Wink Inc.., and headed up to the Jackson Hole Mountain Guides high camp, from which Coombs, Workman, and Griber headed up the Grand the next morning, while Rick Hunt, Dan Starr, and I climbed the Teepe Pillar for a “barbie” angle. (Rick climbed the whole route with a heavy, $75,000 high-def camera, and a burly tripod, on his back.) Also, Arden Oksanen and Dan Petrus climbed Disappointment Peak for another angle. Griber did a hell of a job filming the on slope action, while also making the first snowboard descent of the Otter Body, which is a small, steep snowfield, in the shape of an otter, plastered to the Grand’s east face. By the way, Doug is skiing a pair of BD Havocs that he acquired from me; he didn’t have any skis except his usual beefy K2 and Fritschi set up, and wanted to try a light-ski/Dynafit combo. This run, on the Otter Body, was the first run he took on these skis and bindings! (This was Coombs’s third descent of the Otter Body; he made the first with Mark Newcomb in 1997, and his second with Miles Smart on July 4, 2003; this was Workman’s second descent, having skied it with Eric Henderson a week or two before we shot this film.) Finally, the cover photo above shows Doug Workman rapping into the Otterbody Snowfield from the Grand’s upper east face. Though I was the production’s “stills guy,” my photos of the actual ski descent were lame — the top of the Teepe didn’t really provide a good angle. The best photos of the whole thing were Coombs’s, and this is his shot.

We miss you DC, and congrats on the induction into the Hall of Fame. Seems only fitting for the Greatest Skier in the World.

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