- 14 hours ago
Travis Rice reflects on the avalanche that catapulted him into the unknown and shares how it has shaped his life....
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00:06Is anyone not ready?
00:09Yeah.
00:12Yeah.
00:14It's going to be sick.
00:19Travis dropping.
00:21Come on.
00:22In five, four, three, two, one.
00:28One.
00:47Holy .
00:58When you're on a quest to redefine what's humanly possible, the line between triumph and tragedy is razor thin.
01:07I'm Jimmy Chin.
01:10From Mount Everest to Antarctica, I've had the privilege of sharing adventures alongside the world's most daring athletes.
01:18In the pivotal moments when life hangs in the balance, what drives the greatest to keep pushing, to stare down
01:28fear, to risk everything?
01:32These are the stories from the edge of the unknown.
01:52Hey guys, I'm moving into position.
02:05Snowboarding is something that I've trained and worked and ridden for so many years.
02:12There's so many little mini breakthroughs.
02:17I, to this day, continue to chase that feeling.
02:23It gives me a sense for living.
02:29Travis Rice is one of the greatest snowboarders of all time.
02:34He's elevated the sport to the world stage through his films and his absolutely outrageous level of riding.
02:46It's incredibly beautiful to watch, but it's hard to understand kind of the scope and the scale of what he's
02:53actually doing.
02:56Travis has been facing both physical and creative risks his entire career.
03:05But there was one moment that made him question how much he was willing to risk.
03:11When he got caught in a massive avalanche in Alaska.
03:24We're in Valdez.
03:26It is 7.35.
03:30Five minutes behind.
03:32Um, bluebird morning.
03:34Got some snow yesterday.
03:36Gonna ride some lines.
03:38Do some flips.
03:40It's gonna be a good day.
03:51I was up in Alaska with my crew working on this film, The Fourth Phase.
03:58I think let's do this wizard thing real quick.
04:01It looks extremely good.
04:07You need a canvas to put your work on.
04:10And the type of art that I like to make demands a very large canvas.
04:15And that is Alaska.
04:21You find snow features in Alaska that you don't find anywhere else in the world.
04:30My first couple trips, I was really scared.
04:34And scared not just on a, I might get hurt, but like there was a death component.
04:40You have cornices on the ridges.
04:42You have crevasses.
04:44There's a lot of big cliffs.
04:46You get out of a helicopter on top of a ridge.
04:50And you look a couple thousand feet down.
04:55And there's an absolute moment of leap of faith.
04:59And then drop in and surrender to the unknown.
05:14Everything in your body is like speed check.
05:17Speed check.
05:18You're going too fast.
05:19Slow down.
05:21Slow down.
05:22And you can't.
05:27You have to just try to override the body's natural ability to protect itself.
05:37Avalanches, of course, are a constant thing that you're thinking and talking about.
05:45I've been skiing in the big mountains for over 25 years.
05:49And I've seen a lot of bad things go down.
05:52If you get caught in an avalanche on a big Alaskan face, you're not stopping until the bottom.
06:01You have control in an avalanche if you have more speed than the snow.
06:08Once you're going the same speed as the snow, you're essentially in the avalanche.
06:13Until then, you're riding on top of it.
06:17Whew.
06:17Just gotta keep fighting for those ones.
06:20The thing cracked, and I just had to get to the side, so...
06:27And so we try to pick terrain that have really big fanned out run outs.
06:33So that if you were in an avalanche, you're not going to be deep.
06:37And a rescue is still possible.
06:41All right, just do a little snow check here.
06:46Okay.
06:49With all these dangers, why put yourself out there?
06:53For me, riding in Alaska, it's the art that I have worked towards for so many years.
06:59And all of the little subtleties and the nuances and the details...
07:02Like, that's where it matters.
07:08Hi, honey.
07:11Some happiness for you.
07:16Travis's brain works slightly different in how he sees the world.
07:21And how connected he is with the natural world around him.
07:28Oh, my gosh, come on.
07:30This is the shot.
07:32Are you kidding me?
07:33Becky Rice was a...
07:36Award-winning downhill skier.
07:39Growing up, Trav has always been creative.
07:42And he's always been a real perfectionist.
07:47He could walk into a room and see the angle of a wall that was slightly off balance and it
07:54really bothered him.
07:56But he just had difficulty in school.
08:00You know, I was told that I had ADHD in middle school.
08:05And, you know, I probably came close to even being kicked out of school.
08:10I ended up getting prescribed Ritalin.
08:15But what I found over time was I lost a bit of creativeness.
08:19You know, I was very robotic.
08:21And so I stopped taking it.
08:26But that's when he discovered snowboarding.
08:34And I would say that that is basically what saved him because he had that focus.
08:43I just fell in love with snowboarding.
08:46It was all I could think about.
08:48There's a physical, emotional, and even spiritual release.
08:52For me, it's art.
08:58Travis can be a little scattered because he just has so much energy.
09:04But when he's snowboarding, it's like he takes that energy and can hyper-focus it and perform the sublime.
09:17Oh, Tempting, voluptuous, beautiful snow.
09:23Watching Travis snowboard is a beautiful thing to witness.
09:30But when you're going into the big mountains, it can all go wrong at any moment.
09:44You might do a little wide circle to go look at that chute.
09:47There's two or three lines that are pretty bad boy.
09:51Then also right over this thing, there's a crevasse gap that actually looks pretty good.
09:56Pretty good.
10:01To ride any type of big mountain terrain is really hard.
10:05But the filmmaking piece ups the complexity quite a bit.
10:12I'd spent three and a half years working on this film.
10:18We are isolated to these opportunistic windows of weather to try to get a couple good days.
10:27And we had been skunked.
10:29We're talking storm for three weeks.
10:33By the time you get a weather window, you've got a full camera crew, probably four different angles, and an
10:40aerial team on standby.
10:47So when Travis is actually standing on top of a 3,000-foot spine line, he has to compartmentalize all
10:53of that pressure from the production.
10:56And then perform as a world-class snowboarder.
10:59The amount of pressure is extraordinary.
11:04Whoo!
11:06Whoo, scary feature!
11:10Scary feature?
11:12Dude, how's this thing?
11:16When we finally got the window to go, there was a component of, this is my chance.
11:22And everything has to go perfectly.
11:33You know, when accidents happen in the mountains, so rarely is it, like, one bad decision that led to that.
11:41Oh, my God, so much snow here.
11:44That's what I feel the most catchy about.
11:47Yeah.
11:48I was up there with Victor De La Rue.
11:50We were trying to make a best-guess assessment of how much new snow we thought there was.
11:56I mean, it seems like the cornice right here is pretty supported, but it has that same look, you know,
12:02where, like, the cornice have been breaking and making the avalanches close to the rocks.
12:09We got there, and the light looked so good, and the face itself was so stunningly sexy.
12:21And oftentimes, I'll strap in and kind of jump on the top and try to get a little bit of
12:25snow to run down the mountain to do a quick assessment of the slope.
12:29Well, in the worst case, you could go check it out.
12:33No, I feel pretty good about it.
12:34Cool.
12:36And this time, because I was so entranced by how pretty the face looked, for the filming, I didn't want
12:44to scuff it up.
12:46You know, had I done that assessment, I would have not gone.
12:54Yeah, dude.
12:58Just commit to the seven.
13:01Just commit to the seven.
13:03All right, Travis, just give me circles when you're ready.
13:07Just commit to the seven.
13:10I wanted to do a backside 720 into the middle of the face, which is inverted, two spins with a
13:19flip.
13:20And then I was going to do two turns, and I was going to exit over like a small cliff,
13:24rider's left.
13:27Almost ready.
13:29Is anyone not ready?
13:48Is anyone not ready?
13:49Is anyone not ready?
13:50Is anyone not ready?
13:54Is anyone not ready?
13:56Travis dropping in five.
13:58Four.
13:59Three.
14:00Two.
14:01One.
14:04Oh.
14:18Holy
15:03Holy
15:18Is anyone of ours on them
16:03Transcription by CastingWords
16:11Transcription by CastingWords
16:36Next, there was a cliff below me, and I didn't want to hit the rock with any part of my
16:41soft body.
16:42And so, really just tried to get in like a kind of backstroke position, keep the nose up, and just
16:49make sure that it's the board that hits a rock going over the cliff.
17:03The minute I went into open air, it was a time dilation experience.
17:12It's just a really excruciatingly long time that you're waiting to hit.
17:21No!
17:22No!
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19:20No!
19:20When I asked him about it, after seeing that, his comment was, it wasn't as bad as it looked.
19:27I think he kept from me whatever feelings he had.
19:35The reality that you're doing something where there is, you know, risk of death.
19:39I think to do it properly, you really have to have that conversation with yourself.
19:50I mean, it's taken me years to have that internal conversation, right?
20:03I learned at the end of the day, nailing the sweetest line of my life against possible
20:11death, no, I don't think it's worth it.
20:16You get a little cavalier with the decisions you make, and for me that day, it was underestimating
20:22how much new snow had fallen, wanting to get the footage, and deciding not to do a quick
20:30assessment of the slope, you know, led to me getting in that avalanche, getting swept over
20:36the cliff.
20:40My recovery took a lot of work.
20:49And then I actually went back up to Alaska.
20:56How are you going to take out speed?
21:01Respectfully, I make decisions differently, but I will never retire.
21:11All right, best of luck.
21:18Travis took in what happened, and then he moved up.
21:22And then the next couple of years, you know, he's still out there charging.
21:29I just have the most respect for Travis, forcing himself to take a deep breath and learn from
21:38this experience.
21:43At the cutting edge of adventure sports, the risks are always there.
21:48But each athlete has to make a very personal decision, and sometimes that shifts.
21:54It's about what they're willing to risk in that moment to achieve their dream.
22:00SOMETIMES
22:04Based on what's in mind, and worth a track, it seems like you have already set y
22:04by minutes, for having to fix this a
22:04After all, I got to start after this event.