Speed riding: Extreme skiing in the sky | INDIE ALASKA

Pretty much from the dawn of time, man has dreamed of flying.

At this point, it's as easy as getting the canopy and running off a mountain.

When I fall asleep and I have a skiing dream it's like I'm skiing around and then I just jump off something and I go like 500 feet; and that's literally now like what we're doing.

So it's like living my dream.

The sport is like categorized in like two disciplines they call speed flying and speed flying is like in the summer and that's off your feet.

Where you're like running off a mountain.

And then speed riding is with skis.

It's like a total zen moment.

You're like up in the air, your legs are dangling, but like you don't feel scared you just get this bliss feeling and that just like blew me away and it was a feeling I like couldn't ignore.

You know, I was pretty heavily into skiing and I really like skiing spines and stuff.

Just like a nice clean edge that was like steep down the mountain.

And for you to ski that it has to be like perfect avvy conditions and good weather and good snow conditions but then as a speed rider every mountain now is appealing and you can ride everything.

(Okay are we ready?

All right) Probably like my first hundred flights I'd be in the takeoff and I would like get shakes.

It's pretty much like once you land then you're like whoa, you know?

And then it all hits you and you're like yeah let's do it again!

So I grew up in Anchorage out of high school I was just like I'm just gonna ski bum it.

At that point I started commercial fishing and I was really lucky and still am lucky that I was able to make enough monies commercial fishing to kind of just like dirt bag it through the winter, you know, and and follow my passion.

We live in one of the best environments to play in the mountains you know?

Our tree line's so low so most of the mountains are really open and then our access to the mountains that we can just get so many laps in.

So it's probably the best spot in the U.S.

Speed flying, especially in Alaska, is something that you know maybe your friend did over there and maybe you know some people who did it but we're all starting to kind of come together... like 'oh you speed fly?

Oh you speed fly too?

Oh we should go out together!'

And Josh has been key in kind of making that happen.

Yeah he makes you think that...he's like 'oh dude you got this, you're going to get down no problem.'

Yeah, very motivating very confident in your abilities even if you're not confident in them.

Yeah a lot of the people there, I had given them their first flight.

He's a really talented person in the community so he's a great person to learn from.

I crashed.

But it was fine.

and I haven't done too many since then but I've done enough to where I want to buy a wing (laughs).

(Yeah dude) But I just think it is like a really cool thing to like give people that experience of flight.

(All right you start us off.

One, two, three...) You have time to get your wing overhead and then once you know your wings overhead and it's fully inflated and then it's just like kind of all the worries out the window you just point it downhill until you take off.

You do have moments where you like maybe you're flying and oh you did something cool and then then you get the release like YEAHH!

Yeah it makes you feel alive.

I did it for one season kind of not like half-heartedly but I was still like really obsessed with skiing at that point.

but it wasn't really till uh I got hip surgery a couple years ago and then since then skiing just hasn't really felt that great and so then i just focused all my energy into speed flying and as soon as I figured out like how to ski with the wing that's when my passion just exploded with it.

and I love being out in the mountains and it was just like another way to interact with the mountains.

I'm not gonna like look back when I'm old and be like 'dang it, I should have worked more' you know?

like I'm not gonna be like 'I regret playing in the mountains that whole time and having the best time of my life.'

I had a friend ask me the other day she's like 'well do you get bored in the winter, not working you know?

I was like well I got snow machines, I got skis, I got snowboards, I got speed wings... if I'm bored, I'm doing something wrong.