Rail Tail showcases a backcountry rail skiing adventure featuring Mitchell Brower, Tom Wallisch, and Robert Ruud. An original idea by Mitchell Brower, read on below to get Mitchell's first-hand take on what it took to make the edit happen.
Words from Mitchell
The Backcountry rail... If you’re a park skier who enjoys skiing powder, you have probably dreamt of hitting a rail into a powder landing. It's been done before by some notable characters, but it has been years since I have seen it. I decided to wrangle up a crew, and with the support of Line and many other homies, we got to work.
Photo by: Rocko Menzyk
The first item of business was the rail. Years ago, Will Wesson obtained hundreds of feet of HDPE tubing, which has been featured in Traveling Circus, RCFS, and more in the past years. Will was kind enough to loan a couple sections so I could construct a portable rail, capable of being transported by snowmobile in steep, rugged, and remote backcountry areas. After some precarious transportation methods, backyard fabrication, and a bit of trial and error, I had my rail!
The second item of business was transporting the rail. Ryan McElmon reached out to me asking if he could help with any backcountry operations, and i said why yes you can! He, Nate Miceli, and I strapped met at the trailhead and loaded up the sleds.
Photo by: Rocko Menzyk
I strapped the rail onto my MoPros ski rack (like a tail), and it worked surprisingly well. We ripped up the trail with only a few broken straps and such. The rail even stayed on going up the steep and difficult approaches. We finally found ourselves at the top, surprised at how well the operation had gone.
Now that the rail was in location and everything was looking like it would work, I finally felt it appropriate to invite the pretzel kingTM, Tom Wallisch to come and hit it with me. He made time to come hit this rail in the middle of filming his part in Good Company’s “Crecendo”. Norwegian ATV, Robert Rudd also flew in to try his hand in another discipline of skiing. Funny enough, Robert (who had never ridden a snowmobile before) was the hardest and most time consuming item to transport into the zone. On that first day, Tom joked, “Why are we doing this in the hardest zone to get to in utah??”
Photo by: Rocko Menzyk
We set up the first spot and it was time for the first hit: the moment of truth! The rail didn’t break or fall over, so it was on!
We were blessed with new snow every few days, part of the record breaking winter we all experienced last year. We would set up a spot, wait for snow, hit the feature, move the rail to a new spot, and repeat. These were long days, no time to hang out, only a quick lunch break then back to work!
Photo by: Rocko Menzyk
“You don’t realize the time and effort that goes into each trick” This is true for me. But this is not true for Tom, who got all of his tricks on the first or second try. Big thanks to Tom for putting up with us taking too many tries to land our tricks.
Watch the edit and our instagram stories to see what went down.
I was really happy with how the edit turned out and so stoked about all the homies that pitched in to make it happen.
Hope you enjoy the edit!
-Mitchell