Interview

The ‘Steep’ Skier

Andrew McLean talks about the new Mark Obenhaus Documentary

(photos courtesy Sony Pictures Classics — All Rights Reserved)

ANDREW MCLEAN IS A CLIMB-UP-AND-SKI-DOWN PURIST with an enviable list of descents that have taken him around the globe to places like Baffin Island, Patagonia, and Iceland. Scenes from Andrew's Iceland expedition appear in the new Mark Obenhaus/Sony Pictures Classics film Steep, a documentary about Big Mountain skiing, and I think it's fair to say they give the film one of its biggest jolts. SierraDescents got a chance to talk to Andrew about Steep, plus we did our best to learn the expedition techniques and secrets that have made him one of North America's most respected ski mountaineers.

SD: Andrew, welcome to the inaugural SierraDescents.com interview. Thank you so much for your time!

AM: You're welcome.

You've been very selective when it comes to appearing in ski movies. How did you become involved in Steep?

AM: The type of skiing I do is generally very remote and hard to film and it's also not very dynamic as far as going down the hillside as fast as possible.

That has had a lot to do with my not appearing in ski films because it just doesn't have a huge public appeal.

But Steep looked at the whole idea of big mountain skiing, and chose different episodes—they have the beginning history with Bill Briggs, the Blizzard of Ahs, and things like that, and I got involved because the type of skiing I do represents one of the specific niches.

I first talked to Mark Obenhaus, and other people that were involved with Peter Jennings's crew.

They were doing research on the whole project and I talked to them for a day, did a little bit of filming, and then we put together a few ideas for a trip that would be representative of the type of skiing I do but that also would be filmable, and that's how we chose to go to Iceland.

Steep introduces the term 'Big Mountain Skiing' to describe a combination of backcountry skiing, heli-skiing, ski mountaineering, and ski extreme. What's your definition of Big Mountain Skiing?

AM: It's not a term I use very often, but I think it fits for Steep because there are all these different elements to it. My definition of Big Mountain Skiing would probably be the same as Steep's: beyond Backcountry.

The term has been growing on me, because it encompasses the higher-risk aspects of the sport without the unwanted associations that the phrase 'Extreme Skiing' has picked up over the years.

AM: Yeah, extreme skiing is kind of a sport unto itself. Extreme skiing used to be purely the French term of it, and Steep has a really good segment on the original French extreme skiers, but then extreme skiing in North America morphed into going straight down big Alaska peaks, and that's really dynamic skiing but its not the true, original idea of extreme skiing.

Shane McConkey was one of the first to come up with the idea of calling it free skiing, which is I think a much better description of that type of skiing.

Along with skiing, "Steep" is a film that very much focuses on people. For me, one of the film's most unexpected pleasures was seeing pieces of myself in the characters who populate Steep. Did you have a similar experience when you watched the film—a feeling of kinship?

AM: Yes. And I think that's one of the real strong points of Steep. I've often though much as I love skiing, if for some reason I was not able to physically go out and ski, the thing I would miss most is all of the people. The characters, the skiers, you know, they're just great people. That's what Steep really captures, the people and the stories behind the skiing, as well as showing some incredible skiing footage.

It's definitely one of the film's strengths. I don't think it would be fair to say this film tells us we're not crazy, but it does say, "Hey, you're not alone, and here is your family."

AM: That's very true! It's very hard to explain to friends and family who are not involved in the sport what the allure is. A lot of people get hurt doing it, there's not a lot of fame or fortune, yet people are very passionate about it. I'm thrilled Steep came along, because if you want to understand what I do and why I enjoy it so much, watch Steep! It says it all.

Another thing Steep features is an extraordinary collection of archival film footage, including as you just mentioned a sequence on the French extremists. How would you contrast what they were doing in the 70's and 80's with state of the art steep skiing today?

AM: Well, what the original French extreme skiers did was amazing. In a very short time they invented a sport and just completely buried the needle and brought it all the way up to skiing some of the steepest stuff that's ever been skied in just a matter of five or six years. The original French extreme skiers in Steep were skiing stuff that's as steep as anything that's been skied today.

Perhaps people have pushed it up a degree or two here or there, but getting beyond sixty degrees for a sustained pitch is really hard. And it has everything to do with finding the right conditions and being patient and finding the right area that will hold that type of snow. I think those guys were true pioneers of the sport, and what they did years ago is still completely valid and respected today.

It's extraordinary that they were doing such remarkable things at such an early phase in the sport's history.

AM: Yeah, and I think that as far as the angle of it or the imagination of the lines that they were skiing, people haven't skied stuff that's much steeper than that, but what people are doing is skiing it maybe a little faster, or a little bit more dramatically, but the angle still is very respectable.

When I saw Steep, I got a huge thrill watching vintage footage of Patrick Vallençant and his peers making fluid turns on 50° faces. These are shots that many of us are going to be watching over and over again at home, in freeze-frame. Your style of ski mountaineers strikes me as a direct extension of that technical, climb-up-and-ski-down tradition. Were they an influence on you?

AM: I would fully agree with that. I learned how to ski at a very small but steep area in the Pacific Northwest named Alpental. It had a lot of steep terrain in it, and for some unknown reason I just really enjoyed skiing steep terrain, grew up skiing steep terrain. I would climb in the summer and then one weekend I would climb on Saturday and then it would start snowing and I'd ski on Sunday and then take up skiing for the rest of the Winter.

Alex Lowe turned me onto the idea of ski mountaineering—climbing up hard stuff, technical climbing, with technical steep skiing, and because of those two interests, I really started looking towards the steeper descents, such as the Grand Teton and what the French Extreme skiers had done and that was what I was interested in. I think things might be different if I was growing up skiing now with what people are skiing and the way that they're skiing now. But those were my early influences—alpinists, and the French extreme skiers.

Were you interested in trying to figure out their technique?

AM: Maybe not so much their specific ski technique...I use very conservative technique for skiing steep slopes. I try to minimize any excessive movements, I don't do any sort of 1-2-3 or smear turns, I just do a solid hop turn, try to keep every turn under control, and I think looking back at the vintage footage in Steep, those guys were kind of doing the same thing.

I was more inspired by what they were skiing, and what they were capable of skiing, rather than their specific style.

When people come out of the theater, one of the first things they're going to be talking about is why anyone would voluntarily expose themselves to such a high degree of risk. Is that a question that keeps you up at night?

AM: It should! I do think about it quite a bit, and the idea of being kept up at night is a good one, because at night I tend to think about worst-case scenarios, but when you go out skiing, you seem to ease into the sport slowly, you climb up stuff, you look at the conditions, you look at the day, and I go into it with an open mind.

If it seems like conditions are good, then I'll ski something, and if I doesn't seem like it will work then I back off. And what I think isn't really shown in a lot of films and even in Steep is that for every successful descent there are probably five or six that were aborted efforts along the way.

As far as being kept up awake at night, I think about it a lot at night, but when I go out and do it during the day, it makes a lot more sense than it does at night.

next: The 'Steep Interview' continues »