We tend not to use the word “epic” any more, largely thanks to the internet around 2012 turning it into an extremely mundane, widely misapplied un-superlative. This video has some truly epic landscapes though, and we mean that in the completely un-ironic, older sense of the word. When was the last time you got a proper reminder of how vast this planet is? If you divided the surface area of all land on Earth by the number of humans there are, we’d get about a quarter of a square kilometre each. Much of that total land area is wilderness, and there’s plenty on show in this new short film from Red Bull.
Rampage alumni Darren Berrecloth, Wade Simmons, Tyler McCaul and Carson Storch all show some amazing riding amongst the Canadian mountains, not to mention a crash or two. There’s steep, and then there’s continuously steep for many hundreds of metres… you also get to see them dealing with their basecamp almost blowing away in a storm. It’s not the kind of trip that’s ever going to be in reach of many of us, but it feels oddly nice to know that even people with this kind of budget occasionally have to spend a night in a leaky tent (sorry Darren)… not just that, but imagine you can hear icebergs calving nearby too.
At one of their camps, they also get a visit from a First Nations elder to explain some of the history of the region. The Tatshenshini River takes them through First Nations territory in a little bit of British Columbia and a whole load of the Yukon, rafting down a 260Km route, camping at night and spending the days searching out new lines at each spot, supported by a couple of helicopters. Where they were riding is very remote, and while they did have the choppers, if anything had gone seriously wrong it wouldn’t have been a quick trip to the nearest hospital.
The whole film is 44 minutes long and well worth the time.
(No video? Watch it over on Redbull.tv)
