“This isn’t it.” I was getting saturated, huddling under a rock with two other sweaty dudes, and in a total whiteout at the top of the continent. The winds were howling.
“What?” yelled Chris.
“I don’t know much about survival,” I shouted back. “But this isn’t it.”
The three of us were hiding under the rock avoiding a lightning storm we found ourselves not under, but in. The big metal rod that made up the bones of our shelter, conveniently placed in the highest point around, didn’t seem like the safest place to be. Now, however, we were getting soaked to the bone.
If lightning doesn’t get us, hypothermia will. What are we doing here? I thought to myself not for the first time this trip. So, what were we doing here? Well, we were chasing the steepest lines Australia has on offer.
The plan was simple: Hit up three of Australia’s steepest backcountry zones, with five days camping at each location, with perfect weather all the time and plenty of time to scope lines, get warmed up and bag rad footage showcasing the Australian backcountry’s untapped potential. That was the plan, anyway. But the thing about adventure filming is that, no matter how much you prepare, Mother Nature always has the final say.
This journey started two years earlier, when my friend Chris Wills and I were in Revelstoke, BC, Canada. We were barely employed and living in a temple of ski bummery—a double-width trailer passed down through multiple generations of ski bums. No two pieces of furniture matched, and the walls were plastered with photos from some of snowboarding and skiing’s greatest moments. We spent most of our time either riding or skiing, or talking about riding or skiing. It had been a long spring, and we’d achieved a lot of our goals. We’d also learnt a lot about how we operated in the mountains, and our skills both uphill and downhill had come a long way.
One afternoon, as I was doom scrolling social media, I saw a post from Mt Hotham. In the background was
