Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American science fiction thriller film directed, written, and co-produced by Cameron Crowe. It is an English-language remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes, which was written by Amenábar and Mateo Gil. Penélope Cruz reprises her role from the original film.
Extreme skiing is performed on long, steep slopes in mountainous terrain. The French coined the term 'Le Ski Extreme' in the 1970s. The first practitioners include Swiss skier Sylvain Saudan, who invented the "windshield wiper" turn in the mid-1960s, and in 1967 made the first descents of slopes in the Swiss, French and Italian Alps that were previously considered impossible. Saudan's 'first descent' in America was at Mt. Hood March 3, 1971. Early American practitioners include Bill Briggs, who descended Grand Teton on June 15, 1971. The Frenchmen Patrick Vallençant, Jean-Marc Boivin and Anselme Baud and the Italians Stefano De Benedetti and Toni Valeruz were among those who further developed the art and brought notoriety to the sport in the 1970s and 1980s.
McConkey is an Irish surname. The surname arose in Scotland from the Irish 'Dál Riata' people. Notable people with the surname include:
Ian David McShane is an English actor, producer and director. He is known for his television performances, particularly as the title role in the BBC series Lovejoy (1986–1994), Al Swearengen in Deadwood (2004–2006) and its 2019 film continuation, as well as Mr. Wednesday in American Gods (2017–2021). For the original series of Deadwood, McShane won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama and received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series; for the film, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.
Olympic Valley is an unincorporated community located in Placer County, California northwest of Tahoe City along California State Highway 89 on the banks of the Truckee River near Lake Tahoe. It is home to Palisades Tahoe, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Olympic Valley is the smallest resort area to host the Olympic Winter Games.
Glen Plake is a US National Ski Hall of Fame skier. He grew up in Lake Tahoe, skiing Heavenly Valley. He is known for his appearances in ski films such as Greg Stump's The Blizzard of Aahhhs. Plake has been named a pioneer of extreme skiing in America by ESPN. Glen has been the host of the RSN program Reel Thrills.
Freeskiing, or new school skiing, is a specific type of alpine skiing, which involves tricks, jumps, and terrain park features, such as rails, boxes, jibs, or other obstacles. This form of skiing resulted from the growth of snowboarding combined with the progression of freestyle skiing. "Newschoolers", or those who specifically ski in this style, as opposed to traditional freestylers, freeriders, big mountain skiers, and racers, are often found in terrain parks, which are designed specifically for tricks.
Ski geometry is the shape of the ski. Described in the direction of travel, the front of the ski, typically pointed or rounded, is the tip, the middle is the waist and the rear is the tail. Skis have four aspects that define their basic performance: length, width, sidecut and camber. Skis also differ in more minor ways to address certain niche roles. For instance, skis for moguls are much softer to absorb shocks from the quick and sharp turns of the moguls and skis for powder are much wider to provide more "float" in deeper, softer snow.
Matchstick Productions, also known as MSP Films, is a film production company based in Crested Butte, Colorado that specializes in content creation and expert cinematography. Steve Winter and Murray Wais founded the company in 1992. According to MSP’s website, “Matchstick aims to create entertaining films that not only are stunning visually but on the cutting edge of action sports.”
Scot Schmidt is a professional extreme skier.
Shane McConkey was a professional skier and BASE jumper. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and eventually based himself in Olympic Valley, California. Due to an itinerant childhood, he never identified with a single place, but he was said to have come from Boulder, Colorado. It was from here that he started his professional skiing career. He did so after dropping out of the University of Colorado Boulder to pursue his dreams.
Shane is mainly a masculine given name. It is an anglicized version of the Irish name Seaghán/Seán, which itself is cognate to the name John. Shane comes from the way the name Seán is pronounced in the Ulster dialect of the Irish language, as opposed to Shaun or Shawn.
The Spatula was a ski manufactured by Volant skis from 2001 to 2003. It was the first production ski to feature reverse camber as well as reverse side cut. The ski was initially envisioned by professional freeskier Shane McConkey as early as 1996, and he convinced the company to manufacture the first prototypes in the summer of 2001. The Spatula gained a cult following, and along with its successor the K2 Pontoon (2006), inspired other ski manufacturers to experiment with a variety of camber shapes.
Steep is a 2007 documentary about extreme skiing written and directed by Mark Obenhaus. Steep explores the history of extreme and Big Mountain Skiing, starting with its roots in 1960s and 1970s North America and Europe, with Bill Briggs' now famous first descent of the Grand Teton, and progressing through to the current day sport.
Sean Martin Pettit is a Canadian freeskier born in Ottawa, Ontario. He grew up in Chelsea, Quebec until the age of 7. He now resides in Pemberton, British Columbia.
Tom Wallisch is a professional freeskier.
Ultimate Rush is a 2011/2012 documentary television series produced by the Red Bull Media House in association with Matchstick Productions, and marketed as a combination of stupendous action sports endeavour, coupled with a cinematic-approach to storytelling. Through its wide distribution in the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Denmark, Austria and other territories, the series is evidence of the acceptance of extreme sports into mainstream television, and one of the most complete accounts thereof. The series focuses on the outrageous exploits of some of the best athletes in the world, and how they explore the fine line between extreme sports, philosophy and art. Most of the filming was conducted in the rugged backcountry of British Columbia, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, the French Alps, the Himalayas and the Andes, but not at official events or secured sites.
Louise Harrison McCraw was an American writer and philanthropist. She was the founding director of the Braille Circulating Library of Richmond, Virginia.
Burke Mountain Academy is a full-year private college-preparatory school in the northeastern United States, located in East Burke, Vermont. It educates and trains alpine ski racing athletes on the slopes of adjacent Burke Mountain Ski Area.
Ski-BASE jumping is the recreational sport of skiing at a high speed off of a cliff or mountain and free-falling through the air, using a parachute to descend to the ground, therefore combining the two sports of skiing and BASE jumping. Participants often perform tricks or manoeuvres during the freefall and remove their skis mid-air in order to safely deploy the parachute and land.
