Progression in extreme sports is always a journey. You think you have reached your plateau and yet you arrive at another mountain. I guess we chase the thrill of summiting the mountain and secretly hope the next mountain challenges us even more. Are we all chasing our potential? Sometimes, yes. Other times, the hike, assessment of weather conditions, the jump &  landing safely all create a unique, personal experience of self-actualization. I fly because I love it. Through in and through out. Similar to the old powder hound trekking for fresh tracks and untouched lines. We fly because it makes us feel whole. This year, I have lost quite a few friends in the community to accidents. Even with tragedy, I still hold on to my love of wingsuit flying. There is something about it I can’t… I won’t give up. Try explaining to this your dad Anyways, while the rest of the world is oblivious, judgmental or just plain angry about dark times, we have to keep spreading the stoke. You don’t quit living because you lost someone or many. I know my friends wouldn’t want that. Each and every one of them taught me to be kind, be strong, and be stoked!

Blue Skies, this video is dedicated to Matt, Rami, JVH, Brandon Jackson, Dario, Chris La Bounty, Gage Galle, Kat Donahue, Uli, Alex Poli. Thank you for being my friends, and inspiring me to be a better human

This video is a nice break from the hot temps and smoky skies of summer.  Last winter my lifelong friend Jon Malmberg and a few of his crazy buddies went on a speed flying vacation to Chamonix, France; the epicenter of big mountain skiing and now “hucking yourself off big mountains in every way imaginable.”  He asked me to edit his GoPro footage into something fun, so I carved out some time and created a video that’ll hopefully get us all thinking more and more about the coming winter!  It’s not a fancy edit with some insightful story line…just some good old fashioned editing with all effects done inside of Premiere Pro CC 2015.

Thanks to Jon’s sponsors for their support – in particular, KAVU, an outdoor clothing company based out of my old hometown area of Seattle.  Enjoy!  Chris

Featuring Jon Malmberg, Blake Robinson, Max Toeldte, and Giorgio Traverso

Edited by Chris Morgan (twosherpas.com) | Music: Give Me The Beat – Ghostland Observatory

• Kavu
• GoPro
• Swing
• Freeboern
• Trew

]]> http://spreadstoke.com/snow/speed-flying-in-chamonix-france-gopro/feed/ 0 http://spreadstoke.com/snow/sierra-quitiquit-japanda-shred-the-japow/ http://spreadstoke.com/snow/sierra-quitiquit-japanda-shred-the-japow/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2015 16:57:32 +0000 http://spreadstoke.com/?p=5362 Last winter, I had the opportunity to visit Japan for my first time. I spent a few days in Tokyo on a modeling job and exploring the streets on inline skates before cruising to the “Japanese Alps” of Hakuba to experience the famous JaPow. This edit shows some of the deepest and best powder skiing of my life. I hope you enjoy.]]>

Last winter, I had the opportunity to visit Japan for my first time. I spent a few days in Tokyo on a modeling job and exploring the streets on inline skates before cruising to the “Japanese Alps” of Hakuba to experience the famous JaPow.

This edit shows some of the deepest and best powder skiing of my life. I hope you enjoy.

If you’ve climbed for 10 years or 10 minutes, you’re familiar with Yosemite’s towering, granite walls. It is literally the mecca for climbing. By that, I mean that people make pilgrimages there. They train for it. They dream about it. And like any proper holy place, it feels like heaven the first time you drop into the valley and see El Capitan thousands of feet above you.

It makes you feel small and insignificant, but somehow, it is also rejuvenating and empowering. You start to look up those slabs of granite and think, “Maybe I actually could sleep on the edge of a cliff for a week.”

There’s something about the place that just draws you to it. You have to touch it and feel it. You have to run your hands over the bumpy surface. You have to imagine yourself getting above the valley and seeing a view that so few people will ever experience.

If you’ve read ‘My First Summer in the Sierras’ by John Muir, you’ll probably remember the paragraph where he describes climbing down over the cliff’s edge to get a better view. A different view.

“The slope beside [Yosemite Falls] looked dangerously smooth and steep, and the swift roaring flood beneath, overhead, and beside me was very nerve-trying. I therefore concluded not to venture farther, but did nevertheless…While perched on that narrow niche I was not distinctly conscious of danger. The tremendous grandeur of the fall in form and sound and motion, acting at close range, smothered the sense of fear.”

He was compelled to explore these massive walls in the nineteenth century and that same magnetism is still working its magic 200 years later.

People are still searching for a different view of these iconic places.

Before I passed through the gates to the park and before I drove down into ‘the valley,’ I was skeptical. I knew that it would be beautiful, but I was doubtful that it would live up to the hype and the climbing lore. But it was all true.

There are places in this world that will take your breath away. Places that stop you in your tracks. Places that make your heart race. These are the types of places that awaken a desire…no, not desire. A necessity to explore more.

The colossal granite domes, meandering Merced River and deafening waterfalls of Yosemite evoke that necessity to seek more adventure.

I’ve always said, “I would never sleep on a portaledge.” I never saw the need for it and never felt any desire to put myself through the fear and anxiety. Maybe the real problem was that I was never really inspired.