The Ski Journal - Volume 16, Issue 1
SHAPING A LEGACY AT THE TGR HALL OF FAME
Words: Jake Stern. Photos and Captions: LEE COHEN 2022-09-09 14:13:59
Gordy Peifer mugging in the parking lot at Alaska Backcountry Adventures in 1998. The whole scene around Valdez, AK was so cool back then—a parking lot filled with campers and degenerate ski bums just over Thompson Pass. You could go heliskiing and pay for it by the run—$45 a bump.
Although Teton Gravity Research’s September film premiere traditionally kicks off ski-hype season, it’s not the only show sweeping through Jackson, WY, as the aspens turn. Annual ski movies nod to the sport’s present, but TGR cofounders Todd and Steve Jones have started to enshrine its past, inducting early film athletes into the nascent TGR Hall of Fame.
Gordy Peifer, who debuted in TGR’s 1998 release Uprising, was among the earliest pioneers of the Alaskan heli scene, and was on the very first helicopter mission from Haines, AK. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2020, joining legendary athletes such as Doug Coombs, Kent Kreitler, and Micah Black in the production company’s celebration of ski-film history.
“I was honored,” Peifer says. “We were all lucky to be a part of that time, because you couldn’t do it alone back then. You didn’t promote yourself back then. The Internet really was in its infancy. You really had to get in with a solid group of filmmakers and photographers.”
Each year since 2017, TGR athletes and crew members get together to nominate and vote on a set of potential inductees, recognizing a lifetime of achievement in film for skiers and filmmakers. The TGR staff then selects three inductees and fêtes them with speeches and a custom pair of skis with images from their film careers. As of yet, the hall of fame doesn’t live in a physical space, but for skiers like Peifer, the night of celebration is a chance to bridge the gap between the early days of freeskiing and today.
Before John Collinson and Sammy Carlson started turning Alaskan aspects into terrain parks, Peifer was skiing big lines in Valdez when the only mechanized transit was bumming shuttle rides from stoked locals in pickups. He competed against Coombs in the first-ever extreme skiing competition in 1991 and went on to solidify a film career skiing steep, spine-riddled faces in as few turns as possible. “We saw what [Scot] Schmidt and [Glen] Plake were doing, launching the Fingers [at Palisades Tahoe] and skiing out at speed. What we wanted to do was to take that style and push it into the most amazing terrain—exploration was at the forefront of everything we were doing,” Peifer says.
Todd and Steve began filming in Alaska in 1996 with The Continuum and never really stopped. After a run of nearly 30 years and counting, the Jones’ felt a duty to pay homage to those that have helped them create the blueprint. “I’ve been a part of the whole freeride movement for almost three decades now. But so many people that have been a big part of TGR have had a broader impact on the sport,” Todd says. “[The hall of fame] is really important for us to acknowledge the people who made [TGR] what it is and subsequently shaped skiing and snowboarding along the way.”
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