TOP TO BOTTOM “The Galena road gap north of Sun Valley, ID, is no joke. This day was the first time I really saw how calculated and confident Karl could be as he hit the beast switch over and over.” Photo: Tal Roberts After a successful afternoon of snowmobile tows into every snowbank around his Ketchum, ID neighborhood, Karl celebrates with his roommate C. Gorgon Knight. Photo: Tal Roberts “I’ve been waiting my whole life to get that! Thank you!” he said. Scott Gaffney, director of the annual Matchstick film, has great regard for Karl after filming with him. “He has an inven-tiveness I’ve always appreciated,” Gaffney says. “Almost like an otherworldly ability that we’ve never shot before. He was spinning midline where no skier would ever think of tricking. The shot didn’t stop when the line was done. We had to keep the cameras rolling on Karl till the very bottom.” By all accounts, that’s Karl. He will never have enough ski-ing in his life. You’ll find him out sledding and skiing corn in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho till late May and then camped out on Beartooth Pass, MT in June. His next goal is longevity in his career. “I want to feel like I’ve peaked, and that time has yet to come,” Karl says. “He’s in it for all the right reasons,” Gaffney says. “I think he’ll influence people largely and inspire both parts of skiing. He’s already done that on the jib side with insane urban parts like his Detroit segment in the Poor Boyz film [Tracing Sky-lines] And now he’ll open some eyes to what’s possible in the big mountain world.” Hall backs Karl’s progressive nature as well. “Karl is carving his own path and pushing the sport into new avenues of pro-gression,” he says. “If he stays on course with what he’s doing, he’ll go down as one of the best to ever do it.” Midway through this past winter, Karl signed with K2 Skis and he’s expected to have a 12-minute-long MSP segment. Early word is that it’s going to blow minds. Yet Karl feels like he’s still warming up in the big mountain arena. “As a youngster I think I learned what not to do,” Karl says. “Now I’m pretty confident on how I assess risk, when to turn it up and let my guard down, and when to keep it tight. I want to keep learning how to access the big mountains, find those honey holes, focus on skiing natural shit.” WE LATER LAUGHED at the deep wheezing heard in the GoPro footage as Karl continued shoveling for Chris, an indication of just how hard he was working. He turned on his head cam shortly after Reggie established an airway. Chris was alive and talking. The footage is a bit gut-wrenching and pretty astonishing to watch as they pulled a completely uninjured Chris from an upside-down position 15 feet in the crack after nine minutes under snow. The crew hugged it out on the side of that steep Alaskan face. It’s possible Chris would not have survived if Karl was not such a tuned-in rescuer. He kept his calm, remembered his training, and was fully prepared—something you might not expect from a guy with the nickname Crazy Karl. Following the rescue, the group decided to end shooting for the day. Karl, Reggie and I, along with a few hungry clients, stayed in the field to keep skiing. Karl was able to reset and focus on his original intention for the trip: to ski for himself and gain experience in Alaska. That classic Crazy Karl creativ-ity came out again as he buttered and bounced his way down the kind of runs that are puckering for clients. The next morning, we went out again without the big cameras. We wanted to ski. We let Karl drop first on every run despite his attempts to give the rest of the crew priority. It’s just more fun to watch him paint fresh turns down a beautiful face than to drop first yourself. On the last run, we put our group of six Idaho-based shred dogs atop a classic Haines run called Sexy Spines. Karl dropped in hooting and hollering and floated down the fluted spine face with overt enjoyment and ease. I can only liken it to a little kid bombing a hill on rollerblades just for fun. Karl Fostvedt 075
The Ski Journal Volume 13, Issue 2: Page 75
