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from skiing, every dollar.

That's it. It's what I do.

Glen Plake's star began to rise

in 1988 when he appeared

in an unconventional,

irreverent ski movie called

The Blizzard of AAHHH's.

Okay, if you thought skiing was skiing

and there was a certain sameness to it all,

I suggest you buckle your breakfast seatbelt

because what we're about to show you

is something called extreme skiing.

It lacks only a disclaimer

that you not try this on your own.

We assume your sense of

self-preservation will tell you that.

Extreme skiing is virtually outlawed

in this country,

where insurance companies

and promoters fear the worst.

So these days extreme skiing

is centered in France

where the concept of recovery

for ski injuries is laughed at.

Out-of-bound skiers have

no sanctioned competitions,

but most arguments advance

veteran Scot Schmidt as America's best.

Lately, though, he is being challenged

by newcomer Glen Plake,

the man with the Mohawk.

He now lives in France

where he earns a living

by wearing a point-of-view camera

to make ski movies like this one.

It's called The Blizzard of AAHHH's.

Glen Plake, Scot Schmidt,

good morning, guys.

-Morning, Bryant.

-How are you?

I'm not going to let this pass

without comment, did you dress for us?

-Yeah.

-Did you?

-Did it for my country.

-Let's talk about the lake.

Oh, okay. So, talk to me

a little bit about injuries, guys.

I mean, how many

and what kind have you had?

I've had three broken legs.

Broken when I was five,

broken when I was like 17,

and then just broke one again

two years ago.

Before you started doing all the weird stuff.

No, I've been doing

the weird stuff the whole time.

-Do you do everything to extreme?

-Yeah.

The Blizzard of AAHHH's was

the creation of filmmaker Greg Stump.

Stump was unhappy

with the state of American skiing.

They wouldn't let us film in America.

We had been kicked out of every ski resort

because we were jumping off stuff

and skiing out of bounds.

And we were like, ""Screw it.

""Let's go to France

where we don't have to get any insurance,

""where they've got better mountains. ""

So we just all booted it to Europe.

Glen Plake joined skiers

Mike Hattrup and Scot Schmidt

in what would become the most influential

American ski film ever made.

They came to Chamonix,

the birthplace of European extreme skiing.

But The Blizzard of AAHHH's

bore little resemblance

to the extreme ski films

being made in Europe.

The skiers in Blizzard

were in Chamonix to play.

We were just having a good time, you know.

We were out cruising around.

We were making a ski film and skiing hot.

We were just good skiers

out ripping around.

And I think it showed. You know?

It looked like these guys were having

a fun time. That's cool.

The skiers in Blizzard were having fun.

But they were also courting danger.

I had never seen a glacier before.

I had never seen

Iifts that took us

to those types of places before.

You know, I mean, I knew what

a crevasse was, but I had never seen one.

You know. I'm from South Lake Tahoe.

You know, I grew up skiing Heavenly.

Yikes, this is kind of wild.

It was our introduction

into the big mountains.

It was awe-inspiring

and intimidating at the same time.

And that was all captured on film.

One run in Blizzard

that resembled the kind of skiing

that the European extremists were doing

was Scot Schmidt"s run

from the top of the Aiguille du Midi.

This one here is called the Couloir Poubelle.

It's about 47, 50 degrees.

It's a 200-meter shot.

-Scott, you want to try to ski it?

-Yeah, I'll ski it for sure.

Two, one...

Steep.

Blizzard really made skiing seem

like a dangerous sport,

more like surfing than golf, for instance.

I mean, you know,

there's this mountain that can cream you.

There's doubt there.

There's risk there. There's...

If you do something wrong,

the consequences could be fatal.

It was just light years away from the typical

American ski experience in the "80s.

People went berserk

and it just caught on like wildfire.

You know, you ask people where they were

when they first saw Blizzard of AAHHH"s

and most people can tell you

where they were.

It's like JFK getting shot

or something, right?

I mean, obviously not

something that monumental.

But, for a skier, the people that are fans,

they'll tell you where they were,

what house they were in, what town,

what they were doing, how old they were.

They know right where they were.

I was at my high school living room

and that movie had a real big impact on me,

just like it did for everybody else my age.

From that moment on, I focused

on being a professional skier.

And, you know,

I basically went back and told my dad

that I'm gonna go be in ski movies.

And he's like, "You're out of your mind."

I'm like, "No, I'm gonna do it."

You're just on the edge of your seat,

watching this thing, the whole time.

And then they get to go to Chamonix.

And they get to ski these lines

that nobody has ever seen before.

At least none of my friends,

nobody in the States, I mean...

It was just so eye-opening

and mind-boggling what they were doing.

I've probably watched it over

a hundred times. I mean...

I think we burned through

at least two VHS tapes

when that came out

with my friends and I watching that.

Blizzard was the first ski movie to come out

after VCRs were widely adopted.

And so it was the first ski movie

that you could watch over and over again.

It brought Chamonix into your living room.

It brought Chamonix to you

in a much more personal, intimate way.

American skiers were looking

for their own Chamonix,

a place to create

their own style of extreme skiing.

In 1991, the port town of Valdez, Alaska

was famous for one thing,

the massive oil spill

that fouled Prince William Sound.

But one feature of Valdez was overlooked.

Valdez is the gateway

to the Chugach Mountains.

A vast, uninhabited wilderness

that receives as much

as 80 feet of snow a year.

The mountains are

literally blanketed in snow.

In 1991, the town got the idea

to promote the Chugach

as a helicopter skiing destination

by staging an annual event called WESC,

the World Extreme Skiing Championships.

One of my sponsors had read

about this extreme skiing competition

and said, ""We'd like to send you there. ""

And I said, "Sure, I'm in. That'd be great."

And they said if you don't win, though,

you're going to have to come back

and paint the building.

And I didn't realize they were just joking

on that, but I was thinking,

"l don't want to paint that building."

Yeah. Coombsy.

So at WESC in 1991 you have the best skiers

and the toughest hills in North America.

-What's this guy's name?

-Doug Coombs.

Doug Coombs comes in, he's got this gleam

in his eye, this grin on his face.

And he skis everything

so much better than everybody else.

Stronger, cleaner, crisper,

makes it look easy.

There was just absolutely

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