[Above: Late afternoon lines with no one else but the crew to lap up. Mitch scores one for the memory banks.]

You had to wait out a long period of bad weather and it looked like tempers maybe got short. How did you deal with cabin fever?

Everybody has their own way of dealing with cabin fever in bad weather conditions… I am pretty easy-going and enjoy being out there and sitting out a storm as long as there is a chance for good riding on the horizon! Keeping the daily routine of hoping for better weather, snow shovelling, checking the snow conditions, digging a pit, eating, playing cards, sleeping, drinking coffee…

What was it like to wake up one morning to discover it had cleared and was perfect conditions?

At one point you are so used to the same picture of snow falling and bad whiteout that you don’t trust your eyes for a moment when the sun is shining and you see wonderland out front and days away from civilisation.

What’s the process when conditions finally get good after such a long wait. Do you head off immediately, or are there pits to be dug, plans made etc before you start out? Did you have a local guide who knew the terrain there?

We didn’t have a local guide because we didn’t find anybody who’d ever visited this area during winter time. In the summer shepherds are living in the simple huts taking care of their animals.

During the storm we were checking on the snow conditions and digging pits so when it finally got clear we were pretty sure that it was on for us and started to hike out as soon as we had our shit together.

It seems there was a lot of new snow. Was your approach to mountain/avalanche safety different to when you’re riding at home? Were there avalanche bulletins you could consult or reliable weather data? 

The difference to back home is there are no avalanche bulletins and there is no rescue you can expect from outside. But anyway you make yourself a picture from the situation and if you feel good about it you start moving and feeling the snow under your board. In the end it all feels familiar and you are right there and do your thing as if it would be in your own backcountry.

[Above: After waiting out the weather, Mitch and the crew were rewarded with glorious bluebird and virgin peaks to caress.]

Often you seen trips of this nature in exotic, faraway lands. But as you showed in Jeremy’s movie, Further, and now this, there’s heaps of lesser-ridden wilderness at home in Europe. Is this something you want to focus on more?

At first I travelled to different places around the world, mostly for helicopter-accessed riding. Back then I didn’t really have a closer look at anything further than the sidecountry of our home resorts. Almost a decade ago, and also inspired by Chris Edmands’ film, My Own Two Feet, I cut my board in two and hiked out in the backcountry to see if there were hidden treasures out there.

That opened up so much unridden terrain and so many different mountain ranges with their own characteristics just inside a radius of, let’s say two hours’ drive from home that one mountain man’s life wouldn’t be enough to get all the good stuff done.

“[Splitboarding] opened up so much unridden terrain and so many different mountain ranges with their own characteristics just inside a radius of two hours’ drive from home…”

Finally, in your movie you ask: “What was it like before all the development in our mountains?” Did this trip answer your question, or leave you hungry to search for more?

Being able to drive there from home we were stoked to find these untamed and sparsely populated mountains that are still home to wolves and bears. We met people there living a simple – and harsh – life that probably isn’t much different to what living in our home mountains was like decades ago. Of course, these people would like to have more infrastructure, more tourists coming, more river regulations to have a more comfortable life for them and their kids. [Check out this initiative to ‘Save the Blue Heart of Europe‘ – Ed]

I really hope that there is a way to gently develop these areas for the people living there and at the same time conserve these pristine areas on the Balkans that are probably some of the last real wild areas in Europe. Maybe the best chance to give value to this wilderness and to make it worth it for the local people to protect them could be the individual eco tourism that has already started in some of these regions.

For us, living in the central European alps, the mountains keep the last refuge where we can experience kind of a raw, original natural environment. Although these places are still getting smaller and fewer due to the construction of more ski lifts, bigger resorts, bigger hotel-like mountain huts, more dams…!

I really think we should preserve what is left of our home mountain wilderness so we, and also our kids, can still hike out there and have the chance to experience mountain wilderness.  

[Below: Valbona valley local, Demush Selimaj on the daily grind.]

[Above: After days in the wilderness, the crew return to civilisation.]