The Claremont Ski and Snowboard Club hosted the annual Snowstock Film Festival at Pomona College’s Rose Hills Theatre last Saturday, featuring four ski and snowboard documentaries that played throughout the day.
The event was organized by Brian Shain PO ’13, President of the Claremont Ski and Snowboard Club, and Sasha Karapetrova PO ’15, the club’s team captain.
The festival showcased extraordinary performances in skiing and snowboarding, but also explored themes and ideas of performance spectacle.
One documentary featured, “WE: A Collection of Individuals,” is a compelling story surrounding the life and times of the modern day skier. “WE” debunked the myth that skiing is an individual sport and asserted that skiing is an art, a collaborative effort that takes the energy of many.
The films also highlighted the uniqueness of skiing and snowboarding as a sport. Karapetrova said that skiing and snowboarding are unlike typical sports.
“Teams that compete against one another, leagues and coaches that are so commonly found in sports, are absent in skiing and snowboarding, excluding professionals,” Karapetrova said. “Skiers and snowboarders on our team enter competitions on their own, ski or snowboard with their friends to progress, and many make their own trick lists, resumes and film edits to get sponsors to help pay for expensive gear and traveling.”
Another theme emphasized in the films was the progress that is occurring in the sport. Karapetrova said that new attention is being brought to the sport with the introduction of Slopestyle and Halfpipe Skiing to the Olympics for the first time in the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia.
Along with presenting the films, the Claremont Ski and Snowboard Club raffled out sweaters, stickers, lanyards, hats, movies, yowies, t-shirts and tanks. A Cairo Cowboy food truck was also present.
The festival also hyped the upcoming season for the Claremont Ski and Snowboard Club. The club, comprised of about 30 members, is led by Shain and Vice Presidents Karapetrova and Sarah Swartz CM ’15. Four members will be competing in the Southern California league in Mammoth.
“If all goes well, we should be able to send a couple to nationals in Sun Valley, Idaho this year,” Karapetrova said.
Despite Claremont’s warm weather, Karapetrova said that she finds this part of California to be “prime” for skiing.
“Mt. Baldy is 30 minutes away, and Bear Mountain, which has a great park with more features than most parks in the country, is an hour and a half,” Karapetrova said. “Mammoth is known around the world to have excellent backcountry skiing and the best professionally built parks in the country … We also have a cabin [there] that we organize trips to every weekend. Everyone has a lot of fun.”
The team’s upcoming events include Snow Daze, a party with Sigma Tau where gear will be raffled off, and the annual trip to Mammoth during reading days.
The Snowstock Film Festival was also sponsored by Outdoor Technology, First Drop outerwear, iNi cooperative and Skipunx.