Cody Townsend has no fear. The Santa Cruz, California–raised freeskier took home “best line” honors at last week’s ski industry Powder Awards for his incredible (and borderline insane) chuting of a slot canyon in Alaska’s Tordrillo Mountains. And as you’ll see in the video above, it was a prize well earned.
Dropped atop the couloir via helicopter, Townsend steps into his Salomons and descends on the narrow chute, pushing the limits of reason as he navigates the line at a clip of 65 to 70 miles per hour, with nothing more than a few turns to maintain control—or, in his words, to keep himself from Wile E. Coyote–ing himself into the wall at the end. It’s a truly impressive line, and also—with all due respect to Sochi—quite simply the best skiing you’ll see all year.
Townsend also snagged Powder Awards for “best male performance” and “full throttle,” and the award-winning line is featured in the pretty-epic-in-its-own-right film Days of My Youth, which is available on iTunes.
