The East’s Best Pow

Add this to your early season watch-list: a new film from T-Bar Films that explores Vermont’s backcountry scene. The film, titled, “Shared Lines: The Vermont Backcountry Alliance,” is a project of Tyler and Elliot Wilkinson-Ray, two brothers and filmmakers who have already established themselves in the ski movie world with releases like “United We Ski,” which celebrated Vermont’s tiniest ski hills, and “Out on A Limb,” a profile of skier Vasu Sojitra.

For their latest project, the guys at T-Bar trained their cameras on Vermont’s ever-growing backcountry skiing community, now unified under the Vermont Backcountry Alliance and supported by local groups of skiers like the Rochester Area Sport Trails Alliance and the Northeast Kingdom Backcountry Coalition. The past two years have had some exciting developments including the organization of the Vermont Backcountry Alliance under the Catamount Trail Association. The area around Braintree, Rochester and Randolph saw the creation of the Braintree Mountain Forest and the subsequent cutting of several glades open to everyone. This weekend, volunteers will take to the Brandon Gap area in the Green Mountain National Forest to trim the first of what will become several ski lines – the first project of its kind in any national forest. The six-minute clip features interviews with volunteers, landowners and of course the skiers about the opportunities to expand Vermont’s off-piste offerings.

And then there’s the actual skiing. Like any ski movie worth streaming, Shared Lines has a heavy dose of slashing some serious powder in the trees. It’s just the thing to tide us over while we wait for stick season to end.

See for yourself.

Shared Lines: The Vermont Backcountry Alliance from T-Bar Films on Vimeo.