Video: Mad Trees Show off Mt. Baker in We Heard You Need Gloves
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Occasionally while sitting on one of Mt. Baker's non-high speed fixed grip lifts, you will witness a rider send something or go fully underwater and emerge in a cloud of snow from a distance. Or maybe you are joining the backcountry donkey show on a high pressure aprés-storm jump session and you see someone go for a huge backie off a cheese wedge step-down. Oooh that kid backslapped super hard but he rode it out, I'd count it. Then as you look a little closer, you see a purple jacket, maybe it's teal. You think to yourself, maybe it's just modern manhood, masculinity undone - is that...? I thought it was a dude.
Mad Trees presents We Heard You Need Gloves, a story of female athletes pushing and supporting each other over the course of a 844" season. - Anne Cleary
It’s become a common thing in mountain towns across North America: a crew of friends goes out shredding, and captures the good times on tape to share with the world. The age-old ritual of pulling out a camera to show off the rad sh** you and your friends are up to is not news, but this particular crew of rippers appreciates the art of it a little more than most. Enter the Mad Trees, a collective of skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, and all-around mountain badasses that have stories to tell.
Their latest short film We Heard You Need Gloves is a simple ode to the friendships formed in the mountains, and shows off something we can all relate to: helping out a friend in the morning so that they, too, can join in on the fun. Forget the no friends on a pow day rule, The Mad Trees are all about sharing the stoke with friends when the gettin’s good. It also tells the story of a band of ripping women who took one of the deepest years on record by the reins. Take a peek at the new short, filmed around the Mt. Baker Ski Area, and listen to what Mad Trees director and TGR bike tester Anne Cleary has to say about the film.
The crew prepping for another day on the hill. Mad Trees photo.
TGR: Anne, it’s good to catch up again! Last we saw you was riding bikes in Bentonville last January for TGR Tested. It seems like you’ve returned to where you are most comfortable: in the mountains behind the lens capturing the stoke. Tell us about what you do for Mad Trees, what are you guys all about?
Anne Cleary: I would say it really all came to life in the college town of Burlington, VT, making films for some of the homegrown ski and snowboard club festivals there. I think that we got so into content production, making videos and taking photos of friends, as a way to drive community. I personally like making films and being able to include as many people in them to make it feel like we were all a part of it. In reality we’re all out there having a good time together.
It started as a group of close college friends in Vermont that has now snowballed into a bigger group of friends in different outdoor-oriented towns across the country, like Jackson, the PNW, Vermont, and Tahoe.
TGR: How has it evolved from there?
AC: It kind of flirts between being a production company and a broader network. For example, on our website, we get a ton of inquiries about “hey are there any Mad Trees people here, I’m taking a roadtrip and I want to get some beta on where to go!” So the network is really cool to have, but our brand is also something we use to chat with partners in the outdoor industry. Mad Trees is interesting because I still struggle with answering what we really are, but that’s kind of the beauty of it! It’s grown very organically from young, reckless 20-somethings into something more professional.
So far, we had only been putting out random short stoke videos, and We Heard You Need Gloves is something a bit more cohesive in terms of a concept and a story, so I feel like we’ve grown up a bit and it feels really good!
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TGR: Tell me more about producing that film.
AC: It kind of all happened over a few weeks skiing and filming at Mt. Baker. The idea was born a little earlier in the season though. The group of women in the film are all the local rippers around the Baker Ski Area, which is a unique culture in that it’s the same folks pretty much every day, and you can recognize them from the lift by their skiing. You’re like “oh man Zoë just rode Fly On the Wall, that looks sick!” These women started popping into these bigger lines, and pushing a little harder, so we got together and just wanted to show that part of the ski community there.
Things got a little rushed near the end of the season, so we are looking forward to coming back with the same crew and doing more this year!
Pow days are meant for friends and showing off, as Andrea Graham demonstrates. Mad Trees photo.
TGR: Was it hard stepping out into a more defined format?
AC: [Laughs] Yeah, it was definitely a bit different than what we had been doing so far. We learned a lot from this project, and have a little more of a defined storyline for this season’s film. Although I really like the We Heard You Need Gloves concept, which honestly kind of came out of nowhere and turned into a bit of a verité representation of a group of people in this really cool venue encouraging one another and helping each other out. It’s hard to capture, so I’m psyched on where this seemingly simple concept ended up.
TGR: What can we expect in the future?
AC: When we finished this project, everyone involved looked at it and loved it, but wanted to do more and saw where we can try to improve. Some of the girls saw their riding in the film and were fired up to push it even further next year. From a creative standpoint, it would be nice to develop more of a cohesive storyline and collaborate more with other creatives. So I want to tie in more friends with that part, and there’s some good people we have lined up to help!
