A journey into the world of extreme skiing in some of the world’s most remote and sought after locations and a look at the progression into modern skiing through the life of freeskiing pioneer and icon, Kent Kreitler. Arguably the best compilation of big mounatin skiing ever caught on film. Interviews including: C.R. Johnson, Jeremy Nobis, Shane McConkey, Tanner Hall, Micah Black, Skogen Sprang, Steve Winter, The Jones Brothers, and their words on one of the most prolific skiers of our lifetime.
Reverence the Kent Kreitler story produced and directed by Jon Klaczkiewicz associate producer Pedro Pineda edited by Jon Klaczkiewicz and Sasha Motivala post production Big Bang Productions footage provided by Teton Gravity Research, Matchstick Productions additional footage provided by Warren Miller, Nick Nixon, Chainsaw Productions, Standard Films, Pedro Pineda, Rob Bruce, and many others.
Kent Kreitler grew up around the Sun Valley ski area in central ID. His skiing was influenced by both the remaining freestyle icons who remained in the area after the freestyle boom of the 70’s and by a huge surge in racing interest through the 80’s and participation on the Sun Valley Ski Team which produced several Olympians in that era.
1989 -
Went to College in: Boulder, CO at the University of Colorado.
While in Boulder Kreitler was able to feed his desire to ski on a regular basis while continuing his education. While attending school in Colorado, Kreitler began associations with Spyder and other ski companies who utilized him for videos and product testing. During this time through a chance encounter, Kent also became room-mates with freeskiing icon Shane McConkey. Kreitler moved on from Colorado after winning the 1993 U.S. Extreme Skiing Championships in Crested Butte and began focussing his full attention on his skiing.
1993 -
Moved to: Lake Tahoe, CA/NV
1994 - 1998
After moving to the Lake Tahoe area Kreitler became regularly involved in various aspects of the sport. He competed in Extreme Skiing competitions and other revolutionary competitions during the early days of what was to become “freeskiing”. As a competition skier in the Extreme venues, Kreitler never finished outside of the top 5 without a DNF resulting fall and had several podium and victory finishes. Kreitler retired from Big Mountain competition with various international podium finishes and in three starts at the World Extreme Skiing Championships in Alaska he finished 5th, 3rd and 2nd.
In 1998 after a disappointing 2nd place finish at the World’s, Kreitler decided to call it quits on competition and focus his attention solely on his dream to ski some of the biggest, best and most aggressive skiing terrain in the world. Feeling inhibited by the competition format, that same year Kreitler took his desire to ski big mountains fast and aggressively and skied for Harvest with Teton Gravity Research. Outrunning raging sloughs, navigating uncharted terrain and free from controlled venues, Modern Big Mountain skiing was born.
1998 - 2001
Despite some involvement in early freestyle and skiercross competitions (Kent actually received a Silver Medal in the 1st Skier-X of the X-Games) Kreitler’s attention was on both pioneering early freestyle with the Tahoe posse and exploring, filming and skiing some of the biggest lines ever recorded in skiing. These were days when the big mountain skiers of the time were all the fascination and people couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Kreitler and others were consistantly blowing minds and evolving the sport to higher and higher levels. Kreitler stayed involved in the surge in modern freestyle or new school skiing but his focus and heart remained in skiing natural lines with the aggressiveness and authority which mark his style.
2001-2004
With his consistent adaptation to current trends, Kreitler evolved his style and has even been on the forefront of the most recent movements to hybrid big mountain skiing with park skiing and to bring park tricks into natural terrain. Kreitler has continued to produce award winning segments and nominations despite being ten years the elder to most of the competition. Kreitler continues to evolve with the sport and surprise the neysayers.