Apart from those other riders there is a whole production team [ of The Fourth Phase] behind the cameras too, hauling hundreds of kilos of fragile and awkward filming equipment up those same frozen landscapes. They're the real heroes.

Apart from those other riders there is a whole production team [ of The Fourth Phase] behind the cameras too, hauling hundreds of kilos of fragile and awkward filming equipment up those same frozen landscapes. They're the real heroes.

We faced blizzards, sub-zero temperatures, and of course dangerous snow conditions and vertiginous drops. That's what you get when you're working with fickle mother nature - you start out with a solid plan and it always changes, so you have to evolve and adapt.

One of the proudest things for me with this film [The Fourth Phase] is that year after year we put ourselves right out there making it and no one got seriously injured.

I was pretty blown away by how vast and aggressive the terrain is in the Japanese Alps. You're looking up at peaks, and it's like Alaska seeing all kinds of amazing stuff that looks ridable, but it's 70 percent death defying; only a small percentage really goes.

While researching the project [The Fourth Phase] I stumbled across this amazing research by a scientist called Dr Gerard Pollack who had done studies on what he called a 'fourth phase' of water.

When I finally got to go ride the mountains in Japan, it blew my mind.