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.

If we want authenticity, we have to initiate it. Self-discovery takes us to the wildest places on earth

I knew Shin [Biyajima] a little bit early on, but it's funny because where I really met Shin, and where he made a strong impression on me, was in Jackson Hole. I sledded back to a secret zone way deep in the Jackson backcountry to some freeriding. I got out there and followed some snowmobile tracks figuring it's just some snowmobilers.

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.

It was just on a whole other level, getting to experience and ride that terrain. We spent a fair amount of time in the Hakuba Valley.

We started out making a film [ The Fourth Phase] about the incredible snow we get at home in Wyoming, the journey soon macroed out into this epic 16,000 mile trip around the North Pacific, taking us to locations in Japan, Alaska, the Kamchatka Peninsula in far-eastern Russia, and back to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

I knew I wanted to shoot in Japan early on. Years ago, we did a Japan segment in "The Community Project," and at the time I felt it was one of the better Japan segments ever captured.