Sick little video from Jacob Wester documenting a few week stretch in the spring of 2021 when conditions lined up perfectly and the backcountry in Riksgränsen, Sweden became a freeride paradise. The film centers around Jacob and his wife Sofia who set out with a tent, some food, and a toboggan full of camera gear to session this unbelievable zone. So sick.
Riksgränsen is a small Swedish ski resort right on the border of Norway, in the far north of the country. A mythical place, forever immortalized in the history books of freeskiing – many stories have been written, filmed and photographed here, aiming to capture the very soul of this wild lifestyle.
For many years, Jacob has made a pilgrimage here in the spring, to take advantage of the many hours of light, culminating in the end of May with a never-setting sun, allowing for some truly unique skiing opportunities. While the playful ski resort has been the perfect place to build jumps and take laps with friends on the ski lifts, over the years the neighboring peaks and their steep freeride lines have been calling for attention. With steep faces in every direction, many above serious exposure, these ideas have remained dreams, until the spring of 2021, when an exceptional window of opportunity arrived. For a few weeks, the area was blessed with some of the best freeride conditions in modern times, and after thinking about these distant walls for so long, it was finally time to have a closer look.
Equipped with a tent, some food, and a toboggan full of camera gear, Jacob and his wife, Sofia, set out on a series of camping missions closer to these looming peaks. Carefully balancing the line between an obsession with the goal, and the well-founded fear of pushing it too far, the two documented a truly unique experience. What waited in these valleys surpassed even their wildest fantasies about what serious freeride skiing in Sweden could be.
This is Nouvelles Vues – A short ski film from the deep north of Sweden.
