Video: 2 Million Reasons To Get Stoked For Snow

Backcountry skiing is, in a sense, the purest form of the sport. "Earn your turns," is the battle cry of an untamable tribe that ventures out-of-bounds in search of adventure and freedom. They pay for every joyful foot of downhill with a foot of hard-earned skinning, ice-axe-and-crampon mountaineering or just plain trudging. The reward is complete fitness, a sense of self-reliance and, most important, untracked pow as far as the eye can see. Nobody understands this better than Greg Hill.

Hill, 36, is a Canadian backcountry skier/ski mountaineer who, from January 1^st to December 31^st, 2010, climbed and skied 2 million vertical feet. To do that, he climbed 71 mountains and skied 1,039 runs. He chased the snow, his wife and two kids in tow, from North America to South America and back again. He put in 77 10,000-plus-foot days and one insane—and, we imagine, insanely exhausting—23,000-foot day. It was an epic year in which he (according to his website) "set a standard of endurance that will be tough to beat." No kidding.

Now, just in time for the first snowfalls (in both BC and the Colorado Rockies), FD Productions has released this trailer for 2 Million Reasons, a documentary that offers an inside look at Hill's remarkable year of skiing the wildest places in the Americas, and plenty of stoke for the fast approaching season.

Check it out now, as well as Backcountry Magazine's Q+A with Hill, in which he previews he upcoming season ("I'm not going to go ski 3 million feet or anything,") with new sponsor Salomon (a sure sign of backcountry skiing's growth).