Sure would have been nice to know that hole was there. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Parkin Costain is well aware that skiing at the level he skis at can be dangerous. It’s all part of the gig, and he knew what he was signing up for. Like most athletes who are at his level, he’s well-prepared for most things, but it’s impossible to prepare for everything… and in this case, he was not prepared to suddenly find himself falling through a 60-foot hole in a mountain.
“This past season while shooting his newest film, ‘FLIPBOOK,’ Parkin Costain encountered one of the gnarliest and most consequential lines of his career,” Red Bull wrote. “Here’s the story of accidentally falling through a 60-foot chimney in the backcountry.”
It all started with a line that looked to be one of the funnest lines a skier could hope for. He dropped, hit a few fun little turns, then suddenly vanished. He was wearing a GoPro, and the footage of what he saw is terrifying. He had no way of knowing that the chimney he’d just fallen through didn’t drop into a lethal landing, but luckily, he somehow managed to escape unscathed.
“It was because my arms were up,” he said the following summer when he returned to the scene of the accident. “I just continue to look at this crack and I do not understand how I made it to the bottom of it. It’s like worst-case scenario for that face, but it was kind of the best-case scenario for how it all turned out.”
