
Interview with Mike Quigley
Director of the film To The Hills & Back
Sherpas Cinema has produced several avalanche awareness films over the years, but “To the Hills & Back” is the first one that you directed. Was it your first big project?
Mike Quigley: Oh yeah, for sure. It was the biggest thing I've ever worked on and directed. And then in house with Sherpas, I'm really lucky that I got the opportunity to direct this. Typically, like, there's two other directors at Sherpas and usually they direct all the big films: Dave Mossop and Eric Croston. But it was to my good fortune, that they were too busy. So, I got lucky to direct this film.
It premiered on the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival in November 2022. Had it been your plan to get the film ready for this important festival?
Mike Quigley: Oh my goodness. It's a miracle that we even got the film into the festival.
Why is that?
Mike Quigley: We were so behind. I mean, I shouldn't say we were behind. That was always my thing. We were doing a really good job, but then all of a sudden this expectation to get it into Banff came out of nowhere and then we were worrying that we didn’t have enough time. We didn't really start editing properly until September. Which is kind of crazy for 45 minutes documentary. I had two editors helping me on this project. They basically brought their sleeping bags into the office and just lived at the office and edited for two months straight. Everything happened organically and on the fly. But we had one thing that was planned out, and that was the script.
What a final sprint! That’s pretty much editing in expedition style. When did you start with the production anyway?
Mike Quigley: The idea came to light in December of like 2020. And from January and through the rest of 2021, we started developing different ideas and looking for characters. When we secured the funding In November of 2021 it became a reality. And then we started filming in January 2022.
“We wanted to create a sense of like: This can happen to anybody, and it doesn't matter who you are or what you're doing. So that was like priority 1.“
Mike Quigley, Director
How did you find your main protagonists?
Mike Quigley: It is different for each character. There’s Brad, the old mountain guide. Adam Campbell. And Katie Combaluzier. Adam's story literally happened in our backyard, and he's a close friend of ours. I've known him for a for a long time, and so his story. So it felt natural to tell his story.
My only concern with Adam was that his story had been told a lot. And that a lot of people would say: I've already heard this story so many times. I don't wanna hear it again. But I realized that most of those people that were telling me that… these people were super connected to Instagram and social media. Which is not my world. And I like to believe that there are other people out there that are into backcountry skiing like myself and that they are also not super connected to social media. So, it felt OK to me and I thought, there's still an audience out there for Adam that hasn't heard his story yet.
How did you find Katie Combaluzier?
Mike Quigley: That's where social media really came in handy. One of our producers, Gabby, is all over social media and found Katie on Instagram, came to me and said: You gotta look at this girl! I read her post and sort of learned about her story a little bit. Then I did my research on her accident. Just after a few phone calls, it became obvious that she needed to be in the film as well.
And Bradford White?
Mike Quigley: I didn't really know too much about Brad, but my boss, Malcolm Sangster, knew a lot about him. He had done his research and said: This guy's gotta get in the film. His family literally started backcountry skiing in the West. Skoki Lodge, where we filmed the scenes with Bradford and his daughter Ginny, is the first backcountry ski lodge in the West, not just in Canada, but in the US. Unfortunately, we didn't really have time to like dive into all this historical background.
The Skokie Lodge scenes have a very different look than the rest of the film. Why did you do that?
Mike Quigley: Yes, Brad’s interview was super challenging. Because it was staged. So it wasn't like a real interview. The idea came from Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful 8”. There's this scene where there's a fireplace, and two chairs. And I really wanted to create a sense of dramatization. This is cinema. I love documentary filmmaking but I try to break it out of the documentary style that we’re very used to today from now and then. But this was the first time I'd ever done that and it was kind of weird because it felt super bad and really fake.
I mean, these people aren't actors. Brad's got a lot more experience than Ginny. He's a public speaker and teaches a lot of avalanche courses and does a lot of talks. His dialogue came out great. Ginny is not that media trained, not used to being on a camera. She did great, too - but it was really tricky. But in the edit, it started to feel natural and beautiful.
In the beginning I didn’t even know who Brad should be talking to. And then his daughter came out of nowhere. I started looking into her a little bit more and found out that she was becoming a ski guide. And this was perfect. Everything worked out good in that sense. And then on the day of it was like: Surprise! Ginny's sister is gonna be there, too.
In the end almost the whole family made it into movie. Some things obviously cannot be planned. Why was it so great that the sister turned up, too?
Mike Quigley: The way I had scripted it, was: I had imagined this cool opening scene of this singular person entering the mountains. But that's a little reckless, you probably shouldn't be exploring the mountains by yourself. Ginny had skied to the lodge thousands of time by herself, but when her sister appeared and they could ski together, it was all good.