After asking social media fans to write the itinerary for their European ski adventure in real-time last winter, Stan Rey and Kalen Thorien embark on the ultimate ski road trip
If you could take the ultimate European ski road trip, where would you go? And how would you decide? Would you chase powder? Seek out the best apres-ski scenes? Or go wherever you had a free couch to crash on? As Salomon free-ski athletes, Stan Rey and Kalen Thorien were lucky enough to go on such an adventure last winter. There was one catch: where they went was out of their hands. Salomon let its followers on the Salomon Freeski social media channels dictate the route and day-to-day choices of Rey and Thorien on their European ski adventure last winter, and they sent a Salomon TV crew from Switchback Entertainment along to document their adventure. The episode, called Unscripted, debuts Tuesday, October 23rd at tv.salomon.com.
In January, Thorien and Rey embarked from Salomon’s Annecy Design Centre in the French Alps, where they loaded up on gear and prepared for their unscripted adventure. Where they went from there was left up to Salomon’s online community of followers to decide via Instagram polls. In the end, the first “Salomon TV Unscripted” adventure lasted 10 days and took the pair from the southern French Alps and then to the Dolomites in Italy, and even included a quick stop in Venice. From there, they carried on to Austria, where they sampled the legendary apres-ski party scene of the Arlberg region, before finishing with a stop in Switzerland for a monster powder day with local Nicolas Vuignier, another Salomon athlete.
Since launching Salomon TV more than a decade ago as Salomon Freeski TV, the platform has produced numerous episodes and short films that have won awards at film festivals worldwide and gathered a legion of loyal followers. This was the first time that the brand let its followers dictate the itinerary of an episode and the unpredictability, coupled with some monster snow days, made the journey an immediate hit on Salomon’s freeski social media channels. Now the film, shot and produced by Whistler’s award-winning Switchback Entertainment, puts the entire package together.
