by RICHARD WEIR
"It's one of the hardest things in the world, sometimes," Staten Island firefighter Rob Gibson says of stretching a fire hose into a burning building.
But carrying 50 feet of hose while on skies, with four other firefighters in tow, as your team races downhill through a maze of slalom gates? Well, that's a whole other challenge.
"You know there is going to be a crash almost every time," Gibson, 32, said of the FDNY Firefighters Ski Race, held each February at Hunter Mountain. "And everybody that's falling is laughing and having a great time."
It's that comedy and camaraderie generated by the annual charity race that inspired Gibson last year to pitch the idea to the producers of Warren Miller Films, the pioneer in extreme ski movies.
Gibson, who took up skiing in high school, was watching a Warren Miller Films flick on cable television in August 2004 when he decided to send the company an E-mail suggesting it include New York's Bravest in one of its upcoming films.
Warren Miller movies typically showcase world-class skiers who are helicoptered to the big mountains of Alaska or British Columbia, or exotic locales like India, where they plunge off steep cliffs and carve S-turns in waist-deep powder.
To the surprise of Gibson's buddies at Ladder Co. 114's Sunset Park, Brooklyn, firehouse, the independent filmmaker took him up on the offer.
"I didn't know what to think at first," said Joe Cavarretta, 32, a firefighter and snowboarder.
Warren Miller "gets these great athletes that ski these areas that are breathtaking and unbelievable," he added. "With us, I figured it was going to be like the bloopers."
But that's exactly what Chris Patterson, Warren Miller's director of photography, looks for when searching for new material to serve as comic relief from its trademark, death-defying ski scenes.
Each Warren Miller film features a novelty segment of some slopeside zaniness to depict the lighter side of skiing.
And shooting hundreds of New York City firefighters trying to navigate a slalom course, wearing turnout coats, fire helmets and ski pants and gripping heavy fire hoses, fit the bill.
"It represented the quintessential Warren Miller event," Patterson said.
Last month, Gibson and his FDNY ski team were honored at the Manhattan premiere of "Higher Ground," Warren Miller's new film. Screenings will be held Nov. 20 at Symphony Space in Manhattan and Jan. 14 and 21 at the Brooklyn Brewery.
The exposure can only help the annual ski race, which raised $41,000 this year for the New York Firefighters Burn Center Foundation. Next year's race is scheduled for Feb. 16.
Last February, Patterson and his Boulder, Colo.-based crew flew to New York and spent a day filming Ladder 114's firefighters at work in Brooklyn, then traveled with them to Hunter Mountain in the Catskills to document some extreme skiing.
Cavarretta's snowboarding had the crowd at the premiere in stitches. They were laughing at his "Wide World of Sports"-like wipeouts. Just 50 feet into the race, he took a spill when the hose whipped him around a gate and dragged him downhill.
The race, in its 33rd year, grew out of a dare over beers at the Hunter ski lodge in 1973 between several city firefighters and local volunteers from Tannersville.
But the race has evolved into a popular event, with some 170 teams and more than 1,000 city firefighters competing.
"We've had over 1,200 guys racing in one day, making it the largest alpine ski race in the world for a single day event," said retired FDNY Lt. Joe Jove, 58, of Manhattan. He co-founded the race and still runs it.
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