Summer stoke  

Two things attract the attention of Boulderites year-round: powder days and the Grateful Dead. 

Somewhere between those two addictions lives Teton Gravity Research (TGR), an organization best known for producing more than 50 award-winning outdoor adventure films about skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking and surfing, often in staggering conditions and terrain. 

Co-founder Todd Jones says the company of powderhounds is also full of Deadheads. A dream collaboration with the Grateful Dead since 2019 includes TGR selling merch with the Dead’s dancing bears on skis, boards and bikes, and setting epic big-mountain lines to the band’s jamming soundtrack in its Fire on the Mountain shortfilm.  

That marriage is about as Colorado as it gets. 

Embracing that culture, TGR opened its newest brick-and-mortar storefront on June 30 in Boulder to be the epicenter of all things stoke in the state. The flagship shop on 1420 Pearl Street is the largest of TGR’s six retail locations, and includes a 15-seat theater to screen films and host community events. 

Jones says the company wants to get involved in mountain town jewels, “of which Boulder is obviously a top dog,” for outdoor recreation. It also has stores in Park City, Bozeman, Jackson and Breckenridge. 

Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett got the chance to wield the big scissors at TGR’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. He says he likes the company’s gear, especially the Grateful Dead-themed clothing for our “Dead-loving town,” and calls the in-store theater a noteworthy feature. 

While Brockett enjoys snowshoeing and mountain biking in his free time, you won’t see him crushing any of the extreme terrain highlighted in TGR’s films. 

“I don’t think anything that I do can qualify as shredding,” Brockett says.

TGR was founded in 1996 by Jones and his brother Steve, Dirk Collins and Corey Gavitt, who wanted to capture the progression of action sports on film. The company is based in Jackson, Wyoming, but snow-chasing films have taken the crew from the remote ranges of Alaska to “ma and pa” ski resorts scattered around the Midwest. 

It’s these films that bring the group to Colorado, the company’s largest audience, and to sold-out theaters in Boulder for the last two decades. The connection to Boulder deepend after Jones’ brother Jeremy, a professional snowboarder, founded Protect Our Winters (POW) to engage pro athletes and outdoor enthusiasts in climate-change activism. The two companies work together to help TGR “tread lightly” on the environment.

The trailer for this year’s TGR film dropped on July 18. Jones says Legend Has It steps into stories and places that touch on iconic ski history in Patagonia, the California Sierra, Pakistan, Jackson Hole and more with world-renowned athletes like Kai Jones, Ian Mcintosh, Nick McNutt and Griffin Post. 

“We’ve traveled the world for 28 years in pursuit of groundbreaking action and cinematography,” Jones said in a press release about the film. “Over the years we have collected countless stories and experienced extraordinary moments. This year’s annual film taps into these legendary tales — be it mythical storm cycles, heroic feats or whispers of fantastical terrain.”

The crew also traveled deep into the Centennial State’s backcountry this past winter with Colorado-native Colter Hinchliffe to document deep powder, cushy pillows, carves above tree line, gnarly jumps and steezy freestyling. Jones says the legendary piece of the Colorado chapter comes from their basecamp — a 10th Mountain Division Hut near Aspen. 

“We want to inspire people to get outdoors and to do things they’ve never done before,” he says.

Legend Has It premieres in Boulder on Oct. 4 at the Boulder Theater, followed by a concert from experimental indie rockers Portugal. The Man, longtime friends of the company who have shredded gnar with the TGR crew and whose tracks rock action sequences in several films. Pre-sale tickets for the event are available at the store in Boulder starting July 19. 

It may be the peak of summer, but for some that only means we’re halfway to winter.