Dan Davidoff, a.k.a. the Krazy Canadian, needs no introduction. For more than 30 years, this thrill-seeking native of Castlegar, B.C., has been ripping it up in the West Kootenay region of B.C. If you’re a fan of Thunderstruck Films, chances are, you’ve seen Davidoff tearing up 1,500-foot chutes like it's nobody’s business. And if you’re one of Davidoff’s fans, it’s likely that you own a few of his Krazy Canadian Adventures movies. This summer, he will be releasing two new movies—one with a compilation of his all-time greatest moments and another with brand new footage.
We recently caught up with the winner of the 2007 and 2008 Xtremey award for best performance in a snowmobile film to see what he’s been up to and what we can expect from his latest movies.
How was your season? We’ve had a fantastic year of filming for Krazy Canadian Adventures 7. This spring was just fantastic for great snow conditions—safe snow conditions and beautiful sunlight. We were able to do a whole bunch of first ascents—climbs that I thought I would never try.
Where did you do most of your filming? I would say the bulk of it was near Castlegar in the Norns Range and the Valley of the Chutes in the Valkyr Range. Those are just north of Castlegar, a 15- to 30-minute drive. And then, of course, we did a weekend in Revelstoke that was, again, perfect light and snow conditions.
When will Krazy Canadian Adventures 6 and 7 be ready for release? We are going to go to replication in July so we are hoping for a late-July, early-August release. And the Krazy 6 is actually going to have all six of my first DVDs on one disc—(No.) 6 being a highlight package of the first five.
What can we expect from Volume 7? I stepped it up one more notch. I’ve climbed some really neat stuff in the last 10 to 15 years but I really outdid myself this year and did stuff that I said I would never try or (thought) it wasn’t doable. And because my sled ran flawlessly and the weather and snow conditions were so perfect, I tried things that on a different day with lesser conditions I wouldn’t have tried. So I had a lot of luck. I was blessed and we went over the Twisted Turbo 925 Speedwerx Arctic Cat that Shain Stanger built for me top to bottom the week prior to the great weather and conditions so it just ran flawlessly. It sounded perfect, everything was tight, there was no boost leaks, no fuel leaks. When you’re running these high-performance machines, there is so much room for error. You ride them for a month and if you don’t go over it things are loose and then failures occur. You watch top fuel dragsters, for instance, they do a quarter-mile run and then they totally overhaul the motor and rebuild it. NASCAR, they do a 500-mile race and then they rebuild the car, and here we are taking snowmobiles to the very top of their performance and trying to ride them all season long and hoping they will be fine after 2,000 miles and that’s not the way it works. So anyway, we went over it top to bottom and it ran flawlessly. It was awesome.
Was there any carnage this season? Yes, unfortunately. But amazingly enough, I was able to drive the sled back to the truck and all I had was front bumper and rear bumper damage because the sled got wedged in a chute in a cliff about 500 feet up. I lost it, I failed, and it went back 20 feet and got wedged nose to tail—that’s how tight the rock was. We were able to tie a rope on to it, push it off the rocks so it was pointing down and then lower it down with rope. Had it just taken off and bashed off all the rocks all the way down—guaranteed destroyed sled—so I was fortunate.
What was your gnarliest climb? We named a couple of new chutes this year. One we called the “Wild Thing” chute and its only been attempted once. I climbed it, it was one try and I was successful. It’s about 1,500 vertical feet and it has a bunch of little wiggles in it. It’s quite tight. So the Wild Thing chute was top for sure. But then I found this one that I renamed, I called it the “Ultimate Wild Thing” and that’s the one I failed in. I made it two-thirds of the way up. That was unsuccessful. Then there was the “Wiggly” chute in the Valley of the Chutes in the Valkyr Range. One person successfully climbed it out of four and I said I will never try it but the snow was just perfect the one day we were there and I just had to, and I was successful. So it was nice to get that one out of the way.
Will those climbs be on the new video? Definitely. We had helmet cam footage and cameras at the top looking down, cameras at the bottom looking up and cameras on opposing ridges looking across and we also filmed one day with a helicopter so we were able to capture a phenomenal amount of footage—really trying to show people this is how much fun it is and how scary it is. But unfortunately every time we watch the footage, it’s never as scary as it actually was.
What goes through your mind when you’re doing these climbs? When you’re thinking about it, it’s terror but it’s just replaying successes over and over. And you build up to the big stuff in a given season. You don’t really remember what you did last year or three or four years ago. It all disappears over the summer and you start over in the winter. You start getting comfortable on your sled in December and January and when the snow is right, you start trying some tough stuff in March and April and eventually you get to a level that you think I did this, this and this so I should be able to do that—if there are no surprises. But, unfortunately, when you're looking up a 1,500-vertical-foot chute, you can’t see what's up there at 1,300 vertical feet. You think it looks good and you look at it from the top, you look down and you try to gather as much information and say there should be no surprises. But when I tried the Wild Thing chute, I did encounter 30 feet of ice. When I first got into it, it was like, oh no, I could feel myself spinning out on ice but it was only a 30-foot path and when I got past it, the traction was there for me to finish it. In perfect snow conditions, you can almost climb anything but that’s rare . . . The reason I failed the Ultimate Wild Thing chute was I looked at it from the top and from the bottom and I was confident that it was doable but once I got into the tight upper part, there was only a foot of snow on these smooth rocks so I started spinning out and that was it . . . I couldn’t go up anymore so I had to step off and the sled just went backwards a bit and the back bumper went into the wall, the front end came around and it just wedged in there (laughs). It makes for fantastic footage.
You have a new website as well? Yes, hopefully, by the end of the week (June 2), it should be pretty much up and definitely by next week, we are going to have the teasers for Krazy 6 and Krazy 7 and a whole bunch of pictures from this year’s filming days.
What will you be up to this summer? First of all, are you still riding? Maybe for one more weekend or two. Meadow Mountain (near Kaslo) and Boulder Mountain in Revelstoke still have plenty of snow. We’ve sledded into late June, early July during the last two winters so this one is ending really early in comparison. And then after that, it’s finalizing the movie. There is going to be a premiere in Castlegar in September. And then there’s the Edmonton snowmobile show, I always attend that, the Saskatchewan snowmobile show in Saskatoon, a show in Spokane, Washington, and a show in Seattle, Washington.
Do you have any other hobbies? I’m a gardener. I love gardening vegetables and I have an absolutely amazing flower bed with all kinds of lilies.
For more information on Dan Davidoff, see his website.
