This Mountain Life

Martina Halik and her 60-year-old mother Tania embark on a six-month ski trek through the treacherous Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada.

This journey has only been completed once before, and never by a female duo. Their adventure is interspersed with beautifully crafted portraits of high-altitude human endurance and passion-an avalanche survivor, a snowshoe artist, a snowbound convent-that are by turns captivating and inspiring.

Woven between their arduous and uplifting story are vignettes of others who have chosen a mountain life: a group of nuns inhabiting a mountain retreat to be closer to God; a photographer is buried in an avalanche; an impassioned alpinist; a focused snow artist; a couple who has been living off-grid in the mountains for nearly 50 years.

What is it that leads these adventurous people to sacrifice everything - comfort, family, personal safety - for a life in the mountains?