It was snowing heavily when a group of North American skiers and snowboarders arrived in the secluded village of Khom, China, tucked in the Altai Mountains, this past January. “To go on a ski trip to one of the most remote places you can get to and have it snow the whole time, it seemed like a perfect scenario,” says British Columbia-based filmmaker Chris Winters, who’d traveled with three others to work on a documentary series, Snow Hunters, that would detail the origins and history of skiing across the globe.

Only, the project’s first stop quickly developed some imperfections. Because little did the group know at the time, a contagious virus known as coronavirus would soon shut down China, and then, promptly, the rest of the world.

“There were whispers of a virus, but we didn’t think it was anything we had to pay attention to,” says Brian Hockenstein, the film’s co-director.

Read the full story in Backcountry Magazine.