An extreme skiing champion and founder of the International Free-Skier Association, McConkey is so talented and versatile he once skied a 45-degree, 2,000-foot British Columbia spine on water skis.
He spent 2004 as he usually does, jumping off cliffs, making 200-metre turns on steep Alaskan Faces, and starring in ski movies. But he also honed his new twist: ski-BASE-jumping, using a parachute to stitch together otherwise unthinkable lines, for instance throwing a back flip off a high ramp, landing, skiing, ditching his poles, then throwing a front flip off a cliff, ripping his parachute cord, and sailing back down to earth.
His stunning feats in the new film Yearbook included skiing down the sheer summit of Switzerland's imposing, 13,025-foot Eiger, throwing not just a front flip, but two of them, then pulling his chute. The jaw-dropping sequence won the two biggest awards at Powder Magazine's prestigious Video Awards, the Readers' Poll and the Full-Throttle Award - his second straight Full-Throttle.
