Winter in New Hampshire isn’t what it used to be.

At least, that’s what Walpole filmmaker Gabriel Andrus’s grandfather has been telling him via the daily weather log the older man has been keeping for the last 20 years. As a boy, Andrus was told of the state’s frigid winters decades prior and shown photographs of his grandfather next to massive snow banks and snowdrifts.

“It sparked my curiosity. I wanted to learn more about what winter was like then, and also dive deeper into how winter is changing and what the future will look like,” Andrus said via phone.

This February, Andrus researches the state of New Hampshire’s winter the hard way: through a 300-mile self-supported cross-country ski expedition from the Canadian border to his childhood home in Walpole, which Andrus will document in a film, tentatively called Remember Winter.

“It feels like a rite of passage – to dive into this project, fully immerse myself in the place I grew up, and tell its story in a meaningful way,” said Andrus, who spent the last two years studying photography and videography at Colorado Mountain College. “This opportunity came up, and I couldn’t not pursue it. It seemed like the right time to do this project and tell this story.”

At the moment, Andrus is in the midst of shooting B-roll and conducting interviews for the film. Some of these interviews are with people who’ve studied climate change, including UNH researchers Elizabeth Burkowski and Cameron Wake; National Geographic explorer and mountain guide Mark Synnott; and New England Ski Museum director Jeff Leich. Other interviews are with friends and family, including his grandfather.

If, during this trip, the opportunity arises to conduct candid interviews with people he meets along the way, he’ll do so, but come Feb. 6, the start date of his expedition, his focus is simply to film and to ski.

Andrus’s 20-day adventure is self-supported, which means he’ll pull everything he needs via sled for the majority of it. This includes food, camera equipment, and gear for skiing and winter camping. Most of his route is made up of snowmobile trails and Class 6 roads, however, some portions, including one that traverses the Pemigewasset Wilderness, will feature brook crossings that may or may not be frozen. And, of course, there’s always the possibility he’ll have to hike parts of the journey due to lack of snow cover for skiing.

Yet, he says the most challenging aspect isn’t the physical trip. Andrus grew up ski racing and partaking in outdoor adventures led by Kroka Expeditions, first as a student, then as an employee. He’s winter-camped and has done multi-day cross-country ski trips before.

“The expedition itself is the part that’s least daunting to me and the most straightforward in my mind because it’s something I enjoy and love so much. I’d say the really challenging part is the actual storytelling around the project – to take these interviews and these different concepts and put them together into a meaningful film that people can relate to,” he said.

Before he leaves, Andrus hopes to raise $20,000 to help support the purchase of skiing and camera equipment, plus other related expenses, though the trip will happen regardless of whether he makes this goal.

He’s collected sponsorships from outdoor and ski equipment companies, and last summer, while working on the Shenandoah, a schooner that holds FUEL’s youth voyage programs, he pitched the idea to New Hampshire PBS, who was boarding the tall ship to film an episode of its Windows to the Wild series. PBS agreed to broadcast Andrus’s film upon completion.

“That made me realize this could be a real thing,” Andrus said. “And so that’s when the planning began.”

Andrus says he’s especially inspired by the film Treeline by Patagonia. Recently, he reached out to its filmmaker, Jordan Manley, to learn how he approached the project and for filmmaking advice. After it’s finished, Andrus plans to enter Remember Winter into regional and national film festivals and, hopefully, conduct a local film tour to regional town halls, schools, and theaters.

In a way, putting together this film is a dream Andrus has had since age 14 when he first brought his camera onto a Kroka Expedition trip. Until then, he didn’t know outdoor photography and filmmaking was a career option. He fell in love with the process of capturing beautiful moments of the wild and sharing them with people.

“Photography and videography really immerse you in the moment,” Andrus said. “It seemed like a meaningful way to use my passions to give back to the world.”

To learn more about Remember Winter, visit Andrus’s website or email him at gabrielandrusmedia@gmail.com.

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