Snowboarder-BASE jumper Alenka Mali helps Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival leap into action
At The Spirit of Adventure opening event, the film “The Beginning” captures the Squamish resident’s record-breaking feat at Goat Ridge
Alenka Mali
“The Beginning”
VIMFF Opening Night, featuring Jimmy Martinello and Alenka Mali, takes place February 21 at SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival runs from February 21 to March 4
THERE ARE WILD THINGS happening in Squamish. Back in May 2024, a then 24-year-old Slovenian by the name of Alenka Mali combined her two great loves, snowboarding and BASE jumping, and went flying off the face of Goat Ridge without either crippling or killing herself. It goes without saying, a capricious change in the wind or any small equipment failure could have ended her life very quickly.
“I was thinking about that just the other day,” Mali tells Stir in a call from her home in Squamish. “Every jump kinda has to be worth your life, worth the risk your taking. It has to be that good.”
If she has mortality on her mind, it’s probably because death almost came knocking only two weeks ago when a routine jump from the Chief, aka Stawamus Chief Mountain, went catastrophically wrong. Mali knows well enough that BASE jumping is a uniquely dangerous sport. She’s lost more than a couple friends.
“It was a really bad accident,” she says, softly. “I almost died. There’s a part of me that feels like I survived that for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is yet, but—yeah that was really bad. It was a super basic jump that I’ve done a hundred times and I just did a 180 into the wall, got stuck on the wall for about four hours, completely suspended in the air because my parachute got caught on a tree until Search and Rescue came and lowered me down. I was very, very lucky.”
It’s a subject that will likely come up when Mali and Squamish-based photographer Jimmy Martinello open the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival on February 21 with a presentation called The Spirit of Adventure. Included in the talk is a screening of the short, “The Beginning”, which documents Mali’s record-breaking achievement on Goat Ridge.
Mali was raised as a somewhat feral kid by ardent Alpiners who traveled the world and fostered in their brood a deep passion for nature. After settling in Squamish in 2015, Goat Ridge became a prize that eluded her for years until 2024’s successful attempt. With six film crew members in tow—“The backcountry is not their home like it is to me,” she points out, like she didn’t already have enough to do—Mali and her partner Spencer Seabrooke camped out for four days until the window of opportunity finally opened.
“The wind calmed down and thankfully we were all super ready,” she says. “The crew went into their positions, they already scoped out angles, everybody did their job, so in 10 minutes we were ready to go—which is unreal. When it comes to filming these things, they were very, very efficient. And very scared. It was funny to watch them.”
The upshot of this heroic group effort is that filmmaker Cristóbal Ruiz captured an event that made history. As the first woman to document a snowboard BASE Jump, from her dream location, no less, we’re treated to an ecstatic Mali when she touches land again. Turning her own GoPro to a gleaming settlement on the horizon, she exclaims through tears, “Look at Squamish right now. This is my home.” Indeed, the 18-minute film is loaded with potent lines and insights, not to mention some charming super-8 footage from her childhood. Infant adventures aside, Mali is frequently seen pondering the mysterious lure of the mountains. “The crazier, the more dangerous they look, the more you want to be on top of them,” she says.
Since its inception in 1998, VIMFF has evolved into one of the most exhaustive specialty festivals in the world, with some 60-plus titles programmed this year along with 15 speakers and number of workshops scheduled over its 10-day run. It runs the gamut of interests from mountain sports to biking to all other forms of extreme adventuring, but if there’s a common feature to everything, it’s probably best summed up by Mali herself. She was raised Catholic but that didn’t really take.
Asked if the mountain is her church, she replies without hesitation: “Oh, 100 percent. I’m a full believer that there’s something more out there and that we’re going to live a really good life if we continue to stay grounded and connected with nature and connected with ourselves. I think we’re all part of the same system so when you’re more connected with nature, then you’re more connected with yourself, and it helps you to keep a clear mind and open heart.” 
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