Antti Autti's Arctic Lines

Arctic Lines is a web series of a freeriders journey that is unfolding in near real time in the Arctic Circle.

The project follows myself alongside the film crew and fellow riders while we are attempting to complete my personal ¨Arctic Lines¨ tick list consisting of 30 lines or tours in the Arctic region. Sounds simple, perhaps in the paper, yet it’s not!

I’ve been a professional snowboarder for two decades. For the past ten years, I’ve dedicated my life to travelling and chasing the best conditions around the world while making my snowboarding films. My passion is in the middle of the snowy nature - wherever I can get to live my passion the way I want.

Lately, I’ve been coming to crossroads and I’ve started to consider the meaning of my own ways.

I’m no longer a young athlete, I need a home and familiar circles. Also, climate change has made me to start question my choices in my work. Can I justify myself travel around the world just for the sake of showing the best moments of the best days? I still want to be a professional snowboarder and inspire people with my projects but could there be a better and more meaningful way to do this near my home also.

Sure, but it would be different, It would mean that I would need to change those perfect powder days of Japan and steep big mountain lines of US and New Zealand to the cold and dry weather cycles of Arctic Circle were searching for that deep pocket of snow is more reality than the top to bottom powder runs. We do get snow here in the north, but the wind, well, it usually takes it away quite fast.
This challenging cycle of weather is something that I’ve been avoiding a lot in my freeriding career, especially in the early season.

However, for several years during springtime, I’ve increased my adventures in the Arctic Circle and I’ve learned to see it’s potential.
It’s filled with beautiful mountains and lines, but that’s not all, we also have a lot of cool terrain that not too many know about.
Through these adventures, an idea of this new project started to grow. I begun to write down these places and mountains that I still want to go ride and I realized that in fact my dream lines were no longer based on travels to far away but rather close to home adventures that would still have potential to be considered as world class descents. That’s when an idea of an Arctic Lines was born. Already 5 years ago.

Then last year, It dawned on me, perhaps all the things happening in the world, now would be finally the time to find out if I actually have what it takes to complete this dream list of mine and finally I decided, I’m gonna do this, for the first time in my professional career I’m going to be spending my whole season in the Arctic Circle and show what a winter in the Arctic really is for a freerider from Finland.

I've chosen 30 lines and divided them into different categories.

My plan is to complete all the 30 lines in my list just in two years. I know it’s a rather tight schedule but I feel it’s a goal that is reachable. The most important thing is to set a goal and begin the process. One thing is for sure, these lines are the ones that I’ve been dreaming of doing for a long time and I just never got around going after them because I was so focused on getting that next banger in the film and knew where to travel for those shots.

In Arctic Lines this will change! No more illusions, no more hiding behind the curtain of perfection. This project is all about real adventures and life in the snowy nature of the Arctic. It will be fun, It will definitely be challenging and most importantly I want you to join this adventure too!

Welcome to follow Arctic Lines

Antti Autti

Follow the series on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkCMSYw068Fb8tcnA5dblzA