By Reader Staff
Though there’s little to no snow in the lowlands, it’s time to grab your friends and family Friday, Jan. 10 to celebrate the local SnowSchool at the 20th annual Winter Wildlands Alliance Backcountry Film Festival at 7 p.m. at the Panida Theater (300 N. First Ave.).
The film festival is an annual event that celebrates human-powered, backcountry-inspired stories rooted in wild snowscapes, stewardship and stoke. Each year, the series makes its world premiere in Boise and then tours to more than 100 showings around the world — from the U.S. and Canada to Antarctica, Europe, Australia and Asia — including a stop in Sandpoint.
The films come from renowned filmmakers who search backcountry corners across the globe to submit their best work, and from grassroots filmmakers who take a video camera out on their weekend excursions and submit their best films. In addition to the impactful films, there will be a “Rockin’ Raffle” including the opportunity to win a piece of Schweitzer history — a ski chair from the Musical Chairs lift.
The festival was created in 2004 to highlight the Winter Wildlands Alliance’s efforts to preserve and promote winter landscapes for human-powered users.
Funds raised stay in local communities to support like-minded, human-powered recreation efforts and to raise awareness of winter management issues, avalanche training/safety and winter education programs like SOLE’s award-winning and nationally recognized SnowSchool Experience program.
As part of SOLE’s larger fall season Reach and Teach Kids Campaign, the annual event aims at raising awareness and essential funds for SOLE’s SnowSchool at Schweitzer. Since its inception in 2012, the place-based experiential education program has put more than 4,500 local area youth on the snow to explore and learn in (and about) their winter wildlands from the mountains to the lakes.
Educators and their students experience fun and engaging outdoor education lessons on outdoor living travel skills, snow science, winter ecology, avalanche awareness and conservation literacy.
During the past 12 winter seasons, every fifth-grade student in the Lake Pend Oreille School District has been afforded outdoor opportunities through funds raised during the event and other partnership opportunities, including LPOSD, Panhandle Alliance for Education, the Innovia Foundation, the William Wishnick Foundation, the Blue Skies Foundation, TC Energy Foundation, Bonner General Health, the city of Sandpoint, Kochava, P1FCU, Mountain West Bank and Idaho Blue Cross Foundation.
For more information on the Winter Wildlands Alliance Backcountry Film Festival and Selkirk Outdoor Leadership and Education, visit soleexperiences.org.
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Coming up this week! Don’t miss Science fun, the Backcountry Film Festival, Insanity Fab, and more! See the full list of events in the 
