If the preparation was arduous, the mountain adventure would be every bit as testing. Out of Bounds isn’t merely a film about Torah Bright the snowboarder. It is a film about Torah Bright the climber, about Torah Bright kayaking the frigid waters of Antarctica, about revelations in nature and society, about a fragile and mighty planet on the brink of climatic meltdown. Perhaps it’s not about Torah Bright at all – in which case she is onscreen as a vital messenger. Either way, the experiences she was able to tick off along the way were profound.

“Ahhh there were so many! Antarctica was something special. Removed from the world. I had some seriously beautiful spiritual moments there. Riding with Sammy and Jeremy was amazing!”

The more she extols on her affinity for the white world, the more I understand why Torah was the perfect choice for this film. She has a rapport with snowboarding, and every element of the arena in which it is practiced, that goes beyond anything we get to see on the competition circuit. Her love for snowboarding is matched by an understanding of its place in the wider world beyond winter sport. 

“I have always had an interest in native cultures,” she explains. “The final stop of the movie was to visit an Iñupiat village in the Arctic Refuge. It was amazing to talk and hear stories of the native people. So much to learn and so much synchronicity in their ways of life.” 

Out of Bounds took in its long stride three continents and both hemispheres. It features snow and rock and water along the vast range of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountains that runs from the Antarctic Peninsula, up the spine of South America, Central America, and into North America right up to the Alaska Range. Look at a map to get your head round this inestimable line of peaks, but before you get into the geography we ought to stop and take an ecological bearing.

For all its sweeping vistas and epic riding, Out of Bounds touches some of the vital aspects of our planet. Not just because a chunk of it was shot in Antarctica, which is losing ice at a rate six times faster than it was in the 1980s, but also because of locations like Squaw Valley, the California ski and snowboard resort that is aiming to become 100% sustainable.

Of course there are reams of scientific data, as compelling as they are disturbing, but for all the facts and figures, it is the visual evidence which lays bare the perils of the world we inhabit today and which, in theory at best, we might continue to inhabit tomorrow. The more I’ve witnessed of our planet over just the last few years, from bleached coral to plastic mountains to shrinking glaciers, the more I understand the earth’s plight.

Last month I interviewed USA’s first Cross Country Skiing Olympic Champion Jessie Diggins, whose on-snow experiences of climate change have led her right to the doors of Capitol Hill, where she has campaigned to raise awareness and to galvanize the powers that be. 

But as a sport, Cross Country is very different to anything practiced in the freestyle arena, where snow and ice are gathered and sculpted by machines. So is the threat of climate change felt equally across the winter sport spectrum?

“I think for me I can’t say I have seen this over my career as snow conditions vary greatly from year to year everywhere around the world,” Torah says. “I don’t spend time in the places that are feeling it most so don’t have the experience Jessie does,” she points out, citing a sport contested within artificial confines over Jessie’s, which has its roots at least in natural forest trails at low levels. “What we all do know and feel is that the world is changing. We have taken and taken for too long and now the earth is hurting.”