Island Trails Network holds ninth annual outdoor film festival

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Community members gathered at the Kodiak Convention Center this weekend to attend Kodiak’s ninth annual outdoor film festival.

The festival is also the membership meeting for Island Trails Network, a nonprofit with services that include building and maintaining trails and cleaning up marine debris around the Kodiak Archipelago.

Executive director Andy Schroeder says it’s easier now more than ever for the brave and intrepid to film their adventures.

“In the time we’ve been having the film festival, we’ve seen sort of the advent of the GoPro and saw those proliferate and now it seems to be drones in the last few years, so they’re all cameras, but they’re in different places, moving around in different ways, and it’s really amazing.”

Coastguardsman Matt Miller used a drone for some of the shots in his submission. He paraglides.

“It’s like a parachute that you can hike up a mountain with, and then you can run off the side of the mountain and fly down. Everyone thinks it’s kind of like an adrenaline, scary sport, but it’s actually pretty low-key, and it’s kinda calm when you’re flying.”

He says he records every flight, and his movie includes shots of Pyramid Mountain, Pillar Mountain, and the Flats.

Philip Tschersich is president of the Island Trails Network board and helps out on other people’s films, but also documents his own travels in the archipelago. One of his submissions is of him packrafting around Shuyak Island.

“Packrafts are very small inflatable rafts. They only carry a single person and use a kayak paddle with it. They also fold down very small, so if you’re backpacking and you get to a body of water that you need to cross, there’s no reason why you can’t bring a boat with you now.”

ITN screened a total of 13 films to a room full of people.

Paul VanDyke took home the blue ribbon for his movies, a time lapse of him collecting buckets of gravel for his icy driveway and depositing it inch by inch from the back of his truck so he could drive up to his house.