Chris Anthony making final push to complete new film in time for 2025-26 ski season

Tenth Mountain Division veteran Friedl Pfeifer, in his book “Nice Goin’, My Life on Skis,” says after making the famous “Trooper Traverse” from Leadville to Aspen in the spring of 1944, he knew he would be back.

“I felt, at that moment, an overwhelming sense of my future before me,” Pfeifer wrote.

If it sounds like it should be a scene in a movie, setting up a conclusion in which Pfeifer returns to Aspen and helps build the first chairlift, it soon will, as Vail-area filmmaker Chris Anthony is exploring Pfeifer’s story for his new film “Mission Grossglockner.”

Pfeifer’s story is symbolic of the Camp Hale-to-Aspen pipeline that many 10th Mountain Division soldiers took in the 1940s.

In between those two Colorado locations, the ski troopers went to Europe, fought the Axis powers and organized two international ski races following the conclusion of the war. The first of the ski races that followed the war was the focus of Anthony’s most recent film, “Mission Mt. Mangart,” which debuted in 2021.

“Mission Grossglockner” will be a companion piece to that film, Anthony says, although both can be enjoyed independently of each other.

Capturing the ski racing action has been a culmination of Anthony’s skills as a skier and filmmaker. A former Warren Miller ski film star, Anthony started pivoting to more educational-based content about ski culture in the 2010s, starring in Warren Miller’s “Climb to Glory” in 2014. That film, about the 10th Mountain Division, sparked Anthony’s renewed interest in the history of the elite unit of the U.S. Army formed during World War II. Anthony first learned about the famed ski troopers as a kid growing up in Colorado.

In February, when locals were recognizing the 10th Mountain Division’s 80th anniversary of the capturing of Mt. Belvedere, Anthony was in Austria scaling a peak that hosted another ski race featuring the 10th Mountain Division following the conclusion of the war.

It was the second of two races the 10th helped organize after the fighting had ceased in Europe. In exploring the history of the snowy face that hosted that race — a mountain called Grossglockner, the highest peak in Austria — Anthony saw a name that jumped out at him.

“Grossglockner had an annual race series, and the winner of the very first race in that series in the 1935-36 season was Friedl Pfeifer,” Anthony said.

After the war, Pfeifer returned to the United States in the fall of 1945 with one goal in mind.

“I was discharged from the Army on October 16, 1945, and immediately set off for Aspen with my discharge papers in hand along with a Purple Heart and a few dollars in my pocket,” he wrote.

While the Austrian native had just left his true home, the European Alps, it didn’t feel that way at the time. Instead, upon reaching Aspen, “remarkably I felt like I had come home,” he wrote.

Anthony’s goal is to launch his new film exactly 80 years from Pfeifer’s return to Aspen, in November of 1945, to be played at select locations that request the film in advance through Anthony’s 501c3 foundation.

Anthony’s film is also a collaboration with the Vail-based Colorado Snowsports Museum. The museum creates video tributes for all of the inductees to the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame, but does not have a video tribute on file for Pfeifer, so a portion of Anthony’s new film will be used for Pfeifer’s video tribute.

Anthony is also raising money to complete the film in time for this upcoming winter. Those interested in contributing to Anthony’s latest film project can visit the “Mission Grossglockner” tab on the Chris Anthony Youth Initiative website to learn more.