Professional snowboarders and film makers Jake Price and Lukas Huffman are celebrating the ten year anniversary of their cult snowboarding film ir77, with a remastered edition featuring several DVD exclusive shorts from the original film footage.  One of the mini features on the DVD is a very impressive ladder challenge; to build a functional ladder out of wood in just nine minutes.

As they travelled from Canada to Romania, via Germany, fellow snowboarder Andrew Crawford found a wall he wanted to board off, but in order to get up there he needed a ladder.  They did not have one to hand, nor was there anyone they could borrow one from; so the challenge to build his own ladder in nine minutes was devised.  His friends didn’t believe it can be done, and at points in the video they look like they could be right; the saw he was using to cut the wood to length, wasn’t working well and the nails he has, keep bending as he tries to hammer them in.  Working against the odds to build the ladder Crawford does eventually get it done with a minute to spare.  Despite their initial misgivings, Crawford’s friends happily celebrate his ladder triumph with him.

The real test of viability comes when Crawford uses the ladder to climb on to a roof.  The rungs are very far apart and it certainly wouldn’t pass any health and safety assessment, but for a homemade ladder, created in less than ten minutes we think he has done a pretty good job.  Perhaps he could be nominated for one of this year’s ladder heroes?  We would suggest that if you are planning to recreate this challenge at home, you allow a little more time, and are very careful when testing the ladder out.  These guys were in Germany during the winter and had big piles of snow to break their fall should the ladder have failed; in the UK we don’t have that luxury.