You might press play on Arc’teryx’s Shaped by Wild to watch Joe Lax riding massively wild British Columbian spines. And that alone makes it worth watching. But excellent storytelling and depth of character is what’s going to keep you entranced.

Aiming to capture the essence of British Columbia’s massive Coast Mountains, Shaped by Wild accomplishes that goal by diving into the stories of the people who live there and whose cultures have, in some cases, been shaped by the range for time immemorial.

“It pretty quickly could just turn into a landscape piece,” says co-director, Bryan Smith, who crafted this beautifully poignant 49-minute piece alongside co-director Cameron Sylvester and Reel Water Productions. “But when we thought about it, we were like, what really makes the Coast Range special are the people that live amongst the mountains, the people that call the place home.”

Joe Lax tags an obscure peak in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. Lines like this are a result of decades of dedication to exploring and riding his home range.

Smith and Sylvester took a fly-on-the-wall approach, capturing around 1,000 hours of footage—no interviews, no scripts, just organic and authentic moments which tell the stories of several people embodying different ways of life in the Coast Mountains.

Those stories include Joe Lax and Delaney Zayac seeking out big mountain lines in their backyard near Pemberton; Chief Jimmy Lulua of the Xeni Gwet’in nation leading a team across the Homathko Icefield on a 50-mile traverse the way his ancestors did for generations before him; Skiers Ryan Oakden and Kalissa Lolos embracing solitude in the tiny and remote community of Bralorne; Meesh Coles and John Kelsey experiencing the coastal fjords aboard the sailboat they call home. Climbers Julia Niles and Lisa Van Sciver topping out on Godly peaks after dozens of pitches of big wall struggle. And, finally, legendary Coast Range mountaineer and author, Don Serl, reliving a lifetime of mountain memories as he pours through boxes of slide film from his journeys.

The Coast Mountains span nearly 1,000 miles, covering some 130,000 square miles of British Columbia. It’s a place of vast wilderness, with only a handful of roads. Trying to portray that in a film was a daunting task.

Mount Waddington is the tallest peak in the Coast Mountains at 13,186 feet.

“You could spend a lifetime, 20 lifetimes trying to find every little nook and cranny here,” Smith says. “…the film is just a little microscope into a handful of characters who are constantly looking beyond. They’ve spent their entire lives here, and they’re still curious about what’s around the corner or what’s up over there.”

Shaped by Wild is full of striking visuals and lovely moments, which Smith attributes to the tactic of constantly rolling film and letting life play out. Oakden, Lolos, and their dog Dusty ice skating on a frozen lake many miles from the next person, Coles and Kelsey skinny dipping in tranquil waters from the bow of their boat, and Lulua talking of the personalities of all his horses are some standouts. The film also includes plenty of epic landscape aerials that convey the beauty and grandeur of the Coast Mountains, the kinds of goosebump-inducing shots that the best outdoor films provide.

There’s a memorable scene of Lax poring over a trunk full of old, weather-beaten maps of different parts of the range in his living room, making a list of spots to explore. “There’s just something to pulling the maps out and dreaming,” he says. “I know there’s hidden gems… Sometimes it’s the time of year, or the sun hits it just right and all of a sudden, it’s something you obsess over.”

Lax, again, exploring the sharp edge of the Coast Mountains.

Our last glimpse of Lax and Zayac is on the face of one of these hidden gems known only to their inner circle. It’s steep and technical and exposed. The snow looks perfect. They’ve been obsessing about lines like this for a couple of decades now and will continue chasing them for years to come. They’ll cross descents off their list, but we get the impression this list will keep growing and growing faster than they can keep up.

Shaped by Wild is about these places, but really, the beauty of the film is in the unique relationships each of these people have with these mountains, and with each other.

“The reality is that the Coast Mountain Range doesn’t care about us. It’s just there; it’s an inanimate object, a piece of land,” Smith says. “But the characters make us feel what’s truly unique about this place. They make it feel big and vast and unpredictable.”