With more than half the planet busy practicing social distancing, one man in Spain decided to use his time in isolation to get creative with a camera. Ski fanatic and photographer Philipp Klein Herrero is in lockdown at his home in Barcelona. After being forced to cancel a trip to the mountains due to coronavirus travel restrictions, Herrero decided to combine his passion for skiing with his film-making skills to create a video called <em>Freeride Skiing at Home. </em> "This is what happens when you force a skibum to stay home when I should be skiing!" he wrote under the video posted on his Instagram. Filmed via a GoPro Hero attached to the ceiling, the video shows Herrero waking up on his wooden parquet floor in a sleeping bag. Donning his skis, he ascends the "mountain" in front of him – created from white sheets spread on the floor of his apartment. At the top of the slope, there's an "ice wall" that he picks his way over before making it to the "summit". "Just before the current health situation locked us in, I was about to go freeriding with my family. It was supposed to be the big adventure of the year, the one I had been eagerly awaiting for a year," said the Spaniard on his YouTube page, where the video is posted in 4K HD. "I made this video to cheer up a little and spread positivity during these times," he writes. It is type of skiing (or snowboarding) that happens on natural, open terrain. Freeriders shy away from groomed ski-slopes and instead take in off-piste slopes, steep runs and deep powder, often accessed via helicopters. Herrero's work has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on YouTube and more than 200,000 times on Instagram. It has inspired similar offerings from adventurers around the world. French pro-kitesurfer Antoine Auriol shot a similarly styled video depicting the former world champion of the sport kiting from his home. He posted the video under the hashtag #inspiredbyphilippklein. These videos are a little bit of light relief for an industry that's been one of the hardest hit by the spread of the coronavirus. The travel and tourism industry has fallen hard and fast after the pandemic. Research by the World Travel and Tourism Council found that 75 million tourism jobs are at risk globally. In a recent broadcast, Shannon Stowell, the chief executive of the Adventure Travel Trade Association, spoke gravely about the "forces wreaking havoc on the industry" and paid tribute to several members of the community who have been affected. But in a spirit of optimism similar to that in the GoPro videos being shared on social media, there was a sense of resilience and optimism in Stowell's message. He encouraged travel agents, tour operators, guides and travellers to "band together for hope, inspiration, a common voice and the recovery phase that we know will come eventually."
