A documentary by Mark Obenhaus. Rated G. Opens Friday, January 25, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Steep is a documentary on extreme skiing that could have just as easily been titled: Don’t Try This at Home. Written and directed by Mark Obenhaus, it features breathtaking footage of daredevil skiers catapulting down isolated mountain ranges in Alaska, France, Wyoming, and B.C.

Visually, it supplies an unbelievably tantalizing powder porn that could make any foolhardy kid long to ski out of bounds without a moment’s thought. On a deeper level, it tries to explain why the sport can take a permanent hold on a person’s soul. And the stunts are as thrilling as they are dangerous.

So why would anyone want to test their abilities beyond any rational limit? Champion extreme skier Doug Coombs—who perished in a ski accident shortly after his footage was filmed—half-jokingly explains his attraction to the sport as a chemical imbalance in the brain. By the time you notice that all the interviewed skiers share the same maniacal gleam in their eye, it’s easy to believe that he was being perfectly serious.

How else do you logically explain the exploits of Shane McConkey, who uses a parachute to ski off cliffs, floats deftly to the ground, and then keeps right on going? McConkey seems to have no common sense whatsoever under his tightly wound wool hat. But, man, is he having fun.

One of the film’s more interesting aspects is how it captures the underlying smug sense of entitlement that’s as much a part of some extreme skiers as the ability to part impossibly deep drifts of snow. When pioneering daredevil skier Bill Briggs suggests that we play it far too safe and should take serious risks more often, you can’t help thinking that he needs to take a walk through a spinal-injury ward.

But if Steep proves anything, it’s that plain old prudence is no match for sheer adrenaline.