ADVENTURE -- For the first time, I'm able to reveal the lineup of films for the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, which starts its three-day run tonight, 7 p.m., at The Bing.

I just returned from the meeting as Mountain Gear staff made the difficult selections to present a balanced lineup of the best films without overdoing any night with too much whitewater or culture or too many long films while provide everything from thrills to laughs.

From what I could see, they succeeded.  Read on for the list of films, but if you don't have tickets, you're out of luck until Sunday.  The shows tonight and Saturday are sold out and Sunday tickets were going fast when I stopped by Mountain Gear minutes ago.

Picking the films were Phil Bridgers and Heather Salo of Mountain Gear, teaming with Paul Price, a 10-year veteran World Tour host who travels the continent with the Banff films.

Paul already has showed the film at four three venues in Montana, and he helped the Spokane hosts with tips on how the films were received by other audiences.

Here's the lineup as it stood at the conclusion of their meeting, subject to minor last-minute changes.  Note that a few of the snappy crowd-pleasing short films will show more than one night.

FRIDAY (Starts 7 p.m.)

• The Longest Way -- Voted best short film
• Fly Or Die -- Special jury award winner
• Crossing the Ditch -- Best film on exploration and adventure
• Azadi: Freedom -- Skiing
• Still motion -- Wildlife
• WildWater -- whitewater film featureing Doug Ammons of Missoula, selected by Outside Magazine as one of the top 10 adventure game-changers in the last 100 years
• Kranked Kids -- Biking humor

SATURDAY (Starts 7 p.m.)

• Kranked Kids -- Biking Humor
• Into Darkness -- Caving flick that's getting great audience response
• The Asgard Project -- Voted best film on climbing, it's the longest film of the weekend at 60 minutes, but visually captivating.  The northern lights images at the end of the heart-thumping intro footage are from this film.
• Last Paradise -- Excellent nostalgia flick on industrious New Zealanders and their evolution from go from surfing to snowboarding and more
• Stones into Schools -- Culture: if you read Three Cups of Tea, you'll dig this
• Longest Way -- Best short film
• Dream REsult -- Whitewater thriller, ends with a clip of the world-record waterfall descent of Palouse Falls.

SUNDAY (starts at 6 p.m.)

• Swiss Machine -- Speed climbing
• Life Cycles -- Mountain biking
• Longest Way -- Best short film
• Eastern Rises -- Best film on mountain sports, a zippy, humorous film on fly fishing in Russia
• Salt -- Won award for creative excellence.
• Rush Hour Dream -- Paragliding
• Deeper -- Backcountry snowboarding
• Kranked kids -- Biking humor.

One disappointment about the World Tour this year:  A Life Ascending, the people's choice winner from the Banff Festival featuring a ski mountaineer and his family from Revelstoke, British Columbia, will not be shown.  The licensing agreement has not yet been processed.

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