About the film.

When four-year-old Ryan faced expulsion from preschool, Rob and Mary Beth DeLena were desperate to protect him. They turned to a series of experts, who quickly labeled Ryan and pushed for a therapeutic school. What followed was an agonizing decade of heavy medication, violent restraint, and time spent in a psychiatric hospital.

One cold January day, Rob impulsively took young Ryan skiing and discovered a striking contrast to the explosive child experts presumed him to be. In the years that followed, Rob and Ryan traveled the world in search of challenging terrain, and Ryan discovered a love of backcountry skiing—especially in the iconic White Mountains.

In 2019, 17-year-old Ryan set out to do what no one ever had: ski all 91 lines of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, detailed in the Presidential Skiing Guidebook—a goal many thought impossible. Over six years, he studied the geography, avalanche risks, and weather, then spent hours skinning and climbing. Some days, even after reaching the peak, conditions forced him to turn back without descending. But Ryan never gave up.
While filming the final two lines of the project, Ryan shared the motivation for his endeavor—and in doing so, realized there was one mountain he hadn’t yet climbed. He had never fully processed his traumatic past nor the impact of the people and places that sought to contain him.

Set against one of the most unforgiving mountain ranges on the planet, Ninety One is a transformative father-son journey shaped by guilt, pain, and perseverance—and a tribute to the rugged landscape of Mt. Washington, where Ryan was finally able to thrive.

This is the true story of how skiing saved Ryan’s life.