Battle Mountain is the story of an attempted ski trip in Nevada at the time of the Gulf War. That year there was hardly any snow at all and the trip turned into an extended drive through the state’s mountain ranges and basins. As the producer encountered scene after scene of violence – cowboys cutting off the testicles of cattle and branding them, the ear-shattering noise of military jets; a drunken sledding race turned bloody – the CNN coverage of the Gulf War blasting from the tv screens in local bars took on new meaning.