This article first appeared in The Ski Journal Issue 15.4 High on the steeps above us, a skier catches an edge in the summer slush. He rag-dolls before belly sliding a good hundred feet, losing skis, poles and goggles along the way. Cheers erupt from the lift line as the man stands, shakes the snow from […]
Michelle Parker was 17 years old when she got her big break. A former racer who’d turned to freeskiing contests at 15, Parker was invited to appear alongside her idols in Freeskier’s 2004 “Women of Freeskiing” issue. The exposure could cement her place as a torch-bearer for the next generation of women in a blossoming niche […]
It’s mid-summer in Salt Lake City, UT and the heat is oppressive. Dan Gates sweats as he wrenches on a 1979 Thiokol Imp Snowcat, the smells of engine oil, axle grease, and diesel fuel thick in the air of his small shop. Snow is a long way off, but for a snowcat mechanic like Gates, […]
A slopeside room on the cheap is a ski bum equivalent of the American Dream, though an increasingly elusive one. High costs of living in mountain towns is nothing new, but other challenges—like the lack of available housing inventory and space constraints preventing the building of more—add to the immense challenge of housing the ski industry’s […]
Editor’s note: On Saturday, February 6, an avalanche in Utah’s Millcreek Canyon buried seven backcountry skiers. Four of them died, making the incident the deadliest avalanche in Utah since 1992. In total, the mountain community lost 15 people to avalanches last week, the deadliest weeklong avalanche cycle since 1910. Our condolences go out to the […]
For a lot of us, our vehicle is a whole lot more than just a ride to and from the mountain. A ski rig can be a safe-haven from the cold, a mobile kitchen to avoid ponying up $15 for a lodge burger, and a portable office for those who’ve managed to arrange their work […]
In a spread eagle world, Mike Nick was throwing 720s. Nick had just topped the Winter X Games podium for the debut of skiboard slopestyle, and it was clear to everybody watching the event on TV: this sport was unlike anything ever seen before. The year was 1998, and skiboarding was the future. Of course, […]
The last few years have been big for Caroline Gleich. In 2017, she finished her five-year project of becoming the first woman to ski all 90 lines in The Chuting Gallery, Andrew McLean’s famous guidebook of the steepest lines in the Wasatch. Since then, she’s turned her focus to projects both beyond, and inherently tied […]
The edge, my friend. That is all you need to worry about—the tiny sliver between doom and grace. That place at which a point is made, where two surfaces converge. For now, think only of that. Think of the samurai, who kneels bent over whetstone, or the chef, whose arsenal of kitchen knives lies waiting […]
On March 14, I woke up in my sleeping bag. I put on down pants, stuffed cold toes into stiff boots, and set to melting snow for water, taking my hands out of big mittens just long enough to turn the knob on my stove. It took four hours for the sun to crest the […]
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