Culture

Resort Expansion

North of Duluth, MN, near Lake Superior, a group of obsessive backcountry skiers has been planning the Midwest’s first backcountry ski area and a hut-to-hut ski-touring route along the North Shore. Rory Scoles, the founder of Superior Highlands Backcountry, a local nonprofit, says hacking around outside in the winter is core to the culture there. They’re […]

Hokkaido

I never thought that a Japanese winter could be all ours. Gathered around a bonfire the night before my wedding, the idea seemed far-fetched, at best. I had been based in Japan for a few years, ski guiding in the bountiful mountains of Hokkaido, far from my home mountains in New Zealand. Yukka had been an […]

Revelstoke

It’s 3:15 a.m. and I’m awakened by a primal, don’t-freeze-to-death instinct. I check my phone. Still four hours till the alarm. Damn. I’m tired, but I don’t want to sleep. I don’t think I can. I want to get moving. The northern winter nights are always long, but this week they’ve felt exceptionally long—a 30-degrees-below-zero kind […]

Female Freeski Pioneers

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 […]

Podunk Powder

“You wanna know what Fergi’s all about? We take white trash and we turn ’em into skiers.” Years of cold mountain air and cigarettes layered Tim Turrentine’s raspy voice with the crackle of a transistor radio. An unseasonably warm breeze picked up his long hair and wafted smoke across the deck of Terminal Gravity, a […]

Skijoring

Save for the tracks of the rodeo queen carrying the American flag, and the skiing duck mascot that hyped up the crowd, the corduroy is pristine. The lack of tracks is a bit disconcerting, but by now I can visualize every jump and turn. It takes a while for us to get the all-clear. I […]

Honshu Streets

A 20-year-old filmmaker working on her first project joins seven women, also in their 20s, to make a street-skiing film in Japan. They have three weeks. Most of these skiers have never made a street-focused film before, and many of them don’t know each other yet.  What results from this whirlwind is Jyosei—“woman” in Japanese—a film […]

California Grass

In 1984, Warren Miller recruited Brian McKay and two friends to shoot a California segment for his upcoming film, Ski Country. During their two-minute part, the trio displayed all the hallmarks of a mid-1980s Warren Miller film: tight pants, spread eagles and synthesizer riffs, all set to Miller’s wry narration. The background, however, wasn’t snowy […]

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