Late in the 2022 season, Sophia Rouches made up her mind to hit the infamous Mt. Baker road gap. For generations of locals, jumping over Highway 542 has represented a pinnacle accomplishment, a rite of passage and cause for top bragging rights rolled into one death-defying, camera-friendly stunt. “Dropping in 10,” she announced to her crew, […]

It was nearing midnight and six giant bags of luggage still needed packing. Earlier in the day—on a sunlit Saturday last March—American ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin had beat Ingemar Stenmark’s 86-win record for the most World Cup victories, racing slalom in Stenmark’s home country of Sweden. But there was little time to stop and reflect. […]

Stakes were high for Sam Kuch atop a steep, misty venue at the 2017 Kicking Horse Freeride World Qualifier. Lace this run, make the Freeride World Tour. Stumble, and the 19-year-old would return home to Nelson, BC, empty-handed, just in time to pick up the hammer for a sweltering summer of backbreaking roofing work. The […]

In April 2023, Parkin Costain got the call he had been long awaiting—Alaska. Teton Gravity Re- search. Spines. And it came laced with an op- portunity to obtain a master’s degree in extreme skiing from two athletes that had helped define burly Alaskan descents: Sage Cattabriga-Alosa and Ian McIntosh. The phone started to feel a […]

It’s not clear what Molly Armanino sees in the line off the summit of Volcán Azufre. It looked good from the valley, sure—a 50-degree, slightly fluted face, perched above a small cliff band and a few thousand more feet of skiable vertical. From the top, the descent looks dramatically steeper, icier, sun-affected and like some invisible […]

State Highway 13 is a lonely country road, coursing along the Rio Blanco in western Colorado. Pickup trucks full of ranchers and natural gas field workers are usually the only traffic, but every January, Utah professional skiers like Joss Christensen traverse the empty thruway en route to X Games in Aspen, CO. That’s exactly where Christensen […]

Sitting dejected on the curb outside of the Taco Shoppe in Government Camp, OR, Andy Parry and Will Wesson bantered about how far $2.50 will go. “The gypsy lifestyle is embracing me,” quipped Parry, buried among a pile of Full Tilt boots. It was summertime and the pair had managed to wrangle a little money and […]

In March of 2021, deep in the guts of the COVID pandemic and stuck at home in Canada, Christina Lustenberger made her way to the top of a mountain that’s always been core to her sense of place. Mount Nelson, the 10,869-foot massif that rises above her hometown of Invermere, BC, had been on her mind […]

From the passenger’s seat of Leighan Falley’s 1957 Piper Pacer, the granite peaks of the Alaska Range loom large. Buzzing past heavily crevassed glaciers, the bush plane cuts through the narrow walls of the Great Gorge of the Ruth Glacier with intuitive precision—an extension of its pilot, an artist in flight. Climbers and skiers pepper the […]

Winter 2019 in Cooke City, MT. Set against the backdrop of the dramatic Absaroka Range, Jossi Wells sat atop the inrun. Below, Bobby Brown and his crew milled about. Two cameras, three friends and a 65-foot step-down. In the distance, the steady hum of snowmobilers, undoubtedly high-marking. It was a familiar situation for Jossi, a professional […]