Josh Daiek’s Humble Beginnings Before He Became Your Favorite Pro Skier’s Favorite Pro Skier The search begins in the gray, smoky light of early morning. Josh Daiek is hunched over Google Earth like an old school cartographer charting a risky path across the sea. He zooms, scrolls, tilts the computer screen, hunting for “any little bump and whatever on Google Earth that we could go ski.” What he is looking for isn’t obvious—it’s rarely […] Deep Dive Martin Kuprianowicz | December 22, 2025 0 Comments
With Kelowna, BC, Named a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, Big White Ski Resort Raises Its Culinary Game Big White Ski Resort, BC, Canada, is located 35 miles southeast of Kelowna, which received the designation in the creative field of gastronomy this year. It joins other culinary capitals in North America, such as San Antonio, Texas, Tucson, Arizona, and Mérida, Mexico. Kelowna is Canada’s first city to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) award […] Industry News Gregg Frantz | December 19, 2025 0 Comments
Rewriting the Story of Women in the High Alpine Across history, women have fought for the simple freedom to move through the world without restriction. Women conquering wild spaces is not a new story. For 150 years or longer, women across the globe have led expeditions, first ascents, and feats of endurance—often quietly, often in the shadow of a male companion, frequently unrecorded or misrepresented in their own stories. […] Deep Dive Jacqui Davis | December 18, 2025 0 Comments
Cody Townsend Confronts the Hard Questions Behind a Life in the Mountains With New Film “The Edge of Reason” WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the film The Edge of Reason For twenty years, Cody Townsend has been known as one of the most gifted skiers alive. His career spans everything from high-speed freeride films to one of the most iconic descents ever captured on camera—his line through “The Crack” in Alaska, a straight-line through a sliver of rock that […] Backcountry Martin Kuprianowicz | November 21, 2025 0 Comments
The Fisherman With a Ski Tuning Service in His Van 27-year-old Jake Filarski chased fish before he chased ski edges. Boats before vans. The ocean before the mountains. In summer he runs rivers in Alaska. In winter he wants to ride—and to pay for it without killing the dream. “I started the ski tuning business to support the fishing,” he told me. “And the fishing has kind of gone […] Deep Dive Martin Kuprianowicz | November 18, 2025 0 Comments
GoFundMe Helps Athletes and Para Athletes Make The Olympic Dream A Reality In just a few months, we’ll be watching Team USA enter the Olympic venue at Milano Cortina, Italy, in the opening ceremony. Between now and then, athletes will compete fiercely with each other to qualify for the team and represent the U.S. at the Winter Olympics. While the immense challenge of maintaining an extreme training program, avoiding injury, and stringing […] Olympics Zach Armstrong | November 15, 2025 0 Comments
Split Skis: How a Tool for the Polish Military Has Turned into the Next Big Thing for Travel Skiing Split Skis started because of a problem that a Polish parachute unit faced: jumping from an airplane into a winter alpine environment was often inefficient to do so with skis. The skis had to be dropped from the airplane in a separate crate and could easily get lost and land kilometers away from the paratrooper. In theory, it would be […] Deep Dive Martin Kuprianowicz | November 10, 2025 0 Comments
Civics For Skiers: The Balance Between Recreation and Resource Extraction on Public Lands *This article is the third article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard. Civics For Skiers: How Local Governments Help Skiers Talk To Developers Civics For Skiers: State Laws Establish Responsibility For Skiers and Ski Areas A lot of the […] Industry News Zach Armstrong | October 24, 2025 0 Comments
Inside the Liability Insurance Crisis Pushing Oregon Ski Areas to the Brink Oregon’s outdoor recreation industry is in the midst of a liability insurance crisis after earlier this year, Safehold Special Risk, a major insurer for ski resorts, announced it would no longer provide coverage in the state. The decision stems from Oregon’s legal climate, where liability waivers are largely unenforceable following a series of lawsuits, leaving businesses more exposed to lawsuits […] Industry News Brent Glogau | October 24, 2025 3 Comments
The 25-Year, $3 Billion Killington Expansion Will Run Head On Into Vermont’s Housing Crisis Chris Karr arrived at Killington in 1981 to spend a season as a ski bum; 44 years later, he is still here as the owner of a number of restaurants and a convenience store. Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, Karr faced serious problems finding staff. This wasn’t a new issue as housing in Vermont had been getting harder to […] Industry News David Michael | October 13, 2025 1 Comment
How to Stay Alive in Steep Terrain: Lessons From a Life in Chamonix Ross Hewitt has been skiing steep lines in Chamonix for nearly 30 years. He has not just survived, but endured. In a place where mistakes often prove fatal, he’s found a way to consistently keep the most important aspect of free skiing intact: himself. By all accounts, the odds aren’t in your favor. The slopes of the Mont Blanc Massif, […] Deep Dive Martin Kuprianowicz | September 20, 2025 0 Comments
From Ice Rink Shavings to the Freeride World Tour: The Rise of Polish Freeskier Zuza Witych In Łódź, a city in central Poland where the horizon is flat and the winters often arrive more as slush than snow, a teenage girl dragged buckets of ice shavings from the local skating rink. She and her friends heaped it into mounds beside the railway embankment, shaping small jumps and rails from scraps of metal. It was the closest […] Competition Martin Kuprianowicz | September 2, 2025 0 Comments
Carving New Lines: How Pakistan’s Women are Claiming the Snow The fight for women’s equality—at home, in politics, and across culture—is a story that has unfolded over centuries and around the world. On February 12, 1983, hundreds of women marched through Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore, to protest the discriminatory Law of Evidence instituted under General Zia-ul-Haq. The law, equating the testimony of two women to that of one man, was […] Deep Dive Jacqui Davis | August 29, 2025 0 Comments
Civics For Skiers: State Laws Establish Responsibility For Skiers and Ski Areas This article is the second article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard. Civics For Skiers: How Local Governments Help Skiers Talk To Developers In the late 1970s, the only way to get down the hill was with two planks […] Industry News Zach Armstrong | July 30, 2025 0 Comments
Civics For Skiers: How Local Governments Help Skiers Talk To Developers This article is the first article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard. Development has always been a part of the ski industry. From the early days when big resorts used skiing as a way to sell real estate, to […] Industry News Zach Armstrong | July 17, 2025 0 Comments
From Trend to Necessity: How Helmets Became Essential Gear on the Slopes It wasn’t that long ago when wearing a helmet while skiing or snowboarding was a rare occurrence. According to the National Ski Areas Association (NSSA), the overall percentage of skiers and riders wearing helmets was 25 percent during the 2002-03 season. That percentage rose dramatically over the last twenty years to 90 percent during the 2023-24 season. It has become […] Industry News Gregg Frantz | July 7, 2025 2 Comments
Inside the U.S. Ski Team’s Ambitious Plan to Win the FIS Alpine Nations Cup The U.S. Ski Team has set its sights on winning the Overall Nations Cup by 2035. Chip Knight, U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s (USSS) Alpine Development Director, tells SnowBrains, “We’d like to stand toe to toe with the best Nations in the world, and the Nations Cup is the best metric in terms of depth of excellence.” The Performance Task Force […] Competition David Michael | June 12, 2025 0 Comments
How an Oncology Nurse is Redefining Backcountry Skiing Limits By Completing Utah’s Legendary ‘Chuting Gallery’ in Only 47 Days Through the windows of the Huntsman Cancer Institute, Mali Noyes looks out past cars with license plates tagged with the motto “Ski Utah” and “Life Elevated,” toward the towering Wasatch Range. An oncology nurse and Salomon-sponsored skier, Noyes just skied all 93 lines in the Chuting Gallery in less than 2 months. “Life Elevated” isn’t just a slogan. It’s the […] Deep Dive Miles Berman | May 29, 2025 0 Comments
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