Brains
In honor of Mother’s Day, it’s worth taking a look at the women who are redefining what it means to be both a mom and a professional skier. Whether they broke barriers in a male-dominated sport or are currently balancing competition, filming, and raising kids, these athletes are proving that motherhood and a ski career can go hand in hand.
Freeride Ski Moms
Ingrid Backstrom
Ingrid Backstrom is a pro skier, mother, and trailblazer. Her ski career opened up the male-dominated industry that skiing is and inspired women everywhere. Backstrom topped Powder Magazine’s Reader Poll for a decade from 2005 to 2015 and finished on the podium in 12 of 14 career contests. Her first descents include routes on Baffin Island, Greenland, Antarctica, and the 20,050-foot Reddomaine Peak in China — the latter one of the highest ski descents ever made by a woman. She won both Best Female Performance and Breakthrough Performance at the 2005 Powder Magazine Video Awards — a rare double — and went on to win Best Female Performance five times total. After becoming a mom, she shifted her focus to coaching, advocacy, and family life, without disappearing from the sport. She was one of only a handful of women in ski movies when she broke through in 2004, in an era when the industry assumed male audiences only wanted to see women who “looked a certain way or skied at a certain caliber.”
Lexi DuPont
Lexi DuPont is another new mama who is crushing it. DuPont qualified for the Junior Olympics two years running as a ski racer before transitioning to big mountain skiing at the University of Colorado. She achieved first ski descents at the Arctic Circle’s northernmost tip in Svalbard, Norway, and across southeast Alaska. She was nominated for Best Female Performance at the Powder Awards for her part in Poor Boyz Productions’ Tracing Skylines and appeared in the all-female film Pretty Faces, also nominated for best ski film by Powder Magazine. She co-founded the Sister Summit — the first ever 100% female backcountry ski and snowboard event, contest, and media production. Her path now is less about non-stop performance and focuses more on balancing an athlete identity, creative work, building a strong community of women, and family life.
Michelle Parker
Michelle Parker, a big name in the freeride community and now expecting mother, is another lady who’s embracing the next chapter of life. She’s navigated the ups and downs of pregnancy this past winter, without losing her drive and ambition in the mountains. After a devastating knee injury that threatened to end her career, Parker staged one of skiing’s most remarkable comebacks, earning Matchstick Productions’ Skier of the Year and a spot on the Red Bull athlete roster. She won the 2019 Powder Awards for Best Female Performance. She pivoted to directing and producing, co-creating All In — the first action sports film with equal male-female representation — and created the Red Bull Originate series. Competition highlights include 1st at the 2009 Aspen Open and multiple top-three finishes at Red Bull Cold Rush.
Lynsey Dyer
Lynsey Dyer, co-founder of She Jumps, a talented filmmaker and elite skier, is another mom who’s continuing to dominate in the ski community. She was a true trailblazer. Dyer was the first female athlete to be featured on the cover of FreeSkier Magazine and was named Best Female Skier of the Year numerous times. Dyer won every big mountain competition she entered over her career, including the overall Extreme Skiing Tour in 2005, and was awarded Female Skier of the Year by both Powder and Freeskier Magazines. She was the first female to launch off the infamous 70-foot Fat Bastard and Cave Air cliffs outside the Jackson Hole ski boundary. She produced and directed Pretty Faces — the first all-female ski film — after fundraising $113,000 on Kickstarter. It sold out 100 shows across the US, Canada, and Europe. She was also the first woman to open a Warren Miller film when she appeared in Children of Winter. Lynsey’s shift into motherhood has been very public and reflective. She has influenced the sport in numerous ways throughout her career and continues to do so as she demonstrates that motherhood is far from slowing her career down.
Elyse Saugstad
Elyse Saugstad, a big mountain skier from Alaska and mother, has also been vocal about balancing motherhood and a ski career. Elyse has had a strong career, collecting multiple “Best Female Performance awards, Freeskier’s Best Female Skier of the Year, winning the 2008 Freeride World Tour overall title. She is still the only American woman to win the Freeride World Tour overall title. She won Powder Video Awards Best Female Performance twice, in 2013 and 2018, was nominated eight times total, won the IF3 International Freeski Film Festival’s Best Female Freeride Performance three times, and was named Freeskier Magazine’s Female Skier of the Year. She survived the 2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche at Stevens Pass — which killed three people — by deploying an avalanche airbag backpack, an experience that directly informed her co-founding of SAFE AS. Her recent transition to motherhood proves that being a mom doesn’t have to slow you down. Rather, it’s redefining what her career can look like. Being a mother inspired her most recent movie, “Here Hold My Kid,” in which she starred alongside Jackie Paaso.
Jackie Paaso
Jackie Paaso is a veteran on the freeride circuit, winner of the 2016 Xtreme Verbier, and an advocate for snow safety and avalanche awareness. She is another outspoken mama not afraid to show the ins and outs of balancing work as a pro skier and a mother. Her movie, “Here Hold My Kid,” demonstrates the balance of a professional chasing goals and being a mom. Paaso was the second woman in history to win the Sickbird Award at Verbier and spent 11 years on the Freeride World Tour, finishing as overall runner-up in 2016. She also won the 2012 and 2014 Chamonix events and the 2010 Squaw Valley event. She entered the Squaw Valley FWT event in 2010 as an unknown wild card, weighing just 118 pounds due to months of depression and no training, and won — beating Ingrid Backstrom into third. That comeback story is extraordinary and completely missing from the piece. After retiring from competition in 2020, she led the Arctic 12 project — a 415km crossing of the Arctic Circle, becoming the first group to ski all 12 of Sweden’s highest 2,000-meter peaks in winter.
Freeride Snowboard Moms
It’s not just the skiers who are redefining motherhood as professionals. There are plenty of ladies in the snowboard community sharing the ups and downs of navigating a new chapter of life.
Jamie Anderson
Jamie Anderson holds the record as the most decorated woman in Winter X Games history with 21 medals across 23 appearances, including multiple slopestyle gold medals. She won the inaugural women’s snowboard slopestyle at Sochi 2014 and became the first woman to defend the Olympic slopestyle title at Pyeongchang 2018 — the first woman to win two gold medals in snowboarding. At Pyeongchang she also won big air silver, making her the only athlete — male or female — to podium in both snowboard events at those Games. She has 11 career World Cup wins, 8 U.S. Open Championship wins, and five ESPY awards for Best Female Action Sports Athlete.
Leanne Pelosi
Leanne Pelosi built her career through competition, creative projects, and mountain advocacy. Her career highlights include: Snowboarder and Transworld’s Female Rider of the Year awards, earning Transworld’s Influencer of the Year award, and being named to ESPN’s Top 50 Women of Action Sports list. As the founder of “Runway films”, she has produced, directed, and starred in numerous snowboard films, broadening the influence of women in the snowboard industry, including Full Moon for which she won the 2016 Transworld Influencer of the Year award for producing, directing, and starring in the first ever all-women’s backcountry snowboard film. After becoming a mother, she did everything but step back from her career. Pelosi does not frame motherhood as a retirement from snowboarding and continues to send big lines. She now represents a more layered life built around parenthood, partnership, and mountain work.
Aline Bock
Aline Bock, known for redefining snowboarding in the 2010s, built her career in freestyle and shifted her focus to freeride. She won the vice world champion in 2009 and the world champion in 2010. Bock joined the Freeride World Tour in 2008 having never planned to compete in freeride — and won the vice world title in her first season, then the world title in her second. She describes winning the world title as “accidental” — saying the FWT was never her big goal, and that she “slipped into it and had a lot of fun.” That detail is genuinely charming and belongs in the piece. Also worth adding: she transitioned from halfpipe and slopestyle to freeride — an unusual career arc that demonstrates extraordinary versatility. After becoming a mother of twins, she successfully navigated the transition without stepping back from snowboarding. Her movie, “Double Trouble”, follows her journey as she adjusts to motherhood with not just one, but two kiddos. Her story is a good example of how a pro snowboard career can evolve. From contest riding into freeride prominence, and then into motherhood, Aline has done it all.
Kimmy Fasani
Kimmy Fasani is an inspiration on and off the mountain. At the start of her career, she was the first woman to land a double backflip in the terrain park. Additionally, she won Women’s Rider of the Year and Video Part of the Year honors, and was featured in numerous snowboard magazines and film segments. Kimmy did not step back from her career as a snowboarder after becoming a mother. She advocated for contract language that would protect pregnant athletes, breaking down barriers for women athletes as they became mothers. After becoming a mother, Kimmy successfully fought stage 3 breast cancer. She came back to win third place in the 2023 Natural Selection, proving that illness and motherhood would not define her career, but rather be a chapter of her story. Her recent documentary, Butterfly in a Blizzard, shows her metamorphosis from a professional athlete to a mom. Kimmy continues to lead by example in the snowboard community by advocating and mentoring others through her and her husband’s nonprofit, The Benchetler Fasani Foundation.
- Related: Why I don’t Like Mother’s Day
While most popular ski movies feature fear-defying big lines and face shots, these moms are sharing a different side of skiing through films of their own. Here are a few movies that share the ups and downs of motherhood as a professional skier. But don’t worry, there’s still epic lines and plenty of face shots to be had. These movies have opened up a new conversation and perspective. As some of these ladies blend their family life with their career, they’ve shared how motherhood doesn’t have to slow you down.
Released in 2023, “Here Hold My Kid” follows Elyse Saugstad and Jackie Passo, who play exaggerated versions of themselves as moms doing it all. It gives insight into the constant competition that drives these athletes and how they continue to rip while balancing being moms. However, they’re not doing it all alone. With the help of their partners, Cody Townsend and Reine Barkered, both professional skiers, these ladies are still able to chase their goals.
Similarly, “Rad Moms,” a short film, displays motherhood as part of a professional ski career rather than a detour from it. Filmed at Jackson Hole, it features rad moms: Resi Stiegler, Jess McMillan, Lynsey Dyer, Crystal Wright, and Jessica Baker. These ladies aren’t just any old moms; they’re cool moms. Each a professional in their own right, they’ve navigated motherhood and their ski careers in their own way. They saw a space to be role models for other professionals trying to figure out how to have a family and continue their ski career.
“Double Trouble / My Life With Twins”, starring Aline Bock, shows her navigating the transition into motherhood. After having twins in 2021, she quickly had to adjust to a new way of living, all while still having her own professional goals. This short film is personal and reflective. It shows how she thinks of motherhood as a continuation of her mountain life.
These moms are still very much front and center in the ski industry. They continue to build their careers while raising kiddos, proving motherhood isn’t an endpoint. Sure, their goals may have shifted, but their drive, passion, and competitive spirit are alive and well. They really are doing it all. They’re not just setting a standard for other ladies in the industry; they’re also raising the next generation of rippers. So whether you’re a mom raising the next generation and sharing your drive and passion, or simply getting by while enjoying the little moments, keep it up. The next generation needs rad moms.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the bada** moms out there!
Kimmy Fasani is deserving of a shout out