Ode To Ski Journalism
“You can’t look forward without looking back,” I kept saying to myself. Someone told me to rock the boat and make some waves. Another said, encouragingly, “Drive it like you stole it.”
The thoughts echoed through my head as I joined the list of FREESKIER editors who came before me. Like getting my name etched on the Stanley Cup, sitting at the top of the FREESKIER masthead is a childhood dream realized. But I didn’t celebrate with a round of golf or eat cereal out of a sterling silver trophy. When I was offered this job, I immediately got to work calling everyone I knew—industry vets, fellow editors, buddies from ski towns across the country—and started doing my homework.
Founded in the late 1990s amidst skiing’s shift away from regimented mogul comps and the confines of downhill racing, FREESKIER represented a new wave of freestyle and freeride athletes. Finally, the rest of us caught on & FREESKIER has since been the primary publication in the industry that covers all aspects of the sport—backcountry, big-mountain, resort, freestyle, street. It all has a home within the pages of this magazine, and that’s the way it will stay while I’m at the helm.
It’s no secret that the landscape of ski media has shifted dramatically in recent years. Last season, one of skiing’s longest-standing pubs, Powder Magazine—where I got my start in this industry—shuddered & has since just puttered along with digital content. Conglomerate companies are now swallowing up niche titles and adding paywalls to their content, leaving consumers scratching their heads about what will happen next. Yet, FREESKIER remains focused on the big picture, keeping a close eye on the athletes, gear, brands, destinations and trends that define our sport in all its variations.
When it comes to skiing, style is subjective and what’s considered “mind-blowing” adopts a different meaning depending on who you ask. Massive cliff drops, far away first descents and double (or triple!) corks will always have a wow-factor, but the same can be said traveling to a new resort or exploring an unfamiliar backcountry zone. And that is what makes our sport so special. From the pros competing for gold medals at the X Games, the Olympics and vying for a spot atop the Freeride World Tour podium, to the rest of us, who often split time between our home resort and traveling far-and-wide to make our skiing ambitions come to life, there’s no single thing that encapsulates why and how we do it. Skiing, in its finest form, takes inspiration from every aspect of life and paints that on the mountain…
