Long before the birth of my daughter, Sophie, last spring, I was disillusioned with the American way of parenting. Many of my objections led back to a single overarching theme: we no longer cultivate in our children a healthy relationship with outdoor play.

The problem is familiar: recent studies show that unstructured time outside—referred to as free play, in the words of child development experts—improves mental and physical well-being, yet kids can’t peel themselves away from their tablets and smartphones and Xboxes for more than a few minutes at a stretch. When outdoor activities are present at all, the emphasis is narrowly focused on sport specialization and competitive achievement. Where I live, near Aspen, Colorado, I see kids monitored so closely by parents that any semblance of self-direction or self-reliance is lost. That’s not how I want to raise Sophie. I want her to do her own thing, try a number of activities, and build up the kinds of skills that will enable her to find joy in the outdoors.

In the weeks leading up to her birth, I researched countries that take a different approach to parenting. I came across a 2020 study published in The Lancet, England’s most prominent peer-reviewed medical journal, that identified various mental and physical metrics among children—everything from happiness and life satisfaction to nutrition and health—and ranked countries accordingly. The United States came in 39th. At the top of the list: Norway.

The report raised an obvious question: Why are Norwegian parents doing so much better than Americans are?

As I discovered, access to the outdoors and an appreciation for free play are essential.

My research was helped along by a happy coincidence. Earlier last year, I met a Norwegian-American family named the Lockers who’d recently moved to Aspen. A few months before Sophie was born, I sat down with John and Camilla Locker to get their perspective on Norwegian-style outdoor-centric parenting. John is from New York City; Camilla was born and raised in Oslo. During the pandemic, the family moved to Norway and sent their three-and-a-half-year-old son to a forest school—a preschool that primarily happens outdoors.

“He came home the first day with a whittling knife,” John said. “I was shocked. But they taught him how to use it safely, and soon he was bringing us spoons, bowls, and other things he’d whittled.”

At forest schools, even inclement weather occasions outdoor fun, the Lockers told me. “On rainy days,” Camilla recalled, “they put a big tarp on a hill, covered it in soap, and let the kids slide down.” The children took naps outside in the dead of winter.

“That’s because we wear wool,” said Norwegian Anine Husebye Haug. Haug, 22, was staying with the Lockers for the winter, and she offered anecdotes from her own upbringing. She was shocked by the poor outerwear choices she saw in Colorado. “Americans wear the wrong clothes—synthetics!—so when they’re skiing, they must come in for hot chocolate every two runs. We never come in.” Turns out those heavy woolen sweaters are more than a fashion statement.

Such experiences—attending a forest school, sleeping outdoors in winter—are part of Norwegians’ national identity, which in part is rooted in wilderness capability and resilience. Axel Rosenberg, a lecturer at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, told me that this trait is captured by the word friluftsliv. (Don’t bother trying to pronounce it.) The term dates back to the late 19th century and was popularized by Roald Amundsen, who in 1911 became the first explorer to reach the South Pole.

“Literally translated, it means ‘open-air life,’ ” Rosenberg said. “It’s how we think about nature, how we relate to nature, and how we integrate nature into our daily lives.”

The term is credited to Henrik Ibsen, who used it in the 1859 poem “On the Heights,” about a farmer’s yearlong trek through the wilderness. Later, around the turn of the 20th century, Norwegians sought to set themselves apart from Denmark—the two countries existed under a unified government until 1814—and friluftsliv helped cement a distinctively Norwegian identity. Amundsen, along with explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Paul Knutsen, built on the tradition with their grueling polar expeditions.

“They credited friluftsliv for opening their world,” Rosenberg said. “The ability to deal with Mother Nature became a benchmark.”

Yet Norwegians weren’t quite as outdoor savvy as they thought. On Easter Sunday in 1967, a group of 15 Norwegians died from exposure while trekking through the mountains, a tragedy that generated headlines across the country. According to Rosenberg, the incident prompted a shift in Norway’s outdoor philosophy, with emphasis placed on skills that keep people safe. The country created the Fjellvettreglene, or , a set of backcountry protocols. Schools began exposing students to nature and emphasizing life lessons that could only be absorbed outdoors.

Norway’s education system embraces trial and error, Rosenberg told me. Kids learn by doing, instead of just being lectured about safety. “By starting at a young age, you find out that nature isn’t dangerous if you stay within your limits,” he said.

When I visited the Lockers, the family emphasized how seriously Norwegian parents take the directive to let kids fail. “There’s no nanny culture, no babysitter culture,” Camilla said. “In Norway, kids roam, and they come home filthy and happy.”

According to this philosophy, children participate in outdoor activities from a young age. Not long after learning to walk, they’re skating around town on plastic skis. They commute to school by bicycle or, in winter, on cross-country skis. Cycling is so important that, at ten years old, kids take a test to ensure they’re competent riding next to cars on the road.

As their skill set grows, Norwegian children not only build an appreciation for the outdoors, they also improve their coordination, endurance, and ability to problem-solve. “Free play—from climbing trees to building forts in the woods—is crucial,” said Kristin Vindhol Evensen, an associate professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. “The interplay between children and the local environment, which could be playgrounds in an urban environment, or the forest, or mountains in a more rural area, is what creates resilience.”

My assumption was that all the early-age competence would lead to ultracompetitive youth leagues. But Norwegians value play and skills acquisition above competition. In 1987, the country ratified the Children’s Rights in Sport, formal legislation that establishes guidelines for youth sports. Among its main directives is that the primary purpose of sports is to gain skills, make friends, and have fun; there’s nothing about winning. In fact, the guidelines explicitly ban rankings, keeping score, and timed competition before the age of 11. Another mandate: no child is allowed to participate in a championship event until the age of 13.

The guidelines emphasize enjoyment and self-improvement. Haug told me that a favorite kids’ game is to run or ski a one-to-five-kilometer course, then repeat. The goal isn’t to beat your previous time; it’s to lock into the same pace and come as close as you can to repeating it. Having grown up in the world of ski racing, I had to laugh.

“Everything is a game—you’re sort of tricked into learning,” Haug told me. “From a very young age, you’ll put on cross-country skis and play games while wearing them, like tag or capture the flag.” Coaches give pointers, but only to help kids develop. At this stage, winning isn’t the objective.

It’s difficult to argue with the Norwegian formula. Not only does it turn out adults who are physically fit and seemingly well-adjusted, it also produces some of the best athletes in the world. Norway dominated the past two Winter Olympics. In Beijing in 2022, Norway fielded 84 athletes and won 16 gold medals, the most ever by a single nation at a Winter Games. In contrast, the U.S. sent 224 athletes, won eight golds, and totaled 11 fewer medals than Norway. It was an amazing performance by a country with just five million people.

Norway’s sporting prowess is also growing away from the snow. In 2022, Casper Ruud became the first tennis player in the nation’s history to reach the top ten, finishing the year at number three. Triathlete Kristian Blummenfelt is an Olympic gold medalist and Ironman world-record holder; his compatriot Gustav Iden won the Hawaii Ironman in October. Anders Mol and Christian Sþrum are the best beach volleyball team on the planet. Jakob Ingebrigtsen is considered one of the world’s best middle-distance runners. And hurdler Karsten Warholm won gold at the 2020 Tokyo Games.

“Being able to play and learn and not worry about competition until you’re older is a big part of why Norwegian athletes are so successful,” said Felix McGrath, a former member of the U.S. Alpine Ski Team. McGrath saw Norway’s system up close: he worked as a ski coach there for 20 years. His wife, Selma Lie, was a member of the national cross-country ski team, and the two raised their four kids in Oslo. McGrath’s son Atle skis for the Norwegian national alpine team and won two World Cup races this past season.

The Norwegian approach has a definite advantage over the competition-crazed American one, McGrath told me. De-emphasizing results in preadolescent kids allows children whose bodies are still developing to thrive. “In the U.S., those kids are beaten, and it’s demoralizing. They end up quitting before they get bigger and stronger and are ready to break through. In Norway, by the time they’re being timed or keeping score, they’ve reached an age where their bodies and minds have matured enough to compete.”

McGrath wondered if Atle would have risen through the ranks in the U.S. system, where kids are identified as talented (or not) very early on, often before they hit puberty.

My conversations with the Lockers, Rosenberg, McGrath, and others were enlightening, but I had my doubts that raising Sophie the Norwegian way was even possible in the States. Our culture doesn’t lend itself to free play and outdoor trial and error. Americans are far more litigious—hence all the helicopter parenting. If Sophie were to fall and break something, my health insurance may make patching her back up challenging and unaffordable.

Still, I believe there are ways I can apply the Norwegian method. Backyard trampolines abound in Norwegian towns and suburbs, and I’m already plotting how to get permission from my homeowners’ association to install one on a patch of community green-space. I’m also rehearsing ways to persuade Sophie to commute by bicycle. I don’t want her to get hurt, of course, but I’m resolved to encourage her to push her boundaries.

Adopting the Norwegian attitude with respect to youth sports will be harder. It’ll be nearly impossible to tell my daughter when she turns 11 that she can’t play in a soccer game because “Dad has a better plan,” even though there are a few examples of this model working in the U.S. Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena, famously took his daughters off the tournament circuit when they were ten to help them ease into the game. Ted Ligety, the legendary ski racer who won two Olympic gold medals, recently wrote on Instagram about how much he benefited from recreational skiing with friends after training days. Ligety and his buddies abandoned their competition skis for shaped ones and had fun pushing one another on the same slopes the rest of us ski.

“Without play and experimentation, I would have stayed an OK ski racer and maybe eventually an OK college skier,” he wrote. “But I played and experimented, and it made all the difference.”

The best advice I received was to keep outdoor activities light and fun. Rosenberg told me about another Norwegian tradition called Sþndagstur, or “Sunday outing.”

“Norwegians take the family out for the entire day to ski, build a bonfire, and roast hot dogs,” he said. Done, done, and done.

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Mikaela Shiffrin’s pursuit of history isn’t the only reason to tune into World Cup skiing this season. New faces on America’s alpine and cross-country teams are emerging as consistent podium threats—and hometown races and new broadcast services make it easier to watch them ascend the rankings. Here’s how to tune in and what to watch for this competition season:

Mikaela Shiffrin Leads an All-Star U.S. Alpine Team

Having stood atop the World Cup podium 76 times, Shiffrin is only six victories away from tying Lindsey Vonn for the most wins by a female skier. She’s also only ten wins from tying Ingemar Stenmarks’ record of 86, the most victories ever by any skier. In 2019 alone, Shiffrin scored 17 wins, so it’s certainly possible that she could accomplish both records, which would confirm her, at just 27 years old, as the greatest ski racer ever. Though Shiffrin will garner most of the headlines as she chases those records, it’s worth keeping an eye on other American skiers. Rookie Ava Sunshine Jemison, who, when she wasn’t skiing, grew up competing in surf events, finished in the top 30 in her first two World Cup starts (not even Shiffrin accomplished that). On the men’s side, Vermont’s Ryan Cochran-Siegle, who won America’s only medal at last season’s Olympics (silver in the super G), will compete for the overall title in super G and downhill, and Vail’s River Radamus, who nearly found the podium in Beijing (fourth in giant slalom), is on track for a tour win in that event. Two skiers coming back from injuries are also worth noting: Breezy Johnson, who got hurt just a few weeks before the Beijing Games, has a chance to win the women’s overall downhill title. And Tommy Ford, who, during the 2019 season, was in the hunt for the overall Giant Slalom crown before suffering a horrific injury, has already managed a sixth-place finish in this season’s World Cup opener.

An absolute masterclass first run from this morning at the HERoic Killington Cup presented by Stifel

Mikaela ended the first run on top of the leader board and finished 5th in today’s slalom World Cup

— U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam)

Nordic Stars to Watch

American audiences began noticing just how good U.S. cross-country skiers had become in 2018, when Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall won Olympic gold in the team sprint event. Randall has retired, but Diggins and the rest of the women’s squad is still racking up victories on the World Cup. Diggins won the overall World Cup title in 2021, making her only the second American to accomplish that feat (Bill Koch won the overall in 1982). Julia Kern and Hailey Swirlbul have both earned podium results. And Rosie Brennan has won multiple World Cup races. In addition, the men’s team is greatly improved. Vermonter Ben Ogden was 12th in the sprint race at the Beijing Games (the best sprint result at the Olympics by an American man), and Scott Patterson and Zak Ketterson teamed with Brennan and Diggins to win a World Cup mixed relay last season.

What a FINAL!

Jessie Diggins wins the first-ever sprint medal in cross-country skiing for at the Olympic Games! Rosie Brennan finishes in fourth!

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics)

New Technology Powers the Stars

If your favorite American ski racers look sharper this season as he or she carves through courses, it might be due to technology that the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team began developing just prior to the pandemic. The tech, called Slope Sense is a monitor attached to skiers’ back protectors. Using GPS and IMUs (an electronic device that measures inertia), the team can now detect the forces on a skier’s body—at 100 times per second—throughout the turn. Using that data, the team has been able to build a proprietary exercise machine that mimics exactly those forces, allowing skiers to get the same sensation of going in and out of gates right in the gym.

The U.S. Becomes a World Cup Destination

For the first time in history, the U.S. will host eight World Cup events. That means there’s more opportunity than ever to watch your favorite athletes compete. Included in the collection of events are aerial and mogul competitions in Utah and freeski and snowboard competitions in Colorado and California. There are also several alpine ski races, first at Killington Mountain in Vermont (women’s slalom and giant slalom) in November, then at Beaver Creek, Colorado for men’s super-G and downhill in December. There’s also a series at Palisades Tahoe in Lake Tahoe, California (men’s slalom and giant slalom) in February. But perhaps the most exciting news is that World Cup racing will return to Aspen, Colorado in March, where the men will take on one of the more iconic tracks for the first time since 2017. Dubbed “America’s Downhill,” the course is noted for its huge, 100-foot jumps, extreme steeps, and technical turns. If you do make it to Aspen for the race, try getting there early and hike to the bottom of Spring Pitch. There, you’ll be able to see most of Aztec, which includes the steepest section of the course and highest speeds. “To be able to hold the lead and dominate on home snow felt like defending the honor of American skiing,” AJ Kitt, an American downhiller, once wrote. “I felt the whole country on my shoulders—in a good way.”

You can watch Ryan Cochran-Siegle and the rest of the men’s speed squad for FREE on this weekend

Don’t miss out as they compete on U.S. soil at

— U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam)

New Ways to Watch

Through a new partnership with the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Team, șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű+ is streaming .ÌęNBC platforms will also broadcast 19 hours of coverage of domestic World Cup events across their platforms, including live and tape-delayed coverage on NBC, CNBC, and Peacock. Skiandsnowboard.live will stream events abroad (a season’s pass costs $16), except for events held in Austria. There’s a complicated story behind Austria’s broadcast rights to World Cup events, but they have struck a deal this year with NBC. So, to watch the Hahnenkamm, Flachau, and Stubai races, you’ll need a Peacock subscription.

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I’m biking as fast as I can down a mile-long ribbon of singletrack in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, navigating roots, lips, a miniature rock garden, and an abundance of turns—everything from big, swooping corners and twisty hairpins to fall-away berms. My breathing is heavy as I try to maintain my pace. When I arrive at the bottom, I check my time: a solid three minutes and 13 seconds, for an average speed of 17.8 miles per hour. But I want to go faster. And in a week or so, I absolutely expect to.

The day before, I downloaded , an app that lets duffers like me get personalized tips and advice from world-class athletes and coaches. Users upload a 20-second video of themselves doing their activity of choice, then choose an expert to work with. The app can connect you to professionals in a range of different sports, including Alex Ferreira, a freestyle skier who won silver at the 2018 Olympics; Steven Nyman, a veteran World Cup ski racer and Olympian; and Shaun Murray, a member of the Wakeboarding Hall of Fame. Ask a question, and before long they respond with advice. The average price for a two-and-half-minute instructional video? Twenty bucks.

Using video for remote coaching is by no means a novel idea. For more than a decade, elite tennis players, golfers, and track and field athletes have relied on it to improve their serve, swing, or stride. In the past few years, video-analysis tools from online platforms such as and have made the process even easier. Then, last year, Willie Ford, formerly of the helmet and goggles manufacturer POC, saw an opportunity to deliver the same kind of instruction to amateur athletes. The result was Givego. “It lets anybody have cheap, easy access to coaching, and at the same time provides income to struggling professional athletes, helping offset training and travel costs,” Ford says.

To get started, I uploaded a video of myself riding to the Givego app and then connected with my coach, Lea Davison, a two-time Olympic mountain biker and world champion medalist. I wanted some tips to help with my downhill cornering. “You have picked the hardest and most complicated skill in mountain biking to improve on,” Davison responded. “Every mountain biker can always improve their cornering.”

She went to work on my clip like a Monday Night Football analyst, freeze-framing the footage and drawing circles and arrows to help explain what was going wrong. Basically, I needed to do a better job of tilting my bike from side to side as I rode. I asked Davison if she could offer a progression of moves to practice. She sent me to a soccer field (a safe place to crash) and told me to tilt the bike with each pedal stroke until the saddle hit the inside of my leg. “The arm on the outside of the turn should be at 90 degrees,” she said. “The arm on the inside should be straight.” It was great to have a specific drill to work on.

My sole complaint about Givego is that you are allowed only a single follow-up question, and no longer than 250 characters. But it’s better than nothing. “Online coaching isn’t a cure-all, nor is improving performance always a straightforward matter of getting feedback from an expert,” says Blake Bennett, a professor at the University of Auckland who specializes in coaching. “But having an opportunity to get a few minutes of targeted advice can be helpful.”

I practiced cornering for a week and felt like things were starting to click. So I decided to record a second video and send it to Davison. “I do see some improvement,” she replied, noting that my outside-arm angle was closer to 90 degrees and my inside arm was more properly extended. But was I faster? I headed back to the trail and booked it. My time: two minutes and 53 seconds, for an average speed of 19.9 miles per hour. I liked how I felt on the bike and was pleased with my progress. What’s more, getting better is addictive. I look forward to uploading another video and trying again.

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Rob Gronkowski is not impressed with my look. “You’re kinda lame,” says the , a man as famous for catching passes from Tom Brady as he is for his party-boy persona. It’s late March, and Gronk—fresh off his fourth Super Bowl title—and I are riding a chairlift at Deer Valley Ski Resort in Park City, Utah. “You’ve got the classic winter jacket on,” he says, as he looks me up and down, assessing my Gore-Tex kit. “It’s nothing special.”

Knowing that the 32-year-old rolled into Gronk Beach—a 2020 event in Miami that he called the “championship of partying”—wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves torn off, I ask him if ripping the sleeves off my coat might improve my style. “That would be better!” he says.

This fashion critique comes from a guy who, today,Ìęhas squeezed his six-foot-six-inch, 265-pound body into a blue hooded sweatshirt, a yellow and black zebra-printed buff, and pink, yellow, and blue swimsuit trunks that are pulled snugly over a pair of snow pants. To go powder skiing. Resting on his nose are a pair of oversize sunglasses with splatter-painted red, white, and blue frames and a mirrored lens that covers his face like a windshield. The company that sells them, Pit Viper, has, in just nine years, grown from a ski bum selling shades out of his van to a multimillion-dollar-a-year business with 70 employees, occupying 30,000 square feet of plum office and warehouse space in Salt Lake City.

That meteoric rise has been fueled by a crass and comical marketing campaign that relies on beer-swilling, mullet-wearing, denim-clad bros and ladies performing a host of ill-advised stunts, like jumping snowmobiles over busses; men and women alike getting the tongue-in-cheek pinup treatment; and juvenile, sexually charged jokes and innuendo. That, and plenty of nudity. The brand defies the politically correct climate and sends a message that appeals to a large array of consumers: wear Pit Vipers and you can say and do what you want—to hell with what anybody else thinks.

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On a damp and overcast morning in early December, I checked out of my hotel in northern New Jersey, walked outside, sucked in a deep breath of smoggy air, then headed off to go skiing in the middle of a swamp. In about an hour, a mega mall called American Dream, located in the New Jersey Meadowlands, just 30 minutes outside , would be opening aÌę180,000-square-foot indoor ski area. There are around 20 indoor ski facilities worldwide—mostly in Europe and Asia—but this would be the first operation in North America. Lindsey Vonn would be there to cutÌęthe ceremonial ribbon and officially inaugurateÌęthe facility. She’d take a run down the 1,000-foot slope, then I’d get my chance to make some turns. It would be the first time I’d ever skied inside.

I hopped in a Lyft and motored toward the mall, past overflowing dumpsters and construction sites, and in five minutes, MetLife Stadium, where the Giants and Jets play, came into view. Across from the stadium—actually, attached to it via a long walkway—is the mall. Jutting skyward from the mall is a 16-story ramp, where the skiing happens. Anywhere else, the bizarre-looking structure would be an eyesore, but in the Meadowlands—a vast, polluted, urban marshland—it sort of fits in.

The building has a troubled past. The idea to construct a mallÌęthat housed an indoor ski area was conceived in 1996. The now defunct Mills Corporation finally broke ground in 2004. It was to be named Xanadu, based on the ancient Mongolian city that Marco Polo once described as having marble palaces, fountains, and meadows. But funding issues delayed progress. Then, in 2009, with a lot of work done but still much more left to do, the economic recession brought the project to a halt. Reportedly, some $2.3 billion had already been spent on the construction. That year,Ìę wrote that Real Capital Analytics, a research company that tracks real estate investments, had listed Meadowlands Xanadu as the largest of $9.2 billion worth of troubled assets in the New York area. For over a decade, the building sat empty.

“My family used to go to every Giants game, and we used to stare at the ugly bones of that thing,” says Hannah Follender, a Salt Lake City–based lawyer who grew up near the mall. “It was basically the butt of every single joke.”

With online retail forcing malls out of business, it seemed the project was forever doomed. But in 2011, Triple Five Group, which ownsÌęMinnesota’s Mall of America, took control, renaming it American Dream. By early 2019, it was zeroing in on an opening. By nowÌęthe cost of building the mall had reached $5 billion, and local residents doubted that it could attract enough business to keep the lights on. The North Jersey Record recently described AmericanÌęDream as anÌę“.”

“Few people live in the swamp, so anything we build must be big enough to attract a crowd,” the story read. “But big, isolated developments have failed again and again.”

IÌęwalked into the mall, past Christmas decorations and a small line of kids waiting to sit on Santa’s lap, and up an escalator. I made my wayÌęthrough a ski shop selling gear from Anon, Burton, Giro, and HeadÌęand headed into the ski facility.

The ski-area portion of the mall is called Big Snow andÌęis basically a bunny hill inside a warehouse. Giant air-conditioning units attached to the walls keep the place a consistently chilly 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Fixed to the steel support beamsÌęare hundreds of lights and several snowmaking guns, whichÌęover the past two monthsÌęhave run practically nonstop, covering every inch of slope with three feet of snow.

Near the entrance of Big Snow is a 225-foot-long moving carpet that’s next to almost imperceptibly inclined beginner terrain. On the far end of the building is a platter lift (sort of like a T-bar). Next to that is a quad chairlift that runs on a cable attached to the ceiling. Underneath the chair is the main ski hill.ÌęFifty yards wide and, at its steepest, only 26 degrees, the slope resembles a beginner run. A small terrain park with some jumps and rails takes up a portion of the hill. The facility also has a Prinoth grooming machine, which takes laps every few hours to ensure that the surface remains buffed out.

For the grand opening, a DJ spun hip-hop, and several machines crankedÌęout a veil of bubbles, giving the whole warehouse aÌęsnow-is-falling vibe. ButÌęthe place still wasn’t quite finished. Raw plywood was visible near the entrance, and the wall that the ski area shares with the mall was adorned with large stickers ofÌęstacked wood, a fireplace, and faux deer antlers. Eventually, the company says, a Yard House Brewery, a Lucky Strike bowling alley, and a Hard Rock CafĂ© will occupy the space behind the facility.Ìę

A few hours after the short opening ceremony, during which the executive group said itsÌęthank-yous and Vonn made her ceremonial first run—“It was actually really good, light and fluffy,” she reported—the ski complex opened to the public for the first time. I put on my boots, clicked into some rental skis, and headed up the lift, a three-and-a-half-minute ride. Six turns and 25 seconds later, I was back at the bottom. Three runs after that, I was already bored. But this place wasn’t built for me; I live in Jackson, Wyoming, and ski 80 days a year. It was built for guys like McCoy Daboy and Gurey Rodriguez, two snowboarders I met on the lift.

Daboy, who’s 35 and lives in nearby Hoboken, was wearing white-rimmed sunglasses, a neon yellow beanie, ripped jeans, a baggy black coat, and a long, tasseled blue scarf. He hadn’t snowboarded in three years but liked that Big Snow wasÌę“close, it’s easy, right next to New York. I had to come try it.” Rodriguez, who’s 45 and lives in Manhattan, was wearing similar clothing to his friend. He’d never snowboarded before and was bit tight-lipped. I asked him if he was nervous. “I’m afraid of heights,” he said, looking down from the lift.

“He was down for the adventure,” saidÌęDaboy. “What is there to do? Drinking and eating? This is something different.”

We got off the lift, and Rodriguez immediately collided with Daboy. Then, as the pair were strapping their boards on, twoÌękids collided with Rodriguez. The carnage continued to pile up in the unloading area and on the hill. By nowÌęabout 200 people had shown up to ski or snowboard, andÌęas I looked down, at least five of them were strewn across the trail in various states of wipeout. I watched Rodriguez scoot down the entire hill on his butt. Daboy shook his head. “But that’s how you learn,” he said. “That’s how you learn.”

The brass at Big Snow isÌęhoping the impetus to try skiing or snowboarding will drive more people like Rodriguez to the facility. “The two biggest barriers to getting people to ski and snowboard is that it’s hard to get to the mountain and it’s super expensive,” says Joe Hession, CEO of Snow Operating, the company Triple Five contracted to run Big Snow. “We’re ten miles from downtown Manhattan, so we’ve removed the location barrier. But price was important, too. So if you book online for a full package, you get everything you need for $59.” That includes skis and poles or a snowboard, boots, a helmet, goggles, and outerwear, as well as two hours of skiing and a lesson. Another obvious barrier to the sport that Big Snow removes is the need for winter. The ski area will operate from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M. every day of the year.

Snow Operating estimates that those factors combined will, this year, spur 600,000 people to come ski inside. If that seems ambitious, consider that an indoor ski facility in Dubai has successfully operated in the middle of a desert since 2005. Still, whether Big Snow can be viable is the $5 billion question. Just keeping aÌę180,000-square-foot building meat-locker cold year-round sounds expensive (Triple Five won’t disclose exactly how expensive).Ìę

Regardless, lots of people in the ski industry are rooting for the venue’sÌęsuccess. Jon Rucker, president of Head Skis USA, is one of them. He believes the opening of ski areas like Big Snow are crucial to the survival of a sport that’s suffering from declining numbers. “Let’s face it,” Rucker said, after taking one of the first runs inside the facility. “Skiing is pretty much as white as snow. So exposing these great sports to different populations is radically important for the future of our business.”

Adrienne Saia Isaac, director of marketing at the National Ski Areas Association, agrees.Ìę“Sometimes I think we forget that even playing in snow can be an uncommon experience for a lot of people, especially in urban areas,” Isacc says. “Even if it begins as a novelty, hopefully the experience at a place like Big Snow will inspire visitors to keep coming back.”

That seemed to be the case with Rodriguez.ÌęI bumped into him as I was leaving. He’d had a tough day—not really ever able to get the snowboard to work for him. But he was smiling, and it seemed as though a taste of the sport was enough to pique his interest. “I’m coming back,” he told me. “I need to try again.”

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Jake Burton Carpenter, the founder of and one of the pioneers of the sport of snowboarding, died Wednesday night. Carpenter had announced early in the month that he was battling cancerÌęfor a second time. He was 65 and leaves behind his wife Donna and three sons, Timi, George, and Taylor.Ìę

Carpenter grew up in Cedarhurst, New York, eventually moving to southern Vermont in the mid-1970s. He was a skier, but he’d developed a love for the Snurfer, a piece of plywood that sort of resembled a water ski and could be ridden down snowy hills while standing and holding a rope. Carpenter believed he could improve upon the SnurferÌęby shaping a wider board out of better materials and adding bindings. In 1977, working out of a barn in Londonderry, Vermont, Carpenter, who described himself as a “loser in shop class,” started using industrial machinery to try to bring his vision to life. Many of the prototypes ended up shooting out of the machines and through the walls of the barn. But he finally produced his first model, the Backhill.

He only sold 300 snowboards that first year and almost gave up. “I came incredibly close in the beginning to just bailing on the whole thing,” he told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű in 2002. Instead, he stuck with it and sold 700 boards the next year.Ìę

But snowboarding had a problem. Ski areas were wary of people riding the new contraptions on their slopes and banned snowboarders from riding the lifts. To get on the hill, boarders resorted to poaching the ski areas by hiking up trails after they’d closed for the day, or tromping around the backcountry. In 1983, Carpenter reached out to Paul Johnston, then the vice president at Vermont’s Stratton Mountain Resort.Ìę

“He approached me one day and said, ‘will you guys at least try it?’” remembers Johnston. “I said, bring up some boards and I’ll try it.” Carpenter took Johnston and other executives from Stratton up a bunny slope and tried to teach them how to make the board turn. “Half of us couldn’t even get down the ramp from the chairlift,” says Johnston. “People went into the woods. Nobody wanted to have it on the mountain, but I said I’m going to try it.” Stratton opened to snowboarders that year.Ìę

Two years later, the resort hosted the U.S. Open, an event that would become the sport’s preeminent contest. “He had a real vision for what he wanted to achieve,” says Johnston. “I remember, early on, he showed me a drawing that he’d done. And half the people on the mountain were skiing and the other half were snowboarding. ‘This is what I want,’ he said.”

Carpenter would eventually move his business to Burlington, Vermont, where he’d grow the company to 950 employees and produce snowboard gear and apparel. The fledgling sport became a billion dollar industry and served as a boon to the snowsports sector. “When we started allowing snowboarding it brought all the kids back out again,” says Johnston. “We started to see 200 kids coming out of snowboard school and only 15 kids coming out of ski school.”Ìę

“As far as the ski industry was concerned, we didn’t exist,” Carpenter told me when I interviewed him in 2007Ìęfor șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s 30th anniversary issue. “Then we became a nuisance. Then we started getting into resorts, and became a threat. Next thing you know, we were the saviors.”

In 1998, snowboarding became an Olympic sport, and the way it was presented made Carpenter cringe. “Animal, a Muppet character, with orange hair and a nose ring—that was our mascot,” he told me. “In the Nagano Olympics, they spelled ‘snowboarding’ wrong.”

The bright spot was Ross Powers,Ìęa Londonderry native who Carpenter had known for years.Ìę“In fifth grade I remember getting a one-page letter from Jake saying that the company wanted to sponsor me,” he says.Ìę“He really gave me a chance.” Powers won a bronze medal at Nagano and followed it up with a goldÌęat the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.Ìę“This is a big loss in our sport,”ÌęPowers says. “Way too early. But he lived his life to the fullest and affected so many lives and made so many of us part of the snowboard community.”Ìę

Carpenter was especially proud of that community. “I do feel that snowboarding is still a big brotherhood, or sisterhood, in the sense that when you see someone on a snowboard, you’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt,” he said in 2007. “You just have something in common—there’s a bond there.”

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I’ve been skiing for 42 years and have been lucky enough to ski all over the world, including spots in Europe, Japan, andÌęAlaska. I’ve had lots of incredible powder days, but the best powder day I ever had was in Utah.

It happened 22 years ago. I had just graduated from college and moved to Vail, Colorado, to do some ski bumming. My father met up with me, and we drove to Snowbird in Utah, where my dad’s cousin had a time-share. When we got there, dark clouds rolled in, and it began to snow. Within a few hours, there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground. It keptÌęcoming down. We were “interlodged”—an event whereÌęavalanches are so likely that it’s not safe enough to go outside the property—for two days.

Just as cabin fever began to set in, the skies cleared, avalanche-mitigation bombs echoed through Little Cottonwood Canyon, and, after a few hours, the lifts started turning. On my first run, the snow was chest-deep and billowed over my head. I’d heard plenty about how Utah had the “greatest snow on earth” (it’s even printed on the state’s license plates), but I’d always been skeptical. As it turns out, it’s a scientific fact. Utah’s dry, cold atmosphere produces snowflakes called dendrites, which are thin and crystal-likeÌęandÌęso light and fluffy that, when skiing through them, they make you feel buoyant without causing a lot of resistance. As such, powder skiing in Utah is the closest most people will get to floating in space.

That was how I felt all day, but it was my last runÌęthat was truly remarkable. A ski patroller weÌęmet on the chairlift told us he was opening up a new section of the mountain. We followed him, just my father and I, andÌęafter he pulled the rope, he said, “Go for it.” I found myself on a 45-degree slope, bouncing through the untouched terrain, simultaneously choking on snow and yelping with joy. The impossibly long trail seemed to go on for several minutes. When I finally stopped, I was plucking crystals out of my ears and drunk with euphoria.

I’ve made many more ski trips to Utah since. After all, with ten ski areas less than an hour from the Salt Lake City airport, incredible backcountry terrain, and almost guaranteed powder (each seasonÌęUtah averages 18 storms that deliver more than 12 inches of snow each), it’s arguably the best ski destination in North America. I’ve never been disappointed—and this guide willÌęensure that you get the most out of Utah skiing, too.

What You Need to Know Before You Go

Bring your ski boots and apparel, but leave your skis at home. If you’re fortunate to hit a big storm, then you’ll want wide powder skis. That said, even in Utah there can be several consecutive weeks of high-pressure systems that yieldÌęsunny skies and no snowfall. If that’s the case, you’ll need either a pair of mid-fat, all-mountain skis, which will handle chopped-up snow and bumps better, or, if groomed trails are your jam, narrow carving skis. , founded in Park City, rents a wide array of Rossignols and will drive to wherever you’re staying and adjust the bindings for you in your living room. If you want to swap out the skis you’re using, it’ll drive back and do so ($65 per day).

Buy one of these passes. There are five multi-resort passesÌęworth considering that work at Utah ski areas.ÌęDepending on where you’re going to ski and how many days you plan on skiing, buying oneÌęmakes a lot of sense. For example, a day ticket at Deer Valley costs $160. But an $800 Ìęwill get you five days of skiing there, plus five days at Alta, Brighton, Snowbird, and Solitude. The $1,100 version of the pass gets you seven days of skiing at each ski area. Other options include:

• : $989, unlimited access to Park City and Snowbasin
• : $649 buys you a one-day ticket at each of the 15 Utah resorts
• : $509 for two days of skiing at Alta Ski and Snowbird, plus 50 percent off each additional ticket
• : For only $45, fifth-graders can ski or ride three times at each of Utah’s 15 resorts; sixth-graders get one day at each

Don’t miss getting into the backcountry. There are lotsÌęofÌęreasons why, includingÌęguaranteed powder turns even weeks after a storm, zero crowds, amazing views, and terrain options that you probably can’t find at most ski areas, such as couloirs and powder pillows. In Utah, there are several ways to get into the backcountry. will take you ski touring throughout Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons. And its staffÌędoesn’tÌęjust guide but also provides instruction, like how to most efficiently skin uphill and how to best tackle the deep snow on north-facing slopes. Lots of that terrain is mellow enough that even intermediates can handle it. For more advanced skiers looking for long ascents and gnarly descents, UMA guides tour clients to the 40-degree pitches, bowls, and chutes in the Lone and Twin Peaks Wilderness areas ($219Ìęper person for a group of four). No backcountry experience is needed, but those looking to head out on their own next time can enrollÌęin one of the company’s .

If touring isn’t your thing, you can fly or ride into the backcountry.Ìę, a heli-ski operation based out of Snowbird and Park City, has access to 170,000 acres of terrain—everything from gently rolling slopes to steep tree-filled lines. You’ll get breakfast and lunch, six to ten runs, and ski thousands of vertical feet ($1,600 per day). , with 43,000 acres to play on, is another option. Cat rides only take between five and ten minutes and gain you access to bowls, chutes, and, should you be so inclined, cliff drops. After six hours of fast laps, you’ll be ready for a hot tub and a beer ($629Ìęper day).

How to Get There

There are arguably no ski areas in the country easier to get to than those in Utah. Ten of the state’s 15 ski areas are located within an hour’s driveÌęfrom Salt Lake City InternationalÌęAirport (in addition,ÌęEagle Point, Brian Head, Cherry Peak, and Beaver Mountain are two to 3.5 hours away), which sees around 700 incoming and departing daily nonstop flights from almost 100 destinations.

When I lived in New York City, I would get in the car on a Friday night and, due to traffic, it would take me six hours to drive to theÌęclosest ski area in New England. I soon figured out that a nonstop flight from New York to Salt Lake City took just a hair over five hours, and, after landing, I was at the ski area in about an hour. After skiing all weekend, I could hop on a red-eye, pop a melatonin, and be back at my desk in the city just after 9 A.M. on Monday morning. And rather than chattering on New England ice for two days, I was choking on powder.

What’sÌęthe Best Time of Year to Ski Utah?

The season usually begins in mid-November and runs until late April. Other than the short shoulder seasons, Utah is constantly packed with people. But since the state gets consistent snowfall throughout the season, finding fresh powder is less of an issue than dealing with crowds. The best-kept secret is that some of the biggest storms hit Utah in late spring.

My second-best powder day ever was on April 15, 2015, at Alta.ÌęIt snowed aroundÌętwo feet, and, because crowds are much lighter in the spring, I skied deep, untouched powder from bell to bell, never waiting in a lift line.ÌęAdded bonus: several Utah ski areas host , many of which can last weeks or up to an entire month. These aprĂšs-ski bashes include live bands, pond skimming, and makeshift outdoor bars.

Hit These Ski Areas

For the Powder Hound: Alta Ski Area/Snowbird

Combined, the two ski areas just southeast of Salt Lake City have nearly 6,000 vertical feet of the best in-bounds terrain in Utah. With the proper pass (see above), you’re allowed to ski between them, ticking off classic lines like High Rustler atÌęÌę(day tickets from $60)Ìęand Tiger Tail atÌęÌę(day tickets from $50).

Where to Stay

Snowbird has five options, including the sprawling 500-room Ìę(from $160) andÌęÌę(from $100), which has 35Ìęrooms right in the pedestrian village. Alta has five historic inns that are all independently owned,Ìęlocated at the base ofÌętheÌęWasatch mountains, and similar in price, but they vary in offerings.ÌęIts oldest structure, the 58-roomÌęÌę(from $329), got a swanky upgrade last year. Eighteen monthsÌęof renovations yielded , an on-site game room with a pool, arcade games, and karaoke;Ìęguest rooms with sliding barn doorsÌęand leather furniture;Ìęand a new spa, where you can request the High Altitude Recovery, a combination massage and stretching session that can work out the kinks from a long day on the slopes.

The Terrain

It’s not all gnar. Beginners practice their skills on low-angle terrain at Snowbird in the Baby Thunder Family Area, and intermediates hit the groomed trails off the Collins lift at Alta. Experts, though,Ìęwill truly find theirÌęgroove here. Ski steep glades and chutes off Alta’sÌęSupreme chairlift, then head through the Keyhole, a connector between Alta and Snowbird that features open faces and drops. At Snowbird, head to the Gad 2 chairlift and ski Tiger Tail, a 40-degree pitch that funnels into steep glades. If you have top-notchÌębackcountry skills, head across the canyon and skin up Superior, a two-to-three-hour climb with a big payoff: couloirs and deep snow.

Signature Trail

Though it’s not often open and requires boot-packing, a trek up to Alta’sÌęÌęis well worth the hourlong climb. The 40-degree steeps and narrow chutes will test everything you’ve got.

The Town

Alta and Snowbird are ski areas. There is no town per se. That said, the base-area hotels have decent dining, and there are shuttles between the ski areas that can transport you to them. The best restaurant is probably , inside the at Snowbird. It serves everything from grilled salmon to gourmet shepherd’s pie with elk meat.

TheÌęBottom Line

There’s not a lot going on in Little Cottonwood Canyon other than skiing—which is fine. Alta and Snowbird are where you go if you want to ski hard and don’t care much about the aprùs or nightlife scene. If that is a priority, go to Park City (see below).

For the Family: Park City

Located just 35 minutes from the Salt Lake City airport,ÌęÌę(day tickets from $108) is spread over 7,300 acres, making it the largest ski area in the United States. Since it’s situated right in the town of Park City, which is flush with restaurants, bars, and shopping, it’s also the Utah ski resort with the most to do when you’re not skiing.

Where to Stay

There’s no shortage of options in the area, from pricey ski-in, ski-out hotels to pet-friendly vacation homes. For thoseÌęwhoÌęwant the former, theÌęÌę(from $750), which opened in June, has 700-square-foot rooms and two-story, two-bedroom suites, plusÌęnordic skiing, snowshoeing, and, in the summer, fly-fishing. For something more affordable, ’s property-management portfolio has more than 150 lodging options within theÌęPark City area, ranging from one-bedroom condos to full homes (from aroundÌę$200).

The Terrain

Much of the terrain at Park City is family friendly. Last yearÌęthe ski area introduced High Meadow Park, a new learning area for beginners that’s about halfway up the mountain and can be accessed via the Red Pine Gondola. The wide-open, gently graded slope is always well-groomed. Intermediates will love theÌęcruisers off the King Con liftÌębut should also venture over to Iron Mountain, which has some of the best low-angle tree skiing in the state. Experts with the gear and know-how will want to do the ten-minute hike up Ninety-Nine 90 and drop out of the backcountry gate from there. The run down Upper East Face from the top of the mountain is worth it: it’s a leg burner that’s steep and often full of moguls.

Signature Trail

King’s Crown is often overlooked, because it’s a pretty easy groomer. But what makes it special are the views: panoramic glimpses of the Wasatch mountains and the town of Park City as you arc down the slope.

The TownÌę

With so many dining options, it’s tough to go wrong in Park City, but here’s how I would approach the day: Fuel up on the soft scrambled eggs at Harvest before heading to the mountain. After skiing, grab a cocktail at the , an award-winning whiskey distillery that’s right in town, then cruise Main Street, checking in on everything from high-end cowboy boots at to the latest ski gear from the apparel companyÌę. For dinner head to and try the chicken-fried rabbit. Then finish things off by drinking and dancing at the . Of course, the kids will want to check out Park City’s newest addition, , an indoor skate park that will open in December with 70-foot jumps and a 22-foot halfpipe.

The Bottom Line

Serious skiers won’t be blown away by the terrain at Park City, but there’s probably no better ski area in Utah for a family vacation, someplace where your kids can have fun on the slopes and you can all enjoy the good food and drink.

For the Solitude Seeker: Powder Mountain

Though (day tickets from $95) has gotten some decent press over the years, it still feels like a hidden gem. You won’t find massive crowds here, even on powder days, and theÌęlodges are total throwbacks—run-down buildings with tiny kitchens that still serve greasy burgers and pizza.

Where to Stay

There’s no hotel at Powder Mountain, but there are plenty of condos. One-to-four-bedroom condos can be rented from Ìę(from $95), which also gets you access to the community pool and Jacuzzi.

The Terrain

Spanning 8,464 acres, Powder Mountain it has more skiiable terrain thanÌęany other resortÌęin the country.ÌęBeginners should start the day at the Sundown area and slowly make their way to the Hidden Lake area. Along the way, you’ll tick off several blue and green groomed runs, and you might even feel brave enough to try some of the low-angle terrain that’s just off-piste. Intermediates should head straightÌęto the Paradise lift and ski the open bowl directly off the top of it. Experts should also head to Paradise, but at the top, follow the lift down to the ridgeline and drop into the steeper shots on either side. Then invest in a couple $25Ìęsingle-ride snowcat tickets. The cat will drive you to the base of James Peak. Hike the peak (it will take about 30 minutes), then ski all the way back to the Paradise lift—a 2,500-foot descent withÌęopen bowls, trees, and drops.

Signature Trail

Woody’s World has it all:Ìęsteeps, trees, and open shots that all funnel back onto the ski area’s access road. From there, follow the singletrack down the road to catch the bus back to the mountain.

The Town

Powder Mountain is working on building a village near the top of the ski area, but it won’t be complete for several years. Until thenÌęthere are the nearby towns of Eden, 15 minutes south, and Huntsville, ten minutes farther—and you’ll be shocked by how tiny they are. One must-hit spot is the in Huntsville. It was established in 1879, there’s a stuffed SaintÌęBernard on the wall, hundreds of dollar bills stapled to the ceiling, and they serve the best burgers you’ve ever had (but no fries; don’t even ask).

The Bottom Line

For the most part, you’re not going to find the sustained steeps like at Snowbird and AltaÌęor the fine dining and nightlife that Park City has. But you also won’t see crazy crowds, and you might still getÌępowder skiing days after a storm.

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On Thursday, Ecuadorian-Swiss alpinist Karl Egloff climbed up and back down Denali—at 20,310 feet, the highest peak in North America—in 11 hours and 44 minutes. In doing so, he broke the previous speed record, which was set in 2014 by Spanish alpinist Kilian Jornet, by just a single minute. Ìę

Even more impressive is this: Egloff, who left basecamp at 7 A.M., topped out on Denali in seven hours and 40 minutes—two hours and five minutes faster than Jornet summited five years ago. What’s more, Jornet skied down Denali, a much faster mode of descent than what Egloff employed to get down the mountain, which was a combination of hiking boots, snowshoes, and running shoes. Ìę

“It felt like I was running on water,” Egloff, 38, told me when I reached him by phone on Friday. He had just made it out of and was resting in the outpost town of Talkeetna, Alaska. “From Camp I to Camp III [6,400 feet of climbing], I used crampons attached to running shoes but it was still very slippery.”

From there, Egloff switched to boots and put on a heavy down jacket to help shield him from the nearly 20-mile-per-hour winds. Upon summiting, he looked at his watch and says he was surprised by his time. “I was thinking, ‘I have a huge gap’,” he says. “It was hard to believe I was more than two hours faster than Kilian.”

Still, Egloff knew it’d be difficult to beat the record. He’d developed a headache and was well aware that his ski-less descent would be slower. “But when I got back down to Camp III, I knew I could do it,” he says. “I started pushing myself. From Camp III on, I was watching the watch more than my own safety. I drank two litres of water on the way up but nothing on the way down. I was just going. I got to basecamp, saw that I was a minute faster, and I stretched my hands in the air.”

This isn’t the first time the little-known Egloff has knocked off one of Jornet’s records. In 2012, Jornet began the Summits of My Life project, in which he’d attempt to set fastest known times on what he calls seven of “the most important mountains on the planet,” which includes Denali, Argentina’s Aconcagua, the Matterhorn (Switzerland’s famous pyramidal peak), Mount Kilimanjaro, France’s Mont Blanc, Russia’s Mount Elbrus, and Mount Everest. He was successful during all of his record-setting attempts except for his climbs up Elbrus and Everest. On Elbrus, he was forced to turn around. On Everest, his time was several hours off the record set in 1996 by Italian Hans Kammerlander.

But in 2014, Egloff, who works as a mountain guide, decided he’d try to set speed records on each of the seven summits—the highest peak on each continent. That year, he bested Jornet’s time on Kilimanjaro. Seven months later, he eclipsed Jornet’s time on Aconcagua. In 2017, Egloff set the speed record on Elbrus.

Though Jornet fans tore into Egloff, accusing him of cheating and “destroying Kilian’s world,” Egloff and Jornet have developed a friendship. “Our sport is a gentleman’s sport,” says Egloff. “He’s the biggest sky runner in the world and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. Killian took this sport to another level and nobody would know who I am if it wasn’t for Kilian. He motivates me.”

On Friday, Jornet congratulated his friend on Twitter.

Next up for Egloff is Indonesia’s Puncak Jaya, the highest peak on the Australian continent. He hopes to tick that off next year. After that, he’ll climb Mount Vinson in Antarctica. And in two or three years, he’ll attempt to set the speed record on Everest. “I’ll need to go up and down in less than 22 hours,” he says. “I hope I can do it.”

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In 1999, I moved to Vail, Colorado, to do some ski bumming. One day, I slid up beside my friend Reid Phillips, who was a coach for the local race program. As we chatted, a lanky young girl blasted through the slalom course, arcing turns and slapping plastic with the skill of a much older racer.

“She rips,” I said to Phillips. “Who is she?”

“That’s Lindsey Kildow,” said Phillips. “And, yeah, she does.”

The three of us got on the lift together and I looked at Kildow, who was 14, and said, “You’re really good.” She shyly sat there, her head lowered as she stared down at her dangling skis, andÌęanswered, “Thanks.”

A year later Kildow was named to the U.S. Ski Team. She gained muscle mass and pretty quickly began scoring points on the World Cup circuit. By the time she won the overall World Cup title in 2008, she’d married and was on her way to becoming a household name: Lindsey Vonn.

Vonn became known for her ultra-aggressive, somewhat insane approach to racing. “I’m slightly crazy and I don’t get scared,” she once told me. “I’m willing to risk everything.” That attitude garnered her three Olympic medals, seven World Championship medals, and another three overall titles. But it also caused spectacular crashes that often put her in hospitals, on bed rest, and forced her to miss huge chunks of the racing season. ÌęÌę

The next time I sat down with Vonn it was two years ago in her home in Vail, not far from the chairlift where we’d had our first “conversation.” She’d . Numerous devastating injuries,Ìęone of which prevented her from racing in the 2014 Olympics, aÌędivorce, and a very public breakup from golfer Tiger Woods. That day, sheÌęconfidently looked me in the eye and told me her plan. At that point, she’d won 76 World Cup races, 11 short of the record held by Swedish racer Ingemar Stenmark. “I want to break that record,” she said. Later, I watched as Vonn grunted and swore through painful-looking exercises, all of which were specifically designed to try to fortify her busted joints and give her a shot atÌęreaching her goals.

But it wasn’t enough. When Vonn, now 34, announced her retirement Friday, she’d won 82 World Cup races, five short of Stenmark’s record. In the end, it was the injuries that prevented her from attaining her goals. “Over the past few years I have had more injuries and surgeries than I care to admit,” she says in . “My body is broken beyond repair and it isn't letting me have the final season I dreamed of. My body is screaming at me to STOP and it’s time for me to listen
 Honestly, retiring isn’t what upsets me. Retiring without reaching my goal is what will stay with me forever.”

Though that may haunt Vonn, it won’t tarnish her legacy. She leaves the sport with the most World Cup wins by a woman.ÌęAnd she was one of the few ski racers to win in five events on the World Cup: downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and combined. She hasÌęmade more people care about ski racing and part of that is due to her celebrity. It’s fairly safe to say that no ski racer has ever been as famous as Vonn, and her walks down the red carpet at major events like the Oscars, photo spreads in magazines like Sports Illustrated and Vogue, and high–profile relationships, helped bring more fans to an otherwise niche sport. Vonn was also a committed ambassador who often made time to visit with kids—especially young girls—and share her experiences. Many, no doubt, walked away dreaming they’d become the next Lindsey Vonn.

But it was her athletics that drew the most eyeballs. Throughout her career, people tuned in to watch her crush the competition by seconds (eons in ski racing).ÌęPeople also watched to see if they might witness a dramatic Vonn crash, like the one in the super-G at the 2013 World Championships in Schladming, Austria.ÌęIn that race, Vonn , flew over the handlebars, and tore her ACL and MCL.

Her heroics were also noteworthy. Before the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, she injured her shin and publicly stated that she might not be able to race. She hobbled around for several days, then won the downhill race.

According to Bode Miller, considered the best American male skier to ever live, Vonn’s proven her greatness despite not catching Stenmark. “She has a lot of check marks that put her at the very, very top,”ÌęMiller told in January.Ìę“Stenmark lived in a different era, it wasn’t the modern era and he never had to deal with the things Lindsey had to deal with throughout her career.”

Vonn will race twice more before ending her career. On February 5, she’ll ski the super-G at the Alpine World Championships in Are, Sweden. On February 10, she’ll push through the start gate for a final time in the World Championship downhill.Ìę

In her Facebook post Friday, she wrote: “I always say, ‘Never give up!’ So to all the kids out there, to my fans who have sent me messages of encouragement to keep going
 I need to tell you that I’m not giving up! I’m just starting a new chapter.”

Vonn is likely to pour as much energy into whatever comes next (she’s hinted at an acting career) as she did her ski racing career. “There’s one gear for me and that’s going 100 percent,” she told me when we spoke two years ago. “That will never change.” ÌęÌęÌę

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Casey Brown is standing on a steep desert slopeÌęin southwestern Utah, just outside Zion National Park, staring down at a man-made, 20-foot-high dirt jump that she intends to hit on her mountain bike.

Brown, a New Zealand native who now lives in Revelstoke, British Columbia, will descend 200 yards at around 40 miles per hour, soar some 50 feet through the air, and then—she hopes—safely land on a modestly pitched runout. Brown has launched from hundreds of similar jumps, often on her way to victories at competitions, where riders are judged on how well they can make their bikes perform like stunt planes. But this one is making her nervous. The wind is gusting hard enough to knock an airborne rider off-kilter. If that happens, Brown will probably slam into the desert’s sandstone surface.

“This is sketchy,” she says. The breeze sweeps plumes of dust off the surrounding ocher mesas. “If the wind doesn’t die down, it could be bad.”

A big part of mountain biking, especially the high-flying brand that Brown practices, is crashing, and the 27-year-old knows the consequences of a jump gone wrong. Her five-foot-three-inch body, scarred and partially held together with metal rods and pins, is an illustrated guide to what can happen when humans plummet from three stories up and smack against the earth. At the end of March, while riding in New Zealand, Brown jumped 12 feet off a mound of grass and came up short on the landing, slamming her chest into the handlebars and tomahawking for 30 feet. The results: a cracked bike frame, nerve damage in her left shoulder, and such bad bruising to her left lung that she coughed up blood for two days.

It’s now the middle of May, and Brown is still hampered by lingering pain. Nevertheless, she was determined to come to the tiny town of Virgin, Utah, for what she calls exposure therapy, on terrain that, riders will tell you, is some of the most dangerous and technically demanding you’ll find anywhere—a devil’s playground of 50-degree knife-edge spines, 60-foot cliff drops, and gap jumps over 70-foot-deep ravines.

Such obstacles feature prominently in the , an invitation-only competition, held in October, in which 21 of the best riders in the world air into backflips and off-axis spins and otherwise tempt disaster while barreling down a seemingly unrideable, 700-vertical-foot mountain. It’s the sport’s biggest event, and Brown wants in. A few weeks from now she’ll petition contest organizers, hoping to become the first woman invited to ride in the Rampage. They’ll make their decision in early August.

But first the jump, which looms before her on the event’s original course, just a mile from the new one.

“Is it still windy down there?” Brown shouts to a group standing beside the jump. She’s brought along Garett Buehler, a close friend who has competed in the Rampage four times; her boyfriend, Marty Schaffer; and her dog, Snuff, a black Lab mix who’s almost always at her side.

“It’s better,” Schaffer replies. “You’re probably OK to go.”

Brown buckles the strap on her full-face helmet and lowers her goggles. She angles her gray Trek toward the jump, her blond ponytail swishing as she speeds down the slope. As Brown launches from the lip, she floats so high and far that she overshoots the touchdown zone and lands on a flatter section. She hits hard—her bike shocks completely compress—slides off the saddle, and slams her backside onto her rear tire.

“Ouch!” she yells.

Speckled with red clay, Brown cringes as she walks her bike back toward the jump.

“Yeah, Casey!” Buehler shouts.

“Are you OK?” Schaffer asks.

“Yeah,” says Brown, shaking her right hand. “I wrenched my wrist a little.”

She looks at where she landed and lets out a chuckle. “I’m fine.” Then she pushes her bike up the hill to do it again.

Watching the Red Bull Rampage, which is streamed online, can be a nauseating experience. One minute you’re witnessing a rider land a double backflip; the next he’s writhing on the ground, a pile of busted bones.

Since the Rampage began in 2001, several athletes have been airlifted out after suffering serious injuries. In 2015, Paul Basagoitia, a rider from Reno, Nevada, was paralyzed from the waist down after going off a ten-foot cliff and crashing. In 2013, two riders broke their femurs.

The acrobatics displayed at the Rampage are among the most impressive spectacles in all of sports, but the bodily harm that can result is enough to make you wonder why anybody thought it was wise to subject mountain bikers to such gnarly terrain.

Todd Barber, one of the event’s founders, says the idea came to him in 2000, when he was watching a ski-cross competition in Lake Tahoe. “I thought, Why isn’t there a competition that showcases what guys can do on bikes?”

On hand with Barber was Paul Crandell, who at the time was the director of events for Red Bull. He pitched the idea to his bosses. The brass at the energy-drink company, which never misses an opportunity to be part of something involving human projectiles, got on board right away.

The first Rampage was held in 2001 in Virgin, which was chosen, Barber says, “because it has everything, the ridges and drops and vertical. It reminded me of what guys were skiing in Alaska.”

To select the slate of participants, a committee of five spends months poring over competition results and footage, trying to determine which of the world’s riders are worthy. Applicants must prove that they have the ability to handle steep, loose, technical terrain and are daring enough to take on enormous jumps and cliffs. During their runs, bikers are judged on fluidity, style, amplitude, and line choice.

“People look at it and say, ‘I can ride that,’ ” says Kurt Sorge, a rider from Nelson, British Columbia, who’s won the event three times, including last year. “But you have to be fast and fluid and throw in the tricks. And you gotta deal with the wind and the heat. There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s one of the toughest challenges out there.”

The winner pockets $8,000. More important, a good showing at the Rampage can lead to big sponsorship deals.

According to Barber, a female biker with the goods to descend the length of the course while pulling off tricks like the Superman—in which riders take their feet off the pedals and fly through the air while holding the handlebars—has never emerged.

Brown acknowledges that what separates her from some of the best male riders is the shortage of tricks in her repertoire. But she’s working on several, aiming to have them ready by October.

“I’ve had other women want to compete,” Barber says. “But there are a lot of guys out there to choose from. It’s hard to say we’ll give Casey a shot when there have been so many guys knocking on the door for years. I’m not opposed to it. But it’s gonna be tough. The Rampage is not a proving ground.”

Over the past year, Brown has made a strong case that she deserves a chance. Last September, I joined a full house at Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, Wyoming, for the premiere of Teton Gravity Research’s . The crowd, mostly dressed in flannel and brimming with anticipation, had come for the usual adventure porn: skiers and snowboarders descending steep faces in deep powder, flinging themselves off massive cliffs. With each colossal launch, the pack yipped and hollered. But it wasn’t until about halfway through the hour-long film that they completely lost it.

That’s when Casey Brown and Cam McCaul, a pro from Bend, Oregon, appeared on the screen, riding their bikes off a 20-foot cliff into snow-filled , the legendary Jackson Hole ski run. The icy pitch rendered brakes useless; Brown hurtled for 300 feet at around 60 miles per hour. With that, people leaped to their feet, shouting and throwing their hands in the air.

After the movie, the talk was all about the mountain-bike segment, both because the stunt was novel (mountain bikers had never appeared in a TGR ski film before) and insane (nobody had ever been crazy enough to ride a bike off Corbet’s). And by the way, several asked: Who was that girl?

Besides her Crankworx victories, Brown, who began competing in 2008, has spent several years posting impressive results on the World Cup downhill tour and in Enduro World Series races. Among serious riders, she’s noted for her in-flight style and hang time, which seems to last seconds longer than her peers’. “The thing that impresses me is that she’s so confident,” says McCaul. “She can take on any terrain, and she makes it look good. Such stylish riding isn’t something we’ve seen from women before.”

But until that moment inside the theater, most people outside the world of mountain biking had never heard of her. The TGR segment, which was later and quickly went viral, with 730,000 views, boosted Brown’s celebrity. A month later, Red Bull proposed doing a short film about her. She’s also been asked to shoot a commercial for Coors Light.

Brown, who’s soft-spoken and demure, shies away from much of the attention. “I like to live a little more humbly,” she says. Ìę“Looking forward and focusing on the future are more important than looking back at what you’ve done.”

In Revelstoke, she’s able to find sanctuary from the limelight. When she’s home, which is usually only five months of the year, she spends her time working on her bikes, hanging out with her family, or, in the winter, skiing and snowmobiling with friends. And she devotes a large chunk of time to her artwork, a passion since childhood.

The tiny basement apartment that she shares with Schaffer is a gallery for her work, including a painting of Snuff, as well as pottery she made at a nearby studio. ÌęEven her bike helmet is painted with a sketch she did of a coyote biting a snake. In some native cultures, she says, “the coyote is the trickster. I feel like I’m the coyote and I’m biting my fears.”

She’s a good artist, which prompts me to ask why she didn’t choose that as a career, since art is less likely to put you in the hospital. “Artists starve to death,” she says, then thinks about it. “Well, mountain bikers starve to death, too.”

Brown is hardly starving. Her income this year, earned mainly through endorsements with , Dakine, and Trek, will reach six figures. She and Schaffer are house shopping—with one stipulation. “There needs to be enough land to build jumps,” says Brown. It’s a remarkable success story when you consider that when most children were learning to ride a bike, Brown was swinging from vines in a jungle.

One afternoon in Virgin, Brown changes out of her Dakine riding kit and into a tank top and cutoffs. She says the shorts are similar to what her father, Lou, wears around Revelstoke—much to the embarrassment of his children.

Airstream has loaned her a rolling bedroom for a week—a thank-you for jumping her bike 40 feet over a trailer for an advertisement—and we’ve taken lawn chairs from it and plopped them in the middle of the shallow Virgin River, where we’re soaking our feet.

I ask Brown if she’s seen the movie Captain Fantastic, noting that the story line—about a father who raises his children off the grid—sounds like her childhood.

“Lots of people say that,” says Brown. “There are a lot of similarities.”

Only days after Brown was born in a Queenstown hospital in 1990, she joined her parents, Lou and Liz, along with three older sisters and a brother, in Barn Bay, on the west coast of the South Island, miles from the nearest town. Lou had moved there with his previous wife in 1975, to work as a fisherman.

“It was a remote and challenging place to fish,” says Lou, a slight man in his sixties who, like his daughter, seems drawn to adventure. In 1983, after his second marriage ended, he convinced Liz to join him.

Lou built a house from wood he had scrounged in the jungle. The family foraged for and grew their own food and used a windmill Lou had devised to generate their own power. Twice a year, they would trek eight hours to the closest town for supplies. “As soon as you could walk, you walked there and back,” says Brown. “I was probably two.”

Lou, who owned a boat, spent days on the Tasman Sea catching rock lobster, which he’d ship out on planes that landed on a runway he’d made. Meanwhile, the children mostly played. That included building forts and “swinging from the trees like monkeys,” says Jennifer, the second-oldest. Elinor, the second youngest, recalls a long-distance hiker dying near the family’s home. After the body had been recovered and bagged, the children watched while Elinor poked it with a stick. “We didn’t really have values or a belief system at that time,” Jennifer says. “We were pretty wild.”

In 1996, after Lou had several close calls at sea, the family moved to a 426-acre farm in a town called Clyde, where they lived in a tepee and attempted to grow vegetables. The crops failed, which took a toll on Lou and Liz’s already strained marriage. They divorced that year, and Lou hit rewind and left for Canada, where he’d grown up, with Jennifer and Sam, his only son.

Liz stayed on the farm with Casey, Elinor, and Jasmine, her daughter from her first marriage. In 1999, a fire started when a tree fell on a power line. Liz and Casey were at home and rushed to open the gates for the horse and their flock of sheep. By the time they made it to the car to flee, the blaze had reached the driveway, and the two narrowly escaped by driving across the pasture and through the fence. The farm destroyed, the family moved to Hawea, a small lakeside town, where they survived on welfare.

In British Columbia, Sam had begun mountain biking and proved to be an ­

“He was an amazing rider, but he was also creative and innovative,” says Darren Berrecloth, from Parksville, B.C., who appeared alongside Sam in several films. “He had great style and flow, and would pick different lines down the mountain, lines that other people couldn’t see.”

Casey revered her brother from afar. Then, in 2002, hopeful for a better life, Casey and Elinor left for Canada to live with their father.
Ìę

In Revelstoke, an old logging town 350 miles northeast of Vancouver, Lou had taken on several jobs, including one as a metalworker. When Casey joined him, he built his daughter a bike out of spare parts, a clunker with different-size wheels that Brown used to chase her brother and his friends around.

“She was just like Sam—a total natural from the time she was 12,” says Joel Pirnke, a Revelstoke native who grew up riding with Casey and Sam. “She was aggressive, but with a really calm, relaxed style. As she got older, she was passing the boys.”

Brown began harboring dreams of becoming a professional biker. Sam, however, became disillusioned with the sport’s bloated egos, gave up, and in 2005 found work as a logger. To get in and out of the woods, he traveled by helicopter; he took pilot lessons in hopes of someday earning his license.

Some time later, Sam befriended , with a bald head and a stocky build. Martin offered Sam a job, one that would appeal to his sense of adventure and earn him serious money. Sam said yes and went into outlaw mode.

Eventually, Casey became aware that Sam was smuggling drugs into the United States. She confronted him about it one day while they were riding around in his truck.

“I don’t want you to do this,” Casey said. “I don’t want you to die.”

“Don’t worry,” he said confidently. “I’m not going to.”

Sam ran pot and ecstasy over the border by snowmobile and, later, by helicopter, though he never got a license to fly. In February 2009, into Washington, landing in a meadow inside Colville National Forest. The DEA was waiting and arrested him.

Four days later, the Brown family was called to Elinor’s house. When Casey walked in, a police officer standing in the doorway bluntly delivered the news: “Your brother killed himself.” Brown sank to her knees.

Sam didn’t leave a note, and speculation swirled about why he’d take his own life. To Brown, it didn’t matter. Her best friend was dead, and she spent several months in mourning. Then she turned all her attention to riding. “Biking was the thing he loved and the thing we shared,” says Brown. “If I could do one thing that made him proud, that was it. I decided to work toward becoming a free-ride mountain biker.”

On my last day in Virgin, Brown and her entourage drive about four miles through the desert down a rutted road. They eventually reach the base of the current Rampage course, where the event has been held since 2012. The wind is up again.

“What do you think, Casey?” asks Buehler.

“Perfect day for sailing,” she says.

A day earlier, we’d driven here in less breezy conditions; Brown had sessioned some of the course’s lower cliff drops and jumps, easily sending a 50-foot bluff over and over again. Then, as the sun began to set, she hit a small jump and landed funny, causing her to endo over her bike and face-plant in the dirt. A silly mistake, she’d called it, but one that cracked the visor on her helmet and left her with a headache. A few hours later, when I asked how she felt, she said she’d mostly recovered.

“Just a little hucker’s neck.”

Huh?

“You know, Huckingson’s disease,” she said. “Whiplash.”

“Can you ride?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “You’re always recovering from something in this sport.”

“Part of what makes Casey so good is that she’s so tough,” Buehler interjected. “She’s resilient. She can bounce back from anything, so she keeps progressing—she’s not spending a lot of time off her bike.”

Brown, Schaffer, and Buehler assess the wind and decide to wait a bit. Instead of riding, we’ll hike to the top of the course and check out some of the bigger features on the upper section.

As we climb, the pitch gets steeper and the loose sand and rock starts to crumble below our feet. On one stretch, I find myself on all fours, grasping for a solid handhold and realizing that if I fall, I’ll tumble 100 yards over an outcropping of boulders. I find myself wondering why Brown wants to ride her bike down this.

“There’s a quote I like,” Brown says. “ ‘The best things in life are on the other side of fear.’ I’m pretty sure Will Smith said it. The Rampage is a really good measure of your abilities. It tests everything. I want to be pushing the sport, and this is the next step for me.”

Many people seem to agree. Often, when women try to break through in a male-dominated sport, they’re met with online harassment. Brown has received nothing but support. In mid-May, she posted Instagram photos of herself riding on the Rampage site. The comments, many of which are from men, include “Casey is serious competition for the men” and “Maybe we’ll see you at the Rampage?!”

One of her supporters is none other than Kurt Sorge. “Casey has progressed so much in the past ten years, and she’s proven herself,” he says. “She could carve a pretty sick line down that course.”

When we reach the top of the run, Brown shows me how she makes certain features less scary. We stare down a 12-foot drop onto a five-foot-wide spine with a 200-foot free fall on either side. Brown calls it the Sidewalk of Death.

“I just erase everything except what I need to ride,” she says, waving her arms as though she’s wiping the potentially lethal parts from existence. “When you do that, it’s really not that bad. Just a 12-foot drop.”

By the time we make our way back to the bottom, it’s about eight in the evening, and the wind has died down. I ask Brown what she’ll do if the Rampage committee decides to leave her off the list.

“I’ll work harder,” she says firmly. “And I’ll try again.”

With that, Brown puts on her helmet and pulls up her kneepads. Then, as the sun fades, she pushes her bike back up the mountain.

Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the September issue ofÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű,Ìęwhich hit newsstands the first week of August. Later that month, invitations were made to riders to compete in the 2018 Red Bull Rampage.ÌęBrownÌędid not receive an invitation, but, as she said in the story, she'll continue to work hard and hopes to receive an invitation to compete in the event next year.Ìę

Correspondent Gordy Megroz () wrote about Wylder Goods in July 2017.

Photographs byÌęJosĂ© Mandojana.

The post Casey Brown Is Ready for the Red Bull Rampage appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.