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Here’s how it went, to the best of my knowledge: At the age of 3 or 4, my dad dropped me off at ski
school for my first day of skiing at Vail, CO. He then promised that we would “take a run” together after
the class. By the end of the class, however, a full-blown winter storm was raging outside, so my dad
walked to the parking garage and got out of his ski stuff, thinking there was no way I would want to go
skiing in such nasty weather. When he returned to ski school, however, I was nowhere to be found inside
with the other kids- I was out on the deck, in the storm, waiting patiently to ski another run. Being
the good parent that my dad is, he put his ski clothes back on and took that run with me, blizzard or not.
So I guess that from the very start, I’ve loved skiing more than just about anything. By the fifth
grade, I was so hooked that I began ski racing. After my racing days were over, I simply began skiing the
trees and powder every day I could at Mary Jane while attending the University of Colorado. Rather than
return to CU for my sophomore year, I decided to spend a winter at Crested Butte, where the steep, challenging
terrain fueled my skiing dreams more than ever. I returned to CU, got my degree, and was skiing pow just days
after my last final in December of 1996. Skiing has taken me to a lot of places since then:
-# of years that I have skied less than 100 days since graduating from CU: zero
-Years spent living in Canada: 2 (one in Rossland, one in Pemberton)
-3 weeks heliskiing in Alaska? check.
-3 weeks skiing in the middle of summer in Las Lenas, Argentina? check.
-3 weeks following in the footsteps of giants skiing classic lines in Chamonix, France? check.
-# of Big Mountain competitions: at least 15
-# of those competitions where I placed in the top 10: 6.
Meanwhile, I started getting serious about skiing Colorado’s 54 fourteeners not long after meeting
Brittany Walker in 2006. On May 17, 2008, I skied off the summit of Harvard, which made me the fourth
person to ski all of the fourteeners after Lou Dawson, Chris Davenport, and Ted Mahon. I hope to have
most of those descents archived here in the near future.
After skiing all the fourteeners, people keep asking me what my next goal is. I really don’t have one
right now, but I do know that I will keep skiing and biking and getting out there as often as I can. I
really can’t imagine it any other way.
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