Archive for the ‘Snow’ Category
After winning every major contest during the 2018 season, Chloe Kim became the top women’s superpipe snowboarder in the world at the age of 17. In what came as a surprise to many, in October of 2019 Chloe released a YouTube video announcing that she would be taking a break from competition that season and attend Princeton University instead. The years of rigorous competition schedules, obligations, training, and more were impacting her mental well-being and left little time for Chloe to discover who she really was, or to determine her own path. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m about to retire or anything like that – that’s not it. I just need some Chloe-time! I need to be a human, I need to be a normal kid for once, because I haven’t been able to do that my whole life. So I just wanted to give myself one year, the first time in seven years, to give myself a break from competing,” said Chloe.
Standing watch above the Mt. Baker Ski Area in Washington state is Mt. Shuksan, a towering mountain that steals your eye and sends shivers down your spine. Its glaciated terrain is always moving, letting loose torrential avalanches at a moment’s notice. Its northern faces are steep, wild and fraught with peril. It takes perfect timing along with a union of perfect conditions to ski it. After ten years of waiting for that union, the time has come. Having spotted a solid weather and stability window, the Fifty crew camps out at the legendary Mt. Baker Ski Area parking lot and is joined by fellow Salomon athletes Stan Rey and Alexi Godbout for an attempt to ski the steep and heavily exposed Northwest Couloir. While conditions seemed perfect from afar, the mission gets thrown into jeopardy by a sudden shift in winds and a whole lot of question marks.