Freeriding is a style of snowboarding or skiing performed on natural, un-groomed terrain, without a set course, goals or rules. It evolved throughout the sport's formative years as a contrary response to the highly regimented style of ski competition prevalent at the time. Snowboarders primarily refer to freeriding as backcountry, sidecountry, or off-piste snowboarding, and sometimes big mountain or extreme riding.
Johann Wolfgang "Hans" Gmoser, CM was a founder of modern mountaineering in Canada. Born in Austria in 1932, he came to Canada in 1951, and was a major driving force behind the growing popularity of climbing, skiing and guiding.
Seth Morrison is a professional skier. He has won many competitions and has appeared in a number of ski movies. He is best known for jumping off cliffs from extreme heights.
Mt. Brighton is a ski and snowboard area in Brighton, Michigan, that opened in 1961. As no hills large enough for commercial skiing or snowboarding exist naturally in Brighton, Mt. Brighton's slopes are man-made and reach a maximum height of 230 vertical feet. Contrary to urban legend, Mt. Brighton was never a landfill. Mt. Brighton has 5 chairlifts and 7 surface lifts. Silver is the longest and newest of the 25 runs, running 1,350 feet. A terrain park, featuring rails, boxes, and jumps, is available to freestyle skiers and snowboarders. Almost all of the snow on Mt. Brighton is created artificially using water stored in an on-site reservoir and industry standard snowmaking equipment.
Shane McConkey was a professional skier and BASE jumper. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and eventually based himself in Olympic Valley, California. Due to an itinerant childhood, he never identified with a single place, but he was said to have come from Boulder, Colorado. It was from here that he started his professional skiing career. He did so after dropping out of the University of Colorado Boulder to pursue his dreams.
Liberty Skis Corporation is one of the ski industry's largest independent ski manufacturers, and a leader in the manufacture of carving, touring, powder, and twin-tip skis, used primarily for a style of skiing known alternately as newschool skiing or freeskiing. Founded in 2003 by James Satloff and Dan Chalfant, Liberty Skis has grown to be one of the largest independent ski manufacturers worldwide, with shops and distributors in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
Jon Anders Olsson is a former professional freeskier and alpine ski racer from Sweden. Born in Mora, Olsson started his career as a ski racer but at age 16 he switched his race skis for twin tips and quit ski racing. Eight years later, after a 50 000 SEK (US$5826.22) bet with fellow skier Jens Byggmark, Olsson started ski racing again with the goal of the bets being to make it to the Olympics in 2014. He now competes in both freestyle and ski racing. Olsson is known for his invention of several new double flips, including a D-spin 720 into a flatspin 540, a switch double rodeo 1080, a double flatspin 900, and a switch cork 720 to flatspin 540.
Franz (Fuxi) Fuchsberger is an Austrian skier. He started skiing at the age of six.
Anna Segal is an Australian Olympic freestyle slopestyle skier and two-time world champion.
Matthias Giraud also known as "Super Frenchie" is a professional skier and B.A.S.E. jumper. He was born in Évreux, France and grew up skiing at St Gervais-les-Bains/ Megeve, France. His first highly publicized accomplishment was the first ski B.A.S.E. jump off Mississippi Head on Mount Hood, Oregon. Matthias Giraud started as a competitive ski racer, but moved on to freeskiing and later on big mountain skiing. Matthias Giraud is known for combining BASE jumping with skiing and completed several first descents and ski BASE jumps across the globe including the first ski BASE jump off the Matterhorn in Switzerland. He is also known for escaping an avalanche off Aiguille Croche in Megeve, France while performing a ski BASE jump with his friend Stefan Laude. Matthias Giraud currently lives in Bend, Oregon.
The World Ski & Snowboard Festival (WSSF) was created by Doug Perry in 1996 as an annual celebration of snowsports, music, arts and mountain culture. The Festival is held each April in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada and has been recognized as the largest annual winter sports and music festival in North America. It has been called the snowsport industry's version of Burning Man.
Skiing Everest is a 2009 American adventure documentary directed by Les Guthman and Mike Marolt; written by Les Guthman, and featuring high-altitude ski mountaineers Mike Marolt, Steve Marolt, John Callahan, Jim Gile, Hans Kammerlander, Chris Davenport, Laura Bakos, Mark Newcomb. The film also features Fredrik Ericsson, who died skiing on K2 in 2010.
Dane Tudor is an Australian / American freeskier born in Sydney, Australia. He spent his time growing up between Palmer, Alaska and Rossland, British Columbia. Tudor still resides in both British Columbia and Alaska.
Ultimate Rush is a 2011/2012 documentary television series produced by the Red Bull Media House in association with Matchstick Productions. It is also marketed as a combination of stupendous action sports endeavour, coupled with a cinematic-approach to storytelling. Through its wide distribution in the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Denmark, Austria and other territories, the series is evidence of the acceptance of extreme sports into mainstream television, and one of the most complete accounts thereof. The series focuses on the outrageous exploits of some of the best athletes in the world, and how they explore the fine line between extreme sports, philosophy and art. Most of the filming was conducted in the rugged backcountry of British Columbia, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, the French Alps, the Himalayas and the Andes, but not at official events or secured sites.
Alexis duPont is an American professional big mountain freeskier. She is a Freeskiing World Tour contender and former Junior Olympics competitor, who has been featured in several films such as Warren Miller’s Wintervention and Tracing Skylines. Her mother, freestyle skier Holley duPont, was one of the first women to land a backflip on skis.
Michelle Parker is a pro-skier from Truckee, California, US. She started skiing in her home resort Squaw Valley Ski Resort. At the age of 15, she started dedicating herself to freeskiing. She has subsequently competed in the U.S. Freeskiing open, X-games and Red Bull Cold Rush.
Neal Jay Beidleman is an American mountaineer and climbing guide, known for surviving the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. After the disaster, Beidleman's stories were featured on the U.S. television news show Nightline and PBS's Frontline, in which his decisions and patience were credited for likely saving the lives of himself and several other less-experienced climbers along the Kangshung Face. Beidleman has reached the summit of eight-thousanders five times, Makalu (1x), Cho Oyu (1x) and Mount Everest (3x).
"Sick" Rick Armstrong is a professional skier, freeskiing pioneer, mountaineer, paraglider, businessman and serial entrepreneur based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was a pioneering guide in the early years of Alaska Heli-skiing while working as a lead guide for Valdez Heli-skiing and Doug Coombs as chronicled in the 2007 feature film Steep. He was a member of the ultra-elite group of skiers called the Jackson Hole Airforce who transformed skiing in the 1990s and 2000s. He is known for having skied unskied lines such as his first and unrepeated massive drop into the left side of the notorious Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. He was the first person to have both skied and snowboarded the Grand Teton in Teton National Park. He has many first ski descents in China, Alaska, Europe, Antarctica, South America, and South Georgia Island. He was an athlete in the 1998 and 1999 Winter X-Games in Crested Butte. He was Awarded sponsorships by The North Face and Salomon. He also became an athlete talent scout for The North Face building a world-class ski team by discovering soon to be ski stars such as Sage-Cattabriga-Alosa, Ingrid Backstrom, Kitt Deslauries, Griffen Post, and Hillary Nelson. Armstrong was also a co-founder of the Teton Gravity Research film production company. He served on the board of directors for Intrawest from 2012 to 2017.
Hilaree Nelson was an American ski mountaineer. She became the first woman to summit two 8000-meter peaks in one 24-hour push on May 25, 2012. On September 30, 2018, Nelson and partner Jim Morrison made the first ski descent of the "Dream Line", the Lhotse Couloir from the summit. Lhotse is the 4th-highest mountain in the world and shares a saddle with Mount Everest.
John Nicoletta was an extreme skier who died skiing while competing in the 2008 Subaru Freeskiing World Championships at the Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood, Alaska. Nicoletta was one of 70 men and 26 women in the event. The event had a purse of $12,500. Competitors earn points in the competition by making bold moves jumping off cliffs or zigzagging on tongues of snow through rock bands. John has a shrine dedicated to him at Aspen Mountain John had placed second at the freeskiing championships in Telluride. John has been featured in a number of ski videos including “After the Drought: Adventures of a Colorado Snow Company”.
