A Tribute to Max Martin

I’ve met a lot of my heroes in this job.

It still doesn’t feel real that some of the athletes I grew up watching have become friends and people I frequently work with. I know that this is a shared sentiment amongst others who do what I do, and one of the coolest parts of our jobs.

What we don’t talk about as much is when you meet an athlete, and that person becomes one of your heroes, and if you’re lucky, also your friend. 

This was my experience with Max Martin.

Within two weeks of moving to Jackson, Wyoming, in the throes of the COVID pandemic, I had started my internship with TGR and was assigned an interview about a short film Jackson Hole Mountain Resort had just released. I interviewed Max, Jim Ryan, and Stephen Shelesky.

Max Martin passed away in an accident in Japan a few days ago.

I still have the recording of our interview on my phone, as do I every single other interview and RAW photo I’ve ever conducted or shot in my career, which included several more interviews, film projects, and photo campaigns with Max. For all that I sacrifice in this relative hoard of data, I have never felt more grateful for those recordings and images as I do today. 

Generally speaking, I’m not the best at staying in touch with people, and I hadn’t kept in the closest contact with Max since moving away from Wyoming a year and a half ago.

But just a few weeks ago, I’d stumbled across an image of Max on the website of a guide outfitter in Japan. I texted it to him, and we joked about how much mileage the company had gotten out of the image, which was shot in 2016.

He’s on a pair of SEGO skis, a Teton Valley company that no longer exists, and sporting a pair of bright green SHRED goggles (I think one of his very first sponsors?), but is otherwise enveloped in a pow turn. I only recognized him in the image from photos he’d sent when the two of us pitched a Japan trip in 2022. 

He told me he was headed back to Japan himself in a few weeks.

He was planning to ski in Hakuba before heading to Asahidake, the volcano ropeway he’d introduced me to, and where I was booking a guide for. “That place is the shit, you’ll have a blast,” he texted me. We’d miss each other by eight days on our trips - “I’ll call and give you guys the beta!” he promised. That text was on January 2. 

Everything that’s been written or posted about Max since his passing has chronicled what a positive, kind, unique person he was. I wanted to write as many of my own stories about him as I could, but I fear I’d end up writing a novel.

From that very first time meeting Max in May Park, to the last time I saw him at Roadhouse Brewing in December, every interaction I ever had with him put a smile on my face. He made me believe in myself over and over again, whether on skis or behind a camera.

He was the life of the party, the hardest worker, and the most dedicated person. 

As I’ve looked through the images, videos, and recordings of Max over the last few days, I’ve been reminded of the immense impact he had on my life and the lives of pretty much every single other person he met.

Whether it was his total belief in me to ski the scariest thing I'd ever skied, his endless stoke and dedication when pitching projects, no matter how many of them failed, the ways he uplifted and protected his friends, or simply the joy of a beer with him, or a high five in the Tram line, these memories leave me in disbelief that he is gone, and grateful to hang onto these memories all the same.

When we ski in the backcountry, we’re always listening for cues of avalanches or other hazards. When we do hear them or see them, it’s hard not to feel like the mountains are talking to us, telling us to proceed with caution, stay on our toes. Why, then, does it feel like it’s always the best people that get taken from us by the mountains? If this is their way of talking to us, what are they trying to say when we lose people like Max to them?

I think everyone who has lost someone to the mountains asks this same question, and none of us will ever have the answer. Instead, we can hold our friends close, tell them we love them, do our best to grieve the losses, and honor their memory in the best ways we can.

To Eliza, Tyler, Max’s whole family, and the entire Jackson Hole Community, my thoughts are with you.