Does It Matter If You Ski Well?

When I first began writing about skiing, I interviewed a little-known but influential figure who, years prior, had helmed a seminal magazine. Now a part-time electrician, he had become something of a quiet elder statesman of the skiing world with a distinguished portfolio of articles focusing on avalanche safety, gear innovation, and technique.

And our discussion eventually touched on the complicated topic of skiing proficiency.

I eschewed the standard post-COVID protocol for the chat and simply called the interview subject on my cell instead of turning to the sterile, if strangely intimate, face-to-face of a Google Meet.

With my phone face-up on the kitchen table, blaring on speaker in the hopes my laptop’s Windows Sound Recorder would catch every word, the interview began. We talked about history and current events in skiing. It was the usual for a discussion on our sport; unassuming, light fare. 

But when we began speaking of a certain manufacturer, the dialogue took a sudden turn. The interviewee’s voice lowered, and they asked that what they said next be safely kept off the record. I mentally prepared for a juicy morsel, maybe even a bombshell revelation. But what crackled from my old iPhone seemed of a decidedly mundane nature, no matter that I wasn’t to repeat it.

The individual whom we had begun speaking of—an executive at an important ski brand—it turned out, was a lousy skier.

The bumbling, crummy-skiing industry wonk is an image that drips with hilarity. It elicits the hapless tennis pro Milos from Seinfeld’s classic episode “The Comeback,” a character who pressures Jerry into buying a new, expensive tennis racket only to be a horrible tennis player himself. But in the cool-or-die ski industry, one that elevates not only poise but bravado, a secretly bad-skiing brand leader also seems mildly scandalous. A ski executive, who can barely ski? What would people think? Who would buy gear from them?

But as humorous as the subject may be, and as much as it seems a bad skier would hardly fit into the business of skiing—a sport that holds ideals like genuineness and progression close—much of the modern discourse on snow sports has forgone overwrought seriousness, even proficiency, as hallmarks of the true skier.

“Skiing has always intrigued me because of its inherent fun factor,” modern ski-for-smiles standard bearer and prolific outdoor writer Paddy O’Connell wrote in SKI in March of 2022. Speaking to the one-upsmanship and macho attitude endemic to the sport, O’Connell noted that he eventually took to pushing the limits of his own skiing, “but I didn’t do that for me and my giggles. I did that so other people would think me cool, [and] allow me into the upper levels of the ski town pecking order.” 

O’Connell’s take is emblematic of a modern ski movement ever grappling with the push-pull of seriousness, even proficiency, versus mellow fun, something that has come with a certain preachy bent. “After I realized that living in someone else’s head is a sour reality, and after I got north of 30-years-old and started popping ibuprofen like Tic-Tacs, skiing mediocrity has been my goal,” O’Connell noted. “Yours should be, too.”

O’Connell’s take also illustrates how nonchalance has long underpinned the debate on what role skiing well plays, and speaks to the subculture’s aversion to seriousness. In its lifestyle form, the sport has always been framed by that casual air, where the standard antagonist in ski films of the 80s was the overly solemn, rigid ski patroller; a character juxtaposed by the carefree, shredding heroes. In that vein, a modern-day appeal to mellow out has permeated a ski culture ever grappling with how seriously to take the sport.

Calls to return to a less grave view on skiing have even come from leading publishers in the outdoor space, including Mountain Gazette owner and senior editor Mike Rogge. Speaking to Miles Clark on the Snowbrains Podcast last October, Rogge elicited Shane McConkey’s Saucer Boy persona—the legendary, whiskey-swilling snowblader caricature created by the eminent, late skiing polymath.

"I really do feel like the reason why there should be a Saucer Boy statue at Palisades Tahoe in the village is that I feel, and I’m worried, that we are coming back to this phase where people are taking skiing and snowboarding a little too seriously,” Rogge said.

Though McConkey was an almost mythical skier, taking to the rugged slopes of Crested Butte and Alaska on long, narrow skis in extreme competitions before turning his attention onward, a path that eventually led to his combining of skiing and BASE jumping, he may be best remembered for his fun antics.

Legendarily, after being disqualified from a pro mogul tour event at Vail in the early 90s, McConkey poached the run naked. And his Saucer Boy persona was perhaps the holotype of the freeskiing movement’s rebuttal to over-seriousness, a caricature that has had a lasting impact on modern skiing.

McConkey’s creation has become inseparable from the modern skiing mythos; a symbol of Gaper Day-fun, a meld of cool nonchalance and absurd humor. And to many a salve against an uptight approach to skiing.

But while McConkey’s persona was unavoidably a harbinger of the current era’s aversion to taking skiing too seriously, it remains that McConkey’s off-center approach was legitimized by the fact that he was also one of his generation’s most important and proficient skiers.

He even played an outsized role in the progression of ski equipment, pioneering the use of reverse camber and wide skis, both revolutionary and now ubiquitous. At a certain point, McConkey undoubtedly took skiing seriously.

Still, a carefree, even flippant approach seems core to the current skiing zeitgeist, where sources countering these notions—that skiing should be taken seriously—are essentially nonexistent. Perhaps more sourceable is the canon of serious ski approaches and the response to them. From barroom eyerolls aimed at the Professional Ski Instructors of America curriculum to the ever-present razzing of skimo racing, skiing nonchalance has found its modern foils. And where other topics like avalanche safety and backcountry decision making have rightly become integral to the wider skiing discourse, taking oneself too seriously as a skier often remains the realm of the annoying try-hard.

But does skiing lose a balanced ethos by leaning too much into nonchalance? Is the thought that skiers should be less serious its own heavy-handed mandate? And at what point should we expect ourselves and our sport’s leaders to be good skiers and to take it seriously?

A subculture built around an activity will inevitably place a value on proficiency. It frames the entire pursuit. A skier who can’t make a good turn on icy snow, or who wears the wares but can’t hit a jump, will forever be labeled a poseur. At a certain point, a skier simply has to be able to ski.

But in our modern world, internet-bound and subject to content-bombardment, where social media has distorted our expectations about what others are up to and what we apparently should be doing, a backlash—in many ways meaningful—has ensued.

In that whiplash, a defense of ordinary skiing has found a footing; a justification not only for being a regular skier, but maybe even a mediocre one.  

But the shedding of expectations comes with a certain myopia.

It surely doesn’t matter if any individual person skis well. In a universal sense, it matters little if one excels or not at any leisure activity.  

But from execs to everyday skiers—and a revolutionary ski BASE athlete with a legendarily goofy bent—skiing needs strong skiers. Even serious ones. Because no excellent skier hasn’t in some way taken the craft to heart. 

Those skiers—taking the sport to the limit in sketchy descents on steep faces, barely holding snow and swagger-dripping but innovative park laps—bring an aspirational quality to skiing that has been integral not just as fodder for inspiring others to ski, but it has undoubtedly impacted the marketing and manufacturing arms of the sport.

And skiers of that level, no matter their outward persona, unavoidably take skiing seriously. It’s integral that they do. If no one skied well, the sport would have little measure of progression, leaving manufacturers with little reason to continue innovating. And perhaps leaving us skiers without the push to make the most of our chosen pastime.

Still, skiing remains framed by nonchalance, an aversion to sternness it has long held, and perhaps for the better. From Warren Miller’s post-war escape to Sun Valley, where he taught the sport and lived in a trailer years before his lighthearted films changed skiing, to the staying power of Shane McConkey’s absurd, if refreshing, Saucer Boy, a rebuttal to seriousness, is perhaps endemic in skiing.

No matter how our subculture celebrates progression, strong skiing, and big lines, it seems fundamental to skiing’s fabric to do so also with cool indifference.

Because it does matter if you ski well.

From the ironic razzing of the out-of-touch novice that is Gaper Day to the ever-present allure of freeskiing, the sport remains framed by being both a nonchalant skier and a strong one.

It’s simply mandated, for better or worse, that there’s a limit to how seriously you can appear to take it. No matter how important it is that some skiers out there do.

About The Brave New World of Skiing Column

This article was written by POWDER writer Jack O’Brien for his bi-weekly ‘Brave New World of Skiing’ column. Click below to read the previous column, 'Aspen Has Its Allure, but This Is An Ode to Carbondale, Colorado'.