4th place in Qualifiers at Salomon Freeride Championships in Taos
I was just stoked to stay on my feet and get through to Day One. This place is so special and I feel so lucky to be a skier who is a part of it!
This event is a qualifier for the Freeride World Tour event, so wish me luck!
SheJumps video from Alta Mountain Productions
Check out this sweet video that Alta Mountain Productions created for our last fundraiser. A little shout out to our sponsors and something to remind you “It’s a new day!”
Whydaho: I love the Tetons
Sometimes there are people and places you just can’t live without. In December (I think it was the 18th) 2004, I decided that instead of going home for Christmas from college I would spend a month living with my older brother and two homies (Rhys and Brett) from New Mexico in Alta, Wyoming. Joey (my brother) was doing the ski-bum program there–skiing fun lines by day and working night laundry. It was definitely a “jump” for me. I had no idea what I was about to discover about myself and skiing.
The calm Teton landscape and general energy that those mountains hold is incredible. Waking up in the early morning hours to see a gentle pink light hit the grand and sense the large Teton valley below stir awake in an old-school cowboy style (ranchers feeding horses, hearing diesel trucks go rambling down the road) had me mesmerized from the beginning. The Targhee terrain had me challenged from the get-go. My first day there, I remember making it up the Scotty’s bootpack from the backside in what felt like 2 hours. I was so embarrassed to be the girl that everyone had to wait for. I was sinking to my chest in every step–obviously didn’t know how to use a bootpack! But like most challenging things, with a bit of time and effort I became to love the hiking and started to feel assimilated to this place I had only read about in books or seen pictures of. It feels cool to be able to see my progress as a ski athlete over the years, and use the Tetons as a way to judge that progress.
Over the past 5 years, my relationship with the Tetons and its inhabitants has only gotten more amazing. It quickly became more of a necessity than a privilege to go there. As soon as I got back to school for the spring semester I made plans to get back there. Pretty much every vacation since Dec. 2004 has consisted of begging, borrowing, or stealing (no, not really) a way to get there. My Craigslist ads always read “I left my heart in the Tetons.”When I got there, we were always going on some epic early morning or in-the-middle-of-the-night mission with cold PBR’s and even colder air all around us.
So why the sudden disparation of Teton trips? When I found myself there this time, it felt like nothing had changed, but it had been over 2 years since I had last set foot up the Mary’s nipple bootpack. Well, if you didn’t know, internet blogs are about truth and here goes a big one: I think I cut myself off because I was severely addicted but couldn’t figure out a way to LIVE there instead of VISIT there. As the Jerry Garcia so eloquently put it, “You visit your country but you live in your home.”
Yes, sometimes we are afraid of addiction. So afraid that we cut anything and everything off about it in our lives. My “pura vida” as it has developed so far has made Salt Lake seem like the best option for a budding social entrepreneur/pro skier/private chef. The smog here makes me sick, quite honestly, but the people do not. The community in Alta/Snowbird is overwhelmingly beautiful and sustaining…My idea for this trip was to get up there and bring some of that amazing Little Cottonwood Canyon love to the small area of Grand Targhee. I did a small SheJumps meeting while I was up there and got a bit of some programs on the horizon for the group of incredible women that hold it down in Teton Valley (more to come on that later).
The trip started with high density partying and low-density skiing. But hey, the snowpack wasn’t so great (I swear!). So this rant is about visiting the places that you love the most, (haha even if you aren’t skiing as much as you want to). Sometimes they are in your mind, sometimes you have to drive 5 hours and have your car’s thermostat inching up slowly while you coax it down with the heater cranked on high. Sometimes you have to hike up a bootpack that used to take you forever, only to boast your improvement by coasting up in a matter of minutes.
Staring off into the South Leigh Lakes drainage below the Grand Teton, I was reminded by my number one adventure partner up there (you know who you are) that the mountains will remain…something I had been telling myself for the past 2 years. The only thing that changes is your effort to get into them.
I want to send a huge THANK YOU out to Shannon Hamby at Grand Targhee resort for making my trip that much easier. Another huge thanks to Alta Mountain Productions, all the girls who came out to ski with me and go to the SheJumps meeting, the Gust family, Rhys & Mira’s amazing hospitality and last but not least, to the Tetons and their inspirational energy that recharged me!
Here’s to life and the beautiful ways we find to live it.
SheJumps in SKI magazine! check it out!
Big-mountain freeskier and ski-film star Lynsey Dyer keeps a cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue tacked to a hallway wall in her house as a reminder of the way things are for women in sports: that is to say, largely ignored. “I want it to be a female athlete on the cover, not just models,” she says. “That doesn’t seem to be too much to ask.”
Dyer, with fellow skiers and friends Vanessa Pierce and Claire Smallwood (pictured, from top), founded SheJumps, a Salt Lake City–based nonprofit with an eye toward building a community of like-minded women: strong, active and sick of the status quo. “I’m tired of seeing Britney Spears and Paris Hilton as role models,” she says. “We want to be a part of changing that.”
The group is pushing adventure-based empowerment for three grades of women: the never-evers, the backcountry pros and the active types in need of a little help from talented friends with extra gear. (Their slogan: “What would you dare to accomplish if you knew the only possible outcome was
success?”) This winter, SheJumps is hosting a campaign to get more women avvy-educated and into the backcountry, with classes, discounts and networks of similarly inclined ladies. Last fall, they offered a free two-day career conference for professional female athletes, with seminars on everything from finding an agent to exploiting the media. (Hey, wait a minute….) Salt Lake City contains a growing immigrant population, including a recent wave of Sudanese; SheJumps is working with local social services to gather women who might never otherwise set foot—or snowshoe—in Salt Lake’s surrounding wilderness. “It’s an incredible opportunity to educate people about these open spaces,” says Smallwood, and hopefully instill a passion for preservation.
As a nonprofit, SheJumps is also creating a grant fund to finance women’s adventures. “We’re here to philosophically, logistically and physically support women’s dreams,” Smallwood says. “We want women to make that jump, to build their confidence, to do something they didn’t think they could.”
To see this article, please click here.
