To celebrate Black History Month we’ve rounded up some of our favorite stories that highlight diverse voices.
Historically, skiing has been a predominantly white sport, which makes it more important than ever to highlight new faces in the industry. Through perseverance and passion, these individuals are breaking barriers on the slopes and helping to foster a more inclusive and welcoming environment within the skiing community.
See The Sport Through the Lens of Skiing’s First Black Photographer
I met Stan Evans in the winter of 1998 when we were on one of our first feature assignments for a new ski magazine devoted to the wild and aberrant freeskiing movement that was taking off as a ski subculture. This made us misfits by choice, and while I wasn’t aware of any other Black ski photographers, it didn’t occur to me that there was anything historic about our assignment. The following winter, Stan organized and produced the first snowboard magazine story featuring all Black riders, shot by a Black photographer. That this had never been done makes it objectively historic, and it stands as a benchmark of winter sports diversity. At the time, however, very little mainstream attention was paid to the quantum gap jump that Stan had just helped the sport clear.
A few months into the pandemic, “sheltering in place” meant living in my van in Bend, OR. Having recently lost my previous job as an outdoor industry sales rep, I decided an escape into the backcountry might help me regain control of my spiraling anxiety.
Stratton Matterson organized a small crew, including Zak Mills, Ian Zataran, and myself. Our goal was to circumnavigate Oregon’s second-tallest and least-explored volcano.
Over three nights and four days, we unplugged from the chaos of the world while traversing our way across the mountain’s various aspects. We skied thousands of feet of perfect corn snow, traversed crevassed terrain, filled our water bottles in glacial creeks, and rested our weary bodies on warm lava rock. Rockfall echoing through the mountain’s canyons was our soundtrack.
Mallory Duncan, a Bend, Ore.–based skier, and filmmaker, decided to throw out the rulebook with “The Blackcountry Journal,” a short film that mixes backcountry freeskiing with his lifelong passion for jazz. Beneath the smooth soundtrack and savory facade is a complex story about race in skiing, although the nuance may take a few views to rise to the surface. Shot in monochrome and structured in three parts, the film abstractly follows Duncan’s story as a black man trying to find his place in the white ski industry.
We sat down with Duncan upon his return from the Banff screening to learn about the making of “The Blackcountry Journal.” Be sure to watch the film when it’s released to the public on Nov. 8.
As a Black Skier, It Feels Good to See Others Like Me
On a spring morning at Vail, laughter fills the entire dining room of a restaurant lounge as a group of people gather around a stone fireplace. They clap one another on the back, cackling to inside jokes and generally enjoying each other’s company. At first glance, you might think you’ve stumbled into a reunion of some sort.
The truth is, most of us have just met each other this morning, brought together by an organization whose mission is to encourage, teach, and inspire Black, Indigenous, and people of color to participate in mountain sports by creating spaces for enjoying the outdoors. This convivial group is here for a ski day with the Denver-based BIPOC Mountain Collective (BMC).
An Oral History of the National Brotherhood of Skiers
The nation’s first Black ski group, the Jim Dandy Ski Club (named after an R&B song by LaVern Baker), formed in Detroit in 1958. By the early 1960s, a handful of U.S. cities had similar clubs, like the Snow Rovers in Boston and the Chicago Ski Twisters. In New York, there was the Four Seasons Ski Club, run by an NBC cameraman named Dick Martin, who owned a ski shop in Harlem and often played ski evangelist to his peers, screening films and proclaiming that a skier need not be a “blond-haired, blue-eyed Norse god.” Martin organized weekend ski buses that rolled out of Manhattan at oh-dark-thirty to wend their way north to the mountains of upstate New York. In 1964, a 25-year-old New York University graduate student named Ben Finley climbed on board.
Set to an Afrobeat Soundtrack, These Unique Trips Welcome Black and African Skiers
Soft Life Ski, has a unique mission built on a combination of unlikely passions: skiing and Afrobeat music. The UK-based group hopes to increase inclusion and diversity in the winter sports space by organizing music-themed trips to ski resorts. “Soft life,” a term for an easygoing and relaxing lifestyle, is the feeling the group hopes to bring to the slopes. In short, SLS is a traveling music and ski festival aiming to introduce the joys of winter to its Black and African audience.
