The champion skiers bringing freeriding to the city

Sum­mer has bare­ly end­ed as snow set­tles in London’s Covent Gar­den. On a warm Sep­tem­ber day, in the heart of London’s West End, crowds bypass the mag­ic street per­form­ers and upscale restau­rants to fol­low a trail of bump­ing elec­tro music – trans­port­ed into an ear­ly win­ter won­der­land. Ski slopes rise high above the ter­race with a rain­bow of ath­letes 360-ing through the air. You may be for­giv­en for think­ing the unsea­son­al weath­er is the ter­ri­fy­ing result of a grow­ing cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe but, for today at least, you can rest easy.

The alpine scene is here to mark the launch of Peak Performance’s first store in the UK. The Swedish moun­tain brand was found­ed in 1986 by two pas­sion­ate skiers who sought to rev­o­lu­tionise ski­wear. Tired of the super­fi­cial­i­ty and look­ing like a dec­o­rat­ed Christ­mas tree, they were ambi­tious in cre­at­ing cloth­ing with a gen­uine qual­i­ty that allowed them to ski for longer and bet­ter. Today, Peak Per­for­mance has stores across many ski coun­try hotspots and are fur­ther expand­ing to bring the essence of the out­doors to the world. The event, which intends to bring togeth­er a day of expert demos, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and an end-of-day skills show­down to claim the ​‘Rail Jam’ crown, harks back to a 1995 com­pe­ti­tion which took place on the very same piaz­za mark­ing the arrival of freeride snows­ports in the UK.

In the 30 years that have passed since then, the indus­try has faced many chal­lenges, from DIY grass­roots and issues of acces­si­bil­i­ty to world-famous ath­letes and spear­head­ing spon­sor­ships. Yet with all these changes one thing remains the same – the spirit.

“It’s always pret­ty cool to bring our ski­ing into big cities. I mean it’s not some­thing you see every­day obvi­ous­ly” laughs Hen­rik Wind­st­edt – vet­er­an cham­pi­on ski­er. Born to the moun­tains in Swe­den, Wind­st­edt has been com­pet­ing since the 90s and has wit­nessed almost the entire his­to­ry of the sport. ​“It was so raw in the begin­ning, no one real­ly knew any­thing, like punk music or skate­board­ing in the ear­ly days, it was a pure sub­cul­ture”. He claims snow­board­ing was much cool­er and influ­enced a lot of the skiers to start doing the same tricks and then … boom! The world of ski­ing cat­a­pult­ed into the main­stream. ​“It was going so fast, from doing all these city events, get­ting spon­sor­ships and drop­ping out of school almost.’’ He reflects, ‘’is this some­thing you can make a liv­ing out of?”

The answer seem­ing­ly, yes. Now sur­round­ed by the beat­ing pulse of freestyle ski­ing, these acclaimed ath­letes from across the globe come togeth­er to cel­e­brate the lega­cy of this epic sport. Evolved from the high­ly reg­i­ment­ed ski com­pe­ti­tions of the time, freerid­ing marks a return to the wild. With skiers going off-grid and per­form­ing on nat­ur­al ter­rain with­out a set course — this extreme sport has gripped the dare­dev­ils of out­door life. But this is not with­out acknowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges along the way. Cur­rent Freeride World Cham­pi­on and Olympian, Hed­vig Wes­sel is a shin­ing voice of the com­mu­ni­ty. From her advo­ca­cy of avalanche safe­ty to empow­er­ing pas­sion projects, she notes that one of the biggest changes in the indus­try has been over­com­ing con­cerns of accessibility. 

“I think what is sad and dif­fi­cult, with acces­si­bil­i­ty, is that the resorts are so expen­sive.” She exclaims. ​“Espe­cial­ly if you bring your fam­i­ly and kids its fucked.” What is the solu­tion to this I won­der? She mus­es for a sec­ond before advo­cat­ing ski tour­ing – a jour­ney into the remote back­coun­try, where you can go any­where and build jumps with friends in the moun­tains, only your cre­ativ­i­ty stop­ping what you’re capa­ble of. It’s that pos­si­bil­i­ty that makes it so com­pelling for Hed­vig. ​“What I love about freerid­ing is that it’s free. Its end­less oppor­tu­ni­ties. You can have your own style, your own vibe and form. There’s no set rules in that way, where in oth­er sports it’s pret­ty restricted.” 

There were a few slip­pery slopes in her own jour­ney for free­dom. Grow­ing up and enter­ing the freeride scene was dif­fi­cult, she knew she want­ed to be the best in the world but how to get there was anoth­er sto­ry. ​“I felt a bit lost. It was hard to know what the direc­tion was. There were not many female ath­letes and you had to search to find your com­mu­ni­ty,” she explains. Through her expe­ri­ence, Sis­ter Sum­mit was born. A net­work of women from around the world, from skiers to snow­board­ers, to guides and film­mak­ers the organ­i­sa­tion aims to cre­ate a space of shared knowl­edge, where pow­er­ful con­nec­tions and edu­ca­tion­al tools sup­port young rid­ers in this whirl­wind indus­try. ​“For the young girls to learn from the OGs, but also for the old­er gen­er­a­tion to learn from the young,” she proud­ly states. 

But for kids in the city, where there’s no moun­tains in the metrop­o­lis, how acces­si­ble can this cul­ture tru­ly be? It’s some­thing that Glaswe­gian freeski­er Chris McCormick has thought a lot about. Want­i­ng to show­case a dif­fer­ent per­cep­tion of ski­ing, he took to the streets of Poland with a cam­era and a cause. ​“What we want­ed to high­light from the film was just a bunch of peo­ple com­ing togeth­er from dif­fer­ent coun­tries, absolute­ly no busi­ness meet­ing each oth­er day to day, if it was­n’t for ski­ing, it would nev­er hap­pen.’’ He says. The film Com­mon Lan­guage does exact­ly what it says. Find­ing a cama­raderie, a shared voice in times of frac­tured land­scapes. The pow­er of a com­mon lan­guage in sport, in play and in urban spaces. Where ski­ing can be accessed on your doorstep, to a back­drop of graf­fi­ti and most impor­tant­ly laughter.

Back in the icy lands of Covent Gar­den, crowds are armed with pump­kin spiced lattes and jaws are aching from gig­gling at the new­born bam­bis’ that took to the slopes. At the end of the day, as the snow begins to melt, an epic show­down is in full swing.

The jovial game of P.O.W.D.E.R is a sim­ple one. Con­tes­tants are giv­en a ski trick, fum­ble it and they get a let­ter — who­ev­er unluck­i­ly spells ​‘pow­der’ is out. Due to the stag­ger­ing turnout, this game is cut short to P.O.W. And after five rounds, only two remain. It’s on.

The com­men­ta­tor announces the final­ists, X‑games medal­ist and pro ski­er Alex Hack­el ver­sus 9 year old grass­roots ski­er Deja — it’s all to play for. One trick each, Alex goes first. He glides down, spin­ning with a force and land­ing per­fect­ly. Deja is next. There’s an elec­tric­i­ty in the air, the crowd falls silent as he swoops down, twirling over the pipe until … he lands with a wob­ble. Alex is crowned the Rail Jam King. But not before Deja takes to the slope for a sec­ond try, this time land­ing with ease. Onlook­ers bright with ener­gy, cheer and whoop as he is placed on the shoul­ders of ski­ing roy­al­ty — boots tri­umphant­ly in the air. Although not a de-fac­to king, he joins the ranks in the hearts and minds of Covent Garden’s mass­es. And who knows, we could have just wit­nessed the future World Cham­pi­on of Freeride Skiing.

Peak Per­for­mance Lon­don is open now.

Buy your copy of Huck 81 here.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Insta­gram.

Sup­port sto­ries like this by becom­ing a mem­ber of Club Huck.