Next Level Skiing

• The perfect turn is the next turn, with Willie Volckhausen

  Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Willie Volckhausen started skiing when he was 2 and raced with Sunlight's local ski club for over a decade. He spent 18 years coaching young skiers with the Aspen Valley Ski Club, developing not just ripping racers but athletes with a lifelong passion for skiing. And now he’s a ski instructor with the Aspen Ski School who spends his summers working his family’s farm near Paonia. Over his decades of being coached and coaching, Willie’s picked up more than a few techniques for improving our turns. Listen in and hear Willie talk about critical drills, his description of the best coach in the world, how farming has informed his skiing and when to find the perfect turn.   Topics:  1:00: 18 years skiing with the Bad News Bears of ski racing at Ski Sunlight  3:10: Transitioning to alpine racing coach for U12s for the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club  6:20: Balancing performance and victory with sustaining a passion for skiing  7:00: The best year for winning at Aspen Valley Ski Club wasn’t about the podiums  10:10: No pedestals for elite skiers  12:10: What coaching and young racers taught him about skiing  16:00: “Skiing is the easy part” about being a ski instructor  17:00: Standing on the outside ski  19:40: The up and over drill  20:20: The best coach in the world “should be totally deaf and totally mute.”  26:00: How learning patience through farming helps with skiing  30:50: How can you identify the perfect turn? Wait.  Quotes:  “Ski racing is an individual sport that is dominated by teams.” - Willie Volckhausen  “It’s not all about that one person. Only one person’s gonna win and there’s ten of us. So what are the other nine kids supposed to do the day that so-and-so wins the race? That’s what we focused on a lot.” - Willie Volckhausen  “Coaches and mentors have that opportunity every day to not put their elite athletes on a pedestal. The kids who win know they’re good. They know they’re going to win again. They know they’re expected to win. I think that’s some of the worst pressure we could possibly put on junior athletes.” - Willie Volckhausen  “If you tuck and roll, get your feet back below you, and you stand up without ever stopping, technically that's not a crash; that’s a ground trick.” - Willie Volckhausen     Resources:  Willie’s Instagram  Wagner Custom Skis 

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• Staying balanced with Brody Leven

  Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Brody Leven doesn’t dabble. He’s an all-in type of skier. When he decided he was done with park skiing, he moved from 100 days of high-flying park time every season to 100 days of climbing and skiing mountains. And now it’s been 10 years since the Fischer Ski-sponsored athlete has ridden a chairlift. He’s never eaten meat. During the pandemic, he started exercising outside every day. Now he’s more than four years in without missing a single day. He’s a lifelong vegetarian, a vehement climate advocate, and, as he says, “obsessed with ideas and doing things that are hard.” Tune in and hear Brody talk about growing up skiing in Ohio, his pursuit of untracked sno,w and his evolution into one of the world’s top ski mountaineers who considers his skiing outside the traditional definitions used by both pro skiers and ski mountaineers.   Topics:  1:10: An after-school ski program in Ohio.  4:00: Moving to Salt Lake City in 2005 for the skiing  12:10: Going from 100 days in the park to 100 days in the backcountry.  14:20: Ten years without riding lifts.  15:40: Principled skiing.  24:00: Perfecting turns without ever skiing on a groomer.  28:30: Climbing and skiing peaks in Uganda, Romania and Georgia.  30:10: The “thief of credibility” in the culture of ski mountaineering.  36:00: The light and fast ethos in ski mountaineering.  41:00: Jumping into exercising outside every day  49:00: Tackling climate change is like coming to a mountain with lots of little steps.  Quotes:  “When you're back there, you're listening to what the mountains are telling you and what your intuition is telling you and the frequency with which you do it, you know, getting out there so regularly and, you know, kind of higher risk terrain, you develop that fluency, right? And you push yourself to a spot where you have an intuitive fluency.” Jason Blevins  “I'm not like a woo-woo person, I'm very logical. And so when I say the essence of skiing, I do not mean that in any sort of woo-woo way. I mean, literally, it's how you move around the mountain on skis.” Brody Leven  “There's this culture of doing cool things and being quiet about it but secretly hoping other people hype you up in the parking lots. And like that's, it's just so weird for me. It's uncomfortable for me. I don't know. So I hype it up myself because I get back and I'm proud of it that part of my job is letting people know what I've done.” Brody Leven  “In hindsight, I didn't know it at the time, but I think in hindsight, finding that consistency was some way of having control over such an otherwise out-of-our-control situation. And so much of my life seems to lack that control.” Brody Leven  Resources:  brodyleven.com  Wagner Custom Skis     

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• Staying Aggressive in the Sharky and Spicy with Rob Dickinson

  Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Unless you live in Crested Butte, you likely haven’t heard about Rob Dickinson. He’s a former big mountain competitor who moves like a ninja through the Butte’s scary steps. You really only catch glimpses of Rob … a flash in the trees, a splash of snow on a rocky face, a blur beneath impeccable tracks. He’s coming up on 20 years skiing Crested Butte and is one of the mountain’s handful of inspirational soul skiers.   Rob doesn’t have a sponsor. He runs his own painting business. But he’s got skills and style for miles. Tune in and hear the 45-year-old Rob riff on how CBMR has honed his skiing, how to ride the clutch in technical terrain, and why you should never drop your uphill hand in gnarly steeps.  Topics:  2:20: From upstate New York to New Hampshire to Steamboat  4:15: Crested Butte keeps you honest  7:10: Ride the clutch to stay fluid in technical terrain  11:10: Competing in big mountain comps from 2009 through 2014 with a CB shred posse  18:30: Injuries, replacing body parts, and shifting your mindset   24:15: How steep creek kayaking hones ski skills, risk assessment  26:10: Taking vanity out of the equation.  28:00: Check in with yourself  31:00: Finding happiness in healthy, sustainable places  33:00: Gear adjustments and added protection for steep skiing  36:30: Don’t change anything on race day  37:30: Play, don’t work, in the ski industry  Photo credit: Garrett Grove  Quotes:  “All I did was chase skiing and kind of got the feeling that maybe I was chasing skiing from too far away.” - Rob Dickinson  “Trying to get better and trying to pull better results at, at freeskiing competitions, like, you just learn how to, I always say, ride the clutch, learn how to instead of like jamming on the brakes to see what's coming next.” - Rob Dickinson  “Crosstraining is really, really valuable.” - Rob Dickinson  “You have to steel  your mind and  you have to make yourself present and you have to check in with yourself.” - Rob Dickinson    Resources:  Precise Painting CB  Wagner Custom Skis   

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• Lou Dawson is Our Skintrack Artist

  Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Lou Dawson is a ski pioneer who has been setting the skintrack for countless skiers for decades. Since he arrived in the Roaring Fork Valley as a teenager in the mid-1960s, Dawson has helped shape backcountry skiing. From being the first person to ski all of Colorado’s 14ers — finishing in the early 1990s — to meticulously documenting nearly every technological advancement in ski gear, Dawson has shepherded backcountry skiing from its nascent roots in the 1970s to today’s global juggernaut. His recent memoir, Avalanche Dreams, traces his life from a hard-charging skier to a thoughtful father, husband, and alpinist.   Tune in to hear Lou talk about his first ski tour, the 1982 avalanche that nearly killed him, leaning on his spirituality, penning more than 3,000 posts at his WildSnow.com site, the evolution of touring gear, and the art of setting a skintrack. Topics:  2:30: Life in Aspen in the 60s as a teenager with hippie parents.  7:40: First-ever touring up to Conundrum Hot Springs at age 16.  9:40: The “radical sensibility” of progressive adventurers in Colorado  10:50: The 1982 avalanche in Aspen Highlands Bowl.  13:40: The Peter Pan Syndrome challenges many ski town men.   16:10: The spiritual awakening after the avalanche.  19:00: Finishing all the Colorado 14ers in 1991.  20:40: Writing posts for Wild Snow, tinkering and modifying backcountry gear.  24:50: The role of alpine tech bindings in ski mountaineering.  26:40: How gear and improved education have helped protect backcountry skiers.  35:40: North American versus European skin tracks.  36:40: “A beautiful combination of technology and athletic ability and a mystical awareness of the environments and the mountains.”  40:40: The fun of low-angle touring  Photo credit: Lou Dawson skis Long's Peak in 1990. Photo by Glenn Randall    Quotes:  “I started on wooden Bonna skis without edges and I literally would take those up and go powder skiing on those things back behind Aspen Mountain and places like that.” - Lou Dawson  “The difference between the 60-something millimeter skis we were skiing back in the 1970s and 80s with these with say an 80-millimeter ski or a 90-millimeter ski is like night and day.” - Lou Dawson  “In a lot of ski posses, people would look at you and think, ‘Well, I wish he or she had taken an avalanche course.’ And, you know, the avalanche course might not serve you to be able to predict whether a slope is safe or not, but it just makes you more aware of the danger.” - Lou Dawson  “I've always applied my craft to just anything I do. And I think one of the crafts of ski touring is the skin track. It's how you create it.” - Lou Dawson     Resources:  Avalanche Dreams  WildSnow.com  Wagner Custom Skis     

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• Skiing Every Aspect with Mike Hattrup

  Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Mike Hattrup has moved from bump skiing boss, to ski movie star to gear designer, covering smooch ground on snow that his work has touched just about every skier in the sport. From chasing his four siblings on the slopes of Alpental to winning mogul medals to hanging with Stump, Schmidt, and Blake in the seminal “Blizzards of Aahhh’s” to building backcountry skis and gear for top ski shops, Hattrup’s career has covered a lot of ground. Today, he’s the director of skiing for Eleven Experience, helping folks plunder powder in Alaska, British Columbia, Chile, Colorado, France, and Iceland. Listen in as Mike traces his extraordinary career from pro skier to guide to gear builder.  Topics:  3:05: Growing up skiing during the freestyle rage of the 1970s  4:00: Athleticism of mogul skiing  6:30: Training for mogul competitions  10:00 Filming with Greg Stump in “Time Waits for Snowman” in 1985  11:20: Filming “Blizzard of Aahhh’s” in Europe  14:00: Why “Blizzard” resonated so deeply with skiers  16:00: Moving over to K2, helping the company transition from race  22:50: The emergence of the transformative K2 Four  26:00: Moving into telemark ski design, flexible ski boots, and backcountry gear  34:00: Working at Kastle, Fisher, Black Diamond, Marmot  40:30: AMGA guiding on Mount Rainier  46:00: Improving through technique as we age  Quotes:  “I never thought that skiing was a career. Not like now, I mean, you can go be a film skier, right? But back then it really wasn't an option.” - Maike Hattrup  “We'll for sure look back on that era from early to mid-90s to the mid-2000s as the golden era of ski design.” - Maike Hattrup  “I learned to tele purely from a touring standpoint.” - Maike Hattrup  “In terms of fitness, that certainly becomes more of a challenge as you get older and I think you just gotta find a way to, I mean, find a way to keep training and make it fun.” - Maike Hattrup  Resources:  Maike Hattrup, LinkedIn  Maike Hattrup, Instagram  Eleven  Wagner Custom Skis 

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