The Ski Journal - Volume 17, Issue 1
A TALE TWO SUMMITS: MOLLY ARMANINO’S BALANCING ACT
Words: Brigid Mander 2023-09-15 11:18:51
Face check, vibe check. Molly Armanino keeping things light, even when the lines get heavy. Golden, BC. Photo: Andrew Chad
It’s not clear what Molly Armanino sees in the line off the summit of Volcán Azufre. It looked good from the valley, sure—a 50-degree, slightly fluted face, perched above a small cliff band and a few thousand more feet of skiable vertical. From the top, the descent looks dramatically steeper, icier, sun-affected and like some invisible Andean giant has been pelting rocks at it for days on end. To top it off, the Argentine wind is howling at knock-you-over speeds.
Our group is solid, including Armanino, Owen Leeper, longtime ski guides Doug Krause and Victor Cancinos, and myself. Skepticism regarding the descent’s fun factor is solid too, with one exception: Armanino’s face is plastered with a broad smile and starry-eyed anticipation. “I want to ski it,” she tells us, joyfully steamrolling the naysayers with her complete conviction. Cancinos opens up the line in a reasonable manner—lots of jump turns and even total pauses during moments of extreme wind velocity. It looks like the right way to ski it—until Armanino drops in, that is. She flashes the face without a single jump turn or millisecond of hesitation, and barely looks back at the still-frozen, skittery descent. It’s fitting—Armanino’s sights have always been set on the future.
Yet for many years the now-29-year-old’s trajectory was aimed far from these peaks. A love for environmental advocacy brought her to the sea, but when all roads led back to her childhood home in Tahoe, her worlds converged and created an ambitious agenda. Balancing a career in climate change activism and rejuvenated by her time away from the alpine, Armanino burst onto the global freeski scene in her own way last winter, through the competition circuit and by finding her voice as a leader in the sport’s push for conserving our wild places.
“There is something about being home in the vastness and ruggedness of the Sierra that gives me a sense of happiness and freedom. I remember skiing one day and taking a deep breath and saying to myself,‘ This is what makes me happy.’” —Molly Armanino
The ski industry began to take note of Armanino in a big way in 2022, the winter before our trip to Argentina. That year, she racked up a slew of wins at Freeride World Tour qualifiers, and though her season was truncated by injury, the FWT invited her to join the 2023 pro tour. She was invited to the Sister Summit and signed with Scott. She still holds down a full-time job as a planner and heads up a climate change advocacy nonprofit on top of her busy ski schedule. Nonetheless, Armanino has found that environmental advocacy is a passion she can weave seamlessly into her increasingly high profile as a pro skier, following in the footsteps of skiers such as Caroline Gleich and Michelle Parker.
Skiing and the environment have always been twin passions for Armanino. Unlike most of her tour competitors, the South Lake Tahoe-based skier spent the end of high school, her college years and the first half of her 20s completely off snow. It was also a break from her Placerville, CA, childhood and her family’s entrenched ski tradition. “We grew up skiing every weekend. To this day, my dad loves skiing more than I do,” Armanino says. “My grandma is Norwegian, and that is just what they did growing up, so we did, too.”
Eventually Armanino ended up in a race program. As the racing scene got more intense, a seemingly negative competition culture clashed with Armanino’s effervescent, adventurous spirit. The final straw came at a Junior Olympics qualifying race, when, in an attempt to inject levity, the then-16-year-old Armanino and a friend were arrested whilte trying to streak though a Safeway the night before the race. “I was in so much trouble,” she says. “I spent a lot of time grounded after that. And I didn’t ski much more.”
Armanino was ready for a change. She focused on her other interests—wildlife and the environment. At University of California Santa Cruz, Armanino pursued a degree in ecology, learned to sail and volunteered at wildlife and marine rescues in California. She spent time with a nonprofit in Costa Rica helping protect sea turtle nests from poachers, followed by two post-collegiate years studying and working in her field in Australia and New Zealand. When Armanino returned home, she found a Tahoe-based job at a national environmental consultancy. It turned out, however, skiing wasn’t all that far in her rearview mirror.
“When I moved back from Australia, I realized that the mountains were something that I couldn’t live without,” Armanino says. “There is something about being home in the vastness and ruggedness of the Sierra that gives me a sense of happiness and freedom. I remember skiing one day and taking a deep breath and saying to myself, ‘This is what makes me happy.’”
Shortly thereafter, she quit her consulting job of two years to achieve better balance in her life. “At first, I didn’t care about being a pro,” she says. “I just wanted to ski, and I don’t need anyone else to do that.”
A new, more flexible full-time job as an assistant planner with Exline, an environmental permitting consultant in the Tahoe Basin, offered that balance—and more time on snow.
She began to be noticed for her intensity on snow and also her fun demeanor, earning her a very fitting Instagram following that dubbed her“the sendiest and friendliest.”
When Armanino returned to skiing, she discovered freeride competitions. “I decided to compete not necessarily to win, but to learn how to ski fluidly, pick lines and apply that skill to the backcountry,” she says.
It wasn’t long before her competitive side completely took over. She spent the 2021 season crashing while sending huge airs, but by the following season, Armanino topped the podium at a few four-star Freeride World Qualifier events. She began to be noticed for her intensity on snow and also her fun personality, earning her a very fitting Instagram following that dubbed her “the sendiest and friendliest.” That genuine demeanor is nearly always on display; even after consequential descents of middling snow quality—like what we encountered late season in Argentina—Armanino takes the wheel, cheerleading and encouraging others, while finding joy in any condition.
On the cusp of professional success, Armanino was almost derailed in the winter of 2022. While on a multiday backcountry expedition, she suffered from severe frostbite on her toes 18 miles from the trailhead. The exit, which involved a six-mile skin, then snowmobiling to the car, then a car trip to the hospital, was an excruciating ordeal. Her big toe, and her season, never recovered. Her opportunity to compete in the last few comps of the season and qualify for the FWT evaporated. Adding injury to insult, she would ultimately lose half of her frostbitten toe as well.
Months later, tour organizers invited Armanino to compete anyway and she never looked back. By the end of the 2023 tour, she had taken second place overall, validating her wild card invite, and putting the rest of the field on notice.
“Molly opened new lines at every venue. It was hard to compare her skiing with others as it is so different,” says Rachel Croft, an FWT judge. ”It’s inspiring to see that level of creativity, commitment and, most of all, that level of confidence, especially from a female athlete.”
High pressure on the tour did little to derail Armanino’s entrenched cheerfulness. “Molly is so relaxed, even for being at the FWT,” three-time FWT champion Arianna Tricomi says. “Her skiing is pretty heavy though. She likes big straight lines through rocks, skis fast and goes big. Skiing with Molly pushes me to do stuff I would not normally do.”
“Skiing helps me to appreciate wild places and wildlife, and reminds me that this world is worth protecting and fighting for.” —Molly Armanino
Away from the tour, Armanino still holds down her full-time Exline job. While her employer is flexible about time off during competition, post-FWT this year saw her in Norway, skipping après to take meetings and calls in quiet corners of lodges. She’d often work until midnight local time and be ready to hit the skintrack again at 6 or 7 a.m. In places like the Andes, remote work means rising in the very early mornings to check off tasks, but it doesn’t faze her. Being solely a full-time skier doesn’t appeal to Armanino. She wants to be part of positive change, and really sees that as something that’s intertwined with skiing.
“I always knew I wanted to dedicate my time and energy into companies that I believe would help this world, but I never did anything directly,” she says. “My whole life I’ve had anxiety about the environment and I was constantly in despair about the amount of trash, plastic, poaching, climate change and how much so many species are suffering.”
Armanino created a movie, amend., in 2021 with her brother Sam Armanino, combining ski footage with sobering imagery of the destruction of the landscape and impacts to wildlife during the Sierra Nevada’s destructive Caldor wildfire. After the Caldor Fire, she began paying attention to local politics and policies, attending meetings and making comments, while encouraging other residents and voters to take collective action. The community was able to apply enough pressure to force city leaders to sign onto the United Nation’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, a renewable energy micro-grid, a move that could shape the region for generations—and set an example for other towns.
During the last year, she’s made her environmental passion even more official, leading a new nonprofit focused on climate change advocacy, education and public engagement called the Tahoe Climate Change Action Network (TCCAN). During the 2023 Freeride World Tour, her boss gave her time off from both Exline and TCCAN, but for most of the year, her balancing act is full on—professional skier, planner and advocate for Tahoe’s environment and wildlife. Armanino wouldn’t have it any other way.
“The skills and bravery Molly has in the mountains and her ability to go full send translates well into activism,” says Gleich, a professional skier who has parlayed her high athletic profile into an environmental advocacy platform. Gleich’s work has directly inspired Armanino. Now that admiration is mutual. “It also takes bravery and gumption to advocate for changes in policy,” Gleich says. “Molly is perfect to lead the next wave of this movement.”
For Armanino, her two worlds are inseparable. Although she is pursuing another season on the FWT, she’s also increasingly determined to move toward film, chasing down dream lines, and continuing to push women’s skiing, and her own limits forward. At the same time, she’ll use her increasing profile, audience and new film opportunities to keep promoting awareness of our environmental impacts, of personal and institutional responsibility, and to fight for a better future.
“Sometimes it’s hard to grapple with the fact that skiing is a selfish endeavor, both as a person and an environmentalist,” she says. “But skiing helps me to appreciate wild places and wildlife, and reminds me that this world is worth protecting and fighting for.”
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