Words: Liam Gallagher 2018-01-18 14:40:40
For Walker, a professional mural artist, this is nothing new. For Benchetler, it’s his first piece of art this size. It’s also his first time working with spray paint. In fact, it’s his first time operating a scissor lift. Intimidating? Definitely. But despite the occasional warning buzzer, Benchetler seems almost giddy about the situation.
That’s because it’s exactly the high-stress, do-it-yourself sort of project he loves. Even as he’s learning multiple skills on the fly, he remains unflappable, casually asking Walker for advice. He’s unfazed as we step into his custom camper van for an hour-long interview, even though it’s 90 degrees inside.
He says he always tries to limit his expectations and keep an open mind. About painting, yes, but also about skiing, and surfing, and climbing. He’s just trying to learn everything he can. Jack of all, master of none, he says.
That may be partly true, but really, he’s a master of at least one—there’s no questioning Benchetler’s on-snow skills. Now 30 years old, he’s been a professional skier for half his life, having filmed with Teton Gravity Research, Matchstick Productions and Poor Boyz Productions, among others. He played a role in founding Nimbus Independent with Eric Pollard, Pep Fujas and Andy Mahre. Most recently, he’s spearheaded his own film projects, like Chasing El Niño and the newly finished Chasing AdVANture, which will be premiering at evo in two days alongside an art show featuring his work.
While his success has involved a healthy dose of luck, it’s mainly due to an unrelenting work ethic, something Benchetler learned from grandparents who fled their homeland, from a father who built a business from nothing, and from an ever-motivated mother. Whatever the challenge, he handles it with maturity gained from loss at an early age, and accompanied by a wonderful woman.
Our conversation eventually stretches to 90 minutes, and—thanks to the summer sun—temperatures in the van become even hotter than when we began.
Benchetler, however, never breaks a sweat.
The Ski Journal: How did you end up here, at evo, painting the side of the building? Chris Benchetler: My buddy Skye Walker—who’s a professional muralist—and I did the mural on the outside of the van, which was my first bigger piece. It was only a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood, but after that he suggested I’d really like doing a big wall. So I had it in the back of my mind.
This past season, I filmed the Chasing AdVANture project for GoPro, which was really fun. I lived out of the van, and we documented everything: painting the side, doing the build-out, and then a whole bunch of skiing, snowboarding, surfing and climbing trips. evo has been a partner of mine for a long time, and I’m always trying to think of unique ways to include them in my projects, and the mural idea came to mind.
It’s been a cool opportunity. We’re going to unveil the mural, show the movie and have an art show, with a full gallery of Skye and I’s pieces. Scotty, who built the van, built all the picture frames out of the same reclaimed wood that’s in the roof.
That’s a big exclamation point on a whole year’s worth of shooting. Tell me about your idea for the film. I really wanted to highlight a lot of the people that have inspired and influenced me. It was basically finding masters of different crafts, whether it was painting, building, surfing—all the things in my life that are truly important to me. I wanted to show how snowboarding and surfing and climbing have helped shape me into the skier I am. We tried to really document that, and highlight people who have mastered each of those sports.
And glean a little knowledge from them? Exactly. I was able to link up with [professional surfer] Rob Machado, who’s been a long-time influence of mine. Funny side story, but when I was developing the Bent Chetler [ski], I saw a board Rob had shaped, with distinct contours underneath the board. I had been trying to figure out how to increase flotatation and surface area on my ski without losing the turning radius or hampering how it performed, and that board sparked an idea. Then we just took it from there.
It was cool to talk to him about shaping [surfboards] and why he does certain things. He was obviously stoked that I took inspiration from something he had built, and it opened his mind a little bit about snow sports and the fact that we do pay attention to what surfers are doing.
Since then, we’ve hung out a number of times and surfed together, and hopefully have a few other projects in the works. He came up to [Mammoth] and went snowboarding, and I took him snowmobiling. I’m hoping to get him on a noboard next year. I think he’ll probably rip on that thing.
Tell me about growing up in Mammoth. Technically I grew up in Bishop, which is just 40 minutes south of Mammoth. But my origin story goes quite a bit deeper than that. My dad, Victor, was from Budapest [the capital of Hungary]. His family escaped during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It’s a crazy story. He and his family were thrown in jail a number of times, separated, pistol-whipped, all that stuff.
My dad passed away from lung cancer when I was 16, so I couldn’t ask some of the questions about his life that I would ask as an adult. But I’ve been able to get a pretty good idea through my grandpa. My grandparents had a prestigious life in Budapest, but my grandpa didn’t believe in communism and wanted to get his family to the U.S. They moved to North Carolina first, then earned enough money for one-way tickets to California. That was during the 1950s, and they experienced a lot of bigotry when they got here. They started off with nothing. My grandpa had to teach himself English and how to drive. It was just so different than how I was raised—it’s hard to imagine.
They ended up in Long Beach [CA], and he turned into a full surf rat as a kid. Then he found Mammoth [Mountain Ski Area] while he was in college, and that became his passion. He loved being up in the mountains. I understand and respect it because I’ve had similar feelings about surfing, but I was also shocked to hear he was a surfer because he never took us to the beach once. I never knew that side of him.
My dad really gave my older brother Pete and I such an amazing life. He was a contractor and we weren’t by any means wealthy, but he appreciated quality, so we always had good skis when we needed them. We had a wakeboard boat too, and boat trips became our thing in the summer and then it was skiing in the winter. It was a pretty action-packed childhood.
My dad met my mom, Cathy, at Mammoth in the 1970s, and they raised us between there and Bishop. They actually rode horses competitively for a while, but when they had my brother it became too much financially to have kids and horses. They sold the horses, got back into skiing, and started taking us up on the weekends. I hated it at first, but that changed early on and set the course for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My mom saved some stories I wrote in second grade or something, where I was talking about wanting to be a pro skier.
I got into ski racing first, but I didn’t love the structure or format. My brother was a snowboarder, and he grew up with John Jackson and a few other rippers. I had to be at races in a downhill suit on powder days, but was really inspired by what [the snowboarders] were doing, just that freedom. When twin tips came out, I got a pair and started trying to mimic what they were doing.
I started surfing at about the same time, and was really intrigued by the way surfers drew lines down the waves, by the vision it takes to be good at surfing and how you need to be so in tune with nature. You never really know what the wave’s going to do, but you still need to be three steps ahead: see a section of the wave, plan ahead, and then figure out what you’re doing when you’re on the wave. I like that element, and I really try to ski that way—always have an open mind, essentially.
I’m not trying to get down the mountain the fastest. If I see a wind lip over to the left, I’m going to cut across to hit it. I really want to utilize the terrain and be playful, and so I’ve really tried to adapt that from snowboarding and surfing.
Does your mom still ski? Yes, but not enough. She’s a fair-weather skier and a bit of a workaholic too, which is good. I got a work ethic from both my parents, which I appreciate. She still tries to get out there, but she works for the resort and she manages retail stores, so she overworks herself a little bit.
Let’s talk about your wife, Kimmy Fasani. Kimmy is obviously a ripping snowboarder and she’s a huge part of my story and shaping me into who I am. We’ve been together almost half my life now, which is crazy. I met her while scooping ice cream at a shop in Mammoth. She used to come in with her friends, and I’d give her a little extra scoop every time.
She was rad and funny, but I think what really connected us was she’d lost her father to cancer as well. She’d met my brother snowboarding, and heard about my dad passing away. She was really open about it, and I was wearing my emotions on my sleeve too. One day she said, “If you ever want to talk about your dad, I lost mine too.” And then I was like, “Blah-blah-blah,” just talked about it right away. That definitely sparked our connection. We obviously had a physical interest as well, but we got into deep, heavy conversations really quickly, and got really close. I knew right away there was something real between us.
It’s been a wild ride since then, and she unfortunately lost her mother to cancer too this last year. So, for this event at evo, we partnered with both Protect Our Winters and a nonprofit cancer research foundation called Young and Brave.
Earlier, you mentioned that filming Chasing AdVANture presented some surprises and ultimately wasn’t quite what you’d envisioned at the beginning. But you also seem to be OK with that. Do you think that is something skiing has taught you, to roll with conditions and adapt? One hundred percent. I’ve always said, “Movement is my meditation.” Mother Nature is my happy place, essentially. Being in nature really helps me stay in the present mindset. I don’t know if it was just the way I was raised, but I’ve always avoided dwelling on the past. With my dad, for instance, people deal with death in different ways, and I tried to take all the positive from it and just be thankful for what I learned and the extra time I got to spend with him, that it made me grow up quicker and that I had skiing as an outlet. I think it’s important to be present and try to appreciate why life throws its curve balls, to stay the course and just accept it.
Obviously, I think it helped me realize that life is short, and that you never really know what’s coming. We’ve lost a lot of friends in the sport to avalanches and whatever else. I think you have to enjoy what you’re doing, and do it for the right reasons and really be truthful to yourself. Ask yourself why you’re doing these things, what they give you, what they give your friends. Are you giving back to the community? Are you giving back to the environment? These are all important questions.
Did you grow up with any sort of religion or spirituality? My grandparents and dad were from the “Old Country,” and Catholicism was very deeply rooted there. My dad was awesome about it—we would go to church every Sunday, but if it snowed we’d go to the mountains. Someone told me once that it’s better to be in the mountains thinking about God or the creator and being thankful, than inside of a church thinking about the mountains.
I know there’s something bigger than us, and I’m very open-minded and I still believe in God and a creator. But I also have a brother who’s an environmental engineer, who’s very scientific and aware of the science that supports a lot of other things.
Still, there’s so much that can’t be explained—so many other-dimensional things that I’ve experienced—like seeing my dad, in dreams or daydreams. There are just certain things in our life that don’t make sense scientifically whatsoever. It’s cool to have faith and just know that you’re going to see people again, and that their spirit is still present in your life.
“Someone told me once that it’s better to be in the mountains thinking about God or the creator and being thankful, than inside of a church thinking about the mountains.”
What’s next? What’s on the horizon? Well, there’s one big adventure coming up: Kimmy and I are going to have a child. We’re due in March. We’re psyched. I’m going to be staying home this year—I obviously don’t want her to be shoveling 40 feet of snow as a pregnant woman.
It was an obvious step; we’ve been together so long, and the people we’ve told have been thrilled and just told us, “It’s about time!” She wants to stay active in snowboarding, and has a clear and cool vision of what that can look like, granted we have a healthy kid and there’s no complications.
We have no expectations, but if everything goes as planned, her and I want to do a multi-year video project together. We’ve never really done anything like that, and she’s clearly one of the best snowboarders out there.
I think she has an incredible story, and she’s had a lot of challenges in her life and in her career. It’d be interesting to explain all of that, show what she does, and have some depth to it. That’s my plan, to start working toward that. Then I’m going to do a piece with Atomic about the 10th version of my ski. I have another concept in mind with Rob Machado as well—he’s in the market for a new van, and we’d like to do something around that.
But my main focus for this next season is to stay close to home as much as possible, and film around Mammoth and California. That, and be a dad.
“I’m not trying to get down the mountain the fastest. If I see a wind lip over to the left, I’m going to cut across to hit it.”
You have some good examples to follow, folks like Eric Pollard and Pep Fujas. It does change everything. I’m super aware of that, but it’s been so rad to watch them be such amazing fathers. They have such incredible little families, and I’m really stoked to join that tribe—stoked, and definitely a little nervous.
Selfishly, I love our life right now—we’re very free and we get to travel a lot and do a lot. I don’t think kids have to change that, but I know it’s a new challenge and it’s not easy. It’s hard to say now what we’ll be doing, but hopefully we can still be traveling in the van and climbing and skiing and surfing.
You travel a lot, but it seems like you really love to be back in the Sierras and among that community. Oh yeah, I’m hoping to be there forever. It’s super challenging for people to find a career there unless you’re working for the ski resort. There are not a lot of job opportunities, but Kimmy and I have been lucky to be getting involved with some businesses in our community. We helped our friends open an organic bakery that’s doing very well, which is cool. We’ve found ways to stay plugged in and make things work if skiing and snowboarding fizzle out.
This place has everything. The people are incredible, my closest friends are here, and I have deep ties to the community through my parents and family history. I live in epic ski terrain, I live in incredible rock-climbing terrain. I’m 40 miles from the gate to Yosemite. Surf is six hours away. It’s the perfect place for the things that I hold dear. I’m in love. I got it all.
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