The Ski Journal • Volume 15, Issue 3 • RYAN STOLP'S COMIC RELIEF

Sprinter van build-outs, gear grubbing, season pass debates, inflated egos (and home prices)—in many ways mountain towns are living, breathing hyperbole. For artist Ryan Stolp, they’re also the perfect muse.

The 32-year-old Jackson, WY, resident is the mastermind behind Lift Lines Comics, an Instagram comic that turns everyday ski-town clichés into illustrated hilarity. For five years, Lift Lines has played on mountain towners’ shared lived experience, whether that be through an activity, place or trend.

Harry Potter not wanting to move to Jackson after Hogwarts because he’s already lived in a closet. A rebuffed ski bum complaining to his would-be fiancée that he spent three months’ wages on a ring just to be told, “It was OFF SEASON.”

There’s no exact methodology to the comic, but as Stolp tells it, the spark usually comes after recognizing some greater mountain town truth.

“When you text three people to go ski-touring in the spring,” he says, “and they’re all in Moab—that’s a pattern. So when I build on those shared stereotypes, the comic writes itself.”

Originally from Durham, NC, Stolp grew up exploring the outdoors with his family. At the same time, he nurtured a love for art, and eventually attended an art-focused middle school. But it wasn’t until a climbing trip to Argentina after college that those two worlds finally collided.

During an extended stay in the Southern Hemisphere, he began comic journaling his daily adventures. He’d draw fast by necessity, harnessing an abstract expressionism that would later inform his work as the creator of Lift Lines.

“My Spanish was terrible, but I could always show people my journal and they’d know what I’d been up to,” he says. “The world loves little drawings, doodles and cartoons—I lean on that skill set a lot as an expressive way to connect with people and communicate ideas.”

Stolp didn’t grow up in a ski town, or as a skier, so he sees everything—even after years of living in the mountains—with a fresh set of eyes. He thinks that newness helps him see jokes and punchlines in his everyday life that evade most locals.

“The perspective of not having grown up in it is a big part of what makes Lift Lines work,” he concludes. “Between nowhere to live, millionaires serving billionaires, and the Instagram porn that is the Tetons, you have all the ingredients for snarky humor.”

In tandem with the fresh-eyed mindset, Stolp approaches every comic as a riddle to be solved. Friends and strangers alike often approach him with a joke, and he has to figure out how to convey that idea visually.

“How can I use the constraints that I have to make that joke go?” he says of his creative process. “I love problem solving, as a climber, as an illustrator—and as a visual storyteller.”

When he’s not dangling off a crag, Stolp is drawing Lift Lines, co-managing Orijin Media and working on his first illustrated storybook for ski bums, The Ski Town Fairytale.

He draws Lift Lines as a vehicle to enrich his community, but it’s also helped him tackle harder—but necessary—conversations. Some of his comics simply poke fun at everyday ski bummery, but many of them bite into contemporary political issues with depth and insight. It’s a take on The New Yorker, mountain town style.

“When you can have conversations that are harder than, ‘Man, that was a sick pow day, again,’ and you can talk about housing, or the changing economics, or the sacrifices you make to live here and live your dream,” he says, “I believe that makes us an even stronger community.”

The Ski Journal - Volume 15, Issue 3

RYAN STOLP'S COMIC RELIEF

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