The Ski Journal • Volume 17, Issue 3 • THANKS TO SNOW: Finding Space in New Heights

Vanessa Chavarriaga Posada practices new-found backcountry skills after a fall snowstorm in Wyoming’s Teton Range in 2021. Photo: Joey Sackett

Do you remember the first time you saw the snow? Long before moving to Jackson Hole, WY, and becoming a professional mountain athlete and advocate for access, I was a small child in a new world. This place was intimidating, a natural environment that was completely unfamiliar and far away from Colombia, the only home I’d ever known. My life now is far larger than I ever could have imagined as a child, and a large part of that is thanks to snow.

But it didn’t start that way. All of my early memories of snow are pretty negative: getting lost in the suburbs of my aunt’s West Michigan neighborhood because everything looked the same. My parents’ frustration with not understanding how snow pants, gloves and base layers worked. The feeling of getting left behind as all of my classmates spent time in ski lessons and on mountain vacations with their families. Seeing snow for the first time, however, was a different beast entirely.

I was six years old, gazing up into a sky full of white flakes twirling slowly down to the ground. My mind was filled with wonder and a little bit of fear. I knew nature to be green and abundant, filled with warmth, like my home mountains in Colombia.

At a young age I experienced a harsh and sudden transition from my hometown of Medellín to Grand Rapids, MI. I struggled to find a home within myself growing up. I was never American enough. I was never Colombian enough.

In hand-me-down clothes, I ran out the door, eager to catch up to my cousins and play in the fresh snow. I quickly got a good amount inside my gloves and boots and hurried home, but I didn’t recognize any familiar landmarks. Everything looked the same under a blanket of white. I wandered around the neighborhood crying until my dad finally found me.

The next memory I have is my mom tucking the snow gaiters of my snow pants into the inside of my boots. None of us understood that they were meant to be on the outside, creating a barrier between the snow and my warm, dry socks. I still remember my schoolmates laughing at me. But as a family of immigrants, raised far away from anything resembling a North American winter, how were we supposed to know?

Fast-forward to middle school. All of my friends were spending their weekends at the local ski hill. I begged my mom to let me go with them. The ski hill was a 30-minute drive from our apartment in Grand Rapids and we didn’t have a car. On top of that, tickets and rentals were $80 per trip. My single mother simply couldn’t keep up. As the snow accumulated outside of my window, I sank deeper into my sofa, accepting the difficult truth: this space was not made for me. The remainder of my childhood was filled with desolate and empty winters, a reminder of all of the abundance I had left behind in the lush green hills of my original home. The support of my friends and the love and laughter of my aunts was washed away. With them, I had always felt like I could achieve anything. Without them, all that was left was an empty, white space.

Access to skiing and winter sports includes so much more than money and gear. Most of the skiers I know were either taught by their parents or their parents saw the value in investing in a coach or a ski school. When I first moved to Jackson Hole in 2021, everyone talked about how incredible the access to skiing was. But I couldn’t find any public maps with tracks. Guidebooks existed, but it was hard to know where to look and people weren’t exactly handing them out. There was no information in Spanish, which immediately excluded a large part of the population in Jackson as well. To obtain this knowledge I had to go out with an experienced friend, hire an expensive guide or ask someone to send over a private map. Even though I lived geographically close to skiing, these mountains could still be incredibly hard to reach, especially for people of color.

Do you remember the first time you tried backcountry skiing? I do, vividly. It was just three years ago. Skiing stuck with me because it was the first activity I tried where I wasn’t immediately afraid. Something about the silence and the way the sun reflected off the freshly fallen flakes brought me right back to my childhood, wandering through verdant rainforests in the mountains of Colombia. It gave me permission to feel that joy again.

The second time I tried backcountry skiing was during the spring of my first full season on skis, and everything changed. My nerves were at an all-time high, and an imposter syndrome sunk into my brain. I didn’t feel like I belonged in the ski world because I didn’t see anyone here who looked like me. To me, skiing and snowboarding were activities that my wealthy childhood classmates did over Christmas break, traveling to resorts in the Mountain West or the Swiss Alps.

But something magical happened that day. I shared the snow with new friends who spoke Spanish. My two worlds collided as we skinned up the slope. I couldn’t believe I could speak my language and share my culture while skiing. Suddenly, all of my deficits were turned into strengths. I may not have grown up skiing, but I did grow up centering community and communicating well with others. It turns out these traits make me a pretty good ski partner. What I may have lacked in one culture, I more than made up for in the other.

“I didn’t,” I responded with a secret sense of pride. My friend Dani sang Marc Anthony at the top of her lungs, filling the slope with more joy than I knew was possible. My friend JR took photos of us all skiing together. I remember looking at those photos and seeing myself as a skier for the first time in my life. That day changed everything for me.

After that, I continued showing up. I asked questions, practiced packing my backpack and dialed in my nutrition, layering and technical ski skills. My immigrant grit helped me get back up every time I fell down. I spent most of my free time on the snow with mentors that I actively sought out. Eventually I began to keep up with my friends.

I knew that I would never be as good of a skier as those who learned when they were toddlers. I also knew that no part of me fit in with those skiers who had spent decades on the slopes. I couldn’t even pretend. I existed so far outside of the box of what I’ve seen a traditional skier look like that I decided to make a new, much larger box. My drastic differences once isolated me in snow sports, but they also gave me the freedom to never have to conform. My goals are different: I don’t aim to be the best, I aim to be the first. The first in my community to have access and share it with others; the first to expand narratives on who belongs in skiing; the first to be represented as a skier in mainstream culture; the first to reject assimilation and be Latina AF on the snow.

When I ski, I experience childhood joy. I remember the 6-year-old version of myself looking up at the sky with so much wonder. I make her proud. My ancestors too, doing things that they couldn’t imagine in their wildest dreams. I make my future family proud by being the first of us to be in this space. I created access for myself so that I can invite others to come with me, taking the fear and stigma I endured those first days in Michigan out of being new at something.

I culminated my first season of skiing by summiting one of the high peaks in the Tetons: Buck Mountain. It was the hardest thing I had ever done. I didn’t even have time to cry because I was pushing myself so hard. Now when I drive into Grand Teton National Park, my eyes linger on that special mountain. I didn’t think it was possible for someone like me to achieve this because I had never seen myself represented in the world of ski mountaineering. Suddenly, I had become that representation.

The Ski Journal - Volume 17, Issue 3

THANKS TO SNOW: Finding Space in New Heights

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