The Ski Journal - Volume 14, Issue 3
THE OTHER STREET: Alex Hackel’s Unconventional Rise
Words: Twig Spensley. Photos: Alric Ljunghager. Captions: Alex Hackel. 2020-12-09 17:54:48
“A new haircut can really give you an attitude to rally around while filming. I love watching oldAski films and seeing the kind of crazy cuts they were rocking.”
East Coast pro skiers often follow a well-trodden path: a ski academy education, a move out West, then punishing rounds on the competitive circuit. Alex Hackel started down that road at 14 years old. This past winter, a full decade later, he won his first X Games medal. His journey between those two points, however, reads very differently from the norm.
Hackel didn’t earn his X Games medal in the halfpipe or by lacing the perfect slope run. Instead, he struck bronze thousands of miles from Aspen as part of the X Games Real Ski competition, winning the fan favorite vote in the process and solidifying his place among the most innovative athletes in the sport.
Originally from Boston, Hackel was once on track to become a force on the slopestyle scene. Under the guidance of Mike Hanley at Windells Ski Camp in Mt. Hood, OR, Hackel stomped one of the first ever triple cork 1080s at West Coast Session 8 in 2014 and made the U.S. Freeski Team as a teenager. He also met Magnus Granér about then, a young Swedish skier making waves with The Bunch, a Scandinavian crew bringing new cohesiveness, fluidity and style to street skiing.
A self-declared ski fanatic with an encyclopedic knowledge of ski movies, Hackel had always had video parts on the brain. In 2017, after recovering from a serious knee injury sustained while on the competition grind, he headed back east and filmed a gritty part in HG Skis’ Eat the Guts. The part turned into one of the greatest street-skiing segments in recent history, combining Hackel’s physical skill set with an uncanny eye for both spot and trick selection. Within a year, he’d kicked competitions for good. He reconnected with Granér, who introduced him to another core member of The Bunch, Pär “Peyben” Hägglund. Hackel started learning Swedish and spending more of his time in Europe filming with the group. He was part of The Bunch’s 2019 movie Color, and found himself quickly falling in with the quirky ski contingent.
“I felt so at home with those guys, and I’ve learned that if you stick with the right people, you’ll end up going where you want to go,” Hackel says. “Meeting The Bunch and seeing how they connected as a group was life changing. Their skiing is just a tiny part of who they are.”
That deeper connection within The Bunch was something that allowed Hackel to grow in an entirely new way. Born with both idiopathic short stature and severe dyslexia, he was, in his own words a “depressed child.” School was a huge challenge and he was an easy target for bullies. “I completely lost my way,” Hackel says. “I was going to school, coming home and breaking down crying about the thought of having to go back the next day. At age 12, that was my life.”
He found an escape in skiing, but even that was far from an easy road.
“In the end, [skiing] became my salvation from a rather depressing suburban existence, but the community was not always so welcoming,” Hackel says.
His early skiing days involved a series of coaches telling him he would be too small to have any kind of career. He endured growth hormone shots every day for seven years. “I remember turning 13 and believing that I would get to be in the group with the other teenagers in the freeski program,” Hackel says. “We all walked out to do our morning stretches and once again I was put in the younger group. It was frustrating and heartbreaking.”
Hackel recalls coaches telling his father that although he was having fun skiing, his dad should realize the young skier didn’t have a future in the sport. But a day at Sunday River, ME changed everything. He met a group of locals sessioning a roller-coaster rail and, despite being intimidated, spent the day trying to land his first front 270 out. The kids pushed him to keep going and, after finally stomping it, the crew cheered him on. It was a far cry from the harsh learning environment of the freeski program and a look at skiing without competitive blinders. Yet he continued to chase competitive success, perhaps because that was the most established future he could see in skiing.
In many ways, that story repeated itself when he linked up with The Bunch. “I moved west to go to [Wy’East Mountain Academy in Sandy, OR] and did pretty well in comps for a while, but it wasn’t until I followed my true passion for film skiing that I was able to get over some speed bumps that felt like they had been following me my whole life,” Hackel says. “Getting to know The Bunch reminded me that it’s the people around you that make all the difference. They have no predetermined idea of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ skiing. It’s a group of people who support you in exploring your own unique qualities.”
Two years after filming his part in Color, Hackel earned his X Games bronze in the 2020 Real Ski video competition, beating some of the best street skiers in the game. He traces his newfound success back to his close relationship with the Swedish crew. Their support was never far away. Peyben, who had competed the previous year, even stepped behind the camera to put Hackel’s medal-winning edit together.
“It takes everything you have to make a heavy Real Ski video. Street skiing is as much mental as it is physical,” Hackel says. “Having Peyben and The Bunch with me every step of the way gave me the confidence boost to take my skiing to the next heights.”
When Hackel struggled with the mental pressure of filming a whole street part during Real Ski’s narrow six-week production window, Peyben could relate. Support came organically. When Hackel struggled with a trick or spot, Peyben would clip into his own skis and give it a go himself. Hackel fed off that energy.
Plenty of European skiers transition to filming with American crews—just look at any recent Level 1 film for evidence. Traveling in the opposite direction is far less common. But Hackel has been different since childhood, and his skiing has grown to reflect that—echoing The Bunch’s flowy creative aesthetic, while adding his own unique flavor born of his competitive pedigree. In many ways, his skiing speaks to where, and who, he has been. He moved west to start his career in the comp scene, but eventually made a name for himself by going way east, all the way to Europe. There, in The Bunch, he found support, inspiration and, ultimately, himself.
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