Words Sakeus Bankson IF a mullet was a human being—and if it had a mustache—it would be Parker White. It’s not as random a comparison as it seems. Parker has been sporting both for years, a look that was in full effect when I met him in downtown Bellingham, WA in March of 2018. He and Level 1 Productions director Freedle Coty had just finished a week at Mt. Baker Ski Area after a trip to Europe, a refreshing change for what best friend Chris Logan calls the “Vermonter turned-Montanan, wishing he was Canadian.” The 27-year-old Parker moved to the Big Sky State in 2010, and he’s spent the majority of the past few winters skiing and shooting in British Columbia. If it sounds like a quiet existence, well, you’ve never met Parker White. “He’s one of the biggest characters and funniest people to be around,” Logan says. “He’s always laughing, and most the time he has a beer in hand and his shirt off, just lettin’ ’er breathe.” A seemingly improbable mix of Montucky brash and East Coast class, Parker is an enigma in the ski world. He burst onto the scene with Level 1’s 2010 film, Eye Trip , throwing frontflip double-tip grabs over a 110-foot channel gap in Sun Valley, ID. Four years later, he dipped from ski-film stardom into the relative obscurity of online edits to start a production com-pany, the Big Picture, with Chris and Sean Logan. He actively avoids trade shows, competitions, or general self-promotion, a steadfastness that’s lost him some of his biggest sponsors but earned him an ultra-core fan base, industry-wide respect and an anti-hero-esque mystique. “It was overnight success, or as close as you can get,” Freedle says, referring to that 2010 Sun Valley session. “But it was more than just Chris and Parker hitting a big jump. It was their personalities. I think that’s the biggest draw with Parker: There are people who are good at what they do, and there are people who have a personality to match it, and Parker’s per-sonality matches his skiing. It’s this X-factor, and it translates into everything he does.” White is a throwback—hard charging on the hill while not taking himself too seriously off it. The former quality seen here in Pemberton, BC with Level 1 Productions. Photo: Blake Jorgenson And though he’ll tell you he’s lazy, he does a lot. He’s an avid hunter, rides a Harley, and races stock cars. He’s also a spokesman for the Montana Wilderness Association, a talented chess player, and he and Chris even cowrote the sign-off poem for the Big Picture’s finale, Lite Years . That’s Parker—he seems too outrageous to be true. Ask the best skiers in the world; better yet, ask the stock car racers, blacksmiths and occasional hobo in Bozeman, and they’ll tell you Parker is the real deal. He’s the business side of party, and you can’t help but be drawn into the festivities. “You know that scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Ozff, when the secretary is talking to the principal on the phone?” Josh Ber-man, founder and owner of Level 1, says. “When she’s like, ‘the sportos, the waste-oids, the dweebs, the dickheads, they all adore him, they think he’s a righteous dude?’ Well, that’s Parker. One righteous dude.” Parker White 065
The Ski Journal Volume 12, Issue 3: Page 65
