“Normally I wouldn’t bother building a feature in a skate park—if you can skate a feature, it’s too small for skiing. But this rainbow rail on the top of Hailey, ID’s 16-foot full pipe is an exception. Karl spun into it, slid all the way through, and spun out of it the whole afternoon.” Photo: Tal Roberts Words Yancy Caldwell wasn’t the 40-foot backflip that Karl Fostvedt threw into his first-ever run in Alaska that really impressed me. Rather, it was his reaction to and preparedness for the heaviest rescue scenario I’ve experienced shortly after his third run that did it. As the season wound to a close in late April 2019, the Chilkat mountains were starting to awaken from a long Alaskan winter. It had been a spring of limited snow and weather win-dows. With a high-pressure system lingering and a smattering of fresh paint still drying on the jagged glacial landscape, I called Karl and told him if there was ever a time to pop his AK cherry, that time was now. Within 48 hours, Karl was in Haines. He didn’t bring a big budget, expectations, or major film goals. Karl was simply ready to learn how to navigate the spine capital of the world. Our first morning out, Karl warmed up with Lynsey Dyer and Freeride World Tour snowboarder Chris Galvin under the lead of guide Reggie Crist. After lacing his third line on a simple but beautiful spine on the headwall of the Willard Glacier, we turned our attention to Chris, who was dropping next. “It was just a little wind buff for the first 10-20 feet and then gets really nice in there,” Karl told him over the radio. Chris dropped in. Karl kept eyes on him. Then came Karl’s next radio communication, panicked but clear, as he began rapidly sidestepping uphill: “Big problem! He’s in the crack! Yo! We need help down here ASAP! ASAP!” of his neck from swirlies administered by Hans and Stephen. The Fostvedt brothers traveled as a pack and the eldest were instrumental in encouraging the coordination and confi-dence of the younger siblings. Stephen would set up obstacle courses for Karl when he was 3 years old. Climbing up and over couches, chairs and tables and jumping off things, “Karl had a unique curiosity,” Stephen says. “We knew he had a special potential from a very young age.” Karl’s folks, Karsten and Teri Fostvedt, moved to Sun Val-ley, ID from Santa Barbara, CA in 1989, the year before Karl was born. The story goes the family had grown tired of Santa Barbara. They went on a family camping trip through Wyo-ming and Montana, stumbling upon Sun Valley as a camping spot. A year later, they moved there. Although the Fostvedt clan hails from strong Nordic lineage, Karl and his siblings are its first generation of skiers. Karl brought his knack for obstacle courses to the skate-park and began inline skating with a local crew. “Karl was in-sane on rollerblades!” Mattias says, recounting him dropping into the vert wall backward at age 9 and tossing misty 540s and backflips off the wooden launch ramps. He would often rally a crew of friends for adventures. Mattias remembers a time when Karl snagged roughly 10 kids from the skatepark to jump on the KART bus and ride to the top of the steepest hill in town. “Before anyone could get off the bus, Karl jumped out and started bombing down the bike path switch. We all stayed on the bus and watched Karl bomb the entire hill switch until the very bottom when he went to jump a 180 back to regular, caught an edge, and slammed straight to his face,” Mattias says. Their dad, the local veterinarian, stitched him up in the clinic later. IT IT WAS TOUGH LOVE in the Fostvedt household grow-ing up. Being one of six siblings—Stephen, Hans, Luke, Sigi, Karl, and Mattias—was a little bit like survival of the fittest, according to Hans, the second eldest. Mattias, the youngest, remembers wrestling matches that Stephen, the eldest, would set up between the two young brothers, which usually ended in tears. Tears of laughter for Karl, reminisces Stephen, watching Mattias go ape shit trying to take Karl down. Mattias also fondly remembers the feeling of cold water on the back 062 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 13, Issue 2: Page 62
