Others see her contribution in straightforward terms. “Elyse is one of those athletes that is helping women in sports in general go in the right direction,” says Paaso. Saugstad approaches gender equality with a “rising tide lifts all boats” attitude, even though she knows better than anyone that only a few spots are available to aspiring skiers. “The number-one thing holding women back is not know-ing how, or not being taught how to be supportive to each other,” says Collinson, who is regarded as one of the best female big mountain skiers ever. “But Elyse, from day one, has been so genuinely supportive of me, while maintaining her own competitive edge, and pushing herself so hard, and that really speaks to her success.” “To us it’s sharing the fun of the sport,” Cody says. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, look at me, I rip at skiing. It’s, ‘Hey, look at me hav-ing a lot of fun.’ You want to translate that to the audience.” There’s business to the buffoonery as well. Saugstad knows her audience will detect if she’s forgetting to have fun. She says early season resort laps, chock-full of laughing and catch-ing up with friends, fill that need, and can help balance the rest of the season. In 2019, she committed to staying around Tahoe in January for exactly that reason. “My job is to continue to sell that dream and get people stoked on going skiing,” Saugstad says. “What I do is an escape.” GIVEN THAT SAUGSTAD has survived for more than two decades in a challenging industry and is finally getting some due compensation for it, the question of what’s next is so inevitable it sounds like a cliché. Nevertheless, she has a vision for the next year or 10. She speaks of continuing working with her sponsors, even if that might not always mean full-throttle skiing. She is intrigued by public speaking, knowing she has a plethora of topics of inter-est to the public to speak about. Potential motherhood comes up, but more in the sense of if that happens, how it would open a new chapter of challenges for the female athlete that simply don’t exist for men. “As a professional skier, over the years you train yourself to not make too many plans and be really flexible, and I kind of feel like that’s a bit of a metaphor for how I think I need to proceed through the rest of my career,” Saugstad says. Maybe, likely, she just doesn’t know how it will shake out, but in the short-term, she’s thriving doing what she loves. This fall she appeared in Teton Gravity Research’s Winterland . She’s been training hard in the gym, prepping for what she says is a good chance of filming again with TGR. She knows more than anyone in the game that there are no guarantees. “It feels pretty amazing, knowing how far respect for fe-male skiers has come,” Saugstad says. “But we had to fight for it. You have to ask for what you want and continue to put forth an argument to see it through. People are never going to just do it for you.” SAUGSTAD’S ALARM CLOCK routinely chirps at 4 a.m.—she’ll eat a healthy breakfast, then spend 12 hours in the backcountry seeking heavy terrain. Upon day’s end, she avoids the après party world, because a) she’s not in her 20s anymore, and b) she’s likely doing it all over tomorrow. It takes a certain intensity to maintain this routine for days, months, years and decades. Her words come fast, and intri-cate, and while nimbly weaving through a handful of topics such as social media influencers and the ski industry, external versus internal motivation, income generation, and tenacity, an intelligent focus is usually there. It’s easy to mistake that for a full-time disposition. But it’s a switch that can be flipped, according to her friends and ski partners, and they say in real-ity she’s a bit goofy. “What many people don’t see is she doesn’t take herself too seriously,” Collinson says. “She pokes fun at herself all the time. It’s an almost impossible juxtaposition of character traits. She goes from a serious discussion on safety to dropping an incredibly inappropriate joke with a dry sense of humor.” Her social media has a few fart jokes, dolled-up dog pho-tos, and instances of self-deprecating humor. Epitomizing this, the “It’s Called Backcountry Skiing” edits (produced by her and Cody, which have about 100k views each) satirize the pro-skiing lifestyle, and the comedy of a husband-and-wife duo living the anti-9-to-5 lifestyle. 060 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 13, Issue 3: Page 60
