TOP TO BOTTOM “In the early 2000s, Mammoth Mountain helped build the foundation for park skiing. Their creativity and dedication produced unrivaled features and countless private shoots, while pushing the sport to astonishing levels. A combination of warm temps, massive snowpack, and closing days as late as August create a perfect environment for getting the shot. This photo was taken on June 4, 2019. If you haven’t been to Mammoth Lakes, California in the spring or summer, make the trip. It’s a special place.” Photo: Josh Bishop “Tom was skiing rails better than most pros as an unsponsored grom in Pennsylvania. By the time he went to Utah and filmed his Super-Unknown entry, no one was even close to his level. His ability to rotate onto rails, stop his momentum, then rotate off in the opposite direction was unreal. Tom owns the pretzel in skiing and made it a signature in film segments and pro models alike. I’ve also seen him order a large Bavarian pretzel every time it’s on the menu.” Minneapolis, MN. Photo: Josh Bishop NEW YORK CITY is sticky hot in the haze of summer. Wal-lisch is there with his fiancé, Steph, who’s getting fitted for her wedding dress. He has a meeting with Tom Yaps, who’s based in Brooklyn. “I think it’s time,” Wallisch tells Yaps. “I want to put on an event.” Yaps tries to dissuade him, reminding him how much work contests are, how much time and money go into them—and how little profit comes out of them. But Wallisch is determined. The next few months are filled with endless calls, sponsor pitches, recruiting athletes and sorting logistics. The idea is to host a rail jam—the kind of grassroots contest where Wallisch got his start, and one that’s fading at the local level—on his home turf at Seven Springs. “To me, rails are the most approachable aspect of the sport. In ski towns in the East and Midwest that don’t have big hills, rails bring new people into skiing, yet rail jams are going away,” Wallisch says. The contest, called the Steel City Showdown, took place in January. Wallisch’s mom picked him at the Pittsburgh airport. It was a proper homecoming. The invite list for the contest was a Who’s Who of current top Olympic and X Games athletes, but some film skiers such as Khai Krepala and Dale Talkington, who rarely enter traditional contests, were on the roster, too. The day before the big event, local skiers were invited to compete in an amateur rail jam for their chance to ski against the pros. A kid named Tucker Fitzsimons qualified from the amateur contest, then ended up in third place in the finals, beating some of the biggest names in his sport during a rainy night in front of the resort’s Foggy Goggle Bar. Fitzsimons, who’s 22, is a next-gen Wallisch. He’s stealthy on rails and a presence on social media. “Tucker was the kid who made me feel like the whole thing was a success,” Wal-lisch says. Colby Stevenson, also 22, took second. A teenage Wallisch once gave Stevenson, then just a starstruck 9-year-old, trick tips when they’d first met on the slopes of Utah’s Park City Mountain Resort. “Being a little kid, that was amazing,” Stevenson says now. “I worshipped him. I’d watched all of his edits… He’s still every little kid’s favorite skier.” The 2020 Steel City Showdown was Wallisch opening the gates of the sport he helped hone, and inviting everyone to the party. A few weeks after the Steel City Showdown, Wallisch returned to Aspen, CO, for the X Games. This time, he was in a unique dual role as competitor in the new knuckle huck competition and on-slope announcer for ESPN. He wore a wireless microphone, an earpiece with producers blabbing into his ear and a heavy radio in his jacket pocket. Stevenson won knuckle huck and slopestyle that week, the first rookie ever to win two golds at X Games. The next generation had officially arrived, and Wallisch, who commentated hilariously on his own runs, was there to mark the moment. In recent years, Wallisch has been doing a lot more TV analysis and commentating for big contests, and he’s a natu-ral. Although his core fans have known forever, audiences on major networks are now becoming acquainted with his humor and encyclopedic trick knowledge for the first time. As he once did on skis, Wallisch now brings crossover appeal to the announcer’s booth. He also sits on the board of directors for the U.S. Ski Team as the athlete representative for freeskiing, acting as the voice of his discipline within its governing body. “He’s a powerful figure in skiing. His voice matters,” Decker says. “What he’s doing now is continuing to make the sport better. It used to be, ‘Hey, I made this awesome edit. Push play.’ Now it’s way bigger than that. Tom is shaping a new path for what the future might be.” Wallisch looks to pro skiers like Chris Davenport and Glen Plake, both legends in the sport, for examples of directions he could take in the years to come. “I can see myself in so many roles—working with kids, coaching, doing clinics, working with brands in design or marketing,” he says. But in many ways, he’s still that kid building jumps in his backyard. At home in Park City, he’ll lap the park for hours, skipping lunch. When he finally comes home, he and his friends will drag junk from his garage—an old table, a PVC pipe—to build a ramp in front of the house. Steph jokes that he acts like he’s still 12, fueled by fruit gummies and Pop Tarts. Well past nightfall, he’ll finally come inside, and Steph will remind him to clean up the mess in the front yard. “I will,” he’ll say. “But first, I’m going back to hit it tomorrow.” 080 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 14, Issue 1: Page 80
