MEDIA REVIEW COMMUNAL DISCOURSE LEFT TO RIGHT Tired of suffering in silence, Hadley Hammer has created a public platform to address the issues affecting mountain towns worldwide. Photo: Guy Fattal Busting out of the chute, Hadley Hammer finds post-storm bliss in the Jackson, WY backcoun-try. Photo: Guy Fattal Words Lorea Zabaleta WRITING HAD ALWAYS BEEN therapeutic for profes-sional skier Hadley Hammer. It’s how she expressed herself clearest when times were anything but—injuries, heartbreak, an endless and nearly vertigo-inducing travel schedule. But writing became more than therapy when she lost her boy-friend, renowned Austrian mountaineer David Lama, to an avalanche in Canada in 2019. “The world didn’t play fair,” Hammer says of Lama’s death. With her world spinning off its familiar axis, she shed what was expected of her as a pro skier and role model and found freedom building a new website called Discourse. It started as a place for her to share her thoughts and stories away from the distracting noise of social media, and it ended up giving others the same platform as well. With the creation of Discourse, Hammer wanted to get as close to a “campfire vibe” as possible in the digital realm, creating a safe space for herself and others to share the more complicated or difficult things they deal with. Those sort of thoughts, she says, need a bit more room to breathe than other platforms could offer. The site features a free weekly newsletter written by Ham-mer for the 500-plus Discourse members, and a portion of the site sits behind a paywall where paid subscribers can both read her frequent writings and respond to prompts with their own thoughts and original work. Hammer also includes a direct contact option so that Discourse members can reach out for anything from writing advice to how to make the best chocolate chip cookie. 028 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 2: Page 28
