“I’VE DEFINITELY BEEN INSPIRED BY ARIANNA’S SKIING. SHE HELPED CREATE THE BLUEPRINT FOR A LOT OF WHAT’S GOING ON IN WOMEN’S FREERIDE TODAY.” —ELISABETH GERRITZEN, 2021 FWT CHAMPION Even for a gifted athlete like Tricomi, with access to the necessary time and resources, the path to becoming an inter-nationally certified mountain guide is not an easy one. Despite her transcendence of gender boundaries, the fact remains that only about 1.5 percent of the roughly 7,000 internation-ally certified mountain guides worldwide are women. “The most difficult part is the curriculum, which is your resume to even start out as an aspirant. It’s hard ,” says Tri-comi with a rare tinge of uncertainty. “Mixed climbing, ice climbing, ski touring above certain benchmarks of distance, climbing, duration. You have to be strong at everything . I’ve already learned so much this summer, but there’s so much more to learn.” Despite the daunting challenges, there is little reason to doubt that Tricomi will accomplish her new goal with the same gusto and quiet confidence that have put her in the upper echelon of big mountain freeriding. It’s a mentality that has brought her to the top of the ski world, helping inspire other women in mountain sports to push their disciplines in new ways. Tricomi may have never set out to be a standard-setter, but she’s begun to appreciate it, acknowledging her mountain roots as her garden continues to climb higher. “When you climb big walls in the Dolomites, you’re actu-ally climbing what was once an ancient seafloor. You see the ancient lava and corals and shells, you imagine where they came from and how they came to be mountains,” she says. “This has always been my home. But now I’m seeing it through new eyes.” “A fun day in the trees around Hakuba, Japan. I was shooting with a couple of FWT regulars— Markus Eder, Fabio Studer and Craig McMur-ray—and Arianna was just lapping us. She didn’t care about the pictures. She stopped each time to talk a bit and left again, so I shot her on the go.” Photo: Dom Daher 048 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 15, Issue 3: Page 48
