Downtime is a good time for Kuch, Aaron Blunck, Evan McEachran and Cole Richardson. Photo: Guy Fattal BORN IN Canada’s Northwest Territories and raised in Nelson, BC, Kuch started skiing as a 2-year-old. His aerial acumen developed early, courtesy of a gymnast and black belt mother and an education featuring trampolines and tumbling mats. Whitewater, that hidden gem of the Selkirks that pri-oritized powder and freeriding over cell service and terrain parks, was his childhood playground. “There’s a local energy to [that place],” says Kuch, who loves days spent charging after homies as much as he does skiing in front of a camera. “You’ll run into people you know every time you go up there.” As a grom he followed the lead of his buddies, joining the freeride team at 13 years old. Competitive freeriding became the core of his ski identity, but he dreamed of making it onto the silver screen, either by skiing at home or elsewhere. When crashing out of one led to the other, Kuch went from dreams to reality at the drop of a thin paycheck. After the release of Beyond the Powder Highway , he turned a flow deals into a real contracts and earned the coveted invite to film with MSP after locking in a few more deals. But afford-ing the transition from ski bum to a cash-intensive ski-film lifestyle was no cakewalk. “I was roofing that summer, mak-ing decent money,” he says. “But once winter hit, between traveling and getting a sled, I quickly ran out of all of it. I was flying by the seat of my pants on an empty bank account.” Penniless powder chasing had its perils. Filming with Blank Collective in 2019, Kuch rolled up to the trailhead on a lopsided $500 sled. As soon as he fired it up, it emited a huge cloud of smoke in stark contrast to the rest of the crew’s brand-new machines. With Kuch bringing up the caboose, Mark Abma, Stan Rey and Alexi Godbout rolled out at dawn. They stopped to ogle a moose that had been clearly torn apart by wolves, only to be met by the pack responsible. “From below and above the trail, probably just a couple of meters above us, a couple meters below us, a pack of wolves started howling,” Kuch says. “The sound was bone-chilling.” 044 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 2: Page 44
