“I LIKE TO LOOK FOR GOOD-SIZED Spooked, the crew fired up its sleds and took off. TRANSFERS AND LANDINGS— “About a kilometer down the trail, my sled blows up. I saw Stan go around the corner, and I was just left there I LOVE BEING IN THE AIR— by myself, yelling on the radio, freaking out, thinking about the wolves that were a couple of hundred me-TRANSFERRING BACK AND FORTH ters behind me,” Kuch says, chuckling. “After that, I thought, ‘OK, I need to get a tighter kit.’” The wolves didn’t make a meal of Kuch, but the THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN. I LIKE TO ravenous British Columbian did go on his own feed-ing frenzy that season. His high-speed, trick-laced JUMP THINGS PEOPLE WOULDN’T big mountain skiing shone in both Blank’s The 7 Stages of Blank and MSP’s Return to Send’er. Kuch NORMALLY SEE.” —SAM KUCH punctuated the latter with a spicy Selkirk two-piece, linking a hand-drag three off a cliff to a rodeo seven off a windlip. of the Year award. “Every day we went out, we got A-grade Going broke to film was a gamble, but it started pay-shots,” Kuch says. ing off. “On the drive to the MSP premiere, I got a call The success of Here Goes helped Kuch line up Arc’teryx from Arc’teryx,” says Kuch, who signed with the BC-based budget for a CK9 project with friend, teammate and fellow behemoth shortly after. “And on the way home, I got a call rising star, Cole Richardson. But adverse conditions during from an agent.” the first few months of the season in the Whistler backcoun-Skiing had turned from a passion into a proper career. try had the two former junior freeriders and their film crew Suddenly, he had access to financial support, heli budget feeling tense. and a new sled (ideal for outrunning apex predators). But “We weren’t getting what we wanted for the video and there were pressures, too. Kuch now says they were self-the flow didn’t feel quite as organic as it had in the past,” inflicted, but their effect was very real. “Once it becomes a Kuch says. “There was this pressure to create something job, there is a lot of pressure we put on ourselves. And there’s special, and every day we were going out, I wasn’t thinking a distinctive line between whether pressure is a good thing about having fun—which is when I ski my best. Instead, I or a bad thing for me,” he explains. “Honestly, if people are was thinking, ‘OK, what zone is going to create the best watching me ski and I’m feeling confident in myself, pres-shot?’ I was thinking more in a filmmaking, production sure can be really positive. I’m good at being under pressure perspective than a ski perspective.” while performing the craft.” So, when a rare day of favorable backcountry conditions The negative pressure he puts on himself can be dam-lined up in February, Kuch wanted to make the most of it. aging, especially when the stressful business side of skiing After stacking tricks all afternoon, Kuch hucked a last-hit-influences his time on hill. That pressure caught up with of-the-day rodeo seven—coincidentally the same trick that him in 2022, when he says everything just felt “off.” The announced his arrival as a marquee pro—and drifted, slam-prior season had been a banner filming year, which resulted ming into a one-and-a-half-foot-wide larch in the landing. in Here Goes , a must-watch solo project produced by CK9 In the clash between bark and bone, his femur snapped. studios that earned Kuch the 2021 iF3 Male Standout Skier Sam Kuch 049
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 2: Page 49
