ABOVE • “Apparently, skiing has been my dream for longer than I can remember. I know that I’ve always loved it, but this story from second grade reconfirms why I’ve spent so much of my life on skis.”— Chris Benchetler Art: Chris Benchetler Tell me about growing up in Mammoth. Technically I grew up in Bishop, which is just 40 minutes south of Mammoth. But my origin story goes quite a bit deeper than that. My dad, Victor, was from Budapest [the capital of Hungary]. His family escaped during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It’s a crazy story. He and his family were thrown in jail a number of times, separated, pistol-whipped, all that stuff. My dad passed away from lung cancer when I was 16, so I couldn’t ask some of the questions about his life that I would ask as an adult. But I’ve been able to get a pretty good idea through my grandpa. My grandparents had a prestigious life in Budapest, but my grandpa didn’t believe in communism and wanted to get his family to the U.S. They moved to North Carolina first, then earned enough money for one-way tickets to California. That was during the 1950s, and they experienced a lot of bigotry when they got here. They started off with nothing. My grandpa had to teach himself English and how to drive. It was just so different than how I was raised—it’s hard to imagine. They ended up in Long Beach [CA], and he turned into a full surf rat as a kid. Then he found Mammoth [Mountain Ski Area] while he was in college, and that became his pas-sion. He loved being up in the mountains. I understand and respect it because I’ve had similar feelings about surfing, but I was also shocked to hear he was a surfer because he never took us to the beach once. I never knew that side of him. My dad really gave my older brother Pete and I such an amazing life. He was a contractor and we weren’t by any means wealthy, but he appreciated quality, so we always had good skis when we needed them. We had a wakeboard boat too, and boat trips became our thing in the summer and then it was skiing in the winter. It was a pretty action-packed childhood. My dad met my mom, Cathy, at Mammoth in the 1970s, and they raised us between there and Bishop. They actually rode horses competitively for a while, but when they had my brother it became too much financially to have kids and horses. They sold the horses, got back into skiing, and started taking us up on the weekends. I hated it at first, but that changed early on and set the course for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My mom saved some stories I wrote in second grade or something, where I was talking about wanting to be a pro skier. I got into ski racing first, but I didn’t love the structure or format. My brother was a snowboarder, and he grew up with John Jackson and a few other rippers. I had to be at races in a downhill suit on powder days, but was really inspired by what [the snowboarders] were doing, just that freedom. When twin tips came out, I got a pair and started trying to mimic what they were doing. I started surfing at about the same time, and was really intrigued by the way surfers drew lines down the waves, by the vision it takes to be good at surfing and how you need to be so in tune with nature. You never really know what the wave’s going to do, but you still need to be three steps ahead: see a section of the wave, plan ahead, and then figure out what you’re doing when you’re on the wave. I like that element, and I really try to ski that way—always have an open mind, essentially. I’m not trying to get down the mountain the fastest. If I see a wind lip over to the left, I’m going to cut across to hit it. I really want to utilize the terrain and be playful, and so I’ve really tried to adapt that from snowboarding and surfing. Does your mom still ski? Yes, but not enough. She’s a fair-weather skier and a bit of a workaholic too, which is good. I got a work ethic from both my parents, which I appreciate. She still tries to get out there, but she works for the resort and she manages retail stores, so she overworks herself a little bit. Chris Benchetler 063
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Four: Page 63
