Jeremy Nobis’s radical descent of an Alaskan peak rocketed big-mountain skiing into the modern era of fat skis and monster drops
STORY BY STEPHEN CASIMIRO
Photo by Wade McKoy
One evening in April 1997, the past and future of skiing perched uneasily atop Pyramid Peak in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains. A helicopter had dropped guides Rick Armstrong and Dave Swanwick on a summit the size of a couple sheets of plywood, along with skier Jeremy Nobis. Waiting on a ridge across the way, their long lenses trained on the trio, were Teton Gravity Research filmmaker Todd Jones and photographer Wade McKoy. Nobis, fresh off racing World Cup downhills, was strong, confident, and brash, but this was his first time filming in the big mountains of Alaska—his very first run for the cameras—and the guides warned him to be cautious.
“I was sitting on the top of Pyramid,” said Nobis, “and I’ve got Rick and Dave going ‘it’s super steep, be careful, it’s steep, blah blah blah,’ and I was like, whatever. I was 27, at the top of my game, and because I could see the run from top
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