Wendy Fisher and family in Crested Butte. Credit: Dave Kozlowski

Wendy Fisher: Freeski generations

Freeriding’s Most Influential Woman

Wendy Fisher is one of only a few women in the big-mountain industry—mountaineers, pro skiers, and guides—and one of even fewer who is raising a family. That world hasn’t allowed for much nuance in how moms are portrayed or accommodated. In 1995, when American climber Alison Hargreaves died on K2, a media firestorm ensued over her choice to risk her life in the mountains as a mother.

Fisher agrees. “I don’t want my kids to hear, ‘Your mom used to do that,’” she says. “I want my boys to look up to me as a fiery skier on these big lines that people don’t usually expect to see women skiing.” Still, Fisher says, “It’s a weird mental thing just to decide to have kids in this industry.” Most women, at the age they’d think about having kids have worked for years to earn a certain level of credibility and training, and it’s hard to give that up.

Wendy is originally from Squaw Valley. She later attended the Burke Academy in Vermont and made the US Ski Team her sophomore year. However, the many years of racing led her to burn-out from the sport altogether. She quit the US ski team and made her way down to Crested Butte where big mountain skiing lit her passion again. Wendy began to compete in and win extreme skiing contests all around the globe.

She won her first freeski contest, the World Extreme Skiing Championships, right away. A gold medal at the World Cup of Extreme Free Skiing and victories in other important contests followed. With her uncompromising skiing style, she dominated big mountain skiing, and MSP, Warren Miller, and some sponsors knocked on her door. Wendy was surely able to live from her passion and concentrate fully on her mission to show women what they could achieve.

“Being a mom didn’t affect my skiing — I’ve always been scared, whenever you’re standing on a gnarly line it’s normal. But I knew I was good enough to be there, I wasn’t some yahoo standing on that hillside with some joker trying to get me down for shits and giggles. My husband knows that I need to do this. I never really leave my family needlessly though, it’s for my work — it’s just that work happens to be fun and rewarding.”

A competitive streak runs strongly through their family.

Super Mom – Salomon Freeski TV S7 E09

“My boys actively try to beat me now,” says Wendy. “They know that I am ‘someone’ in the ski world and that beating me means something. They know to give it their all and their goal is to try to crush me — not only at skiing, we wrestle, play soccer, and bike, too. “I used to let them win when they were little but after they got to a certain age I’d say no, I’m not giving you a lead! They know I have to give something 100 percent, I’ve explained that to them. They know now if I’m taking it easy on them.”

She lets her children play hooky from school when it’s a powder day and says her best Christmas present is to go skiing with the family. “The last two Christmases we’ve been out skiing as a family on Christmas day — they’ve both been powder days,” she says, with a huge grin. “My Christmas present is to get on that lift — I say, ‘You can play with your toys later, your present to me is that you get geared up and we go out.’ “We’ll try to keep that as our Christmas tradition.”

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