Tom Wallisch is Skiing's Jack of All Trades

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. From the concrete staircases of Pittsburgh to the steepest and deepest lines across three continents, Tom Wallisch has pushed skiing into new realms for more than 25 years. The pioneer of urban skiing infuses a one-of-a-kind creativity and style across all sorts of powdery landscapes. His mastery of park and big mountain steeps is coupled with a filming prowess and business acumen that sustains a vibrant ski career at age 38. Listen in as Tom talks about his Pittsburgh roots, an "East Coast work ethic" that grows from failure, connecting mind and body and "using inspiration in a good way." Topics: 1:30 Finding skiing after unfulfilling spins through team sports 3:00 Growing up skiing city handrails in Pittsburgh. "It's all we had." 4:10 Flipping U-turns to check out quad kink rails 6:10 Transitioning from rails to steep lines 10:20 Thinking differently and creative approaches to skiing  12:40 Honing a business expertise in the ski industry 15:30 Balancing the core insiders with newcomers while announcing for NBC at the Olympics 23:10 The "nitty-gritty balance" and edge control from rail skiing 25:14 Body mechanics and repetition 27:00 Learning how to fall correctly 29:10 Listening to your body. Being smart. Knowing when to push 31:10 Teaching kids at Camp Woodward 34:20 Best advice: Find happiness or fun on the slopes on bad days on the mundane days.   Quotes: "We didn't have powder. We didn't have anything like that. So the thing that was the most relatable and the thing that seemed achievable to me were the rails, the urban skiing." "With the Wallisch Project, the one thing we all wanted to do was film everything." "The work ethic from the East Coast, from rail skiing, is like, just hike it again, try it again. And at the same time, if you approach life in that way or skiing in that way, you never get overcome by failure." Resources: Tom on Instagram  RENDITION Wagner Custom Skis

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Maggie Voisin soared from her Whitefish, Montana, roots into three Olympics and 11 X Games, where she's collected 7 slopestyle medals. Now 26, she's bounced back from several injuries and surgeries to build a soaring career in front of the cameras, filming with Teton Gravity Research and announcing for the X Games. She's navigated incredible pressure as one of the youngest American Winter Olympians, as devastating grief, finding strength and solace on skis. Listen in as Maggie talks about transferring her slopestyle-honed mental fortitude over to big lines in Alaska, strategies for healing, recovering from "the hardest thing ever," and inspiring the next generation of female rippers.   Topics: 1:10 Growing up in Whitefish. Dad was a semi-reformed ski bum.  2:00 "Something in the water in Whitefish." Tanner Hall. Tommy Moe. Parkin Costain.  3:50 15 years old and winning silver in first X Games months before skiing in the Olympics 4:20 Younger sibling rippers 6:30 The transition from a decade of teams, coaches and training to filming in AK 8:40 Mental fortitude in slopestyle moving over to steep lines in Alaska 12:10 Breathwork to settle nerves 13:40 Calming concerns around injuries 14:30 Four knee and one ankle surgeries 16:00 Red light, sauna, yoga, breathing, stretching and mindset. "The body is powerful. It's going to heal." 17:40 The importance of rest, meditation  21:30 "The hardest thing ever." Losing Michael to suicide. 23:40 Living and carrying Michael's legacy forward. "I walk through this life differently." 26:40 "They are everywhere." 29:00 A deep, internal knowing that the strength was there. 30:00 "We are human beings who need community." 31:00 Announcing at the Winter X Games with deep knowledge and a feminine perspective 34:30 Inspiring the next generation. 35:30 Best advice: "Fun comes first." Quotes: "The mind can just take over. We all know this." "I always take a deep breath, and on the exhale is when I drop, and I feel like that just really centers me." "In this world, we're always athletes." "If I can live every day, half the way that [my brother] lived his 23 years, that's what I wake up every day and remember." Resources: Maggie on Instagram Maggie Voisin Unleashed: An Exclusive Season Edit Wagner Custom Skis  

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Salt Lake City skier Mali Noyes, in the spring of 2025, channeled her Nordic skiing roots and more than a decade of ski touring in Utah's Wasatch to set a new bar for swift steep skiing in the West. The 36-year-old skied all 93 lines detailed in Andrew McClean's seminal steep skiing bible "The Chuting Gallery. It took her only 47 days. An epic achievement. Listen in as Mali shares insights into how her Nordic skiing background fueled her exploration of backcountry steeps, pushing through mental fatigue, mentorship, and honing intuition in consequential avalanche terrain.  Topics: 2:30 Growing up Nordic skiing in Sun Valley 3:30 Taking up alpine skiing with mom's boots after college 4:00 After three years of downhill skiing, joining the Freeride World Tour. "I crashed my way through … overwhelmed and scared." 4:50 Transitioning to backcountry with Nordic fitness, big-mountain skills, and "a love gf spending long days" in the mountains.  4:20 An "obsessive personality" and the Chuting Gallery project 5:20 The mindset of Nordic: finding weaknesses and improving 8:10 "I wonder how fast I could ski all them?" 10:30 Getting stronger with back-to-back-to-back days 12:0 The physical part was manageable. The mental part was the crux 13:30 A brief breakdown in Cottonwood Creek on Day 24 16:30 The spreadsheet motivator 17:40 Eight rest days in three months 18:30 Balancing objective-driven skiing with safety 19:30 The most in-depth book review of any book ever published 21:10 The mountains are horrible teachers 24:10 Mentorship in the backcountry 29:00 Vetting (and being vetted by) ski partners 31:20 Honing intuition in the backcountry 36:52 Best advice: dreaming big Quotes: "You just get good when all you do is ski." "On my rest days, I started binge watching, like, The White Lotus had just come out. So it was, like, ones that took my brain away from skiing because if I didn't distract myself, all I would do is think about what to ski." "That spide-y sense feeling you get is through experience." Resources: Mali on Instagram Mali on YouTube Wagner Custom Skis

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. 26-year-old Parkin Costain grew up in Whitefish as a skiing prodigy. For the last decade, he has been pushing big-mountain skiing with a high-speed, swift-footed style in the heaviest, most technical terrain around. With bust-out performances (like stomping a ridiculous double backflip into Corbets at Kings and Queens) and jaw-dropping segments in Warren Miller and TGR, Parker's fluid, athletic style is helping to define today's big mountain skiing.  In this episode of Next Level Skiing, Parker discusses emulating Candide to get banned from his home hill in Whitefish, blending a life on a bike with his globe-trotting adventures on skis, knee-stabilization exercises, unwinding from a ski day, and his new film, "Flipbook." Topics: 2:25 Booted from Whitefish. "It was always such a funny little feud we had going on." 6:00 Honing aerial tricks and bringing them into the backcountry / big mountain terrain 7:10 Being comfortable and confident at each step of learning 8:15 Growing up on mountain bikes, "I almost try to mountain bike like I ski." 9:20 Building trails with his dad, finding inspiration for ski lines 11:50 Early contest and emerging into a ski career 13:40 First time filming with Warren Miller and TGR 14:50 Navigating rocks at Big Sky for fast-twitch talents 16:00 Developing speed in technical terrain  18:00 Preventative maintenance in the gym with a Bosu ball, plyometrics, Adrenaline Performance program by Marcus Goguen 19:00 Working out in gyms since 12  21:04 Mixed success gap jumping with Jake Hopfinger 23:30 Spinning, rowing, and treadmill after skiing 24:07 Making Flipbook 26:30 Drones and social media enabling pro skiers without gatekeepers  29:19 "You're able to build a career out of it on your own if you put in the work." 34:59 "The gnarliest crash ever" on a pillow line in BC 34:40 Bouncing back from a scary crash 35:33 Controlling your speed with piles of snow and careful navigation Quotes: "I also feel like fortunate with the timing there because the event had started a few years prior to that, but it hadn't like fully exploded yet. So when Jake and I were getting to compete there, it was like so many eyes were on that that sponsors took notice." "Big Sky's just made out of like literal daggers everywhere. You have to hone in on your abilities a little bit and understand the terrain and interpret it differently than you do at other resorts. There's plenty of insanely gnarly terrain you can get yourself into." "I've never played video games. I was always outside." "I did the full front flip, so my feet went back because if I had gone headfirst into that thing, it would have been so much worse. It would have been definitely the end of my life, actually. On camera, it looks gnarly, but in person, if you see what I actually fell through, it was the gnarliest thing I've ever experienced."  Resources: Parkin Costain on Instagram Wagner Custom Skis  

Pete Wagner was building proprietary software to customize golf clubs when he bought a pair of skis in the early 2000s. The mechanical engineer and computer scientist wrestled those skis for a season before realizing he had purchased the wrong skis for his style. Why wasn't anyone designing skis like he was designing golf clubs or like boot fitters adjusted ski boots? In 2006, the expert skier launched Wagner Custom Skis with an exploratory questionnaire that helps skier identify their dream skis and software that guides a warehouse full of machines in building those skis.  Nearly 20 years later, Wagner's team of 15 ski builders in Telluride are crafting skis built precisely for individuals taking their skiing to the next level. Tune in to hear Pete's riff on ski design and the manufacturing process, trends in ski designs, and how a customized ski - like a custom-fit ski boot — can improve your every minute on snow.   Topics:  1:00 - A background in material science and design software for golf  6:00 - Buying the wrong skis. How come no one is focusing on fit like in golf and cycling?  7:10 - 2006 launch of Wagner Skis with "rapid prototyping" software  8:00 - How custom ski boot fitters inspired the Wagner business plan  13::40 - Building a database of ski designs  16:00 - Customization for beginner and intermediate skiers  18:00 - Optimizing ski design with 2,500 different material combinations  19:00 - Versatility for beginners  23:00 - Ski design trends in the mid-2000s to now  25:00 - Adding rocker to the tip and tail with camber underfoot  27:10 - Matching individuals to skis  28:20 - Manufacturing without molds  36:00 - Repeat customers and changing designs as skiers refine their demands  Quotes:  "A ski that has the right flex pattern and stiffness, the benefit of that is that it will be stiff enough to give you good stability if you're going fast." - Pete Wagner   "The business model of the big companies is not about customization or agility. Their business model is that they go out in the late winter and spring, get people to try their next year's models, collect orders, mass produce stuff throughout the spring and summer, and then deliver them to the shop in the fall." - Pete Wagner   "What we realized is that you can keep things simple." - Pete Wagner   "Skiing has a lot to offer people. There are different things you can focus on and that's what makes it such a great activity and way to spend your time. And that's our goal." - Pete Wagner   Resources: Wagner Custom Skis 

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Willie Volckhausen started skiing when he was 2 and raced with Sunlight's local ski club for over a decade. He spent 18 years coaching young skiers with the Aspen Valley Ski Club, developing not just ripping racers but athletes with a lifelong passion for skiing. And now he's a ski instructor with the Aspen Ski School who spends his summers working his family's farm near Paonia. Over his decades of being coached and coaching, Willie's picked up more than a few techniques for improving our turns. Listen in and hear Willie talk about critical drills, his description of the best coach in the world, how farming has informed his skiing and when to find the perfect turn.   Topics:  1:00: 18 years skiing with the Bad News Bears of ski racing at Ski Sunlight  3:10: Transitioning to alpine racing coach for U12s for the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club  6:20: Balancing performance and victory with sustaining a passion for skiing  7:00: The best year for winning at Aspen Valley Ski Club wasn't about the podiums  10:10: No pedestals for elite skiers  12:10: What coaching and young racers taught him about skiing  16:00: "Skiing is the easy part" about being a ski instructor  17:00: Standing on the outside ski  19:40: The up and over drill  20:20: The best coach in the world "should be totally deaf and totally mute."  26:00: How learning patience through farming helps with skiing  30:50: How can you identify the perfect turn? Wait.  Quotes:  "Ski racing is an individual sport that is dominated by teams." - Willie Volckhausen  "It's not all about that one person. Only one person's gonna win and there's ten of us. So what are the other nine kids supposed to do the day that so-and-so wins the race? That's what we focused on a lot." - Willie Volckhausen  "Coaches and mentors have that opportunity every day to not put their elite athletes on a pedestal. The kids who win know they're good. They know they're going to win again. They know they're expected to win. I think that's some of the worst pressure we could possibly put on junior athletes." - Willie Volckhausen  "If you tuck and roll, get your feet back below you, and you stand up without ever stopping, technically that's not a crash; that's a ground trick." - Willie Volckhausen     Resources:  Willie's Instagram  Wagner Custom Skis 

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Brody Leven doesn't dabble. He's an all-in type of skier. When he decided he was done with park skiing, he moved from 100 days of high-flying park time every season to 100 days of climbing and skiing mountains. And now it's been 10 years since the Fischer Ski-sponsored athlete has ridden a chairlift. He's never eaten meat. During the pandemic, he started exercising outside every day. Now he's more than four years in without missing a single day. He's a lifelong vegetarian, a vehement climate advocate, and, as he says, "obsessed with ideas and doing things that are hard." Tune in and hear Brody talk about growing up skiing in Ohio, his pursuit of untracked sno,w and his evolution into one of the world's top ski mountaineers who considers his skiing outside the traditional definitions used by both pro skiers and ski mountaineers.   Topics:  1:10: An after-school ski program in Ohio.  4:00: Moving to Salt Lake City in 2005 for the skiing  12:10: Going from 100 days in the park to 100 days in the backcountry.  14:20: Ten years without riding lifts.  15:40: Principled skiing.  24:00: Perfecting turns without ever skiing on a groomer.  28:30: Climbing and skiing peaks in Uganda, Romania and Georgia.  30:10: The "thief of credibility" in the culture of ski mountaineering.  36:00: The light and fast ethos in ski mountaineering.  41:00: Jumping into exercising outside every day  49:00: Tackling climate change is like coming to a mountain with lots of little steps.  Quotes:  "When you're back there, you're listening to what the mountains are telling you and what your intuition is telling you and the frequency with which you do it, you know, getting out there so regularly and, you know, kind of higher risk terrain, you develop that fluency, right? And you push yourself to a spot where you have an intuitive fluency." Jason Blevins  "I'm not like a woo-woo person, I'm very logical. And so when I say the essence of skiing, I do not mean that in any sort of woo-woo way. I mean, literally, it's how you move around the mountain on skis." Brody Leven  "There's this culture of doing cool things and being quiet about it but secretly hoping other people hype you up in the parking lots. And like that's, it's just so weird for me. It's uncomfortable for me. I don't know. So I hype it up myself because I get back and I'm proud of it that part of my job is letting people know what I've done." Brody Leven  "In hindsight, I didn't know it at the time, but I think in hindsight, finding that consistency was some way of having control over such an otherwise out-of-our-control situation. And so much of my life seems to lack that control." Brody Leven  Resources:  brodyleven.com  Wagner Custom Skis     

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Unless you live in Crested Butte, you likely haven't heard about Rob Dickinson. He's a former big mountain competitor who moves like a ninja through the Butte's scary steps. You really only catch glimpses of Rob … a flash in the trees, a splash of snow on a rocky face, a blur beneath impeccable tracks. He's coming up on 20 years skiing Crested Butte and is one of the mountain's handful of inspirational soul skiers.   Rob doesn't have a sponsor. He runs his own painting business. But he's got skills and style for miles. Tune in and hear the 45-year-old Rob riff on how CBMR has honed his skiing, how to ride the clutch in technical terrain, and why you should never drop your uphill hand in gnarly steeps.  Topics:  2:20: From upstate New York to New Hampshire to Steamboat  4:15: Crested Butte keeps you honest  7:10: Ride the clutch to stay fluid in technical terrain  11:10: Competing in big mountain comps from 2009 through 2014 with a CB shred posse  18:30: Injuries, replacing body parts, and shifting your mindset   24:15: How steep creek kayaking hones ski skills, risk assessment  26:10: Taking vanity out of the equation.  28:00: Check in with yourself  31:00: Finding happiness in healthy, sustainable places  33:00: Gear adjustments and added protection for steep skiing  36:30: Don't change anything on race day  37:30: Play, don't work, in the ski industry  Photo credit: Garrett Grove  Quotes:  "All I did was chase skiing and kind of got the feeling that maybe I was chasing skiing from too far away." - Rob Dickinson  "Trying to get better and trying to pull better results at, at freeskiing competitions, like, you just learn how to, I always say, ride the clutch, learn how to instead of like jamming on the brakes to see what's coming next." - Rob Dickinson  "Crosstraining is really, really valuable." - Rob Dickinson  "You have to steel  your mind and  you have to make yourself present and you have to check in with yourself." - Rob Dickinson    Resources:  Precise Painting CB  Wagner Custom Skis   

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Lou Dawson is a ski pioneer who has been setting the skintrack for countless skiers for decades. Since he arrived in the Roaring Fork Valley as a teenager in the mid-1960s, Dawson has helped shape backcountry skiing. From being the first person to ski all of Colorado's 14ers — finishing in the early 1990s — to meticulously documenting nearly every technological advancement in ski gear, Dawson has shepherded backcountry skiing from its nascent roots in the 1970s to today's global juggernaut. His recent memoir, Avalanche Dreams, traces his life from a hard-charging skier to a thoughtful father, husband, and alpinist.   Tune in to hear Lou talk about his first ski tour, the 1982 avalanche that nearly killed him, leaning on his spirituality, penning more than 3,000 posts at his WildSnow.com site, the evolution of touring gear, and the art of setting a skintrack. Topics:  2:30: Life in Aspen in the 60s as a teenager with hippie parents.  7:40: First-ever touring up to Conundrum Hot Springs at age 16.  9:40: The "radical sensibility" of progressive adventurers in Colorado  10:50: The 1982 avalanche in Aspen Highlands Bowl.  13:40: The Peter Pan Syndrome challenges many ski town men.   16:10: The spiritual awakening after the avalanche.  19:00: Finishing all the Colorado 14ers in 1991.  20:40: Writing posts for Wild Snow, tinkering and modifying backcountry gear.  24:50: The role of alpine tech bindings in ski mountaineering.  26:40: How gear and improved education have helped protect backcountry skiers.  35:40: North American versus European skin tracks.  36:40: "A beautiful combination of technology and athletic ability and a mystical awareness of the environments and the mountains."  40:40: The fun of low-angle touring  Photo credit: Lou Dawson skis Long's Peak in 1990. Photo by Glenn Randall    Quotes:  "I started on wooden Bonna skis without edges and I literally would take those up and go powder skiing on those things back behind Aspen Mountain and places like that." - Lou Dawson  "The difference between the 60-something millimeter skis we were skiing back in the 1970s and 80s with these with say an 80-millimeter ski or a 90-millimeter ski is like night and day." - Lou Dawson  "In a lot of ski posses, people would look at you and think, 'Well, I wish he or she had taken an avalanche course.' And, you know, the avalanche course might not serve you to be able to predict whether a slope is safe or not, but it just makes you more aware of the danger." - Lou Dawson  "I've always applied my craft to just anything I do. And I think one of the crafts of ski touring is the skin track. It's how you create it." - Lou Dawson     Resources:  Avalanche Dreams  WildSnow.com  Wagner Custom Skis     

Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Mike Hattrup has moved from bump skiing boss, to ski movie star to gear designer, covering smooch ground on snow that his work has touched just about every skier in the sport. From chasing his four siblings on the slopes of Alpental to winning mogul medals to hanging with Stump, Schmidt, and Blake in the seminal "Blizzards of Aahhh's" to building backcountry skis and gear for top ski shops, Hattrup's career has covered a lot of ground. Today, he's the director of skiing for Eleven Experience, helping folks plunder powder in Alaska, British Columbia, Chile, Colorado, France, and Iceland. Listen in as Mike traces his extraordinary career from pro skier to guide to gear builder.  Topics:  3:05: Growing up skiing during the freestyle rage of the 1970s  4:00: Athleticism of mogul skiing  6:30: Training for mogul competitions  10:00 Filming with Greg Stump in "Time Waits for Snowman" in 1985  11:20: Filming "Blizzard of Aahhh's" in Europe  14:00: Why "Blizzard" resonated so deeply with skiers  16:00: Moving over to K2, helping the company transition from race  22:50: The emergence of the transformative K2 Four  26:00: Moving into telemark ski design, flexible ski boots, and backcountry gear  34:00: Working at Kastle, Fisher, Black Diamond, Marmot  40:30: AMGA guiding on Mount Rainier  46:00: Improving through technique as we age  Quotes:  "I never thought that skiing was a career. Not like now, I mean, you can go be a film skier, right? But back then it really wasn't an option." - Maike Hattrup  "We'll for sure look back on that era from early to mid-90s to the mid-2000s as the golden era of ski design." - Maike Hattrup  "I learned to tele purely from a touring standpoint." - Maike Hattrup  "In terms of fitness, that certainly becomes more of a challenge as you get older and I think you just gotta find a way to, I mean, find a way to keep training and make it fun." - Maike Hattrup  Resources:  Maike Hattrup, LinkedIn  Maike Hattrup, Instagram  Eleven  Wagner Custom Skis