Photo: Mike Schirf

It’s not very often in the skiing world that the major ski media promotes the up-and-comers of the freeskiing world who don’t hail from the superpipe or slopestyle scene.  Yet the competitive Freeskiing World Tour (read as gnarly cliffs, manky venues and sometimes, billowy powder) has had its share of stars emerge from the ranks of ski bums and college students alike.

Freeskiers like Sage Cattabriga-Alosa or Seth Morrison have found themselves ditching their competition bibs to ski for film cameras and have established a berth with the greater skiing audience over the past decade, but it seems that the major sponsors and media coverage have largely faltered to recognize the talents exhibited on the FWT.  Some of this is in part due to the venues which play host to some of the lines and airs taken by these athletes on natural features, with much of the terrain larger and more natural than ESPN can squeeze into their Winter X-Games three-ring circus in Aspen.  Veterans of the tour find themselves securing small travel budgets and some gear from the few sponsors they can find, but even then, paying their day-to-day bills has been sacrificed to make it to the next competition.

Leo upside down...again.

This is especially true for the junior competitors, whose parents have had the foresight – and made the sacrifices – to know that these competitions are helping to groom their kids into the more well-rounded skiers which the greater skiing audience can identify with.  For 17 year-old Leo Ahrens, that barrier has been broken, and he’s got two shred-sticks on his feet ready to continue smashing through those media walls.  Based out of Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon and skiing with his good friends Johnny Collinson and the Mandahl brothers and Henry Gates, Leo has helped carve a new path for junior freeskiers that doesn’t mean spinning laps in the terrain park.

On a few recent trips to LCC in the TatsVan, I’ve had the pleasure of running into this group of shredders in their neck of the woods.  To witness firsthand the energy and style they bring to the cliffs and pow that blesses the Utah ski scene is inspiring, much akin to Sage’s first cork 720 off of Chad’s Gap almost 10 years ago.  Leo is notorious for backflipping any rock that marks his line, and his friends are always right behind him.

Enter Sweetgrass Productions, a small Colorado-based ski film company.  As Powder Magazine has reported, the Sweetgrass team has been working on a two-year project to follow up to their outstanding 2009 release, titled Signatures (Click here to read my review).  Rounding out their top notch list of talent, they have recruited Leo, Jonny Collinson and Carston Oliver for a South American shred-mission in Argentina (Click here to read Powder’s article).  With such a young and ambitious crew, there’s no doubt that there will be plenty of big lines skied, styled-out airs and pow slash turns.  These kids are changing the game for the future generations of skiers out there; let’s just hope the tall-Ts stay behind in the terrain park.

A collection of a bunch of random footy throughout several seasons.

Click here to see more of Little Cottonwood Canyon’s ‘Livin Local’ series.

Tags: Aspen, Chad's Gap, Christian Mandahl, ESPN, EXPN, Freeskiing World Tour, Henry Gates, jonny collinson, LCC, Leo Ahrens, little cottonwood canyon, Livin Local, powder magazine, Sage Cattabriga-Alosa, Seth Morrison, tatsvan, Utah, X-Games