Finding Your Ski Community - A Short Film for La Sportiva
Creating a Ski Community
I really believe that creating community is one of the most important parts of life. Depending on our age community can look different. When you’re younger, you may be playing on a soccer team or acting in your school’s play but as we grow older it becomes harder to form those communities around shared passions. It seems like work and life responsibilities can sometimes prevent us from being around people in the same capacity as we did when we were kids.
For Davide, creating a supportive ski community is a big driving factor for his development in the sport. With over a decade worth of professional victories under his belt, he’s certainly met a lot of other athletes in the process but he’s now taking it upon himself to make ski touring more inclusive.
Accessibility in Skiing
Skiing is described as many things – exhilarating, blissful, epic, gnarly, beautiful, etc. But there is one thing that skiing is not known for… accessibility.
Because of the high barriers of entry, skiing tends to be difficult to get into. However, Davide believes that doesn’t have to be the case. With local resorts providing safe uphill alternatives to Colorado’s dangerous backcountry winter ski season, as well as an increased number of inclusivity programs, we’re hoping those barriers start to get broken down. To help bring more people into the sport of ski touring, Davide set up weekly clinics in partnership with La Sportiva, to educate people on how to walk uphill with their skis and how to enjoy the descent.
These free Wednesday clinics gave newcomers to the sport an opportunity to try it out and learn from one of the best in the game.
First place isn’t always the most important thing…
My good friend and La Sportiva ski team athlete Davide Giardini and I teamed up this winter to create a six episode series on ski touring. In our most recent episode, which you can watch at the top of this article, Davide walks through some of the magic that takes place in the ski touring community.
After taking first place in a ski mo race at Eldora Ski Resort, Davide humbly put his first place trophy in his backpack, and began his free clinic to teach other skiers how to improve. As the filmmaker witnessing these events unfold in front of me, I was taken aback by Davide’s selflessness. Just a few minutes before the clinic, he was competing and trying to top the podium, but quickly changed his mindset from competition to community once the race was over. There was even a handful of skiers that he was racing against that decided to join it on the clinic as well to see how they could improve too.
Creating community doesn’t come by accident.
It’s thoughtful and meaningful relationships that are built over time. Filming Davide as he interacted with his community reminded me of that. Not only did seemingly everybody know Davide‘s name but it seemed he knew there’s in return. Although skiing isn’t going to become as inclusive or cheap as outdoor sports, watching the Boulder ski community begin to take shape, brings me a lot of hope for the future of the sport.
Want to Work Together?
Roo is a commercial/documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Boulder, Colorado but travels all around the world for his filmmaking career. He has produced films for Outside Magazine in Ireland, camera operated for Netflix in the Rocky Mountain West, photographed among indigenous communities in Peru and Ecuador, directed videos with professional climbers in Mexico and has received notable recognition in his hometown of Orcas Island in Washington State for his work telling uplifting stories in the outdoor space.
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