Autonomous Skier: The Evolution of Sammy Carlson

In 2014, Sammy Carlson was skiing on home turf, the Windells park lane on the Palmer Snowfield at Timberline Lodge. High Cascade Snowboard Camp had just opened its superpipe to skiers for the first time, and to access the long forbidden fruit, Sammy skied through the High Cascade lane along the way—a poach he’s been doing every now and again since he was 14. When some angry diggers told him to take his skis off and hike out, he skied off, spraying a small crowd with snow along the way. The diggers followed Sammy to the superpipe and told him he’d never ski it again. Sammy let them know how he felt. When he returned to the area at the end of the day to meet his friend, pro snowboarder Tim Humphreys, the diggers started up again with Sammy, who, for skiing’s sake he says, chirped back.

Sammy’s got a strong personality,” says Humphreys. “If he thinks something’s whack, he won’t even think twice, he’ll tell people what’s up.”

Sammy’s pushback was ill-received, and he took off with six diggers on his tail in what looked like a James Bond chase scene. Sammy ollied onto a cat track and looked back to see 15 diggers in tuck positions. The chase escalated through the public park, on the lower portion of the glacier, where Sammy started taking diggers out.

“They were trying to tackle him, and he was elbowing them off,” says Humphreys. “At one point, he had four dudes on top of him and kicked them all off.”

As he neared the final pitch, Sammy gapped two snow patches and lost all but two of his pursuers. He hit the pavement and sprinted faster than he ever had in ski boots toward patrol headquarters, where four snowboarders were already blocking the entrance.

“He threw his skis in the middle of them,” remembers Humphreys. “Then as one went to grab him, he did this crazy spin move out of his jacket, pushed someone to the side and made it to the safe zone.”

Sammy wonders how his hotheaded comments and actions escalated things to such a level and why he put his body on the line to speak up for skiing. But passion and spontaneity often override self-control. Those exact character traits correlate to Sammy’s genius in skiing—his success in this sport owes more to imagination and creativity than restraint.

A decade into his career, on the heels of back-to-back-to-back gold medal performances in the X Games Real Ski video contest and the release of a two-year film, The Sammy C Project, the 26-year-old Oregonian finds himself on top of the sport after pioneering an independent route to success.

Despite a controversial decision in 2013 to leave a thriving competition career to progress the sport in the backcountry and on film, Sammy retained sponsors, fans and relevance. His anti-formula proves you don’t need a coach, industry contacts, an agent or even a ski town to excel in professional skiing.

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Oregon

Growing up in Oregon and skiing with guys like [Eric] Pollard helped inspire that [independence],” says Sammy, who lives in Hood River. “From early on, I was confident I could do it my own way.”

In eighth grade, he wrote a list of lifetime goals that his mom, Judy Carlson, still has today. One was to become a pro skier. Another was to win X Games gold.

“It’s not luck,” says his older sister, Rachael. “His determination and will have driven him to be where he is now. He’s passionate about things, and when he gets something in his head, he’s going to do it. His word is what happens.”

Sammy grew up in Tigard, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, as the youngest of three with parents who loved to ski at nearby Mt. Hood.

“We’d load the Suburban up with kids and friends,” says Judy. “We had to have the leaves all picked up by Thanksgiving or no skiing. All the kids who wanted to ski would chip in.”

Judy and Rich, Sammy’s dad, paid for two ski lessons for each kid at age 4. Rich still remembers Sammy straight-lining into a snowbank, jumping up and smiling. When Sammy was 9, he tried ski racing but lasted less than a season. Rachael, 28, remembers one particular powder day when the coaches couldn’t find her brother. Sammy had built a jump to practice throwing backflips.

Judy noticed headstrong tendencies early on. “If he made up his mind about something, he would do it—no matter what,” says Judy. “My mom [Sammy’s grandmother] said ‘Don’t break that—it’s a good thing to have.’”

Sammy opted out of organized skiing and followed his older brother, Zach, and friends around Hood. They would ski the park, but maximize Hood’s plentiful natural terrain along the way, hitting cliffs, skiing trees and smiling, even if it was raining.

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Film producer Shahn Hughes first filmed Sammy for his 2002 flick, The Hood, and introduced him to Windells coaches Tommy Ellingson and Seth Warner, who, along with Pollard, greatly influenced Sammy’s skiing and direction in life. He won his first contest, the Scotty Graham Memorial at Mt. Hood Ski Bowl, at age 12 and earned a trip to Mammoth with his dad.

“He just kept doing this S-rail every day,” says Rich. “I’d say, ‘Let’s go skiing.’ He skied a little bit, but he spent most of the four days on that rail. He just wanted to master it. He finally got to where he could do the whole thing.”

Rich says that tenacity lasted throughout Sammy’s competition career. “If he had a good or bad day, he was the first one out there and last one to go in,” he says. “If he had a bad day, he would just keep going to the top and doing it over and over again. The worse his day was, the more he would go back and do it.”

Determined to spend an entire summer glacier skiing, a 15-year-old Sammy aerated lawns on the weekends to earn the $900 he needed for a summer pass and befriended a couple who worked at Timberline and offered him daily rides. Sammy spent all day, every day at the Windells park, learning tricks that he displayed in front of an audience for the first time that fall. When he skied alongside Peter Olenick and Simon Dumont at an REI rail jam, Sammy’s style grabbed the attention of Salomon, who signed him to the team by the end of 2004. As did Oakley.

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Contest Life

“It was the first and only athlete I signed without seeing ski in person,” says Oakley’s Greg Strokes. “His edit was that progressive. I knew he was going to go places.”

Sammy earned his first major win—and black eye—in 2006 at the King of Style big air in Sweden, having stepped in after a taxi driver punched Dumont. He placed second at the US Open slopestyle contest in Vail that same year. Between 2007 and 2010, he won three X Games slopestyle medals and podiumed at several Dew Tour stops too, all while filming with Poor Boyz Productions (PBP) and MSP Films.

“Sammy was different from everyone in that he was still there doing contests and fulfilling sponsor obligations, but the second he could, he’d peel out of town and go film,” says Riley Poor, a global video production manager at Nike, Sammy’s sponsor from 2006 to 2015.

Those were the days Sammy lived on processed sugar and little else. Poor remembers shoveling two full days on a glacier near Whistler for an MSP shoot with Sammy and Dumont. “Sammy was living on Skittles, never wore sunscreen and just [tweaked] out all day,” says Poor. “On any trip with him, we always went to the grocery store to get him all his ‘snacks.’ On one of our first Nike trips, he grabbed a serving bowl, dumped in a whole bag of marshmallows and a box of Rice Krispies and put it in the microwave.”

“He was a very picky eater,” says Judy. “His diet consisted of peanut butter, Oreos, Skittles and hot dogs with the skin off.”

She packed just that but replaced the hot dogs with fruit snacks for a PBP shoot in China. “All hell broke loose when I ate his Oreos,” remembers Dumont. As rumors of his team managers packing his bags, rebooking missed flights and shopping for special cereal circled, Sammy gained a reputation inside the industry for being “high maintenance.”

“In the early days, he was kind of a pain in the ass,” says skiing icon and filmmaker Mike Douglas, who traveled with Sammy on Salomon outings. “He’s mellowed now. There’s a level of selfishness in top athletes, and while it might not be the most liked human characteristic, it’s a trait that’s pretty common in the best of the best.”

“It’s a phase you have to grow through,” says Dumont. “When people are telling you you’re awesome at such a young age, you believe it, and it’s hard not to get an attitude. I’ve been there, too. It’s just growing pains. He’s matured a lot since then.”

Poor says it all stems from passion. “Most people don’t know he’s an insanely genuine person,” he explains. “He genuinely cares about people, especially his family. He makes time to be a real friend and connect with people. He’s got a lot of genuine friends who care for him and respect him.”

That’s what Jenny Taylor, his former team manager at Salomon, remembers most. “He’s a really inclusive skier,” says Taylor. “Anytime he was meeting fans, I was so impressed with his attitude toward them. He was always encouraging the next generation of skiers, especially his coaching of young athletes at Windells. I have a lot of memories of him helping others.”

One characteristic that’s remained constant, says Tom Yaps, Sammy’s agent from 2009 to 2014 and a current advisor, is his driven nature. “Sammy is incredibly demanding of himself and the people around him,” says Yaps. “He’s super goal oriented. There are a million things he wants to accomplish, and he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

In 2009, while Sammy was at Mammoth Mountain, he convinced Snowboarder Magazine editor Pat Bridges to let him hit the magazine’s famous Superpark features on the last day of the event. As the first skier to ever partake in the event, he put up with the heckling (“skier grab!”) and earned an unofficial invite to the second half of the event the following year—followed by an official invite the year after that.

“You can’t not respect him because he’s going bigger than everybody else,” says Humphreys. “People might try to talk shit, but they instantly shut up when he [does] way sicker stuff than anyone on a snowboard.”

Sammy hosted the Sammy Carlson Invitational in 2012 and 2013, which evolved from a big air contest planned at Mt. Hood in 2010. When weather conditions delayed, then cancelled the event, Sammy took advantage of the 110-foot jump and stomped skiing’s first switch triple rodeo 1260, a trick that dropped jaws throughout the industry. As Sammy told ESPN the following week, “I didn’t do the triple thinking about a contest or anything like that. I did it for me. I wanted to feel it one time because I was sure I could do it.”

In 2011, during his sixth appearance at the X Games, Sammy differentiated himself from the double-rodeo-throwing field with a slew of technical jibs, including a 450 on, 630 off of a rainbow-esque rail. He finally took home slopestyle gold—and a bronze in big air to boot. His entire family joined in celebrating a childhood goal realized.

The 2012 X Games brought Sammy’s first major ski injury—a torn MCL after a crash during big air finals. Fueled by frustration for missing the slopestyle podium, Sammy went too big and left the course in a sled, writhing in pain. He posted up at Tanner Hall’s house near the US Ski and Snowboard Team’s Center of Excellence, in Park City, UT, and rehabbed the rest of the season. The following winter, also at X Games, Sammy broke his ankle during slopestyle practice, four days before the event.

Sammy was disappointed to sit out of the competition season, but he was devastated about potentially missing the inaugural X Games Real Ski Backcountry contest, a video competition hosted by ESPN that called upon eight of the world’s best backcountry-centric freestyle skiers to submit a 90-second film segment. But after a scope and intense physical therapy, Sammy surprised himself and landed a backcountry jump three weeks after suffering his injury. Sammy holed up in Whistler, BC, for a month, something he hadn’t done in years, and put together a video part that won the event’s first gold medal. The victory validated a decision he’d made privately. The next year, just as slopestyle skiing made its way into the Olympics, Sammy announced he was retiring from competition.

Watch: Sammy Carlson’s 2015 X Games Real Ski video

“Contests weren’t the same for me,” says Carlson. “When I was younger, I was always stoked on the bigger jumps and gnarlier rail sections, but as I got older and the features got smaller, I wasn’t challenged. The overall feeling I got doing a trick wasn’t the same as I felt in the backcountry. I didn’t feel that same floatiness I feel when I hit a step-up. I wanted to focus on filming and putting together strong segments that push the tricks, the lines and the features to the next level. People thought it would be hard to continue to be a pro athlete [by going this route], but I try to stay true to what I feel inside as a skier and not be pressured too much by the industry.”

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Silver Screen

Level 1’s Second Generation (2001) started Sammy’s love affair with ski film.

“He was always watching ski movies,” says Rich. “Every night, he would lay there watching the same ones over and over and fall asleep that way. I’d say, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of watching these films?’”

Poor Boyz Productions owner Johnny DeCesare vividly remembers meeting Sammy at the Happy Dayz premiere in Portland in 2002. A 13-year-old Sammy had just had his poster signed by pro skier Shane Szocs, when he went up to DeCesare and asked for his signature. “Just so you know, I’m going to be in your movie some day,” said Sammy.

Rachael remembers Sammy at a younger age telling Warren Miller the same thing when he met the filmmaker at Timberline.

A couple years later, Sammy and Johnny hit it off on the chairlift at a Gravity Games contest. The next Wednesday, he was on a plane to France, where he impressed the crew with off-axis 7s, double grab truck drivers and a work ethic they’d never seen before. “He’d be going 100 percent, as hard as any guy, to the last day,” says DeCesare. “I told him he had enough for two [film parts], and he still wanted to make things better.”

The footage came together for his first legitimate segment, which helped PBP’s WAR win best film at the Powder Video Awards in 2005 with what DeCesare calls a “wow factor.” He landed the opening segment in the 2006 film Ski Porn and went on to star in five more PBP films. “I think he’s probably the best guy to build video segments of all time,” says DeCesare. “Pep [Fujas] is near the top for me, and I’ve seen great segments from Tanner and JP [Auclair], but Sammy is equally as good. He knows how to build a segment that you want to watch over and over again.”

Sammy starred in four Matchstick Productions films between 2006 and 2009 and has been filming with Teton Gravity Research (TGR) since 2009. “There are the guys who go out and do a trick and it’s perfect, it’s textbook, it’s robotic—it lacks a little fl are and edge,” says Todd Jones, co-founder of TGR and veteran cinematographer. “Sammy’s style has something about it. He’s not over-tweaking the grab. He’s grabbing tail about one and a half feet away, where it feels good and looks good. And he has these slow rotations that never feel rushed. He sets it, does the grab and seems like he hangs there and enjoys where he is.”

On run one of his first TGR shoot in the backcountry near Grand Targhee in 2009, Sammy hit a wedge jump with too much speed, over-rotated and crashed at the bottom of the landing, almost biting through his tongue. When he got back on the horse that same day, he stole the show. Later that season, Sammy was hitting the infamous jump at Stevens Pass that took out both Hall and Wiley Miller, when, according to Jones, just as the light was getting low, he hit the zone.

“He was turning the pages of tricks—the 3, the 5, the 9, the switch 9—just riding a curve of energy when he came over the radio and said, ‘This one’s for CR’,” recalls Jones. “He’s not a claimer, so I thought ‘Oh my God, shit is about to go down.’”

That’s when Sammy threw a 100-plus-foot switch 1440 in perfect alpenglow light.

The shot closed his segment in TGR’s Re:Session, which a critic called “some of the most memorable booter footage in the last five years in ski cinematography,” and solidified the 20-year-old slopestyle skier as a serious force in the backcountry and on the big screen.

It was ultimately that X Games gold medal back in 2011 that pushed Sammy to follow his new passion, the backcountry, and to explore his home mountain like no freeskier had done before. He solicited $5,000 from each of his sponsors, threw in the same amount himself and, with a local crew, spent two months of the summer building and filming a unique jump setup above Mt. Hood’s lift-accessed terrain. With the help of Nimbus Independent and Yaps, Sammy released a 25-minute film titled On Top of the Hood.

As he transitioned to spending all of his time filming in the backcountry, Sammy hit his stride. He loved everything about it—the long days, the snowmobiling, the builds, the high-consequence terrain and the creative freedom. “Every session in the backcountry brought new feelings,” says Sammy. “That’s what skiing is all about.”

He thrived in the new X Games discipline of Real Ski, winning three gold medals in three years, and living out his definitive vision of skiing. The pillow combinations in his 2015 Real Ski video convinced Douglas, a Real Ski Backcountry judge, to vote for Sammy.

“Nobody has ever done what Sammy did there,” says Douglas. “That pillow skiing was truly next level. He’s one of the most talented skiers of this generation, but what makes him so exciting to watch is that he sees opportunity for tricks in places on the mountain that no one else does.”

On His Own

Scotty Titterington, who filmed Sammy for Real Ski and The Sammy C Project, says Sammy’s work ethic is unmatched. “Most people go up, hit a line, land their trick and come back to the camera,” says Titterington. “I’ve seen him land nine switch 9s in a row.”

“He really understands what goes into making a jump shoot work,” says Jasper Newton, Sammy’s other main filmer for The Sammy C Project. “He’ll be thinking about the cuts, the action shot, what still shots he needs. He knows if he requires a photographer or a second angle. Everything is timely and efficient. He’s a producer as much as he is a skier.”

That hands-on style and frequent radio communication [with filmers and photographers] can frustrate some, but Jones says he’s earned a level of respect because of his commitment and passion. “He gets certain byes,” says Jones. “He’s going 120 feet and torqueing crazy tricks, so if he tells me to move 20 feet to the left, I’ll do it.”

That DIY spirit translates to the business side of his career. Sammy personally pursued sponsorship from Oakley, Nike and, most recently, Armada, with old-fashioned phone calls and a friendly persistence that’s hard to ignore. He regularly calls photo editors and marketing executives to pitch progressive ideas. Though Yaps advises Sammy and helps with major negotiations, Sammy is currently without formal representation. “At the end of the day, I want everything to be on me,” says Sammy.

And as director of the recently released The Sammy C Project, it is. When Sammy first proposed a two-year project to TGR, Jones knew he was legitimately committed to progressing the sport; he offered Sammy complete creative freedom and the opportunity to hand pick his team.

“The past two winters weren’t the best,” says Sammy. “We had to work for it. We went out when most crews had down days, and we’d come back with a full day’s shot list.”

The 40-minute film includes footage Jones shot with a gyro-stabilized GSS C520, the $750,000 aerial camera system that was used on the set of The Hobbit and The Amazing Spiderman. The Sammy C Project pushes the limits of skiing as much as it does filming. Sammy’s ten years of experience culminate in nonstop A-roll, from a memorable switch 5 down a triple stack of pillows followed by a 3 off the bottom, to a switch drop-in on an old Nordic ski jump in Michigan. And his big-mountain segment rivals the shots put out by Ian McIntosh, who joined him in Alaska to ski spines in the remote Neacola Range. “Who would have thought I’d roshambo for lines with Sammy Carlson?” says McIntosh in the film.

Watch: Official trailer for The Sammy C Project

“In the land of solo projects, I love that the stage is equal for everyone, but I’m the first guy to get bored,” says Jones. “Sammy’s skiing makes everything else look like a high school dance. His skiing is ridiculous and unique and interesting to watch, and he’s truly worthy of doing his own thing.”

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Sammy spent close to three months in an editing bay this past summer and fall, selecting shots with editors Anthony Birkholz and Ryan Halverson, working for music rights and helping organize the film tour.

For Sammy, the project isn’t about him—it’s about commitment. “The film represents hard work,” says Sammy. “The message is to inspire people to go out there and do their own thing even if it’s completely different. I want it to show people if they put time and energy into something, anything is possible.”

If the maximum-capacity crowd at the Roseland Theater in Portland was half as inspired as they sounded on November 20, 2015 at the world premiere of The Sammy C Project, Sammy accomplished his goal. The level of stoke that reverberated through the venue the entire running time of the film reached a decibel I haven’t heard in years from a ski audience at a film premiere. Superlative comments poured faster than the draft IPA. And half the crowd walked five sketchy blocks from the theater to the after party to listen to the music guest Sammy flew in from France. The most memorable quote I heard that night came from an industry veteran who, after seeing Sammy’s display of versatility and progression, called him “the best skier in the world right now.” Zach Carlson, 32, credited his brother’s foresight. “He’s done a really good job of seeing where the sport is going and seeing what people respond to.”

From a determined young kid to a talented park skier to a hard-working businessman and backcountry film star, Sammy has committed himself 100 percent to each goal he’s accomplished. By steering his own career and never following the safe, proven path, Sammy has and always will ski on his own terms.

Note: This article appears in FREESKIER magazine Volume 18.5. The issue is available via iTunes Newsstand. Subscribe to FREESKIER magazine.