Featured Image: Rick Sorensen
This past March, FREESKIER joined the Blizzard Tecnica Freeride Team at the Blizz headquarters and factory in Mittersill, Austria. We found a brand and team hungry for the future, testing a special new product that’s different than anything Blizzard has done before.
Heritage holds remarkable prevalence at Blizzard. This statement certainly applies to many ski brands, but at Blizzard, it’s impossible to ignore. The iconic brand boasts a heritage rooted in craftsmanship, quality and immense pride in creating some of the premier charging skis on earth. But never a group to be stagnant, Blizzard is now looking to push in a new direction.
The brand’s history is littered with innovations and achievements going back to Anton Arnsteiner, Blizzard founder and ski pioneer. In the quiet alpine village of Mittersill, Austria, Arnsteiner opened his original workshop after World War II, where the company still manufactures to this day. While others saw skiing as a utilitarian need, inconsequential to a world recovering from the barbarity of war, Arnsteiner saw a blossoming global industry.
Hard to predict at the time, Arnsteiner was right. Blizzard has gone on to become a staple of skiing. We all know that, but chances are you didn’t know they’re credited with creating the first polyethanol bases, the first mixed wood and foam cores, the first asymmetrical skis and the first binding-mounting plate. That proud heritage is still alive today, and it’s fueled Blizzard throughout its many chapters. But how do you utilize that long line of experience while being open to something entirely new? That’s what we went to Austria to find out.
Within moments of uniting with the crew in the Munich Airport en route to Blizzard’s Freeride Athlete Summit, it became clear that not only had the brand been thinking about this question, but they had an answer in the form of a new ski, and a new piece of their identity.
In more ways than one, the Blizzard Freeride Team is a representation of the brand as a whole: dynamic, changing and looking to merge experience with fresh faces. The seasoned riders, such as Marcus Caston, Elyse Saugstad, Johan Jonsson and Connery Lundin, bring a wealth of knowledge, both in the industry and the sport alike.
Equally noteworthy are the new athlete additions. Zeb Schreiber, Piper Kunst, Kaz Sosnkowski and Noah Gaffney have all joined the pro team over the last few seasons. At just 17, Schreiber is the youngest of the crew. But along with all the names above, his passion and composure far outweigh his years.
This dichotomy of varying styles and ages sounds strange, but it works. In fact, it works better than we’d ever know looking in from the outside. We spent five days with this group, and while that isn’t a ton of time, it’s enough to observe the communal atmosphere. From team dinners to first chair at Kitzsteinhorn and back to the weathered bar at the Kogler Hotel, anyone could see this was a gathering of friends masquerading as coworkers.
But the Freeride Athlete Summit wasn’t a mere team-building exercise. This was another step in a project years in the making. For most of the season, these skiers had been testing a new model slated to enter the Blizzard lineup in 2026, currently dubbed Project Carte Blanche. The true name of the ski won’t be revealed until the release this fall, but the team thought Carte Blanche was fitting in the meantime. The sentiment is clear: we’re going to make a ski that’s new for us, but do it better than anyone else. It’s no surprise there’s a resounding confidence in this mission, as Blizz is well known for bombproof components and masterful construction.
This sentiment isn’t just a selling point, it’s what the team believes. “To witness Blizzard throw its spin on an athlete-driven ski is inspiring as a new rider,” Kunst told FREESKIER. The Alta local officially joined the crew just this winter, and her history of skiing outside the lines makes her an ideal influence on Carte Blanche. “I’m super excited to be a part of this story and to apply these to my own style. What we’re creating is something more than just another pair of skis, and I can’t wait for people to see why.”
Kunst isn’t the only recent addition to the Blizzard Freeride Team who’s elated by this project. Sosnkowski, the aforementioned racer turned freeride artisan, has a clear passion for the process that’s gone into Carte Blanche. The Tahoe-native studied engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, and his dual interests in both ski construction and performance provide just one example of the multifaceted personnel onboard this team.
“[Blizzard] is really stepping out of their comfort zone as a brand to make something new and inspiring,” said Sosnkowski. “As a skier and an engineer, it’s felt like a dream. I’ve definitely had to pinch myself from time to time. It’s been a surreal experience being an athlete behind the wheel of a project like this. In the past two seasons, I’ve skied about 16 different prototype skis of this new lineup… it just shows how much Blizz is putting into this while simultaneously listening to us.”
You get the sense that what’s happening here is bigger than the individual, and a piece of that is thanks to the continuation of a proud heritage. You can feel it in the town, where the Kogler Hotel’s wooden beams are decorated with Blizzard skis dating back 50 years. You can feel it in the famous factory, where every single ski is handmade in rooms that connect back to Arnsteiner’s original workshop. And you can feel it within the group, as every person is as invested and up for the challenge as the next.
As all 40 or so individuals, including the athletes, marketing personnel, engineers and management from around the world gathered to discuss the next chapter of Blizzard Tecnica, you could feel the optimism in the room. Yes, the discussions were tense and the feedback wasn’t sugarcoated, but that’s what you need to create something unique.
Whether by chance or intention, the trip was the perfect exposé for a company attempting the extraordinarily difficult, which is to pull from past experiences in order to craft both a product and a zeitgeist that are new. But there might be no better group to attempt such a task than Blizzard.
This isn’t a reinvention, just a new branch in a very accomplished tree… one that likes to ski really fast. History suggests they’ll have no problem stretching out into this new frontier. And after seeing the Blizzard team unite during one of the final stages of this long project, we can agree that you’ll have a hard time not liking what’s on the way.
Photo: Rick Sorensen (left), Frank Shine (right)
Stay tuned as we look forward to sharing this next chapter of Blizzard with our readers Fall 2025
