Functioning Weirdo: How Ian Compton became Internet famous

Note: This article appears in FREESKIER magazine Volume 18.2. The issue is available via iTunes Newsstand. Subscribe to FREESKIER magazine.

Ian Compton believes in aliens—especially after a close encounter on a walkabout last Thanksgiving night with his sister, Vanessa, and her boyfriend. While wandering through fresh snow in the woods around Compton’s yurt in Greensboro, Vermont, Ian noticed a sapling forming the shape of a portal. Compton’s superstitious side lured him through. The trio marveled at three massive oak trees and in wine-induced Vermont tradition, they each hugged one. They meandered separate directions, when suddenly, the entire forest lit up with a soul-stirring blue glow. Compton felt an overwhelming sense of something he struggles to describe, but he couldn’t bring himself to look to the sky. The fluorescent color exploded three more times. They’ve researched possible sources—lightning or an exploding electrical transformer—but the Comptons are positive it was something otherworldly. “I’m an avid believer of entities outside our knowing and have always wanted to experience something mind blowing,” says Compton.

There aren’t many—if any—outspoken conspiracy theorists in the ski industry, but there also aren’t any yurt living, chicken raising, vegetable growing, woodworking, Carhartt wearing, one-footed rail sliding pro skiers who rarely leave home. So, the notion that Ian Compton would believe he’s been in the presence of extraterrestrials (and Bigfoot) kind of makes sense. It aligns with his quirky brand that’s so different from everything else in skiing. It’s garnered a cult following for the 26-year-old that’s kept him incredibly visible for a guy who conducts interviews on a landline.

“He can be at any ski resort in the world and people recognize him,” says Shane McFalls, the filmer and editor for Line Traveling Circus and Yoke Collection. “It’s insane. Every time you ski with him, people will come up to him and freak out, even when he’s with dudes who are a bigger deal in the public eye. We were with Nick Goepper [the 2014 Olympic slopestyle bronze medalist and three-time defending X Games champ in the same discipline] and no one freaked out on him like they did with Ian.”

“Compton is a prime example of someone doing it right,” explains Evan Williams, team and digital marketing manager at Nordica, and one of Ian’s best friends. “He’s an endless stream of content. His personality and what he brings to skiing are so relatable.”

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Williams met Compton during their sophomore year of high school at Vermont Academy, and they became close friends while skiing at nearby Mount Snow. “He’s one of the goofiest, funniest, best personalities to be around,” says Williams. “After skiing with him for a couple years, it was pretty obvious he was going places in the industry.”

The two made their first edit together in 2008, using only two days’ worth of footage, captured at Okemo. Compton’s innovative 360 switch up—the opening shot—helped earn more views than Williams ever expected. Compton joined the Line Traveling Circus that same year, effectively launching his ski career; his weekly webisode series, The Weak, further solidified his position as an Internet ski star. Compton represented Line Skis for four years before signing with Nordica in 2013, a move that dropped jaws. Two years later, his fans aren’t over it. When Compton posts a picture of his dog, Gretel, on Instagram, there’s a good chance the first comment is from a kid asking why he left Line. But Compton says it was a calculated decision. He lives less than an hour from Nordica’s US office, and his best friend manages the team. “Evan trusts me, so I can just be weird and off in the woods making videos, and he knows people will watch them,” he says.

Compton grew up in Brattleboro, Vermont, with his father, a successful musician who played with the likes of Van Morrison and The Allman Brothers; mother, a painter from Québec; and sister, a cellist and pianist turned visual artist and professional rock climber. Tall, super skinny and having a larger-than-life smile, Compton’s nickname “Chompers” didn’t take long to stick, which Compton says he doesn’t mind. Hockey occupied most of Compton’s time until he was 14 years old and tried skiing for the first time. The freedom from the rink, the creativity of the sport and the speed resonated with him.

“I immediately bought twin tips,” Compton says. “It’s all I’ve thought about for pretty much the rest of my life.”

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Compton spent the rest of his high school years skiing at Mount Snow with Chris Logan, Parker White and Jack Borland, who would film and edit a video of the crew at the end of each season. Compton developed a signature one-footed style no one has really been able to duplicate. “I saw Andy Parry [also of Line Traveling Circus] do one a really long time ago, and I started doing them on anything I could find,” says Compton. “It’s such a great feeling when you go fast and only drop one foot. Some people think it’s ugly, but I just base everything off the feeling it gives me. I did one on a quad kink this year, which felt great.”

Compton isn’t interested in jumps or skiing in exotic locales. Give Compton an East Coast hill with some rails or a tractor-operated rope tow through a maple grove, and he’s content. Seriously. “He’s got such a creative take on skiing, and he doesn’t want to do it the way anyone else does it,” says Williams.

After graduating from high school in 2008, Compton took a year off to travel, then enrolled at Champlain College in Burlington. He lasted half of a semester before school literally made him sick (the day after he went to the library for the first time, he woke up with swine flu). He decided to move to Utah, by way of a cross-country road trip with Borland and the Traveling Circus crew. A week of sleeping in random places, like the ski patrol room in a base lodge, and skiing all day and night in freezing cold weather wore on Compton, who expected to be in Salt Lake City at the time and wasn’t even halfway there. His meltdown in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot became the stuff of legend. “It’s as close as anyone has ever come to crying on the show,” says McFalls, who accidently deleted the video clip, to much regret. Compton left the crew and pointed his Subaru Impreza due west.

“He isn’t afraid to freak out,” says McFalls. “He knows what he likes. Whether it’s a trip or just skiing for the day, if he’s over it, he’ll just be done. He has a super spontaneous personality. It’s wild to watch the way his mind works.”

Compton spent two years in Salt Lake, skiing Park City and the Canyons and living in ski house squalor. Utah’s high-pressure weather wore on him. “It’s hard for me to maintain [sanity] when it’s sunny every day — I lose my energy,” he says. “I need a rest day to watch the rain.” At some point, homesickness and social phobia kicked in, and Ian realized Utah would never be home. He said goodbye abruptly, as he tends to do.

Compton filmed with Level 1 in 2011 and 2012—After Dark features shots of the biggest handrails Compton has ever hit—but that’s probably the extent of his mainstream ski film career.

“Skiing is just so beautiful and awesome, why bum it out with something like an intense storyline?” he says. “Everyone can go out with their friends and do exactly what I’m doing.”

Compton’s four-year, 140 episode strong web series, The Weak started with a simple idea between Compton and Borland and a common typo. His weekly edits—most recently set to the tune of his father’s music from the 70s—garner tens of thousands of views and plenty of comments. Bladez o’Glory racked up 75,000 plays.

“I want to get weirder each year and do things people haven’t necessarily seen,” says Compton.

Watch: Bladez o’Glory

But his 6-foot-1-inch, 145-pound frame isn’t built for impact. He threw his back out last spring, which kept him out of commission for longer than he would have liked. Farming serves as strength training, and his homemade healing balms have helped, but Compton won’t be beating himself up every day this season. He stays away from the crowded terrain parks on the weekends. He recently parted ways with sponsors Tomahawk and Electric. “It’s hard for some people to understand my lifestyle,” says Compton. “Sometimes you’re not going to get a hold of me for a while.”

Some might say he’s not trying.

“He’s watered down his skiing for kids on the Internet,” explains McFalls. “He’s better than he appears. But he’s his own self-sustaining production company. He can control how much he wants to put into it. The fact that he’s been able to make The Weak so successful speaks to how likable he is in person and on the Internet. I imagine people are just as inspired and fascinated by his lifestyle as his skiing.”

Compton admits he’s incredibly lucky to live in an era where he can simultaneously maintain an isolated lifestyle and a magnetic Internet persona.

Compton never left Vermont this summer. He now lives full time in his yurt on his grandfather’s land in Greensboro, where he apprentices on a nearby farm, raises his own chickens and grows 30 crops in his own garden and greenhouse. He feeds Gretel—an Australian cattle dog—a raw diet, and he hasn’t had fast food in years. (He’s come a long way from his Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Sour Patch Kids days.) During winter, Compton will lap the rope tow near his house and ski Sugarbush and Jay Peak. It’s the perfect place for a recluse who needs ample solitude. Compton admits he’s incredibly lucky to live in an era where he can simultaneously maintain an isolated lifestyle and a magnetic Internet persona.

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“Someone will comment on one of my videos, ‘Your teeth are huge. You suck,’ and I’ll respond with something like, ‘Thank you for adding kindness to this world,’” say Compton. “Hater comments are better than no comments. When you have haters, you’ve done something right.”

But Compton’s fans far outnumber the detractors. In 2014, he spent a week in an RV for FREESKIER’s Road Trip Challenge, fielding nonstop calls from kids around the world, most of whom voiced genuine, quivering appreciation and would say things like, “Ian, you’re my hero, you’re my favorite skier, you’ve changed my life. I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”

Compton doesn’t put himself on a pedestal. If a friendly fan approaches him at Mount Snow, he’s been known to ski with them all day. And he regularly gives away everything from poles to the hoodie off his back.

“If someone’s nice to him, he’s twice as nice back to them,” asserts Williams. “That’s how he’s been so successful in skiing. He’s the approachable option.”