Kim Reichhelm signed herself up for ski race camp at the age of five but was turned down three years in a row because she was too young. No tone to be deterred, Kim was finally allowed into pee wee races and the rest is history. Her parents helped start Stratton Mountain School, where she was one of the youngest kids enrolled. She made the US Ski Team, then moved to Colorado to race for CU in 1979. In addition to her racing accomplishments, she is the only skier to have won the South American, US and World Extreme Championships in the same year.
HOW DID YOU MAKE THE TRANSITION FROM RACING TO FREESKIING? After racing in college, I joined the women’s pro tour. And after three years on the tour, I decided to quit racing and pursue the marketing and promotional aspect of the ski industry. I was given the job as the broadcast analyst for ESPN. So I started traveling with the tour but not competing. In 1996, I was in Squaw Valley working with the broadcast team and I took a break to go skiing. I missed the challenge. I used to get off a lift and you train and you focus. And now, I had no focus and I started looking around going, “Wow, I wonder if you can ski that line? And I wonder how you get over there?†At the time, there were very few skiers who actually skied off-piste. There were always the Steve McKinneys and the Scott Schmidts and a handful of skiers at every mountain who skied the toughest lines, but I didn’t know anything about it. I was like, “This is no fun, just skiing down groomers. It’s not that interesting to me.â€
SO YOU NEEDED TO MAKE SKIING CHALLENGING AGAIN? Yeah! I remember seeing a group of guys at Squaw — there was a pack of like five of them — and they were all just ripping lines on the Headwall and KT-22. And I kept seeing the same group, so I positioned myself so that I was a single when they came up. They were in the lift line and I just “happened†to be there to ride the chairlift with them. I jumped on the lift and it happened to be Rob Des Lauriers. I didn’t know who he was. I asked him, “Are you guys skiing that powder up there? How do you get up there?†And he checked me out with my racing gear. We got to the top and he goes, “Hey guys, this chick wants to ski with us.†They onced me over and were like, “Well, we’re hiking,†all super cocky. I said, “Well I know how to hike. I’ve been hiking slalom courses my whole life.†So I followed them up this ridge to the top of a cornice. It was all super fresh powder and they were all standing there kind of snickering like, “What’s she gonna do now?†And I stepped into my bindings first, jumped off the cornice first and skied the whole thing top to bottom. They all skied down and were like, “Yeah, you can hang out. What’s your name again?†From there I met Greg Stump and mostly just hung out during Blizzard of Ahhs, but shot for License to Thrill.
AND THEN AN INJURY LED TO YOU START WOMEN’S SKI ADVENTURES? We were filming all day with Plake, Schmidt and Hattrup. Stump was on the phone with K2 trying to get money for me to go to Europe with them. I was jumping out of my skin thinking it was the greatest thing ever. I couldn’t stand it so I went skiing while they all talked business. I skied right down the middle of the Fingers on KT-22, got in the back seat and completely dislocated my knee.
That same year, I started Women’s Ski Adventures. Had I not blown my knee out, I probably would have done the first clinic, but then ran off to Europe to be a ski movie starlet. Instead, I focused on Women’s Ski Adventures.
Then in 1990, I got a phone call from Mike Kozad in Alaska who said he wanted to start an event in Alaska called the World Extreme Skiing Championships and he wanted my input. For eight years I went to Valdez either competing or judging. But I helped broaden the tour and bring it to Crested Butte and Kirkwood.
WHICH FEMALES STUCK OUT FOR YOU FROM THOSE COMPETITION DAYS? Emily Coombs won the first Crested Butte event. Then Kristen Ulmer got second, I think, but then the talent level dropped off, so I started doing some recruiting. Noel Lyons raced on the ski team with me and was a coach for Women’s Ski Adventures. Alison Gannett came on the scene and then quite a bit later, Wendy Fisher got involved. She was going to school in Reno and hated it. So I invited her to the freeski event and to stay at my house. The next thing you know, she’s fully in love with Woody Lindenmeyr [now Wendy’s husband], she’s winning contests and killing it. It happened so fast for her. She picked up the ball and totally ran with it.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WOMEN’S PROGRESSION? I think it’s amazing. It makes me so happy for these young women to have role models that are females. People looked at me like, “What, are you crazy? There’s no future for you as a woman in professional skiing.†And now there are so many great opportunities for women in sports. When I was around, there weren’t even specific skis for women and now, you can work with engineers and research and development and design. And I just think it’s really important for young women to have sports in their lives and to see other women out there who are doing sports and who are still respected by the industry.
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