I first started skiing when I was six years old. Since then, the winter sports culture has become an increasingly integral part of my life as well as my family’s. My brother is a two-time junior Olympian and now races for Boston College. My father works in a ski shop in the Bay Area and is a member of the Ski Patrol at my home mountain Dodge Ridge, and this year my sister will enter her fifth season with the Dodge Ridge Race Team.

After five years of racing I decided to become a children’s ski instructor. With two years of teaching and one year of coaching the developmental race team at Dodge Ridge, I packed my bags to head north to attend the University of Washington. There I joined the university’s entirely student-run ski and snowboard school, Husky Winter Sports, and instantly found 30 new friends and ski buddies. With the Summit at Snoqualmie/Alpental just under an hour away from Seattle, I was able to continue teaching and still find time to shred in between classes. Now a recent college graduate, PSIA Level II Certified skier, and former president of HWS, I am still living in Seattle, working, volunteering as an adaptive ski instructor with Outdoors for All foundation, and (fingers crossed on this upcoming 2010 season) hopefully will continue keep my snowdays count high on my new LINE Pandoras.

When I’m not skiing, I enjoy dancing, traveling, making headway as the next great chef in the family, running, writing little anecdotes to my rarely-dull day-to-day life, sweating away in bikram yoga, backpacking, and going out for beers. I’ve had the great fortune to travel extensively through the Americas and Western Europe and ski in France, Switzerland, British Columbia, and Argentina. My favorite skiing experiences so far have been lapping the beautiful slopes of Catedral in Bariloche, Argentina, ascending the Aiguille du Midi and cruising the Vallee Blanche in Chamonix, France, and of course, hitting up my neighbor to the north Whistler-Blackcomb in Canada for some poutine, partying and exceptional terrain. I think I would be a great Lange girl because I have dedicated so much of my life, both professional and personal, to skiing and the winter sports culture, and because its always nice to give us redheaded people a chance to flash you all some ginger hair poking out of a helmet as I rip it on the hill.

Hey Freeskier magazine, I’d like to see you do a line-up of some of the best goggle tans ever. Scour the slopes and show us some beauties!