Wintersports
Freeskiing
How did Michelle Parker become a freeski legend? Find out in Originate
From junior slalom racer to freeskier, Michelle Parker has been carving her own line for years. Watch her new series Originate to find out more about her.
If comic book adaptation movies have taught us anything, it's that every superhero (and villain) has an origin story. And if California-born Michelle Parker was a superhero, there's no question what her superpower would be – skiing big, fast lines all over the world.
With a background like Parker's, it’s no surprise. She was born and bred in Lake Tahoe, California, a place with some serious freeskiing history. There's much more to her story than just that, though, and you can learn all about it in her new web-series, Originate.
The five-part webseries follows Parker and her friends through five long months on the road chasing powder, and finding out a little bit more about themselves and the sport of skiing.
Watch Episode 1 of Michelle Parker's Originate series below:
11 min
Backstory
Discover how Michelle Parker has risen to the top of big-mountain skiing.
Winter on the road
"I spent a good part of the winter filming for Matchstick Productions' film All-In. I'm really excited about that, I think it's the first major ski movie with equal parts for males and female riders," says Parker. The goal for Originate was to go deeper than just pure action, though. Each episode strives to take a look at the story behind skiing.
"The first episode is an archival episode," she says. "It takes a look at my childhood, including some really cool vintage footage from a few of my first ski races. It really tells my whole story. My parents are in it, I'm in my own element at home and I tell my own story myself, which I've really never told on film."
As is so often the case for pro skiers, best-laid plans were tossed to the side, as the film crew chased the best conditions. A planned trip to Whistler, Canada, became a last-minute adventure to Japan instead. "It was definitely the strike mission of the production," says Parker. “Whistler was having a low-snow year, while Japan was getting hammered. I called up Mark Abma, who was already there, and he said to come on over."
Of course, they scored plenty of powder – a given on Japan's North island. "It was an incredible trip," she recalls. "What's incredible is that from what many of us see on social media, skiing looks like it's flourishing in Japan, while actually, ski culture there is struggling. But it's not dying. We rode at a tiny little two-lift resort that's a family business. The soul of skiing is alive in Japan."
Hiking up for a wild ride down
© Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool
In front of the lens, behind-the-scenes
Over the course of the winter, Parker found something else she could appreciate about her sport and career – the behind-the-scenes work. Although Originate is produced by Vancouver-based Reelwater Productions, Parker worked on logistics, planning, and producing on her own web series, as they explored British Columbia, Alaska, Japan, and legendary French mountain resort Chamonix.
That last one's a bit of a sore spot, because despite flying from the West Coast of the United States to Europe, they didn't score. "We arrived after 10 straight days of high pressure," says Parker. "There was a tracked out mountain that was icy up top, and slushy down below. We waited for some incoming weather and then headed up in low visibility conditions, but ultimately we didn't feel safe and called it off. We got back down, and started reading reports online about the 'deadliest day in the Alps' – avalanches claimed 14 lives that day."
In the end, Originate is much very much like Parker's career has always been: a labor of love, and a growing process. "Capturing a story is a lot more work that creating action,"Parker says. It's about really putting your heart and soul into something, and having it hit."
