How Do Professional Skiers Raise A Family?

The Hagens provides a substantive look into an uncommon family arrangement. However, I wanted to learn more, so I contacted Stian, who graciously agreed to answer a few questions over email.

Here's Stian on family, risk-taking, and skiing.

Do you have any tips for soon-to-be-parents who are passionate skiers? How do you balance being a good parent with your own desire to go skiing?

I think that you will have to accept that your own skiing will be put on hold for a few years while the kids are small, that said teaching the kids to ski can be a lot of fun too, just remember to bring enough M&M's. For us at around age 8-9 they skied good enough that we had fun as a family, I think the key is not to mix your own ambitions with family skiing. Put your parent hat on when you ski with the kids, and keep the ambitions low, the absolutely worst thing you can do is to push it too far, it has to be fun for them, not you.

Do you and Andrea have flexible work schedules (I know guiding is part of the equation), making it easier to squeeze everything in, or are you exceptionally time-conscious? Maybe a bit of both?

We do have pretty flexible work schedules, and the fact that we live 2 minutes away from the hill makes going skiing with the kids very easy for us. We rarely spend a whole day on the hill, mostly we will go up for a few hours in the morning, before it gets busy and then do something else in the afternoon. These days the kids are in a race program here in Chamonix, so unfortunately they have less time to ski with us.

Taking your kids skiing—particularly off the imposing Aiguille du Midi—is inherently risky. What would you say to someone who is concerned about the dangers associated with your action-sports-focused parenting style?

When we had kids we spent a lot of time talking about this, and we came to the conclusion that we had two options; either we could wrap the kids up in cotton wool and hope they would never go in the mountains, or we could teach them everything we know, to give them a really good foundation of mountain skills and respect for the mountains. We choose the second option, as there is a chance that even if we went for option one, they would still go into the mountains; and if they did it would be more dangerous because they would not have the foundation.

What is it like finally getting to ski steeper and more interesting terrain with your kids?

It's really nice, that said we take a really conservative approach; we avoid avalanche terrain for the most part, and if we enter avalanche terrain it's on days when I am confident in the snowpack. We also try to be two grown-ups at all times, one up the front and one in the back.

What do you hope your kids learn from their unique upbringing?

I hope they will turn into nice human beings, that have respect for people around them, the environment and the mountains. And also that they will wait for me when I can no longer keep up!