People of Powder: Ian Greenwood

Do you remember why your parents wanted you to do the race program? 

"There'd be weekends I just wanted to have sleepovers with my friends and play computer games. I didn't wanna go skiing. And my parents would be like, 'you have to go skiing.' I'm really glad they gave me that push, because by the time I hit high school, all I did on weekends was go ski with my friends." 

Totally. So, you moved on from that program to more freeride style skiing. Can you talk about that transition?

"By the time I was in middle school, I was starting to make that pivot. I did a few years of the the freeride program at Crystal Mountain. I had this Orage B-Dog jacket. 

I ended up doing it just because Crystal Mountain didn't have a terrain park. I know they do now, but it was pretty hit or miss growing up. Freeride was what we had.

I kept competing through all of high school, but my friends and I stopped doing structured coaching during the weekend. We would just go ski and hang out." 

Was any of that spurred by ski media (films, photos, magazines) that you were consuming at that age?

"From a pretty young age, I had the the classic 13-year-old wants to become professional skier mindset. I watched Poorboys and Matchstick. I thought, 'oh, that's what I want to do.' I wanna be in a ski movie. And from that point, I kept on consuming ski media. It's not what it is now, where there are these huge freeride programs all over North America. It was kind of this niche within skiing. 

I was consuming skiing media from a pretty young age. And it wasn't just freeride stuff that I was watching. I was on NewSchoolers a lot, and I was watching a lot of street skiing, everything that falls under the freeskiing umbrella."

You went from consuming a lot of NewSchoolers content to later working for them. How did that come about? 

"I graduated college in 2020 and moved to Missoula. I had a couple different jobs here. I was doing raft rentals. I worked in a a gear shop and then a deli. While I was at the deli, I knew that I still wanted to pursue writing as a career, and I just wasn't totally sure how to make it happen. It felt impossible. 

It was the classic paradox where you need experience to get in the door, but you can't get experience. So, I just decided to write. On NewSchoolers, anyone can publish articles. It's totally open. 

I decided to publish this article about how, in my opinion, we were in another golden era of ski media. They saw that article and they just said, 'Hey, do you want to do some writing for us?' I started doing around an article a month, maybe more. 

All of that stuff is still up there. It was about ski movies, and I did some interviews too. Mostly, it was focused on the park skiing side of things." 

A lot of your work is introspective. Flash forward to now, and you're working at POWDER. What article are you most stoked on?

"Usually, it is the most recent one. The avalanche forecasting one that we published last week. Being able to interview multiple people, getting to talk to Bruce Tremper. 

He's a a total legend in the the avalanche forecasting world. It was awesome. He's super insightful. And I think that's a really cool part of writing in general is just getting to talk to these people who know so much. That was a fun one to work on." 

Is that your favorite part of ski journalism, talking to people? Or is there something else that you really like about it? 

"The talking to people part, I do really like it. But on the flip side, I'm a pretty socially anxious person, so that part is really hard for me. It's really stressful a lot of the time. Sometimes it goes really smooth, and then sometimes I'm totally in my head and it stresses me out. So it's kind of a mixed bag."

How much do you ski during the winter? 

"This past season was kind of a crap season in Montana. So I went pretty much every weekend because during the week, I don't usually have time to work and then go ski. I don't live quite close enough. 

I skied around 30 days this season. In college, I was getting closer to 60, something like that. Someday, I hope to be in a position where I could ski more than 30, 40 days in a season. For the past 4 years, home has been Montana Snow Bowl, which is just about 30 minutes outside of Missoula. 

It's just a couple of two-seaters, kind of your classic mom and pop hill. It's been pretty refreshing skiing there, because of my time in college skiing at Whistler. Whistler is amazing. The terrain is unbeatable, but it can feel like Disneyland at times. 

There's a ton going on, and Snowbowl is the polar opposite of that. And then they also have really good Bloody Marys."

Outside of skiing, I know you're into photography. Your Instagram is filled with some really cool film photos, so it seems to be an interest of yours? 

"With photography, I have had periods where I've been really obsessed with it. The first period was in my last year of college. I got really into night photography. 

I didn't have a car, so I was borrowing friends' cars or just walking around with my camera and tripod, taking night photos. When I moved to Montana, I had my own car. A lot of nights during the week, I would finish with work, and I would just go drive around for a while looking for places to take photos of. 

I was obsessed with these two photographers- Todd Hido and Gregory Crewdson."

What are your goals career wise?

"The overarching goal for right now, at least career wise, is just to be able to write things about skiing and maybe other things in the future that I would want to read. 

It's kind of a vague goal, but I think that's the main one. And, to keep skiing a lot and just have fun." 

Totally. I feel like so many aspects of your life came together for POWDER. 

"Yeah. If there's one thing I've learned from adulthood, it is that being at the right place at the right time is everything."