For Sierra Schlag, empowering women looks more like welcoming people in and becoming friends than it does competing for a seat at the table. Sierra Schlag is a Japanese-American professional skier and storyteller who is one of the brilliant minds behind Girl Winter Film Tour, Moonrise Creative, and more.

Sierra has starred in, produced, and created some of my favorite ski films of the past few years, including Advice For Girls, Nisei, That One Friend, Bloom, and more. Success and genius like that doesn’t just arrive, and it’s really who Sierra is as a collaborator and storyteller that contributed to the wonder of those films. However, it’s her approach to empowering women, such as through the Girl Winter Film Tour, that has inspired me the most.

Sierra and I have become better friends over the past year since this interview was recorded and I can confirm that the way she’s brought people along for the ride, as friends, is genuine and in my opinion, what is most impressive. Now, she’s combined that inertia with her friends to form Moonrise Creative, a women-led creative studio.

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March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, so I’m joined for a chairlift chat by Kelsey Boyer, founder of Save A Brain, who is channeling her experience to shift the brain health of her community. Save A Brain’s mission is to provide education, encourage prevention, and spread awareness about the long-term mental and physical effects of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) and concussions.

Kelsey’s magnetic energy, firsthand experience, and ability to build community give a unique voice and perspective to such an invisible injury. We talk about her path from starting the nonprofit, her lessons learned along the way, and what impact work she’s most proud of and makes her heart (and brain) sing.

As a longtime fan of the work she’s doing and the community she’s formed at Save A Brain, I knew this was a conversation I wanted to have and share with all of you. Personally, I’ve experienced and navigated serious struggles with my own brain injuries, so this hits close to home and I’m grateful for Kelsey and her work.

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Devon O’Neil is a journalist and author of The Way Out. A gripping, consuming read, The Way Out chronicles a 2017 backcountry ski trip in the Colorado Rockies that ended in both tragedy and miracle—and changed a community forever. Set in small towns and towering mountain ranges, it is at once an ode to high-country life and a dissection of what that life costs.

After reading the book, I was left with a profound feeling that it’s a story any member of our outdoor-loving communities should read. Devon’s writing is so much more than a page-turning story. He explores and examines the saga of the accident, but also life in the mountains at-large, with nuance and emphasis on the emotional and communal realities.

Devon himself lives in Breckenridge, Colorado and is a longtime reporter of life in the mountains, our adventurous pursuits, and the psychological realities faced by folks in these communities. He also moonlights as a mountain hutmaster, and in many ways, he became the perfect person to dive into the untold story from this harrowing accident in a true, relatable manner. In the interview, we get into the human side of his writing, the book, and what the process was like to immerse himself in a difficult story.

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Cam Smith just competed in the sport of skimo’s Olympic debut in the Milano Cortina Olympics, including a 4th-place finish in the mixed relay. Cam is an 11-time US Ski Mountaineering national champion, holds course records for The Grand Traverse, Gothic Mountain Tour, and Power of Four, and has also represented Team USA at the Mountain & Trail Running World Championships. As a professional mountain athlete, both in the sport ski mountaineering and as an elite professional trail and mountain runner, Cam has smashed records and established himself as a favorite in the sports for both his performances and how he carries himself as a person.

I had the opportunity to talk with Cam less than a week removed from competing, immediately after he arrived back in the U.S. His reflections from the Olympics are fresh, candid, and personal. In our conversation it is abundantly clear that Cam’s recent success, and the ascendance of skimo, is the result of well over a decade of building up to this Olympic moment. His commitment to that process in the bigger picture shines through admirably.

Cam told me he said yes to my interview request so soon after returning stateside because it was on a chairlift, not a Zoom call—so you know I loved hearing that. We linked up in his home of Crested Butte, Colorado. Everyone I talked to was so excited for him, proud of how he represented their community, and lauded him for so much more than being an Olympian.

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Alan Henceroth has worked at Arapahoe Basin since 1988. Now the President & COO, Al has been a core part of the history of one of North America’s most legendary, unique ski areas. His leadership has helped to shape not just the ski area itself, but also the soul, charisma, and identity that’s given A-Basin its ardent following and community.

Al and I ride Pallavicini, so of course, we talk about the Pali chair. It becomes the vehicle of the conversation into what makes A-Basin what it is and how keeping the soul alive matters, both at A-Basin and in the sport of skiing. Yes, A-Basin has undergone a lot of change, but traditional ski media has covered that exhaustively. I take this opportunity to bring you along for a chairlift ride that’s actually personal and instead focuses on what hasn’t changed.

Of course, this conversation, episode, and chairlift are especially meaningful to me personally. I grew up at A-Basin. My skiing was shaped by the terrain off Pali and my life was shaped by conversations on this chairlift. Alan and I have also known each other for two decades, all the way back to when I was a little kid.

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Zoe Atkin is competing for an Olympic medal. She is the reigning 2025 World Champion in the halfpipe and also just grabbed *another* gold medal at X-Games. This week, in Livigno, Italy, Zoe enters the 2026 Olympics as a top contender in the halfpipe.

While her prowess on skis is truly world-class, Zoe is also a student at Stanford and approaches the halfpipe with a conscious approach and wisdom beyond her years. After taking a mental health break following a disappointing 2022 Olympics, Zoe dove into school and also sports psychology. After our conversation, I was left with a devout belief that she is extremely well prepared mentally for the Olympics. And of course, it only takes watching one run to see she is prepared physically too.

This conversation is from a late-season training camp in Mammoth last spring. Despite her meteoric success, it was an honor and a wonderful opportunity to connect with Zoe on a calm, simple, personable level.

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Chris Davenport is a professional skier, ski guide, and true legend of the sport. The multifactorial chapters of his career—from winning the World Extreme Ski Championships in 1996 all the way to his film career, skiing Everest, numerous first descents around the world, authoring the Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America, and more led to him being inducted into the US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.

Dav is one of my biggest childhood heroes. I personally most vividly remember when he became the first person to ski all of the fourteeners in Colorado in one year. Like he was one of my childhood heroes, in the interview he exhibits the joy in still living out his childhood dreams.

Over the past two decades since then, the longevity and evolution of his career and skiing lifestyle has inspired me to continue learning from Dav. Through conversation, he shows that longevity comes from an evolved relationship with risk, keeping pursuit rooted in passion, and finding purpose in facilitating experiences for others. Connecting with him for this conversation was also a joy because we linked up at Aspen Highlands last spring, and in the time since, I’ve moved to the Roaring Fork Valley and made Aspen my new home mountain.

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This chairlift chat on The Drew Petersen Podcast is with Caroline Gleich, a professional ski mountaineer who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2024. As an athlete activist, she has climbed Everest, was the first woman to ski all 90 lines in the Chuting Gallery, a guidebook to skiing in the Wasatch Mountains, climbed and skied Cho Oyu, and is pursuing her goal of climbing the Seven Summits.

But in 2024, she pursued her most audacious goal yet: running for U.S. Senate in the 2024 election. As the Democratic candidate in deeply red Utah, the odds were stacked against her but she committed with full resolve. Personally, I was amazed seeing her at her first campaign fundraiser to watching her consistently show up through the election.

Naturally, I was curious to hear what that whirlwind was really like. We linked up for this conversation in April of 2025, far enough removed from the election, but fresh enough that her takeaways were poignant and inspiring.

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This chairlift chat episode is brought to you by Protect Our Winters. To learn more and to join Team POW, visit protectourwinters.org.

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In the winter of 1972/73, Powder Magazine was founded by Jake and Dave Moe. In the decades since, Powder became the Bible of skiing, defining the culture and helping shape the track of the sport. Fortunately for us, Jake also just happens to be one of the most passionate skiers I have ever met.

This episode felt like the right fit to kick off the podcast. First, Jake is hilarious and so joyful. In a broad sense, this episode feels reflective of my relationship with the sport of skiing, media, and my professional career. I idolized Powder Magazine as a kid, interned in the office a decade ago, and now, here I am, starting this podcast as a continued exploration of storytelling blended into my ski career. So of course, I had to interview the Founder of Powder himself.

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Angel Collinson surprised most everyone when she retired in 2021. She was, and likely always will be, one of the greatest female big mountain skiers of all time. This episode was actually filmed all the way back in February of 2024. It was one of Angel’s first times back on skis.

I’m also choosing to start the podcast with this episode because it illustrates that I’ve been wanting to create this for a very long time. And it’s true to the compass of the podcast: real, genuine conversation and connection with a great human being.

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