The SnowBrains Podcast

Season 6, Episode 99Sophie Goldschmidt is the President and CEO of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team, leading the organization responsible for the future of ski racing and snowboarding in the United States from grassroots development to Olympic podiums. Before stepping into this role, she built a career at the highest level of global sports and media, including senior leadership positions at the NBA, the World Surf League, and major international sporting events. At U.S. Ski & Snowboard, she oversees everything from athlete funding and high-performance programs to sponsorship, governance, and long-term health of the sport in a rapidly changing landscape. Her job sits at the intersections of athletes, fans, brands, and the future of skiing and snowboarding in America. In this conversation, we talk about her path leading to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team, what it actually takes to support elite athletes behind the scenes, the challenges facing competitive skiing today, and where she sees the sport headed next. This episode of The SnowBrains Podcast is sponsored by Les 3 Vallées.Dreaming of the ultimate European ski trip? Les 3 Vallées—the world’s largest ski area—is now easier than ever for North Americans to visit, thanks to the new Les 3 Vallées Travel online agency. This one-stop booking platform connects you directly to seven legendary French Alps resorts, including Courchevel, Méribel, and Val Thorens. Build your perfect ski week with lodging, lift tickets, lessons, rentals, airport transfers, and more. Everything in one simple spot.Plan your bucket-list winter or year-round mountain getaway at bookings.les3vallees.com.Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:

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This episode was edited by Liam Abbott.Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 98Caroline Gleich is a professional ski mountaineer, filmmaker, author, and one of the most visible climate advocates in the outdoor world. She's climbed and skied some of the biggest lines on the planet, including multiple 8,000m peaks, while using her platform to push hard for outdoor conservation. In 2024, Caroline ran for the US Senate in Utah, bringing climate policy, public lands, and outdoor access directly into the political arena. It was one of the most high-profile campaigns ever launched by a professional athlete in the outdoors space, and it changed long-standing assumptions about who gets to run for office and whose voices belong there. Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:

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This episode was edited by Liam Abbott.Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 97

Vasu Sojitra is one of the most influential skiers in the world, a professional skier, filmmaker, and activist. He lost his leg to cancer at just 9 months old, long before he ever clipped into skis. What he's done since has redefined what's possible in the mountains. Vasu is known for his big mountain skiing, backcountry expeditions, and powerful storytelling, that challenges how we think about ability, access, and inclusion in outdoor spaces. Through his skiing films and advocacy, he has helped change the conversation around adaptive sports and who the mountains are really for.

This episode is sponsored by Smugglers Notch.

If you want a winter getaway that does everything, Smugglers’ Notch is the place. Stay right in our mountainside village with cozy lodging just steps from dining, shopping, and a massive lineup of activities. We’re talking indoor pools, hot tubs, the FunZone, family adventures, nighttime excitement, and so much more—all in one unbeatable location. Park once, play all week, and let the good times roll.

Visit Smuggs.com.

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This episode was edited by Liam Abbott.Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 96

Kelly Brush is a former collegiate ski racer whose life changed in an instant after a ski racing accident left her paralyzed while competing for Middlebury College. Instead of stepping away from the sport, Kelly helped build one of the most impactful non-profits in the outdoor world. The Kelly Brush Foundation supports people with spinal cord injuries through adaptive sports grants and by funding cutting-edge research aimed at curing paralysis. But the foundation also works on the prevention side, providing grants to ski clubs across the country for safety equipment like b-nets and padding to help reduce the risk of catastrophic racing injuries before they happen. Since its founding, the Kelly Brush Foundation has helped thousands of individuals get back outside and has raised millions of dollars for research and community support.This episode of The SnowBrains Podcast is brought to you by Slopes.Take your snow days to the next level with Slopes: Ski and Snowboard, the all-in-one app for your ski adventures. With Slopes, you get detailed stats and performance insights, never lose track of friends, and have resort information all at your fingertips.Download the app now or visit getslopes.com to learn more.Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:

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Season 6, Episode 95Curtis Herbet is the Founder of Slopes. Slopes is one of the most popular ski and snowboard apps in the world, used by millions of skiers and riders around the world to track vertical feet, runs, speed, days on snow, and long-term season stats. What started as a side project has now become the default logbook for resort skiers and riders. Curtis is a former Apple engineer who took a product-first approach to skiing data, obsessing over accuracy, design, and user experience. He built Slopes to solve a simple problem: give skiers and riders clean, reliable data, without the clutter.

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This episode was edited by Liam Abbott.

Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 94Dr. Kevin Stone has become a real friend of the show, now making his third appearance on the podcast. He is one of the world's leading orthopedic surgeons and the founder of the Stone Clinic in San Francisco. He's a pioneer in biological knee restoration, a surgeon trusted by Olympic athletes and everyday skiers alike. He's a voice who's been pushing sports medicine for decades. Every time Dr. Stone comes on, we walk away smarter and usually a little more hopeful about the future of knees. Today, we're diving into the newest advances in joint repair, what he's seeing on the cutting edge, and all of us mountain athletes should know if we want our bodies to last.

This episode of the SnowBrains podcast is brought to you by AirFlare.

Imagine significantly cutting search times when locating guests lost or injured—even in areas with limited cell service. AirFlare Search Tools 'text-out location-back' technology allows ski patrol teams to quickly pinpoint a guest’s phone, respond immediately, and guide them to safety. Already in use at over 30 resorts, AirFlare’s platform works from dispatch to responder, locating subjects with real-time search coordination. It’s easy to deploy, simple to use, and built for patrol.

Learn more at airflare.com.Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:On FacebookOn InstagramOn ThreadsOn SnowBrains.comThis episode was edited by Liam Abbott.Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 93

Denis Lee is a Co-Founder of AirFlare, a company built around a simple idea with lifesaving potential – turning the smartphone people already carry in their pockets every single day into a powerful search and rescue tool, and a powerful tool to help ski patrol save time and energy. He left his traditional corporate career to pursue his passions in the outdoors, motivated in part by the passing of a friend who went missing during a winter trip in Washington state. That experience sparked a desire to rethink how technology could help rescuers locate people faster and more accurately.

Working with his co-founder, Lee developed AirFlare into an accessible safety platform that allows adventures to share their location with friends and family and give ski patrols and search and rescue teams new tools that work even without cell service.

His mission is to make mountain safety easier, more modern, and available to everyone, not just those with specialized equipment.Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:

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This episode was edited by Liam Abbott.

Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 92

Sasha Berkovich grew up in the Soviet Union at a time when nothing came easy, and nothing in skiing was handed to you. If you wanted gear, you had to barter for it. If you wanted to ride a rope tow, you had to build it, you had to scrap together old engines, scavenged parts, and whatever rope you could find. Sometimes the only currency that worked was vodka. Skiing wasn't a hobby for Sasha back then; it was something you earned piece by piece in a world where there was never enough of anything.

Sasha chased skiing anyway. He built lifts out of scraps, traded bottles of vodka to get bindings, he found a way. And then, in 1988, he did something even harder – Sasha, his wife, and their two young children escaped the Soviet Union to make a life for themselves in the United States. No guarantees, no safety net, just a belief that freedom and skiing were worth risking everything for.

Today, we get to hear what he did, what skiing meant to him during those years, and how his story unfolded once he reached America. And I'm grateful to Sasha because one of his young children, whom he brought from the Soviet Union, is my very best ski buddy, Greggy, with whom I just spent 10 weeks in Patagonia ski mountaineering.

Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:On FacebookOn InstagramOn ThreadsOn SnowBrains.comThis episode was edited by Liam Abbott.Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 91

Brian Lazar is the Deputy Director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. He's been studying snow and avalanches for more than two decades, working as a forecaster, guide, educator, and researcher across Colorado, Alaska, all of the mountain west, all over South America, including Patagonia. At the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, he's one of the people responsible for the avalanche forecasts we all rely on throughout the winter. Brian's background spans snow science, hazard mitigation, backcountry travel, and the human factor side of avalanche accidents. He's taught with AIARE and has helped shape how we understand risk in the mountains.

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This episode was edited by Liam Abbott.

Hosted by Miles Clark.

Season 6, Episode 90

Andrew Gast is the General Manager of Mt. Ashland ski area in southern Oregon. This is a very special ski resort because it is not-for-profit. Its one and only goal is to serve its community to the best of its abilities. This episode explores everything Mt. Ashland, along with how non-profit ski areas work in general.Follow The SnowBrains Podcast:On FacebookOn Instagram On ThreadsOn SnowBrains.comThis episode was edited by Liam Abbott.Hosted by Miles Clark.