Freeskiing Legend Sean Pettit May Have Just Revolutionized Backcountry Leisure
The ever-crafty Sean Pettit is back with another invention.
This time, his efforts aimed to improve the ski leisure experience via a deployable on-slope chair.
Pettit, who's hailed as one of the greatest big mountain skiers ever to live, has spent the past several years completing what I can only describe as "side quests."
He's gotten into snowboarding, launched a clothing brand, built a stone dome in the woods, and, more recently, collaborated on a pair of socks with Dissent Labs, to name a few of his endeavors.
Notably, though, Pettit's been pretty absent from skiing in any public-facing way—a choice many don't understand given his incredible talents. But I get it. In a 2018 interview with Snowboarder, Pettit noted that his nerves—after years of pushing the envelope as a skier—had "taken a beating."
Snowboarding and, presumably, his design and clothing-oriented projects have allowed Pettit to learn new skills and expand his horizons without risking life and limb.
During the Snowboarder interview, Pettit explained that when he went snowboarding, due to his status as a relative beginner, he didn't "have to do much to have fun. I can simply ride a cat track with some side hits. It can be foggy or whatever, and I'll just have so much fun. In a sense, you're a kid again."
Skier or not, it's a valuable take-home revelation. While few of us will reach a point in our ski careers where further improvement risks injury, periods of stalled skill progression abound. And sometimes, when this happens, the best thing you can do is try another hobby. Or make like Pettit and build a stone dome in the woods. As long as you remain committed to lifelong learning and creating, you should be in the green.
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