The program was small and challenging, but surrounded her with other winter athletes in an environment that was accommodating to the unusual demands necessary for high levels of training. After an unhappy year at a “stereotypical” New England prep school, Brooks moved out west to Steamboat Springs, Colorado where she attended the Lowell Whiteman School (now Steamboat Mountain School) to find an academic program more commensurate to her academic schedule.īrooks calls herself a “serious” and “elite” skier, but “no superstar.” Still, Lowell Whiteman fit what she needed. While chasing wins, Brooks was “consistently fighting to move up in the racing world without a whole lot of glory.”Ī demanding schedule eventually got her bounced from public high school: “Too many absences even though I had all A’s,” she laughs. She recalls her first ski races around 6 or 7-years old, with training and competitions across New England and then the country. “We were always supposed to figure out something productive to do outside.”īrooks’ time outside wasn’t meant to just be about sports, but that became inevitable when she got very good, very fast. “It wasn’t the lifestyle, it was an expectation,” he adds. The deal is that we spend time outside,’” she recalls.Ĭhase explains the familial understanding with a bit more bluntness and humor: “I don't remember learning how to ski … I came to consciousness and there were skis on my feet.” It doesn’t matter if you ski or snowboard or race or just sit outside and drink hot cocoa. “My parents always framed it as, ‘As a family, we spend time outside. The only caveat was the siblings had to be outdoors. “The ski programs at Waterville became the daycare for my brother and I so my parents could ski on the weekends.”Īway from the more formal instruction, Brooks and her brother, Chase, were told to use their time however they saw fit while their parents stayed on the slopes. “I started skiing when I could walk,” she says. Getting hurt in these backwoods-with a lack of cell service and roads-make getting help a dangerous (or unlikely) endeavor in case of injury, and grueling New England winters paired with multiple water crossings pose the possibility of hypothermia, too. In hiking the Catamount, the greatest threats are rooted in isolation. It was a level-headed decision, the type that is often seen as detached from people willing to take life-threatening risks in the first place, whether hiking a remote trail, soloing a mountain face, or jumping out of a plane. “If it’s a foot, or a foot and a half, I’m confident I can get through it,” she says, “But the snow was two feet and it wasn’t stopping. Risk is a rite of passage that many outdoors enthusiasts and athletes take to logical extremes-and often beyond-but Brooks turned to her decade-plus of accumulated knowledge of nature to know when enough snow was literally enough.
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