Last year, Kaylin Richardson, Canyons Resort’s Ambassador of Skiing, found herself in her first Warren Miller Entertainment film, “Flow State.”
The two-time Olympian and downhill national champion was highlighted during a Canyons segment.
This year, Richardson will make her second Warren Miller appearance in the entertainment company’s 64th film, “Ticket to Ride,” that will make its Park City screening premiere at the Eccles Center on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 18 and Oct. 19.
Instead of showcasing Canyons, Richardson will be seen cutting some lines in Norway’s Western Fjord region, thanks to her ambassadorship deal with Helly Hansen sportswear.
“Last year I signed with Helly Hansen and they also had a segment in last year’s film,” Richardson told The Park Record. “When I signed on with them, they told me they wanted me to participate in this year’s film as well.”
Helly Hansen took Richardson and fellow ambassador Aurélien Ducroz, the French freeride champion, to Norway last February.
“I’ve been to Norway, but never outside Ålesund and Sunnmøre, so, this was new to me, and it was so beautiful,” Richardson said. “I love Norway, especially since my heritage is Norwegian, and right when I got off the plane, I felt like it’s my homeland without sounding too cheesy.”
Not only was everyone she met tall and blonde, but they also had a lot of pride in their land.
“Everyone was so happy to show us around their home and their country,” Richardson said.
The segment Richardson and Ducroz appear in was made possible by a partnership with Helly Hansen and FjordNorway, the tourist bureau for the region.
“We went out on the fjord in a boat almost every day and looked at the mountains and picked out some places to shoot,” Richardson said. “Then we had planning sessions every night.”
The only challenge Richardson, Ducroz and the filmmakers faced was getting the right shot during the not-so-ideal skiing conditions.
“Filming a Warren Miller film is an endeavor that relies on the snow and weather,” Richardson said. “Although the weather didn’t cooperate as well as we would have liked, the scenery is so beautiful that we still got some amazing scenic shots.
“There were still a couple of days of great skiing, but we were there for two weeks and it was warm with a lot of fog and some rain,” she said. “It was a little heartbreaking, but also very cool.”
Thanks to the scenery and the magic of editing, audiences will not see the struggles the skiers and filmmakers had, Richardson said.
Still, the warm conditions got Richardson thinking about another job she’s involved in. She’s an ambassador for the I Am Pro Snow campaign, which is in partnership with Warren Miller through the Al Gore’s environmental initiative called the Climate Reality Project.
“It was interesting talking with the Norwegians when I was there, because they all told me the warmer conditions would have been unheard of 20 years ago,” Richardson said. “Temperatures are definitely slowly rising, but I think it’s easy for people to feign ignorance, because not every winter will be horrible. And this was something I had in my mind when I skied in Norway.”
Working as an ambassador of skiing and the I Am Snow campaign both stem from Richardson’s love of the sport.
“I began to see how skiing could become a jumping-off point in so many endeavors after I graduated high school in Minneapolis,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t going to go straight to college, because the 2006 Olympics were within reach at the time and I needed to train.”
During her training, Richardson realized how skiing could create common bonds.
“Even people who ski only once a year or go and see the Warren Miller films every year, but haven’t skied for the last three, still love skiing,” she said. “Skiers come from Texas or Southern California where skiing isn’t part of their daily thoughts like us in Park City, but their eyes light up when they talked to me about skiing.
“It’s pretty crazy how skiing has helped at the very least to start up a conversation with all the different endeavors I have been a part of,” she said.
Richardson’s appearances in the Warren Miller films have also helped bring down some misconceptions about winter-sports athletes.
“A lot of times, I think, there is a stigma that ski racers don’t enjoy powder, and once they’re done racing, especially at the level that I got to — being a two-time Olympian — that they don’t want to ski in that point of their life,” she said. “I think that comes from a handful of racers who have retired and said they have no desire to go skiing, but I was the exact opposite.
“I was, quote, retired, which was just a euphemism for ‘moving onto something new,’ when I was relatively young,” she said. “I was 25 and ready to do some backcountry skiing and filming and I especially wanted to be in a Warren Miller Film.
“Through serendipity, I got the gig at Canyons and was able to appear in ‘Flow State,’ as if the planets aligned in my favor,” she said. “The biggest jumping-off point was when Icelantic Skis, a company that makes custom skis in Colorado, came to me and wanted to use my love of skiing and background of racing to promote backcountry skiing.”
Unfortunately, Richardson will not be at the Park City screening.
“I’m going to be in Minnesota and sharing ‘Ticket to Ride’ with the people I grew up with,” she said. “But while I love Minnesota, Utah is still my home.”
Warren Miller Entertainment’s 64th film,”Ticket to Ride,” will be screened at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, 1750 Kearns Blvd., on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 18 an Oct. 19, at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Additional screenings will be held in in Orem at SCERA and in Ogden at Peery’s Egyptian Theater from Oct. 15 through Oct. 17. Tickets for the Park City screenings are available by visiting www.arttix.org or www.ecclescenter.org.