TSKJ/You Should be Here

In April 2017, Utah native Marcus Caston traveled to northern Norway, where he barely saw the mountains because of the crazy weather. When I met him in Narvik two weeks later, it rained for the next few days. But conditions improved, and Marcus spent the rest of the trip sporting his usual big smile. Marcus enjoys some Arctic goods in Grovfjord, Norway.

YOU SHOULD

BE HERE

THE METICULOUS MATTIAS FREDRIKSSON

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The Ski Journal

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LEFT • Åre, Sweden has been my home for the last 20 years. It can be a pretty incredible ski destination, especially when you explore Åreskutan, the mountain’s backside. This shot of John Crawford-Currie was taken from a helicopter while following him down Blåstensbranten, one of the area’s steeper runs.

Words Leslie Anthony Photos and Captions Mattias Fredriksson

MATTIAS

FREDRIKSSON car-calls me from the middle of nowhere. That’s not unusual. In the almost 20 years we’ve worked together, I’ve amassed a large catalog of such calls.

Drives through northern Scandinavia are long and lonely, perfect for transacting writer-photographer business from the quietude of a vehicle. What is unusual is that as we dive into this phone call, I find myself remembering the less-sedate calls around which our partnership coalesced. For years I could count on an annual Mattias drunk-dial from, say, a loud heavy-metal party in his hometown of Åre, Sweden. He’d speak excitedly for five minutes about ski projects before we’d agree to talk another time. “You should be here!” he’d finish. Eventually I was, many times, as we worked together on numerous assignments.

Walking around Åre in a stylish hat and scarf, Mattias was hard to place as one of the most prolific ski and mountain bike photographers of our time. His dedication, talent and titanic work ethic (inherited from his mother, he believes) having boosted him to the highest echelons. Even then, his photography was a readily identifiable mix of quiet alpine moments and perfectly framed action, fusing subtleties of mountain light with the angular geometry of human motion.

Most action-sport photographers are hard workers, but from the beginning Mattias took it to a whole new level, one that could drive to distraction. Mattias can see a photo in his mind perfectly, and is never afraid to spend an extra hour—or three—to get it. Yet he isn’t just a taskmaster. He’s also a cheerleader with a heart of gold, honoring friendships with thoughtful gifts and prints of his best photos.

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LEFT • I kicked off the winter of 2017 with a visit to British Columbia’s Mica Heli, one of my favorite places in the world to ski powder. It was my first time there with good friend Chris Rubens, who absolutely crushed Mica’s pillow lines—including this one on January 1, for my first shot of the new year.

RIGHT • Brian Rutter is one of the original members of the Jackson Hole Air Force. He came to Jackson to visit a friend in the late 1970s, but ran out of money and couldn’t leave. “It was a good place to be stuck,” as he put it when I met him in 2013. At the time, Brian was 56 years old and had not missed a single ski day during his 35 years in Jackson.

Circling the globe together, I’ve come to know his fashion sense, music tastes, blood-sugar arc, the way he methodically peels boiled eggs to discard the yolk, even what he might say in different situations. His particularities are so predictable, I’ve often concocted friendly nicknames like “Meticulous Freakrisson,” from the time he fretted that 200 rolls of film wouldn’t be enough for a three-day shoot. Never a fan of the barter economy or institutionalized mediocrity, over the years he’s sometimes found himself at odds with the ski industry.

But these are growing pains he and that industry have suffered together, as the value of his imagery to the sport is as true as the single-mindedness with which he’s pursued it.

Mattias grew up in Sandsbro, near the city of Växjö, Sweden, where he caught the skiing bug alongside other kids schussing a slope near his house. Though pursuits like playing in a punk band pushed skiing aside for a few years, it returned at age 16 through a job in a sporting goods shop. There, while thumbing through Sweden’s ski magazine of record, Åka Skidor, he familiarized himself with athletes of the day and the far-north ski mecca of Riksgränsen.

He experienced these firsthand in 1992 at age 17, finding Riksgränsen’s supercharged freeride scene very much as the magazine portrayed. Back home, working for the sports section of the local paper, he convinced them to let him write a story about inspirational Riksgränsen photographer Lars Thulin, and returned north. Befriending Thulin, he wrangled an internship that opened his eyes to the rarified world of ski photography.

Mattias began a print career in Stockholm with Vertikal magazine, eventually landing in Åre as editor of Åka Skidor.

Working with world-renowned photographers and traveling for the magazine engendered a thirst for the outside world, but the watershed came in 1999 when Powder published one of his photos. In 2000, he left Åka Skidor to focus on freelance photography. Åre, however, had neither big mountains nor great snow, not ideal for a photographer with Mattias’s vision. What it did have was incredible light, harsh weather and conditions that produced great all-around skiers like Jon Olsson and Henrik Windstedt.

Though he’d started in the big-mountain scene, progressive freestyle was exploding, and Mattias found himself at ground zero of the blast zone. From 2000 to 2011, he was on snow from October to July, traveling an average of 200 days a year. It was madness. He’d eventually slow down and circle back to the off-piste world, but not before being twice invited to Whistler’s prestigious Pro Photographer Showdown. In 2009, he won the Deep Summer Photo Challenge and took Photo of the Year for Bike with friend and model, Janne Tjarnstrom. (The duo has worked together since 1998, and Darcy Turenne’s The Moments Between is a documentary film about their partnership.) Though he now chooses assignments more carefully, the number of cover shots and publications in which his work appears remains impossibly prolific.

As we wrap our conversation, he allows that—after years in Åre with his Canadian partner Elle and their husky Tikaani— they’ll be spending more time in my neighborhood of coastal British Columbia. I’m happy, of course, but a little sad that the next time he car-calls, it won’t be from an exotic “middle of nowhere,” but from my own backyard.

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ABOVE • Endre Hals is Norway’s only ski manufacturer. He lives in a small village with a population of about 50 people in the Sunndal Mountains, surrounded by great skiing. Hals’ “factory” is an old barn, built in 1814, and when it snows he closes shop and skis powder.

ABOVE • I had the chance to work with Matchstick Productions for a number of years, and in 2009 they invited me to capture the iconic MSP jump at Whistler Blackcomb, BC. Simon Dumont airs into the sunset, while MSP’s Murray Wais films from the helicopter.

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My favorite place in the Alps is Engelberg, in central Switzerland; it’s been a special place to me since I first visited in 1997. I go back at least once every year, and it truly feels like a second home. Engelberg-newbie Marcus Caston channels Scot Schmidt while skiing the Steinberg, a classic run off the Titlis glacier.

ABOVE • Sean Pettit is hands down the best freeskier I know. Watching him ski is like watching a video game, and working with such an amazing athlete is a photographer’s dream.

He makes difficult lines and tricks look natural, like this 360 off an avy fence in Nakayama Toge, Japan.

BELOW • Henrik Windstedt and I have traveled the world since he was about 15 years old, and he is still one of my favorite skiers. Windstedt takes a snack break near Niseko, Japan after a very deep powder day.

TOP • Two and a half years ago, my girlfriend Elle and I welcomed Tikaani into our home. He is a Siberian Husky who loves following us on ski tours, hikes and bike rides.

Here, Tikaani takes a rest break after a long ski tour in Storulvån, Sweden, a great backcountry zone near the Norwegian border. As long as he’s with us, he’s stoked.

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BOTTOM •After spending so much time in and around Revelstoke, BC over the years, this January I finally made it to the other side of Rogers Pass for my first visit to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. One of the highlights was the incredible vistas from the top of these stairs, which felt very similar to the Alps. Emile Lavoie, Chad Sayers and Dave Treadway head to Heaven after 10 beautiful days.

The Ski Journal

“When Tobias Granath was a kid he had two dreams: To become a professional hockey player and to become a mountain guide. As an adult, he decided to combine the two. During his four-year professional career playing for the Chamonix Hockey Club he became a talented steep skier, and in 2014 became a fully certified mountain guide. These days he’s based out of Engelberg, Switzerland, where he skis the area’s steepest slopes.”

ABOVE • Chad Sayers and I spent six weeks traveling and skiing together around the Alps a few winters ago, and the conditions were so epic we kept changing our return tickets. Sayers plays with the light high above Zürs, in the Arlberg region of Austria.

RIGHT • Early in my career, I photographed a lot of big jumps, quarter pipes and jibs, and it’s safe to say that launched my career as a ski photographer. One of skiers I worked with the most during this time was Jon Olsson. He really broke onto the scene in 1999, and over the next 10-plus years we worked together constantly. This backcountry quarter pipe shot from Ullådalen, near Åre, Sweden, is one of the most iconic I ever took of Jon.