The first time I rode A River Runs Through It (fist-pump! Cleared the bridge! Husband pushed his bike across… ), I should really have been somewhere else. I had blown off the second half of the Slow Food Cycle, an event I had organised, to switch the road cruiser for a squishy bike and go…
Category: whistler
Releasing my inner Evil Knievel is as easy as lying down and letting go
One year after Jon Montgomery won his 2010 Olympic gold medal, I lower myself face-first onto a narrow metal toboggan. Called a skeleton because its 1892 prototype resembles a human bone-rack, the 80 pound frame is more like an exo-skeleton and I am counting on it to keep all my bits properly in place, as…
“Celebrating” the one year anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
This time last year I was cursing El Nino, stalking the Weasel Workers and realising why the world has such a crush on Lindsey Vonn as I donned my best “I’m a serious sports journalist” face and joined the online reporting team covering the Games for NBCOlympics.com. It was, in all likelihood, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity….
Robin O’Neill goes deep for Deep Winter
Dear Robin, I was 100% in your corner last night at the Deep Winter Photo Challenge, but damn, was I nervous for you. “First woman competing for the King/Queen of Storms title.” Girlfriend, that’s a lot to carry on your shoulders. I love that you owned that, telling the Pique “I hope I can rock…
In Defence of App-less Skiing
I wrote a rant for Skier magazine recently, arguing that ski days should be app-less and device free. I wasn’t being deliberately provocative. I really do think that app-games, of which Vail’s new Epic Mix is the Grand Poobah, take away some fundamental aspect of the mountain experience. But as I wrote, If you need a…
Why I’m about to pay $65 for a lunch for the Kathy Barnett Memorial Fund
I cried most of the trip back from SIA in 2008. I had just heard that Kathy Barnett was dead, and was imagining the long and lonely flight her husband, my editor, must have been making home from their holiday in New Zealand, without his partner. Not the plan. Rob Montgomery, The People You Love…
Down the rabbithole – SBC SKIER magazine turns 10
A ski mag was my rabbithole… How else does a girl from Brisbane wind up in Whistler? I took the direct route, falling through a copy of some neon-flecked Australian ski magazine with Glen Plake on the cover, circa July 1994, to land in Whistler five months later into what would become a completely different…
PR is dead. Long live the storytellers.
I didn’t decide to wrap up my 4 year tenure as the Communications Director of the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival because PR is dead. (Although Mat Wilcox closing down her firm rang like a bell from the heart of Vancouver : ding, dong, the the game is forever changed. Start over. Start over.)…
Me! Me! Me! Stoking social media savvy at the Whistler Writers Festival
Honest. I’m not an egomaniac. That’s why I thought it was so funny to tell Stella Harvey, the Whistler Writers Festival director that I would present a session called “Me! Me! Me! How to build your social media savvy for wanton self-promotion.” But now the gig is imminent, (and even has a presenting sponsor in Street…
How to collaborate (or My Secret Crush on Graphic Designers)
I’m a word-nerd. Words are my fancy and my fetish… but working with illustrators, art directors and graphic designers over the years continues to supersize my respect for their ability to turn words (be it a tagline, a 2 page creative brief, or a 2000 word story) into pictures. I’m not sure if the 1000…
Lisa Richardson Bylines 