Sending It To The Top Of The World

August 16th, 2006 at 05:44am Vanessa Pierce 8

Post bBlogger Vanessa Pierce takes off to South America with Skiing Post profiled athlete, Jess McMillan (2006 IFSA #2 ranked freeskier in the world) at the beginning of September to ski an ambitious 10 resorts in Chile and Argentina in one month. Pierce thinks she can ski with the rest of the crew, which includes former IFSA North American champ Lynsey Dyer and a few guests including MSP star Ingrid Backstom. Read all about it on Skiing Post beginning Sept. 10, 2006.

GRAND TARGHEE RESORT, Wyoming – Sending it seems natural to freeskier Jess McMillan.

It’s what she used to do as a kid, it’s what she did all season and it’s what she did here last spring as the fog began to clear to unveil the fresh powder. There she goes, sending it off a cornice, stomping it and arcing it to the bottom of the chairlift. Freeskiers are known to “send it,” “point it,” and “toss it” off cliffs as they “kill it” during a run. In McMillan’s world, she likes to send it, preferring to “straightline it” but will happily “huck it” to prove a point. It’s all about splashing a stellar line.

What is this nonsensical vernacular? It’s the language that goes along with being a world-class skier, albeit a little crazy.

Last spring at the Subaru North American Freeskiing Championships in Kirkwood, Calif., McMillan pointed it – her skis that is – down a 40-plus degree chute and lived to place second, earning enough points to finish the season ranked No. 2 on the International Free Skiers Association World Tour.

McMillan, 28, earned points from three stops –Snowbird, Utah, Verbier, Switzerland, and Kirkwood – where five judges critiqued athletes on their skiing skill through rock-riddled cirques and chutes. Last season marks only her second of competition, and last year, during her first, she ranked fourth.

“’Send it’ is my mantra,” she says, laughing on the chairlift as she swung her appropriately named Volkl Mantra skis. Everyone on tour seems to love McMillan, calling her a “sweetheart.” Maybe it’s because her voicemail greeting ends with, “I would love to talk to you.” But back at Targhee, she contemplated sending it off a terrain-park kicker to prove to her boyfriend she can stomp a 360.

In high school, McMillan liked to click into bindings attached to skis, latched to ski racks on the top of her car while buddies would drive 70 mph as she tucked. Then again, some things are too extreme for her like vertigo whiteout conditions at Targhee and the time she drove home from the Village to find that some crazy chick had hitched a ride on the outside of her car.

In the Kelly, Wyoming, resident’s time off she also likes to send it downhill on her mountain bike and down river in a kayak. McMillan makes money as a sometime ski instructor and a raft guide on Oregon’s Upper Klamath and California Salmon rivers in the summers.

“I’m not crazy,” she says, “just creative.”

She is creatively persuasive, too, a trick she learned early on. She was able to convince the Jackson Hole High School students to vote her student body president. She then learned more business savvy at the University of Montana where she graduated with degrees in business and forestry. She proved to Volkl Sport America – an international brand that sponsors former World Tour champ, Jackson’s Kit DesLauriers, and McMillan’s biggest competitor and friend Laura Ogden of Whistler, who is ranked No. 1 – that she was worthy of skis, Tecnica boots and Marker bindings. Cloudveil picked her up as an ambassador, and Dakine has joined team McMillan as well. And Warren Miller Entertainment might give her a shot in next winter’s ski film.

“For one, it’s fun,” she says about the contests. “Ultimately I want to get paid to go skiing and [the competitions] are a way to get your name out there and get recognized.”
McMillan got into freeskiing contests when her fellow ski instructors at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort told her to enter. Clearly, sending it was a natural gift for the former Junior Olympic national downhill champion, college racer and coach. McMillan was recruited to the University of Utah to race in the ski program, but tiring of the school after a month, she transferred to the University of Montana where she started the NCAA ski team. For two seasons, she acted as a coach and competed her senior year.

After the second World Tour stop in Verbier where McMillan placed second behind Ogden, she went back home for the local contest to compete against some of Jackson’s best women freeskiers such as former world-ranked Jessica Baker and former North American champ Lynsey Dyer, both veterans of competition. She decided to gamble with a gutsy line and the biggest air of the day to impress the judges, sending it off a 30-footer. She nearly stomped it. “If you fall, you’re out,” a disappointed McMillan said after the run. But, being competitive, she wasn’t about to bow out with a bout of walking pneumonia that she had picked up in Europe. She bounced back for the Kirkwood contest and survived 50 mph winds atop the Cirque Headwall while awaiting her run in a snow cave.

She sent it once again, killing most of the competition except one – Ogden.

If McMillan sends it and stomps it next season, there is no stopping this one. From No. 2 to No. 1, that wouldn’t be crazy, that would be creative.

For more on McMillan, visit her Web site.

Entry Filed under: Sports Women, Sponsors, Freeskiing, Wyoming, Jackson Hole, Extremes, Adventure Sports, Chile, South America, Argentina, Grand Targhee