MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2019

103 The men behind the wheel are Kye Petersen and Johnny Foon, the Marty McFly and Emmett “Doc” Brown of the local big mountain scene. They’ve recently partnered up in the ski-shaping business, building on the Foon Skis brand—a staple in the Coast Mountains since 2011—and introducing Kye Shapes, a brand that Petersen can literally call his own. The Foon/Petersen connection is deeply rooted in Canadian ski history. Foon pioneered many classic lines in the Coast Mountains with Kye’s dad, Trevor Petersen, a freeski icon who died in an avalanche in 1996 when Kye was only six years old. Alongside a small a crew of big mountain pioneers that included Eric Pehota, Steve Smaridge, Jia Condon, Pete “The Swede” Mattson and Shaun “Puddles” Hughes, Trevor Petersen and Johnny “Foon” Chilton showed a generation of snowsliders what was possible in the Coast Mountains and beyond. “They were on skinny skis, but they were still hitting all the good lines,” says Petersen, 29, of Whistler’s first generation of big mountain rippers. “Those guys came to Whistler and no one was here, so they got to ski everything: Currie, Fissile, Blackcomb Peak, Wedge. Everything was new. Imagine coming here when freeskiing was a new sport… they were basically inventing it.” That old-school crew were doing it all without the benefit of today’s ski technology—on long, skinny skis better suited to holding four shots of whiskey than charging first descents in waist-deep snow. “I think a lot of the skiers in the '90s would’ve been better skiers than the guys today if they had today’s technology,” Petersen says. For 59-year-old Foon, today’s technology works best with a solid connection to the mountains where it’s being used. Since 2011, he’s been hand-building skis from locally-harvested yellow cedar to create a brand inspired by the surrounding environment, and his extensive experience being out in it. To create the boards he envisions, Foon matches his local experience and passion with state- of-the-art equipment. Alongside his various saws, planers and woodcore preparation tools, Foon’s unassuming two-storey warehouse/headquarters also holds a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine, a base-routing station, a fibreglass prep area, and two pneumatic ski presses—one for Foon Skis, and one for Kye Shapes. For almost two years, Petersen has been working and learning alongside Foon, sourcing high-quality materials, building prototypes and testing the crap out of them—all in search of a shape and vision that’s uniquely his own. “A lot of things have inspired my ski design, mainly other ski, snowboard and surf shapers,” Petersen says, adding that he finds a lot of inspiration studying the hydrodynamics of sports like surfing or pow surfing. “I’m also looking at what I’ve done in the past, and seeing where it can go from there.” On skis, Petersen’s past has always looked like glimpse at the future of the sport. He admits to being drawn to the same style of big, steep skiing that his dad’s old posse pioneered, but watching him powerslide down a burly spine wall—staying ahead of his slough and then slowing down to throw a 720 spin off a cliff at the bottom of the face—is a jaw-dropping display of how much progression has occurred in just one generation. And many of those advances, according to Petersen, come from the boards under his feet and seven years of intensive, hands-on designing and testing. Kye Shapes athlete Matty Richard performing rigorous research and development testing on Whistler Mountain. ANDREW BRADLEY