How Kirkwood Mountain Resort Became a Household Name for Freeriders

Ask most casual skiers or snowboarders about Kirkwood, and they might think you’re inquiring about Costco’s signature brand.  But if you ask a devout freerider—a fall-line fanatic who lives for the steep and spicy—Kirkwood is a household name, deservedly regarded as one of the best freeride resorts in the Lower 48. (Apologies in advance for all of the press, Kirkwood faithful.)

This sliver of the Sierra has a special place in our hearts, and not just because of its radical in-bounds terrain and stellar sidecountry access. In our sometimes sad and confusing era of uncurbed resort overdevelopment and commodification of ski culture, Kirkwood is a proud relic. It’s gritty, and we mean that as a compliment. Yes, it’s owned by Vail, one of the two mega-pass monopolies. But the South Lake Tahoe resort is remote enough that it will never draw the mainstream tourist crowds and so development dollars are funneled to more readily accessed, better-known, and proven, higher-earning resorts.

These economic factors have made Kirkwood somewhat forgotten, much to the delight of both visiting and local freeriders. There are Prius-sized potholes in the parking lot, ancient three-seater chairs crawling up the steeps, cozy condos instead of modern, glass-walled, monolithic hotels. But there’s something charming about it, something money can’t buy. In fact, an influx of money might just make the magic disappear. Skiing comes first at Kirkwood, not shareholders. There are no boutique cowboy hat shops in the base area, no Michelin-starred restaurants in the town (in fact, there’s no town to speak of, just an unpretentious base area village), no high-falutin après scene that’ll earn you posh points on social media. But if your idea of a good time is powder and pitchers, it’s hard to think of a better place. Simply put, it’s a ski area where straight lines still matter more than the resort’s bottom line.

We were lucky enough to host our annual snowboard test at Kirkwood this past spring (peep our photo gallery and travel guide from the great gear showdown). The more our crew of out-of-town riders followed local Kirkwood testers around their beloved stomping grounds, the more it became clear that this place is a freeride dream. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that freeriding, both the act itself and the culture that surrounds it, has deep roots here—and those roots aren’t going to be dug up anytime soon.

A History of Grit

Perched high in the Sierra between Carson Pass and the Carson Spur, about 1.5 hours from Reno International Airport and 45 minutes from Stateline, Nevada and South Lake Tahoe, Kirkwood doesn’t give itself up easily. That’s true today, when Sierra-spackling storms and avalanche conditions can cause road closures, and it was even more true back in the 1960s and ‘70s when Highway 88, the lone access road to Kirkwood, wasn’t even plowed during the winter months. A crew of audacious visionaries lobbied for federal approval to launch the resort on Forest Service land and got state assistance for road plowing, eventually opening Kirkwood for business in 1972.

All that to say, grit has always been a part of Kirkwood’s story. Most Tahoe resorts are much easier to access, and whether you’re taking a ski trip to Kirkwood or a loyalist building a life there, there’s a barrier to entry, an investment required that filters out more casual or fairweather visitors. But if and when you do make the trip, and you pull into the lot, look up at the in-bounds cliffs and chutes and behold the mighty Cirque, Kirkwood’s closed terrain that opens exclusively as a venue for freeride competitions, you can’t help but feel the magic of the mountain.

That’s how it was for Ricky Newberry, now Kirkwood’s general manager, who landed his first job there in 1999. He grew up skiing the relatively teeny hills of Michigan, and ventured out to Kirkwood on a family ski trip as a teenager. “I was blown away,” Newberry recalls. “I absolutely fell head over heels in love with the place and knew I wanted to come back.” Fresh out of college, the Midwest transplant got a gig in Kirkwood’s summer operations and worked his way into ski patrol that coming winter, where he spent the bulk of his career, about 20 years, donning red and white. “I wanted to ski all the rowdy terrain,” he remembers, citing the avalanche mitigation efforts on spicy closed terrain, the in-bounds gems, and the surrounding backcountry off Carson Pass. And so he did.

Freeride Culture and Competition

Even when he first arrived in the late ‘90s, Newberry says, freeride culture was already thriving at Kirkwood. The terrain—steep, rugged, rocky—both attracted freeriders and bred them, as learning to ski at Kirkwood naturally influenced big mountain progression. And competition, in particular freeride competition, was an inevitable continuation of that progression.

“Freeride events were pretty grassroots and new, but they aligned with the Kirkwood brand and terrain,” he says. Ski patrol began to open up The Cirque, an amphitheater of no-fall-zone terrain, huge cliff drops, and trophy lines, for freeride competitions. “I was pretty fired up as a young patroller to be able to work those events,” he says, chuckling. The opportunity to tip into these precipitous, technical venues was most certainly a tantalizing patrol perk.

From there, freeriding at Kirkwood “blew up,” Newberry says, with the resort hosting more Freeride World Tour stops, qualifying events, junior freeride events, and even Daron Rhalves’ Banzai Tour. That momentum hasn’t stopped, even after the resort was purchased by Vail in 2012. Just last year, Kirkwood hosted a Natural Selection Duel between Severin Van Der Meer and Brandon Davis, a Freeride World Qualifier event, and the Junior Freeride Championships. Competitions like these are by no means easy to host. It’s a heavy lift for ski patrol and mountain ops alike, and for any resort, especially one of Kirkwood’s stature, to invest so heavily in freeriding is virtually unheard of these days.

It’s also worth noting that while the Cirque is an alluring venue, the in-bounds terrain on either side of the Cirque’s closed terrain—Eagle Bowl to looker’s right of The Cirque, Thunder Saddle looker’s left—is enough to satisfy any freerider, too. Both venues often get used if ski patrol doesn’t sign off on conditions on The Cirque proper. In fact, we happened to be on hand for the Natural Selection Duel, where we watched Davis and Van Der Meer battle it out in Thunder Saddle on a February powder day last winter. The two riders went ballistic, threading gnarly chutes and throwing creative tricks off of Kirkwood’s iconic Y-spine.

Best of all? When the event came to a close, ski patrol dropped the ropes to Thunder Saddle, and we were among the frenzy of fortunate Kirkwood patrons buzzing through the steep and deep zone. It ended up being one of the best days of our winter.

Big Mountain Inspiration And Community

As we learned during that Natural Selection Duel, getting a taste of freeride-competition-worthy terrain, especially after watching the pros do their thing, is an experience unlike any other. For local talents like up-and-comer Tyler Dore, a 17-year-old skier and freeride competitor, attending in-person events as a spectator can be heavily influential.

“Watching the adult comps as a junior is the most inspirational thing ever, especially at my home mountain,” says Dore. “Seeing random dudes from around the world flip off of cliffs you’ve never seen someone hit can really open your eyes to what is possible, and motivate you to push yourself past what you thought was possible.”

While Kirkwood’s terrain and snowpack have pushed the freeride needle at Kirkwood, the resort’s youth programming has been equally instrumental. Dore came up through the competitive arm of Kirkwood’s Freeride team, and before that, the resort’s year-long Junior Expedition Teams (JETS for short), which introduces young skiers and riders to a holistic big mountain approach.

“Growing up through the freeride programs at Kirkwood has been the biggest factor in my love for the sport and progression in skiing,” says Dore. “Every Kirkwood coach is an incredible coach and human who somehow makes the training feel like you’re just having fun with your friends. Without this energy and excitement around me as a kid, I don’t think my love for skiing would be as strong as it is now.”

Justin Hartwell, the resort’s Director of Skier Services, oversees the mountain’s youth programs, and explains how from day one, even in ski school when they’re just learning the ropes, kids are exposed to Kirkwood’s big mountain values. “Freeride is in our DNA,” he sums up. “You can see all of the classic terrain from Timber Creek [home to ski school] and the village [home to the JETS program], pretty much from the base of the mountain. So it’s really a cool place to get your kids in lessons at a really young age. They’re seeing all of this terrain from the very beginning.”

“As the kids progress, what we’re trying to do with the freeride program is just get the kids to fall in love with the mountains. We want them to leave our program having developed their skills and become good stewards of the sport. We have a bit of a mantra here: make the mountain proud,” says Hartwell. If you catch a glimpse of Dore and his compadres launching backflips on a powder day, or shredding full-tilt on Kirkwood’s Instagram page, it’s safe to say that the kids are alright.

Sparking the Freeride Flame

For Brian “Steney” Stenerson, a blue-collar pro snowboarder who first moved to South Lake Tahoe from Colorado back in 2011, his story was a little different. He didn’t come up through any of Kirkwood’s freeride programming, but Kirkwood would both introduce him to the sport and dictate the trajectory of his snowboard career and life in general. “I hadn’t even heard of freeriding when I moved out,” he laughs. But he happened to catch one of the Freeride World Tour stops go down on The Cirque during his early years. “I  saw that, and I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do that.’ Seeing the World Tour there was absolutely insane. Monumental.”

Like Newberry, Steney was hooked and made Kirkwood his home mountain. It’s a perfect training ground, whether you’re prepping for the competitive stage like Kirkwood regular and Freeride World Tour skier Molly Armanino, or getting the legs ready for a big mountain film project like speed-limit-ignoring local legend Josh Daiek.  “In one run, you can get a little bit of everything, from straight-lining chutes, jumping cliffs, and then freestyle hits,” says Steney.

Using freestyle chops from his Colorado days and the freeride skillset he built at Kirkwood, Steney entered his first freeride competition in 2014 in Crested Butte, soon made a name for himself on the qualifying circuit, and eventually made it to the Freeride World Tour, a longtime goal, a decade later in 2024. However, his favorite competitive memory (at least so far) came at a qualifying event at Kirkwood in the spring 2024, after he’d been cut from the Freeride World Tour.

In front of friends and family and the local freeride community, he dropped the biggest cliff of his competitive career, laced two huge 360s, and dropped a chute dubbed “Jaws” with a mandatory air at the bottom. The cherry on top? Penguin sliding into the finish corral on his belly—a signature move—where a mob of spectators dog-piled on top of him. “I could barely breathe,” laughs Steney. The run would also land him on top of the podium.

“I was so happy to see everyone at the bottom with big smiles on their faces. And I was actually pretty elated with landing that run, and just feeling all the love from the community, all the friends and everyone there. It was just one of the most powerful, emotional feelings when you finish the run in front of your home crowd. And everyone was there to see what I’ve been doing and training for, and put all my time and energy towards for the last 10 years.”

Sydney Schroder, an eight-year Kirkwood snowboard instructor and one of our snowboard testers, echoes those sentiments. In 2023, she nabbed a second-place finish at Kirkwood’s four-star IFSA freeride competition while competing on the fabled Cirque. The freeride community, she says, was a huge piece of what made that day so special, from the volunteers at the start gate who helped her go over her line choice to her cheering section at the bottom of the venue that helped celebrate her podium finish. “Those are your family. Those are your people,” she says. “You hear your name getting called up for a podium, and they’re all there to just push you up there and give you hugs and high fives along the way—those are some of the best moments I’ve ever had at Kirkwood.”

The stories of these skiers and riders are all different, but the thread that ties them together, and what makes this mountain worth a visit for any freerider, is best summed up by Newberry, who, like so many others, got a taste for Kirkwood and never left: “The mountain attracted me,” he says. “And the community and culture kept me around.”