Parkin Costain Imagines Life Without Skiing

Parkin Costain is familiar with the pro skiing lifestyle: as a teenager in 2017, he won the Quiksilver Young Guns contest, and competed in Kings and Queens of Corbet's at Jackson Hole for the first time in 2019.

But what would Parkin do if he hadn't gone pro? Or, what if he had try to go pro, and things didn't pan out? It's hard to envision.

I called up Parkin, seeking an answer to the hypothetical question, and over the background noise, he explains to that he's driving out to Legacy, his family-partnered bike park located near Flathead Lake, Montana.

Similar to his father, Parkin's interests know no bounds. Just ask his sponsor Scott Sports. They send him skis and bikes, depending on the season.

Parkin Costain Q&A

Hey, Parkin. What's up?

"Nothing much, just driving out to Legacy. In a bit of a mountain bike phase given it is summer. Legacy Bike Park is a new bike park in the Flathead Valley that my family is a partner in. It has been a super sick project over the past few years. Since last spring, the word has definitely been spreading."

"Brandon Semenuk came out to our park and filmed an edit last spring. Later this summer, we've got a couple more pros coming and it's just been an insane passion project that everyone's been pouring their heart and soul into.

I've had the opportunity to go shape jumps at it, and the community around here has fully embraced it."

I heard you're super into mountain biking.

"Yeah, I'm a pretty avid mountain biker. Last year I had fully planned to pursue it a little more professionally, but then I had shoulder surgery in spring, so that kind of delayed it a year. But I'm getting to an event* tomorrow at Kellogg, Idaho up on Silver Mountain, and prepping for that. It'll be super fun. I just got a new bike yesterday so barely getting to ride it before the race."

*Parkin attended the North American Enduro Cup at Silver Mountain Resort, ID. Our friend and colleague Cy Whitling , editor of Bike Magazine, was on hand for the wet and snowy event. Check out his Race Report .

That kind of ties into the question at hand: What would you have done if you hadn't become a pro skier?

"My mom was always adamant that I had some backup plan when I was younger. She was pretty real with me that [being a professional skier] was probably not gonna work out.

They didn't force me to go to college and my game plan throughout high school was if I can turn this into a career by the end of senior year, then I'm not gonna jump on that route. Fortunately senior year of high school, it all worked out and I got to start filming with Teton Gravity Research (TGR). I had enough of a presence to have sponsors that would pay me. That was huge."

When I was younger, around 13, 14, 15, I started to realize that I was going to have to have a job one day. I was really into filmmaking, and I started doing some real estate videos and started flying drones right when they first became a thing.

My dad also owned a trail manufacturing business where he built hiking trails and bike trails ever since I was around 11 years old. Instead of having a dishwasher job, I just started to learn how to operate equipment around 12 years old."

"I was in a unique position to have all of these different fallback plants. I thought, if the skiing doesn't work out, I'll just start doing big trails with my pops. If that doesn't work out, I had filmmaking and all this real estate stuff that I could be working on.

I also had aspirations, if the scheme doesn't work out, [I'm] also really into mountain biking. So I was like, 'I'll either become a pro skier or pro biker', and then one just ended up happening first.'"

It sounds like your dad was into a lot of different things as well. Did he have any effect on you going pro? Do you think he would've been equally stoked if you went the bike route?

"He definitely would've been equally stoked if I went the bike route. My parents were both outdoor enthusiasts and ski bums. They met at Mammoth.

They moved to Bozeman, then moved up to Whitefish, and then throughout college my dad was really pursuing mountain biking before mountain bikes had evolved into what they're now. He was on hard tails with no disc brakes but was on some sort of national team starting to get paid to do it.

He was always telling me was that he was just a few steps away from taking it professionally enough that brands wanted to fully finance [his career]."

"When it comes to pursuing this, [I try] to take it professionally and seriously, and although it's super fun, to try to treat it like business.

When a lot of kids my age were partying and trying to go have fun with their friends, I was always thinking about 'how do I actually turn this into a career that I want to have?' There's a lot of insanely talented kids, so it takes this other little element, which brands are super aware of."

Is filmmaking something that you've pursued in any regard? It sounds like you were pretty into it.

"Yeah, super into it. My brother was a big part of that as well. It was mainly film cameras.

But then my brother got really into drones when we were super young. Right when the company DJI became a thing and before they would sell you like preassembled drones, we were buying the equipment and like soldering together our own hot parts to make these things.

We've always just been interested in things like that. Now he's pursuing automobiles and cars and he's like trying to turn that into a small mechanic business."

Have you ever thought about producing your own ski movie?

"Totally, yeah. Last year I had the plans and part of the budget to do so and then ended up being pretty horrendous snow in Montana.

It just didn't line up. I'll continue working with TGR but also gonna start branching out and trying to do some more independent stuff."

It sounds like you have a million things you could have done besides skiing?

"I was never too stressed. My mom made sure that I was aware that it may not happen as a pro skier so I always had these other opportunities. I still am a pro skier I guess, but I still feel like I'm still a kid in high school, trying to make it as a skier.

Obviously, it's worked out and I need to recognize that myself. Sometimes I do, but I'm just having fun.

My friends just laugh about how much I try to pack into my schedule and how many things I am trying to do. Yes, I grew up mountain biking and skiing and I wanted to take those things professionally but I've always been interested in racing cars.

We didn't have the finances when I was younger as a family to afford racing cars, but my brother, Dad, and I are so into that and they've started doing their own little drift events now and I'm slowly but surely building out a rally car.

Who knows, maybe I'll be the skier version of Brandon Semenuk one day."

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