A Ski Media Renaissance Is Happening on YouTube

When Cody Townsend announced the end of The Fifty Project this winter, one thing, among others, was evident: a new mode of professional skiing had been established.

Townsend's channel got big on YouTube throughout The Fifty , garnering millions of views between 2019 and 2024 . He isn't alone in this arena. While few professional skiers have reached Townsend's heights, it's safe to assume they're trying.

The current ski YouTube landscape is dominated by Townsend, Norwegian professional skier Nikolai Schirmer, and French freerider Mickaël Bimboes, among others. If you’re on the younger end, you might also know Nick Riemer, a video game YouTuber turned increasingly popular snowsports personality better known as Steepsteep. Jon Olsson is another skier-turned-YouTuber, but his videos don’t involve much skiing these days.

This skier-centric filmmaking avenue didn't always exist. "You really had to know how to set an F stop and run a film camera. And very few people did," says pioneering freestyle skier and filmmaker Stanley Larsen, who worked alongside the likes of Warren Miller and Dick Barrymore. "As a result, you had, you know, two or three competent filmmakers who had a passion for mountains and snow and skiing and snowboarding."

The rise of digital videography—and consumer cameras, like GoPros—altered this status quo, making filmmaking more accessible. Today, anyone with an iPhone can create a ski video and self-publish, thanks to platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

"The only gatekeeper is how good of a video you can make. I think that's really cool. It's really democratized the whole ski world in that sense," says Schirmer, whose career revolves around YouTube. Producing his videos, which range in length from a few minutes to nearly an hour, is labor-intensive.

When Schirmer returns from the mountains after filming with a crew, he faces the task of distilling and organizing hours of footage shot from multiple cameras and numerous audio tracks. Sometimes, he edits this footage himself—other times, he outsources the bulk of the editing work before applying finishing touches to retain his personal stylistic flourishes. Throughout this process, Schirmer wears numerous hats, serving as a producer, publisher, editor, and athlete.

"I've been surprised to see that fewer people have established themselves in that space," he notes. "And I guess it kind of speaks to the difficulty of it."

The final step before publishing a YouTube video involves a make-or-break factor: thumbnails and titles. "Unless somebody clicks the thumbnail, nobody's gonna watch it," says Schirmer. "It needs to be something descriptive but also enticing."

For Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast—one of the world’s highest-performing YouTubers—the pressure to draw as many viewers as possible often produces uncanny results, where Donaldson's smiling face is superimposed on various strange, over-the-top backdrops. Speaking at a creator conference in 2022, Donaldson said he has an entire team of people dedicated to crafting thumbnails.

In contrast, Schirmer usually does it himself, producing about three to four thumbnails that feature skiing-focused fare, like epic crashes or snowy peaks. He swaps these thumbnails in and out based on a video's performance. The title is malleable, too, and Schirmer might tweak it over time.

A video released by YouTuber and science educator Veritasium defined the difference between types of clickbait. Some are “clicktraps,” whereas others are “legitbait.” The latter, which Schirmer aspires towards, is highly clickable but doesn't mislead a prospective viewer. "You need to be honest about what's on the other side of the thumbnail," he explains.

The content matters, too. When I asked Schirmer—and later Alex Hackel, a nascent ski YouTuber—what makes a successful YouTube video, they had identical answers: "A good story." That longer-form, narrative element drew Hackel to the platform.

After amassing significant followings on TikTok and Instagram, he officially launched a YouTube channel this past fall. YouTube was the social media platform he enjoyed using the most as a viewer, and he wanted to get involved in the community there, he said, citing the likes of Riemer and Schirmer as inspirations.

"I felt like YouTube was a great platform to build upon because it was going to give me more opportunities to be more creative in not just the skiing, but also the filmmaking aspect," says Hackel, noting that he believes YouTube is a "more cinematic experience" than Instagram or TikTok.

Hackel's ski career was already underway when he began uploading videos to YouTube, which is normal for many skiers on the platform. Before Veronica Paulsen started publishing videos in earnest on her own YouTube channel, she became the first woman to land a backflip into Corbet's Couloir. Townsend appeared in Matchstick Productions films and won "Best Line" award at the 15th annual POWDER Awards prior to the The Fifty’s launch.

Hackel has a similarly dense pre-YouTube resume: he featured in the cult-classic street skiing movie Eat the Guts , won an X Games Real Ski medal, and co-produced Many Fantasies Later , a hallucinogenic, arthouse take on the classic ski movie mold. For his YouTube-specific content, Hackel pivots, taking an informative, approachable tact that welcomes a variety of viewers. In one video, he visits Alta Ski Area, Utah, to investigate whether or not Utah really has the greatest snow on Earth. In another, he participates in Jib League , an alternative competition series, and carefully details why he thinks it's important to freeskiing.

These YouTube videos differ dramatically from Hackel's previous work, which, while boundary pushing, focused on high-level skiing first. He seems energized by this shift to YouTube and the possibilities of the platform. However, like so many of us, Hackel grew up on and loves ski movies that put skiing—just skiing—front and center.

"A really good ski part, you tell the story through the tricks and the escalation of the tricks and which spots you hit and which jumps you hit, which way you spin, and how they edit it, and what feeling the music gives you," says Hackel. "I'm not 100% enthralled that that kind of content content doesn't always get its due shine on YouTube, but I am enthralled that there's a platform that does prioritize substance, and that's definitely YouTube."

Schirmer, who's most-popular video has over one million views on YouTube, suspects his content, which often features him and his friends as they attempt to tackle a fearsome alpine objective, is equipped to reach people outside skiing’s core. "I think the difference is that there is a story, you know, you have a classic structure where you have a protagonist who's trying to do something, and you can follow this person on his journey," he says. "I think that engages a broader audience for sure, rather than pure skiing."

Both Hackel and Schirmer are phenomenal skiers, but tremendous on-snow talent isn't a prerequisite for someone hoping to launch a successful-skiing-focused YouTube channel. "In a normal ski movie, you just have to be extremely, super good for it to work," says Schirmer.

YouTube—and the broader ski influencer industry—doesn't make the same demands. During an episode of Hackel's podcast , The Passion Report , Riemer, of Steepsteep fame, candidly said that he wouldn't be able to win a junior-level park competition with his bag of tricks. "Now, you can have somebody with that level of skiing pursue sponsorships and brand deals with the big companies," he continued. Riemer has a knack for making the intricacies of elite freeskiing interesting and exciting to viewers who aren't rabid fans. This knack, alongside his boisterous personality, is how he’s found his audience, expanding the definition of what “professional skier” means. Riemer recently paused a career in finance to focus on YouTube.

YouTube fits into wider discussions about the current state of ski media, which, for lack of a better term, is a firehouse. Across every social media platform, countless skiers and brands compete for our attention non-stop. "It's just so broad. How do you stand out from the crowd?" muses Larsen, the filmmaker.

On YouTube, the answer varies. Some tell stories in the mountains. Others, like Riemer, take the personality-driven vlogger format and apply it to skiing. A willingness to think beyond our little sport seems to be key. Would your friend who only skis a few times a year find it interesting? I'd start there.