Skier Hank Stowers Is Charting Their Own Course

"I didn't necessarily step away so much as drive away on my way to a hospital," said Hank Stowers. It was the end of 2014, and Stowers, a Summit County, Colorado, transplant with dreams of becoming a professional skier, had shattered their arm while street skiing.

Before the injury, those dreams had become murky. Stowers arrived in Summit County after graduating high school and felt the pull of après culture. They partied more than they would've liked and began to eschew on-snow performance, directing less energy toward excelling as a skier despite their passion for the sport. They felt lost and unsure of their direction. The broken arm, which forced Stowers to avoid vigorous activity for around one year, created an opportunity for personal reinvention. "While I was resting, I just started to realize how much interest I had in other things that I had been setting aside because of skiing," they said.

Stowers leaned into new experiences, enrolling in college at Colorado State University, traveling abroad in India and Nepal, pursuing creative projects, and realizing their queer identity. At CSU, Stowers and their partner began going on mellow, relatively infrequent backcountry journeys with their group of friends who skied to have fun—not go pro. The vibe of these trips contrasted with Stowers' pre-injury encounters with skiing. There was less pressure. "It kind of helped to resituate me in a space where I kind of got to fall back in love with skiing," Stowers said.

The urge to push themselves on skis eventually crept back in for Stowers, though, and they caught the freeride bug. Their first foray into freeride competition, at Grand Targhee, Wyoming, could've been a disaster. Stowers crashed immediately during their run. "I thought that I would feel really despondent and kind of defeated by that experience," they said. "But it was actually the opposite… I just realized how much fun I was still having."

Reconnecting to skiing after building a stronger sense of selfhood—and going on a few side quests—"made it feel more holistic and healthy, and less like something that I had to struggle with, and more something that brought out the best of me," Stowers explained.

Sponsors have noticed. On the slopes of Mt. Hood, Oregon—Stowers moved to Portland after graduating college—they rep Db, season equipment, and Pit Viper. Their ski style is quick, playful, and aggressive—sometimes all at once. Earlier this summer, Stowers starred in an episode of Db's Pack Heavy, Chase Light series. At one point in the episode, they chucked several nose butter 720s off a cornice with enormous ice chunks in the landing.

Stowers rips—hard—but they aren't trying to wow through ability alone. Instead, they're more focused on combining skiing with self-expression and creative filmmaking, despite plans to possibly hit a few freeride competitions next winter. Two years ago, they dropped MARITIME AIR alongside close friend and collaborator Finn Peterson. Billed as a "Queer ski film," it showcased gnarly skiing and the breadth of Stowers' non-binary identity, further broadening the once-narrow definition of "professional skier."

Sometime in the not-so-distant future, Stowers will drop two new ski films with Peterson and others. "I'm not going to tell you the names because we might change them," they laughed. The first, filmed near Stowers' hometown of Durango, Colorado—and in Utah—is about place and self. "I feel a real deep connection to having grown up [in Durango], but I'm in the process of redefining my relationship to that region as an adult," Stowers said, noting that the film also explores "the way that the water moves through those spaces and the way that athletes move through those spaces."

The other movie is a Mt. Hood-based backcountry flick—with a twist. The film is fiction, has a script, and, Stowers said, "sci-fi, fantasy tendencies." MARITIME AIR incorporated some narrative, fictional elements—in it, Stowers earns cash for ski gear by pole dancing—but this unreleased movie will take that angle further. It's a different, uncommon approach to the modern ski film scene that, aside from some notable divergences—think Weak Layers , CON ARTIST , or DOLLAR SHORT — tends to stray away from telling non-documentary stories. For Stowers, that seems to be an opening. "I just really want to imbue snow sports culture with a little bit of speculative wonder," they said.

Related: Mow Some Grass, Earn Your Pass at Mad River Glen, Vermont

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