Instagram: @smilesfiles
Home Resort: Marmot Basin
Current Resort: Timberline, OR
Years on the Job: 5
Currently listening to: It depends on the day. Mostly radio chatter, giggles, and stoked shouts of people ripping through the parks. If I end up listening to music, Spotify shuffle, maybe? I’ll listen to anything but modern pop/trap music.
Favorite thing about being on park crew: Ugh, there’s so much to love about this job… From being outside all day and getting to move around constantly, to managing people, designing and daydreaming about new builds and new ways to do things, or interacting with genuinely stoked riders, there’s so many different facets of it that challenge me to be better and do better everyday. I guess my favorite part is being a part of trying to create a culture/community that will build up not only advanced riders, but also beginners and people who have been intimidated by the park scene in the past. And doing so in a way that is as creative, diverse, and dynamic as possible.
Words of wisdom: I would say to women that being a digger/operator is one of the most rewarding, exciting, and invigorating jobs you could do in the industry. As a woman, you are a capable and strong force to be reckoned with, and being a woman does not dictate your ability to achieve and to be a badass worker in this industry, or any industry for that matter. It will teach you so much about yourself, your abilities, people and give you so many transferable skills and perspectives. Working in this industry has its challenges, with it being built mainly on a male dominated blueprint. But the women and most men that we have the privilege to work beside are so incredibly encouraging and inspiring, and far outshine or outweigh the people and foundations that are not. So take that step and make the ones with the outdated gender role ideas squirm, and make them question why they ever had those ideas in the first place. Then I’d give them my number or Instagram to hopefully continue to gas them up and encourage their journey.
Meet the other female builders at Take the Rake at Trollhaugen 2021.
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