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Pep Fujas has spent half of his life flying through the air, performing twists and back flips above powder snow in mountains around the world for extreme skiing videos. The 34-year-old developed his skills at an early age starting near and at Mount Ashland. Fujas has been in more than 20 feature-length ski films, made countless other videos, competed in X-Games competitions, terrain parks and half-pipe events, and has sponsorship from ski and outdoor clothing firms. He’s skied hundreds of areas and traveled the globe making films, doing about 100 days on the snow per year. “Skiing has always been about learning for me, and I still feel like I’m learning on a daily basis,” says Fujas. “The beauty of skiing is it’s a conditional sport. The conditions and the terrain are constantly changing, depending on how much snow covers the ground, rocks and trees.” Fujas’ early years were spent on the family’s organic farm in the Colestin Valley just south of the Mt. Ashland Access Road. His parents are Elizabeth and Richard Fujas, owners of Rising Sun Farms in Phoenix. Pep did his first cross-country skiing on the family property when he was about 2 or 3. “The snow was deep. He’d go up and break trail, then he had to ski down. It had a couple sharp corners,” says Elizabeth. Pep’s first recollection of Mt. Ashland Ski Area is using the rope tow on the beginner's Sonnet run. He was probably 3. “Pep was trying to do aerials from a young age,” recalls his mother. He practiced for hours doing flips and turns on an in-ground trampoline. She worries more about him getting hurt while mountain biking than skiing, but physical exploits always attracted him. “I certainly prefer to ski powder — I enjoy skiing all types of terrain — but my focus is on the backcountry,” Pep says. “He just took to it naturally," Elizabeth says. "He’s got great observation skills. He would look at someone to see if they were skiing well, and then he would just do what they were doing.” Fellow local skiers Zach Rote, Trevor Tanhoff, Adam and Miranda Briggs and others influenced him. He had his first lesson at 8 years old and recalls thinking he could ski better than the instructor. In the eighth grade, Rote persuaded him to get into racing. Pep Fujas would either finish in the top five or would end up running off course as he pushed his speed. Fujas was home-schooled at first, then in local schools, and his mother realized he’d stay on track best if he went to a ski academy where students studied until noon and skied in the afternoon, so she enrolled him back East, and he finished at another in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. “Around my senior year, I was skiing competitive moguls at the school, and then I shifted focus to free skiing and started doing parks contests and pipes and photo shoots,” Fujas says. “I got involved with sponsors.” When he started skiing terrain parks competitively, the smooth, energetic, flowing styles of skateboarders inspired him. “I did a whole slew of different activities, but none influenced me more than skateboarding,” Fujas says. “As a kid, style wasn’t all that important to me. I was more into going fast, navigating challenging terrain, skiing powder and finding anything I could jump off of.” After graduation, Fujas moved to Mammoth, California, where he and others developed their extreme skiing aerials. In 2007, Fujas, Andy Mahre and Chris Bencheter collaborated with Eric Pollard to start Nimbus Independent film company to bring a different perspective to skiing videos. Fujas does a lot of cross training to stay in shape. He surfs, rides mountain bikes and dirt bikes, snowboards and plays golf, along with doing exercise routines for agility. Fujas has been featured on the cover of Powder magazine doing a back flip. He has sponsorship from ski manufacturer K2, ski-binding company Marker, Oakley sunglasses, and apparel firm Patagonia. He is often featured in ads. Fujas moved to Salt Lake City 10 years ago. He and his wife, Claire, have two daughters, age 20 months and 2 months. In February, the family took a non-skiing trip to Poland and Slovenia. Last fall he started classes at the University of Utah, where he is majoring in business with a minor in environmental studies. “It’s helping engage my mind in the 21st century to run a business. I’m an entrepreneur,” Fujas says. “I feel I need better knowledge, and the degree would be an advantage, as well.” Part of his work is pitching photo shoots to sponsors who underwrite the trips. He also develops relationships with photographers to ensure he and they are in the right spots for shooting on a mountain. This season he has been to Japan, coached a camp on skiing steep terrain at Utah’s Alta area. He no longer does competitive events. And the name? His full name is Braden Pepperell Fujas. The middle moniker comes from great-grandfather Pepperell, an explorer and adventurer who helped map parts of Labrador, Canada. Videos of Fujas' exploits can be found on his website, pepfujas.com, or by searching the internet. — Tony Boom is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach him at [email protected]. null