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Flow State

tyLer ceccanti ➜ Ceccanti quit ski racing for a year as a child to pursue motorcycle racing, but fortu-nately for us, that didn’t stick. When he returned to skiing it was to sample big moun-tain competition, and a new passion was born in this decorated skier, who now includes K2 and Spyder as major sponsors. As for Flow State, Ceccanti’s biggest rush was skiing the pwder-filled avalanche barriers in Niseko.

roMan rohrMoser ➜ This Austrian skie,r whose home mountain is Zillertal, was a big fan of the food, people, bottom-less powder and the onsens – Japanese hot springs — around Niseko. Rohrmoser,

27 years old and sponsored by GoPro, already has film shoots and travel lined up for the 2013 season, includ-ing one with WME. Outside of skiing he dreams of solid swell for surfing and sweet terrain for downhill moun-tain biking.

tatsuya tayagaki ➜ We’d tell you where Tayagaki lives, but we can only get as specific as his “small motor home.” We’ve seen pictures, and it’s small even by Japanese standards. Tayagaki travels the length of Japan following storms and reporting on freeride culture for the Japanese-language magazine BravoSki, of which he is editor. He also writes for publications in the U.S.

niseko,

Japan2no

Fifty years after its inception, iconic American ski com-pany K2 is not only still going strong, but is an industry leader in prod-uct innovation. Though K2 maintains its irrev-erent and humorous attitude, never tak-ing the ski world too seriously, today’s K2 engineers keep their eye on the ball, churn-ing out progressive gear every season.

The company has come a long way. K2’s founder, Bill Kirschner, started out making veterinary splints and cages with his father and brothers, and their company become a

world-wide supplier of cages. By the 1950s, Bill and his brother Don had been experimenting with making fiberglass skis. They didn’t hit up on a concept that worked, however, until the early 1960s.

In 1964, K2 —named for the two Kirshners and the Himalayan peak — delivered 250 pairs of the Holiday, the world’s first fiber-glass and foam core ski. This was a complete deviation from what European ski manu-facturers were doing at the time, which was to plate traditional, stiff, wooden skis with fiberglass.

K2 recruited US World Cup racer Marilyn Cochran as one of the first skiers to ski on one of their protoypes. “I really liked the ski a lot,” says Cochran-Brown. “I loved the arc – they snapped around really quick. I could hit the K2 hard, and it would just snap around for me.” In 1969, she won the World Cup overall title in GS on her K2s. By 1971, K2 was doing its own dis-tribution. The rest, of course, is history.

In its 50th year, the company has found itself in the company of a few other half century-old entities

— lift service in powder mecca of Niseko, Japan, and the Rolling Stones. K2 has released lim-ited edition Sideshow and Sidestash skis with Rolling Stones top-sheets, playing on the idea of two types of legendary rockers.

K2 has also released a book, titled “50 Years of Serious Fun” about its history. In 50 years of going from garage to global, K2 has changed the ski world for the better, and remains an inspiration for fun on the snow.

Celebrating Half a Century on K2

Roman Rohrmoser rocks his K2s in the

powder of Niseko.

Not a barrier, but an oppor-tunity, for Ceccanti and Rohrmoser.

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M ost people’s idea of a dream vaca-tion includes tropical beaches, and my personal dream has

always been a trip to the islands. But not for the sand, or the piña coladas, or the swaying palms. on the islands I’ve always dreamed of visiting, the pow-der piles up endlessly, and the sun rarely makes an appearance through the clouds

Ever since I was young, I’ve watched ski movies featuring Japan and the epic skiing there. Experincing JapoW was on the top of my wish list.

so last season, when the snow was slow to arrive near my home in the pacific Northwest, I watched twitter and Facebook as many skiers took off for Japan to take advantage of what some reported was the largest,

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Above: Austrian Roman Rohrmoser takes to the air in the endless in-bounds powder of Neseko Village. Left: Rohrmoser and Ceccanti check out some “really old pow guns,” envi-sioning what it must have been like to ski the region's deep snow on wooden boards. Opposite: Rohrmoser told the film crew that he was going to throw a back flip off the second avalanche barrier and land it on the third. They thought he was kidding.