ashcat collective
A passion project brought to you by living in the mountains, a supportive community, and getting out of my comfort zone.
Photos by Ariana Sanchez
Ashcat Collective came to be on a summer day in August 2023, while I was sitting at my desk in Winter Park, Colorado. The summers are great here, in my opinion, maybe even tied with the winters. But I was dreaming of skiing. I started a (very serious) excel doc listing out all of the goals I had for my skiing in the coming season. It wasn’t until this moment that I truly realized how much I had already accomplished my first season in Colorado. Yes, the snow is amazing. Yes, I got in over 100 days because I practically lived and worked on the mountain. But the things I truly owed my progression to weren't things, they were people.
Every week, when I found myself standing at the top of a ski run or the terrain park, hesitant to drop in, scared out of my mind because I’d never skied something like it before, thinking of everything that could go wrong… all I had to do was look over to my friends standing there with me, and suddenly everything went away. The way I grew as a skier was through experiences like these.
Before moving to Colorado, I’d say I was a decent skier. I could do double black diamonds, I could ski on sheets of ice (shoutout East coast), I could rip through tree runs. But one thing I'd never gotten into was park skiing. It always intimidated me, so I'd ski alongside the park and watch people throw 360s, effortlessly slide rails, then take their skis off and hike back up to do it again. Could never be me! Until it was.
Skiing in the park has taught me so much. It's taught me discipline, it's taught me to push myself past mental blocks, it's taught me to get back up even after the most brutal fall (usually more mentally brutal than physically due to the "all eyes on you" factor terrain parks bring). I wasn't posting clips on my Instagram where I was lacing every feature. I was posting the learning process, the failures, the real moments in the park. My followers on my personal account seemed to be reacting well to this. I was getting DMs from people I wasn't super close with asking if we could have a park day together even though they'd never tried it before. I was getting people asking for advice on how I finally learned a trick. ME?! I don't know what I'm doing.
But then I realized maybe I did know what I was doing.
Not even in terms of skiing, but in terms of building a community, making people feel comfortable in the park regardless of skill level, showing people (especially girls) that they are welcome in the park, that it's not embarrassing to ski the beginner park (called Ashcat) where the local 5 year olds are crushing everything they try. Yeah, I knew what I was doing.
Being a graphic designer, I am familiar with building a brand, with content ideation and creation, with videography, editing, and with social media strategy. I thought why not combine the two passions and create a place where I could document all of this. I started the Instagram page for Ashcat Collective (which went through a bunch of different names before landing there) and posted my first video that was edited completely on my phone. A mash up of Snapchat videos (most of which were bad quality), photos, and complete with a Soulja Boy song. Of course all my friends and locals liked and commented, but it didn't take off or anything. The account stayed quiet until it started snowing. Then I tapped into my graphic designer side and started building out a brand for this whole thing. Visuals, logos, colors, tone of voice, audiences, etc.
My first goal was to get every Winter Park local familiar with Ashcat Collective. I wasn't going to hashtag my content, or share it with brands, I was just looking to form a solid local following. That happened pretty quickly, and I started hearing people talk about it, I made stickers, and started seeing them up all over town. I was getting merch requests and people asking when they could ski with us. I knew I needed to plan some more solid events in the park, so I started collaborating with local videographers and photographers. We were getting a ton of content, I was learning so much about video editing in Adobe After Effects (previously my worst nightmare) and Premiere Pro, and people loved seeing themselves as the stars in my edits.
All footage from April 8, 2023 at Winter Park Resort.
I've stayed true to not only capturing the sick backflips my friends now do, but also the wipeouts on the most simple feature. My goal for this coming winter is to continue to build a community around park skiing here, and start to bring it to an even bigger scale, outside of the valley. I hope it's motivating to any and every skier who's watching my videos. I hope it can be the thing that gets someone to go outside their comfort zone and try something new, not even just within skiing.
This has been one of my most fulfilling personal projects, and I can't wait to see where it goes in the 2024/2025 season. The Ashcat Collective website is now live here, and available to view in my portfolio.