Featured clip – “Taylor Hutchen: A Fearless Adventurer”

Taylor Hutchen isn’t like most other 8-year-olds, per se. Sure, like other kids her age, she is more gums than teeth when she smiles, and she’d rather play outside than do homework. But unlike many her age, Taylor is a serendipitous blend of fearless adventurer, who is thoughtful beyond her years, with a full-blown addiction to skiing that transcends the negative effects of being cold or exhausted after a long day of carving fresh powder.

“I did jumps,” she explains. Her simple answer belies a great deal of thought in a voice almost too low to hear.

The “jumps,” Taylor refers to are mounds of snow heaped as tall as her. In slopestyle competitions, racers barrel down runs laced with obstacles, such as jumps, boxes and rails. Each attempt is judged by the competitor’s ability to execute with style, gain distance and height and still able to stick the landings after each trick. Make no mistake, this is big-time skiing, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

Team Summit competitions are sort of breeding ground for X-Game-type skiers and snowboarders. Case in point, while Taylor was busy winning her first slopestyle race, 21-year-old Team Summit alumni George Rodney was winning his first professional competition on the Freeride World Tour in Andorra — a landlocked nation in Europe bordering France and Spain. Rodney impressed judges by skiing down rocky cliffs and landing impossibly high jumps.

Watching Rodney’s winning decent, one can’t help but wonder what lay ahead for young competitors, like Taylor, who already alludes to wanting a similar fate when she says “I love the bowls and trees and moguls most, and I like it steep now because I’m older.”

It isn’t uncommon, said Hutchen’s Team Summit ski team coach Julia Lewis, to find Taylor searching any given run for hidden treasures.

“Taylor always wants to explore. Even when we are doing cruisers, I’ll look over and she’ll be on the edge of the run trying to find bumps or skiing around trees,” Lewis said.

Although Lewis wasn’t there to witness Taylor’s victory due to work commitments, she said that she was thrilled to receive, via text, pictures of Taylor sporting a gold medal.

“At first, I didn’t recognize (that it was) her, because she wasn’t wearing her helmet,” Lewis said.

That just shows how much Taylor loves to ski that her own coach hardly recognizes her without her helmet on because she never wants to take it off. She never wants to stop skiing, either.

Taylor’s dad, John, says that his daughter’s fearlessness sometimes shocks him. He said that he’s seen other kids her age shy away from new challenges, but Taylor is thrilled by new adventures.

“I consider myself a good downhill skier, but when Taylor says she wants to go do bowls and boxes, I have to admit, I feel a little out of my element,” Hutchen said.

But, for all of her thrill-seeking ways, Taylor still gets apprehensive. When asked how she feels at the start of a competition, again she gives a simple, yet thoughtful, answer.

“Nervous,” she said.

Taylor is lost for words to explain such nerves. She shakes off the suggestion that the nervousness makes her heart race, but vigorously will nod her head in agreement when asked if it makes her legs feel like Jell-O.

So how does she cope with her nerves and brave such daring tasks? She just shrugs her shoulders and smiles.

“Taylor is the kind of kid who never complains,” explains Lewis. “Other kids will cry or whine when they get cold or tired, or sometimes they want to (stay inside) after a hot chocolate break. But Taylor wants to hurry up and get back out there. She is the kind of kid who is just happy to be out skiing and can’t wait to take the next run.”

Taylor’s avid adventurer spirit is reflected in her birthday wishes. She wished, not only for a win at the slopestyle competition, but also for a mountain bike and a unicorn J-Animal, a full-body wearable pajama suit. But a word to the wise, don’t ever suggest that she wear her J-Animal while skiing.

“I wear my helmet,” she said.