Drew Hooker

Profile and significance

Drew Hooker is an American freeski slopestyle and all-mountain rider whose path runs from Eastern prep-school programs to Nor-Am podium battles, film projects and next-generation events like Red Bull Cascade. Born in 2004 and originally from the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, she sharpened her early park skills in the East before moving to Maine to attend Carrabassett Valley Academy, where she trained with the CVA Freestyle squad and chased slopestyle lines at Sugarloaf. From there she stepped into FIS competition under the Park City Ski & Snowboard banner, representing the United States in Nor-Am Cup slopestyle events across the U.S. and Canada and steadily lowering her FIS points into competitive territory.

What makes Hooker stand out is the way she has blended that structured pathway with a film- and culture-driven one. She has been a women’s wildcard finalist for Level 1’s SuperUnknown talent search, a featured skier in Arsenic Anywhere’s “With The Right Girls” project at Woodward Park City and Brighton, and an invited athlete to major showcase events like Red Bull Cascade at Solitude Mountain Resort and her first Dew Tour appearance in Colorado. Now based in Utah and studying atmospheric science at the University of Utah, she sits in the growing group of riders who treat competition, media and long-term life in the mountains as parts of the same story rather than separate tracks.

Competitive arc and key venues

Hooker’s competitive arc began in earnest during her time at Carrabassett Valley Academy. CVA’s freestyle programme is known for producing strong park skiers, and school posts show her working through dryland obstacle courses and on-snow park training as part of the women’s freeski group. Those years built the strength and technical base required to move onto the FIS calendar, and by the time she graduated with the class of 2022 she had already attracted attention from core ski outlets as a SuperUnknown women’s wildcard finalist.

On the FIS side, she competes in slopestyle under the Park City Ski & Snowboard club. Her Nor-Am Cup record includes top-ten and top-twelve finishes at venues such as Aspen Snowmass, Winsport Calgary and Copper Mountain in 2023 and 2024, results that helped drop her FIS slopestyle points into the mid-teens on recent lists. Those numbers may not yet scream “World Cup favourite,” but they place her in the thick of a deep Nor-Am field and show that she has the consistency to ski full-length contest courses under pressure.

Alongside those structured events, Hooker has stepped into more creative high-profile stages. She and fellow rider Ellie Derosier were celebrated by their old CVA programme for qualifying into their first Dew Tour, a milestone that placed her on the same start lists as Olympic medallists and X Games champions. In 2025 she appeared on the athlete roster for Red Bull Cascade at Solitude, the Bobby Brown–designed hybrid event that snakes a mile of terrain-park and natural features down the mountain in a team format. Being invited to Cascade signals that organisers see her not just as a park rat but as someone whose style and line-building can translate to a freeride-inflected, all-mountain contest format.

How they ski: what to watch for

Hooker’s skiing is grounded in park slopestyle, and her strongest weapon is a rail game that has been refined through years of laps in places like Park City and Brighton. In Arsenic Anywhere’s short film “With The Right Girls,” shot at Woodward Park City and Brighton Resort, the commentary calls out how naturally the crew “slides metal,” and Hooker fits that description perfectly. She approaches features with a calm, centered stance, getting solidly onto the rail and staying locked in through the whole feature. 270s on, blind surface swaps and clean spin-outs show up repeatedly in her clips, but the tricks rarely look forced; she moves with the kind of balance that comes from hundreds of rope-tow and tow-rope style laps.

On jumps, her slopestyle training comes through in strong takeoffs and long-held grabs. Nor-Am footage and social clips show her favouring stylish, well-controlled rotations over sheer spin count: forward and switch 540s and 720s with solid grabs, and the occasional bigger spin when the feature size and speed line up. The key is that the grab is always clearly defined—safety, mute or tail held long enough for judges and viewers to see—and that she lands with enough speed to keep the run flowing into the next feature.

Events like Red Bull Cascade add another dimension to her skiing. On a mile-long course at Solitude that mixes gullies, jumps, hips, tree sections and rail pods, riders need more than a park routine; they need line vision and the ability to adapt tricks to complex terrain. Hooker fits that brief, bringing her park-honed timing to side hits, wall features and natural transitions. For progressing skiers watching her, useful details include how early she sets her edges before takeoff, how stable her upper body remains on rails and in the air, and how she carries momentum through a full run instead of treating each trick as a separate, stop–start moment.

Resilience, filming, and influence

Resilience in Hooker’s case is less about a single headline injury comeback and more about the grind of balancing multiple roles. As a full-time atmospheric science student at the University of Utah, she splits her days between lectures, lab work on climate and mountain meteorology, and on-snow training sessions in the Wasatch. That balancing act—classwork in the valley and park laps at places like Park City Mountain or Brighton—demands discipline and the ability to show up at a high level even when time is tight.

Her influence within freeski culture is amplified by her involvement in women-led projects. Arsenic’s “With The Right Girls” positions her alongside riders like Marist Wrenn and Ella Andrews, forming a small crew that tours Utah’s parks with a focus on rail-heavy, creative lines. That project is part of a larger wave of films and edits where women are not just token clips in mixed-gender projects but the core of the story. Hooker’s presence there signals that she is viewed by peers as someone who can carry a segment and hold her own in a very core, style-driven context.

Earlier, her run to the women’s wild card final in Level 1’s SuperUnknown series introduced her to an audience that cares deeply about street and park skiing. SuperUnknown has long been a barometer for where freeski style is headed, and being shortlisted there placed Hooker in the conversation as one of the emerging women pushing Nor-Am level tricks with a strong aesthetic. Combined with her move into invite-only events like Cascade and Dew Tour, that trajectory makes her a visible role model for young riders who want to juggle studies, film projects and contest starts without choosing only one lane.

Geography that built the toolkit

Hooker’s skiing is the product of several different mountain cultures. Her roots in Pennsylvania meant starting on modest vertical and variable East Coast snow, where short runs and repeated laps reward those who can make the most of small features. The move to Maine and Carrabassett Valley Academy added structure: early mornings, dryland training, and slopestyle courses built on the terrain of Sugarloaf, one of the East’s classic big resorts. There she learned to link rail sections and jump lines into full runs that made sense to judges as well as to her peers.

Relocating to Utah for university and Park City Ski & Snowboard membership opened up another level of terrain. The parks at Woodward Park City provide dense rail lines, airbags and progression-friendly jumps where she can rehearse new tricks safely. Brighton’s night-skiing scene adds a different flavour: lower-key, crew-driven park laps where creativity and energy matter as much as structure. Solitude Mountain, as the home of Red Bull Cascade, has introduced her to longer, more complex all-mountain lines, mixing natural features with park-style hits from top to bottom.

Together, those geographies have created a skier who is comfortable whether the session is an early-morning Nor-Am training run, a night shoot in Brighton’s park or a team-based all-mountain contest at Solitude. For viewers, it is a reminder that the “right” place to grow as a skier can be a small Eastern hill, a structured academy or a big Western resort, as long as the laps keep coming and the rider stays curious.

Equipment and partners: practical takeaways

Hooker’s equipment choices reflect her mixed schedule of park laps, contests and longer all-mountain runs. On hardware, she skis for Armada Skis, a brand whose twin-tip park and all-mountain shapes are designed specifically for riders who spend most of their time on rails and jumps but still need stability in chopped snow and on big landings. Paired with that, she uses poles from Joystick, a boutique company rooted in core park culture that builds lightweight, durable poles for freestyle use.

The rest of her setup is tuned around reliability and feel rather than extreme stiffness. Well-fitted boots allow her to stay centered over her skis on rails and at takeoff without fighting hotspots or heel lift, while competition-ready bindings provide enough elasticity to handle backseat landings without constant pre-release. For progressing skiers, her kit underscores a simple point: if you want to ski slopestyle, park and hybrid events like Cascade, you need a consistent twin-tip ski you trust, boots that really fit and poles and outerwear that can survive repeated impacts and long days. Logos matter less than having a setup that lets you focus on line choice and execution instead of on whether your gear will hold up.

Why fans and progressing skiers care

Fans care about Drew Hooker because she embodies a modern, multi-lane version of freeskiing. She has Nor-Am results and FIS points that show she can perform under the stopwatch and judging system; she has film appearances and SuperUnknown recognition that prove her style resonates with core audiences; and she has invitations to Dew Tour and Red Bull Cascade that put her alongside some of the most visible skiers in the world. At the same time, she is still a student, still stacking everyday laps in Utah and still working her way up rather than arriving fully formed.

For progressing skiers, especially young women looking at slopestyle and park with academic or career goals in mind, Hooker’s path offers a realistic template. You can go from an Eastern academy to a Western university, earn a place on a strong local club like Park City Ski & Snowboard, push into Nor-Am competition, submit edits to film contests and say yes to invite events as they come. Watching how she skis—centered, composed, with clear grabs and thought-out lines—and how she balances her time in the mountains with studies in atmospheric science makes it easier to imagine a ski life that is ambitious and sustainable at the same time. In that sense, Drew Hooker is not just an emerging slopestyle athlete; she is part of the next wave defining what a full, modern freeski career can look like.