Lucas Wachs

Bend, Oregon, USA | Active: 2013-present | Focus: backcountry freestyle, powder films, side hits, ski editing | Current: Black Crows ambassador and independent film skier

Mt. Bachelor Wind Lips Before The Cameras

Mt. Bachelor’s wind lips curled under gray Oregon light, the snow chalky on top and soft where the sun touched the rollovers. Lucas Wachs came through the feature sideways, not straight, treating the mountain like it had been built for him overnight. That instinct explains his skiing better than a contest résumé. Wachs grew up on a hill where natural transitions, cornices, side hits, park jumps, tree gaps, and snowboard influence all mixed together. His career did not become a World Cup chase. It became a long film arc built around powder, speed, creative airs, camera work, and the idea that the whole mountain can function as a terrain park.

Bend Roots And The Bachelor Snowboard Crew

Wachs is tied closely to Bend, Oregon, and Mt. Bachelor. Black Crows describes him as raised on the slopes of Mount Bachelor, introduced to skiing by a father who loved nature and Greg Stump films. Freeskier’s 2015 interview added the key social detail: Wachs grew up riding with snowboarders Max and Gus Warbington, absorbing the slashy, sideways, transition-heavy style that shaped his skiing. That background matters because he never looked like a skier trained only through gates, pipe walls, or contest jumps. Bachelor gave him volcanic terrain, wind-built lips, open bowls, a deep park culture, and enough off-axis natural features to blur the border between skiing and snowboarding.

All Damn Day And The 4BI9 Signal

The first public push came through 4BI9 Media. 10 Barrel’s athlete timeline lists All Damn Day in 2013, followed by a Rookie of the Year nomination that same year, then BURN in 2014. Black Crows also notes that a 4BI9 segment helped him get noticed at iF3 and begin building a name in the ski industry. That period is important because Wachs was still young, still close to the Mt. Bachelor scene, and already working in the format that would define him: footage first, story through movement, and progression measured by whether a shot felt new rather than whether a judge rewarded it.

Poor Boyz Twenty And The Door Opens

Poor Boyz Productions gave Wachs a larger platform with Twenty in 2015. Freeskier framed him as a 21-year-old skier who might be remembered from a film that also featured Tanner Hall, Pep Fujas, Andy Mahre, Sammy Carlson, JP Auclair, and Karl Fostvedt. That cast placement was heavy for a young skier from Oregon. Wachs said Jasper Newton helped bring him into the Poor Boyz crew, after years of watching Newton’s work with Rage Films and PBP. The season was not built around big crews or huge infrastructure. Much of the footage came from Wachs and Newton working together, finding shots, and making the mountain look alive through repetition.

Ring The Alarm, Guest List, And The Travel Years

After Twenty, Wachs moved through a filmography that widened his terrain. 10 Barrel lists Out Of The Fog with Lib Tech and The Sammy C Project with Teton Gravity Research in 2015, Ring The Alarm, a Tanner Hall film, in 2016, and Guest List with Good Company in 2017. Lib Tech’s 2017 signing announcement described him as moving from a Rookie of the Year-nominated part in All Damn Day to heavy shots in Ring The Alarm and Guest List. The common thread was not one discipline. Wachs could ski powder, park, streets, backcountry jumps, and natural cliffs without losing the same loose body language.

Romance And The Breakthrough Award

Level 1’s Romance gave Wachs one of his clearest career anchors. The 2019 film was Level 1’s final annual feature, with locations including Sierra-at-Tahoe, Denver, Montana, Idaho, Riksgränsen, Minneapolis, Finland, Hokkaido, Sarajevo, Switzerland, Bend, Mt. Baker, British Columbia, Quebec, and Utah. The athlete list placed Wachs beside skiers such as Laurent De Martin, Sämi Ortlieb, Parker White, Keegan Kilbride, Will Wesson, Noah Albaladejo, Phil Casabon, Tom Wallisch, Thayne Rich, Colby Stevenson, and Emile Bergeron. At the 20th Powder Awards in Aspen, Wachs won Breakthrough Performance for his part, a peer-recognition result that fit a film skier better than any contest score could have.

MSP Huck Yeah And The Heli-Film Scale

Matchstick Productions put Wachs into another tier of ski-film production with Huck Yeah! in 2020. MSP later released his full segment and described the film as a showcase of hard-charging skiing, big airs, and powder action. Lib Tech’s post around the segment pointed to the UFO 115 as his go-to ski at the time and referenced Stellar Heli as part of the crew’s line access. That context matters because MSP filming changes the job. A skier has to handle bigger logistics, bigger mountains, heli windows, radio pressure, and lines where the camera is waiting before the skier even knows whether the snow will hold. Wachs’s style translated because it was already built around terrain reading.

Lost In Thought Across The West And Eastern Sierra

Lost In Thought in 2023 showed Wachs taking more ownership over the short-film format. iF3 lists the film as a Level 1 Productions project directed by Conor Smith, with Wachs teaming up with friends including Thayne Rich, Benny Smith, and Blaine Gallivan to ski powder in the West and chase alpine lines in the Eastern Sierra. Freeskier’s coverage added a wider cast: Blaine Gallivan, Benny Smith, Chris Logan, Thayne Rich, Karl Fostvedt, Zak Mills, and Tim McChesney, with Eric Parker on cinematography and Thomas Crandall plus Jacob Callaghan editing. The film leaned into friendship, sled access, foot-powered terrain, and fast powder skiing rather than a forced storyline.

Wave Length From Oregon To Alaska

Wave Length pushed the same direction into a broader travel piece. Freeskier described Wachs, Chris Logan, Stratton Matteson, and Zak Mills using sleds, planes, and their own feet to reach peaks with big lines in mind. The film’s own description placed the trip through Oregon’s ponderosa pine forests, Idaho’s frozen canyons, and Alaska’s steep cold-blue terrain. That geography fits Wachs perfectly. Oregon gives the side-hit eye, Idaho gives tight couloirs and rough access, and Alaska gives vertical snow where a 720, a fast couloir exit, or a clean powder arc can each carry the same weight.

Black Crows, Afterburner, And The Powder Hunter Kit

Wachs’s current sponsor chapter is tied to Black Crows. Newschoolers reported in 2024 that he had moved into a new sponsor phase with the brand, while Black Crows describes him as both a videographer/editor and a backcountry skier trying to expand into high-mountain skiing. In January 2026, Freeskier covered Afterburner, a Black Crows short created around the Powder Hunter collection. The piece showed Wachs skiing the Nocta 122 mm ski, a one-piece outerwear kit, and Meta poles through deep backcountry snow. It was product-driven, but still recognizably Wachs: slashing, smearing, hitting natural features, and making powder skiing look elastic rather than stiff.

Snowboarder’s Skier, Film Skier’s Editor

The phrase often attached to Wachs is “snowboarder’s skier,” and it fits without reducing him to imitation. His skiing uses slash turns, wind-lip takeoffs, surfy arcs, corked rotations, pillows, backcountry kickers, side hits, cliffs, sled laps, and steep couloir exits as one vocabulary. He rarely looks interested in the straightest route. The line bends, banks, cuts, drifts, and redirects. His editing and videography background also matters. He understands how a shot reads: the speed before the takeoff, the space around the skier, the landing texture, and the rhythm between one feature and the next. That camera sense helps explain why his parts feel built, not merely collected.

The Current Line Still Starts At Bachelor

Wachs earns a 4/5 importance rating because his influence is film-based and sustained: 15-plus video parts, early 4BI9 recognition, Poor Boyz, TGR, Good Company, Level 1, MSP, a Powder Awards Breakthrough Performance win, Lost In Thought, Wave Length, and a current Black Crows creative chapter. He does not have the Olympic, X Games, or contest résumé required for 5/5. His value sits elsewhere: Mt. Bachelor style translated into modern backcountry film skiing, with side-hit imagination, powder speed, editing fluency, and enough curiosity to keep changing the terrain instead of repeating the same segment.