Early Season Chile | The North Face

S. freeskier from Telluride Ski Resort whose story matters because it connects two worlds that don’t always overlap: structured competitive moguls and self-driven modern freeski filmmaking. He is listed by FIS as a freestyle athlete (born in 1997) with competitive results in moguls and dual moguls, and he later shifted his focus toward creative skiing, feature building, and film-style lines.... Read more on the Athlete page

Denver / Breckenridge / Telluride, Colorado, USA | Active: 2006-present | Known for: X Games double gold, triple-cork era progression, competition-to-film crossover | Current: Colorado-based skier and event creator riding for Red Bull, Atomic and Smith, with recent work including White Gold and Red Bull Cascade Aspen, 2010: the night the air got wider. The landing was hard-packed, the night sky was black over Buttermilk, and Bobby Brown dropped into X Games big air looking less like a cautious teenager than a rider trying to redraw the event. He had already won slopestyle.... Read more on the Athlete page

Profile and significance Dennis Ranalter—widely known as D-RAN—is an Austrian freeski original whose blend of backcountry fluency, park timing, and expressive style has earned him broad respect across the sport. Born and raised near Innsbruck, he grew from club-race beginnings and park laps into a rider who makes natural terrain look like a purpose-built slopestyle course. His breakthrough as a cultural voice came with “Descendance,” a short film produced with The North Face, which pairs explosive skiing with a candid exploration of identity and belonging.... Read more on the Athlete page

Overview and significance La Parva is a high-Andes ski resort perched above the Chilean capital, sitting on a ridge at roughly 2,700 metres with lifts reaching up toward 3,600 metres. It is one of the three Tres Valles areas along with Valle Nevado and El Colorado, forming Santiago’s main lift-served winter playground. As a resort, La Parva blends a residential, chalet-style village with a race-focused mountain, offering around forty marked runs, several hundred hectares of skiable terrain and close to 960 metres of vertical drop from top to bottom.... Read more on the Location page

Overview and significance Valle Nevado is one of South America’s flagship ski resorts, perched high in the central Chilean Andes about 60–70 kilometers east of Santiago. The base village sits around 2,860 metres above sea level, with lifts climbing to roughly 3,670 metres on Tres Puntas and neighbouring peaks. That altitude makes Valle Nevado one of the highest lift-served resorts in the Southern Hemisphere, and it shows on snow: the entire ski area lies above treeline, with wide-open faces, bowls and ridgelines that feel more like a high-alpine glacier than a typical tree-lined resort.... Read more on the Location page

Brand overview and significance The North Face is one of the most visible outerwear and equipment brands in skiing, with a heritage dating to 1966 and a mission built around technical apparel for harsh mountain environments. While the company does not manufacture skis, it has shaped modern freeskiing through performance outerwear, insulated midlayers and expedition-grade shells that show up from early-season rail jams to high-consequence big-mountain filming. As part of VF Corporation, the brand pairs global distribution with athlete-led product development, keeping its ski-focused collections relevant for resort laps, freeride touring and competition travel alike.... Read more on the Sponsor page