Mike Powell reflects on documenting skiing’s living history as he brings The Powell Movement to a close.
By Hannah Truby
Much of outdoor culture is lived in the moment, passed between people rather than committed to the record. While its official history is easy to find, it's the unofficial stuff—the people, friendships, rivalries, failures, and behind-the-scenes moments that give a culture its character—that’s harder to preserve.
That’s why archivists matter—stewards of a particular zeitgeist, they preserve the things that are difficult to quantify and easy to lose.
One example is Mountain Gazette contributor Jay Blakesberg, who has photographed the Grateful Dead since 1979 and, through his extensive archive, has become one of the most important visual chroniclers of the band and its extended musical family.
For skiing and action-sports culture, The Powell Movement has done something similar.
Mike Powell, a ski-industry veteran, launched the podcast in 2016, and since then it has become something of an oral archive. Its nearly 500 episodes feature conversations between Powell and a notably diverse roster of guests including ski icons like Glen Plake and Eric Pollard, surf pioneer Gerry Lopez, snowboarding culture-shifter Zeb Powell, ski industry giant Klaus Obermeyer—pretty much anyone and everyone who has had a hand in shaping modern skiing and the broader action-sports world.
The Powell Movement's super power is the killer guests; here is Mike, left, with Washington state ski legend Phil Mahre. Photo via Inlander.
Together, the conversations form a sprawling portrait of the culture. Listeners on Apple Podcasts describe it as “one of the best ski and outdoor podcasts,” “the best podcast in action sports,” and a longtime source for ski-industry stories.
Creating an archive, Powell says, was the goal from the very beginning. “I wanted to make a kind of living, breathing history,” he said. Now, after nearly a decade, having accomplished just that, he’s calling time on The Powell Movement.
Before the final episode drops, we wanted to ask Powell what he’s learned.
When I call, Powell is on his annual family vacation in Delaware—the place where, he informs me, Joe Biden fell off his bicycle years ago (“Their kind of claim to fame”). He’s taking some well-deserved time off as the podcast approaches its final episodes: one remaining installment with Rory Bushfield (August 17), followed by a two-part finale featuring an as-yet-unannounced guest.
Hannah Truby: Your wife gave you a podcast starter kit for Father’s Day, and you decided to take a chance on podcasting. Can you take us back to that moment? What made you think, “I’m actually going to do this”?
Mike Powell: I had been throwing it out there that I thought I could start a podcast, right when people were really starting to get into them. My wife said, “You would really be great at that.” Then, when Father’s Day came around a couple months later, she bought me a starter podcast kit. When she bought it, I thought, “You know what? I’m going to do this.” I decided I was going to quit my job in August and go all in. She said, “I’ve got you. My job will support us, and we’ll see how it works.” And it worked.
What were you doing before the podcast?
I had left K2 and was selling partnerships for companies like Oakley and Brooklyn Brewery. It was a job where I made a lot of money, but it was kind of an existence.
What conversation did you hope to bring to the industry with The Powell Movement?
Well, I come from a line of broadcasters. I have a cousin who does the NBA and another who does professional soccer. I had always spoken on the microphone and done events while I was in the industry. I was always leaving to go do the Oakley thing or the partnership company, but I was still doing the Powder Awards and Red Bull events, so I never really left completely.
At that point, magazines were kind of dead. It was before Mountain Gazette had relaunched, and everything was trickling down. There was no great way to get the stories of the athletes of that time. The magazines didn't want to tell those stories anymore. I remember Powder literally telling me on a call that they were “done jerking off to Cody Townsend.” But that's what the audience wanted to hear. They didn't want to interview the athletes anymore; they wanted to go on trips and travel. I thought, “Look, I can tell these stories better than anybody else. I can do it in a format that's never really been done.”
I felt like I could document a living, breathing history of the sport and drop some snowboarding business in there as well.
Was creating that historical archive always part of the plan, or did that develop over time?
It was always really the goal. I knew so many different people that I could get an A-list guest list that I didn't think other people could get at the time. I thought, “I'm going to get everybody, and I'm going to have a living, breathing history.”
I did think about that in the beginning. I actually launched with Powder and had a podcast with them for the first six months, and then I launched my own podcast.
You came into podcasting with decades inside the ski industry—from K2 to working alongside athletes, brands, filmmakers and other industry figures. How did that history shape the conversations you were able to have?
I've never been a person with talent or an athlete, so I'll never truly understand that. But I could see both sides, and I think that's why people trusted me with telling their stories. I had so many relationships within the ski industry.Working as a team manager let me understand how athletes live and breathe. I was also friendly with a lot of these guys and would hang out with them outside of work, so I could understand the athlete side as well.
You've developed a reputation for asking questions that go beyond the highlight reel, namely your recurring “Inappropriate Questions” segment. Why is that important in your interviewing? And how do you know when you've earned the right to ask those questions?
I think I earn the right to ask the question when I put in the research and do the homework ahead of time. Anybody I've interviewed, by the time they're done, a lot of times they'll say, “How do you even know this?” I'd say 50 percent of my interviews have a line like that. When they realize what I've put into it, they trust me to ask the questions. And if I'm not asking the questions, I'm a shitty journalist. I always try to do it in a nice way, but sometimes they come off pretty blunt.
And, for me, it's a podcast. If I don't ask what I think my listeners want to hear, regardless of whether it pisses the athlete off, I'm not doing my job. There have been times when I haven't asked the question. Bill Murrill, who's the head of the U.S. Ski Team, for example—I didn't ask him about his DUI, and I should have. Maybe I had too much respect for the guy or something. But I didn't ask that question, and I regret it.
You've talked about spending hours researching your guests. What do you look for when you're preparing for an interview?
If something piques my interest, maybe in a Facebook post or something, I'll find the best friend who liked it and start harassing that person on the internet. But you can't always trust everything you get on the internet, and sometimes I've asked questions that were blatantly wrong because the internet steered me in the wrong direction. So I try to get confirmation from humans who actually know the person, like I'll talk to people's cousins and friends. I think that's what makes the interviews great, because that's when they say, “How do you even know this?”
You've interviewed Olympic athletes, freeskiing pioneers, filmmakers and countless industry figures. What makes you hear someone's story and think, “I need to talk to this person”?
Everybody's got an incredible story. If you've made it to this level in skiing and you're at a podcast level where people want to hear your story, your story is going to be interesting. For me, it's about differentiating everybody's story. Ten people can come from Tahoe, ten people can do the Tahoe Freeride Program, and ten people can go to the exact same school. I have to make those ten people different. I can put them back-to-back-to-back-to-back and make them all different.
The podcast has documented an enormous period of change in skiing—from the rise of freeskiing and ski films to social media fundamentally changing how athletes build careers and audiences. Looking back, what changes feel most significant to you?
As much as things have changed on the competition side—the spins taking over, people not being able to count how many rotations are happening—I sometimes question whether the soul of the sport is still pure. But everyone I talk to has such a love for skiing, and that's what makes everything so different. Nobody is doing it because of the changes in the sport. At the end of the day, it's about going out, having fun with your friends and forgetting about everything else in your life. Most of these athletes have to do it at a higher level, but when you ask them what makes them tick, they love to ski. Period.
We're going to see a seismic shift in competitive skiing because freeride is now in the Olympics. Those are some of the last soul skiers in skiing, and they're still going to be that way, but it's going to change things a bit. These guys are going to turn into more athletes than they've ever been. They'll probably have diets and training regimens, and they won't be involved in PBR until three in the morning like they used to. But that's part of the change. It's not going to make it worse. People are still going to love it just as much.
Is there a conversation from the podcast that feels especially significant to you now?
I think my favorite is probably Rory Bushfield, and I think the most important interview I've done—and maybe the best too—was Klaus Obermeyer. He's 106 years old. This guy invented sunblock, mirrored sunglasses, the puffy jacket, the ski-boot liner and the ski-brake system. He's done it all for the greater good of the sport. He never patented anything. He wanted people to get out there, ski and have a good time. If we look at someone in skiing over the past century who's had more of an impact on the sport, I don't think we can find anybody. I'd say he'd be the most important.
If someone is discovering The Powell Movement for the first time and wants to explore the archive, where would you tell them to start?
I'd go to Rory Bushfield first. Honestly, I've put out almost 500 episodes, and I think three of them are average. The rest are all really good, in my opinion.
You're about to release your final episodes. What made you feel like now was the time to wrap up The Powell Movement?
When I started it, I started it with my wife, and she died last year. I don't like going to a website every Sunday night, going to angela.powell and spending an hour and a half doing that. It just makes sense to end it. It makes sense.
What do you hope people understand about this era of skiing when they discover the podcast 20 or 30 years from now?
I hope they understand how awesome everybody was and how cool everybody's stories were. There are so many fun people in the sport. The people who have dedicated their lives to being professional skiers and snowboarders have an aura about them that's different from almost anybody else I know in the industry.
We all have great jobs in the industry. We get to travel and ski. But the charmed lives of these athletes and the things they get to do and the stories they tell are incredibly inspiring. Almost every single person had a road they had to go on. Nobody just got famous and became a pro, other than maybe somebody like Tanner Hall, who had talent from the time he was little.
What's next for you?
I've bought the URL interviewofyourlife.com, and I'm going to interview regular people.
I interviewed my wife before she died, and I made a good podcast about her for my family that we'll listen to when we're ready. Now, I'm going to interview other people. If you have a grandfather that you love and really want to nail his story, I'm going to send out questionnaires like I do for the books that people do. I'll take that information, use my process, build an interview, and create three hours of edited content about your loved one or whoever you want to have interviewed. It won't have a deadline, and it won't be delivered to the public. It'll be private and special. I'll capture family stories.
Finally, is there anything you'd like to add for Mountain Gazette readers or otherwise?
Throughout my whole podcast, I've kind of been on a mantra of “print is dead.” But in the grand scheme, things like Mountain Gazette and good print are what the future of print is. As long as you focus on great content, which you have for the past nine years, I love print. That's what I'd say to Mountain Gazette readers. It's the only print I've found that I'm interested in over the past decade, which is great.
