Interview: Jenn Berg
Edited special magazine section
Published in SnoWorld, magazine of the 57th annual Warren Miller film tour
THE 1999 NATIONAL FREESKIING CHAMP, appearing in her fourth Warren Miller film, once donned a greasemonkey suit and wielded a wrench for her role in a film segment. For Off the Grid, she got back to her pure skiing roots.
SnoWorld: This year you skied with Jeremy Nobis and an all-guy crew—what happened to the ‘Warren’s Angels’ all-girl crew of a couple years ago?
Jenn Berg: The ingredients were different. I was the only girl with these amazing guys; all my previous segments have been girl-oriented, girls ripping it up together—smiles and cuteness and all that. I’m so stoked to get a segment that is strictly about the skiing.
“I grew up with Warren Miller films thinking: ‘Wow, Glen Plake, the Egans …’ and I don’t remember a whole lot of girls.”
SW: So you’d rather ski with the guys?
JB: The dynamics are different: there’s less “Where are you going? What are you skiing? Should I go first or you?” You just kind of do it—which I prefer! (laughs) But it’s really important to have women in the film. There are a lot of little girls in the audience who need to be inspired, just as I was. I grew up with Warren Miller films thinking: “Wow, Glen Plake, the Egans…” and I don’t remember a whole lot of girls. It was probably the girl with hair flying—more for the cute element than for the skiing, for the athleticism.
SW: Where do you find inspiration?
JB: Just looking at the mountains inspires me. I sit in the Snowbird parking lot and just look at Mount Superior and I’m in my own world. I’m picking lines, thinking: “What would be my mark on this mountain?”
SW: You just turned 30. Is there an “over-the-hill” in this sport?
JB: It feels like I’m kind of peaking right now. It takes years to accumulate knowledge in big mountain skiing: you’ve got to understand the variables. If you’re an up-and-coming 15-year-old park skier, you can hit that same jump all day long—it’s not going to change much. With big mountain skiing, everything is changing: the sun, the texture of the snow…. It takes years to get comfortable enough to read a mountain. I think, “There are the trees, there are the anchors in the snowpack, here’s my safe zone, there’s a blatant danger zone …” Age comes into play; the older you are, the more aware and patient you are. But then again, you don’t see a lot of 50-year-olds crashing big lines.
SW: Go ahead and make us jealous about how great your conditions were for filming.
JB: (laughs) Everyone had blower overhead pow; I call it the white room. You open your eyes immersed in your own face shot! I get so spoiled, but to see through heli-virgin eyes is amazing … I was with Julian [Carr] and [Chris] Ward on their very first heli drop. I loved seeing their smiles, like kids in a candy store. They had skinned and climbed to these same lines for hours and days, and now they were saying, “Wow, that took three minutes instead of three hours!”