Chloe Hehir arrives at Alpine Modern Cafe on a May morning. She’s got a stack of flashcards for her upcoming final exam in the pocket of her cargo pants, and she’s wearing a red Billie Eilish sweatshirt from the artist’s 2022 Happier than Ever tour.
“She’s maybe two or three years older than me, but I’m like, ‘Whoa, that’s so inspiring,’” Hehir says of her favorite musical artist. “It’s so cool what people can accomplish in such a short amount of time.”
Hehir has that in common with Eilish. At just 19 years old, the CU Boulder student qualified for the Freeride World Tour, the premier big mountain freeride skiing and snowboarding competition that will take her across the globe next winter.
With a start gate on the summit and a finish at the bottom of the mountain, freeride competitions take place on ungroomed, exposed terrain with skiers and riders choosing their own line through wind-blown cornices, massive cliffs and tight chutes on steep alpine faces that allow little margin for error. Plus, there’s no practice runs.
Described as a “vertical free-verse poem on the mountain” by the tour’s website, freeride competitions are judged on line, control, technique, fluidity, air and style — a system designed to allow for a range of styles and strengths to win, whether an athlete excels in big air, technical tricks or speed.
Next year, Hehir will be up against the best freeskiers in the world — athletes she says she’s looked up to for years — on some of the gnarliest mountains. Stops on the tour have included the Spanish Pyrenees and the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, with the final event each year in Verbier, Switzerland.
“It’s very, very, very challenging terrain,” says Michael Suleiman, one of Hehir’s coaches on the CU freeskiing team. “It’s terrain that a lot of the ski resorts in Colorado don’t even have.”
Hehir says she was in shock after nabbing the first place spot in Kirkwood, California, the last stop for her region on the qualifying Challenger Series earlier this year.
“I didn’t believe it for like a week and a half,” Hehir says of qualifying for the tour. In her mind, she thought she would maybe, just maybe, qualify five years down the road. “A week later, I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I’ve been trying to do that my whole life.’”
Hehir is ever humble, but her coaches say they saw it in the cards from the jump.
“I was expecting her to qualify for the tournament this year or the season after,” says Mic Obleski, another CU freeski coach. “It was just a matter of time.”
‘Clear head’
Obleski has been coaching big mountain for six years, and by now, he says it’s easy to tell how athletes are feeling before dropping into a run.
“When Chloe’s on top in a comp, it’s super obvious that she just has a very clear head,” he says. “There’s not much that gets between her and doing what she needs to do.”
Hehir says she keeps her cool through lots of visualization, singing songs with other competitors and rooting each other on.
She also has “way too many” superstitions. She wore the same ski pants for every competition this year and goes off by herself to do a “very specific routine” before entering the start gate. And while many competitors listen to music as they tackle the mountain, Hehir prefers to hear the sounds of her skis on the snow.
“I like to just be part of skiing with the mountain,” she says. “Being there with myself in my head.”
The Telluride native has been competing since she was 12 years old and skiing pretty much her whole life, thanks to her ski bum, outdoor-loving parents who would strap her to their backs and bring her into the backcountry to camp as a tyke. Hehir’s style of skiing is a reflection of the rugged San Juan mountains that raised her.
“Telluride has some very technical terrain,” Suleiman says. “A lot of different rocks sticking out in places that you wouldn’t typically want them to be. You’re having to either maneuver around tight, quick rock shoots or even jumping over little rocks. She’s an incredibly technical skier.”
Suleiman remembers inspecting a line with her at a competition in Grand Targhee.
“I was like, ‘ehh, I don’t know,’ kind of waffling back and forth about it,” he recalls. “Like, maybe pick a backup option. It looks kind of crazy.”
In the end, Suleiman says Hehir skied it “phenomenally well,” a credit to her skill and composure.
“I think it sort of goes with my major,” says the incoming junior in creative writing whose “dream life” is to be a professional skier and author. “I like trying to be creative and choose a line that not many other people are going to do just as a challenge and looking for things that might not go, but maybe they will go.”
That sort of selection is important on the Freeride World Tour — picking a difficult line sets up the maximum score in other categories like fluidity, control, air and style.
“She makes very, very challenging terrain look super easy to the point where she’ll ski something that nobody else skis in the competition,” Suleiman says.
‘She just had no quit’
Aside from her technical abilities, Hehir’s coaches know her as an outgoing, goofy team member who encourages others and is always smiling. On top of that, she’s got a killer work ethic and is “super stoked on the sport,” Obleski says.
In October 2023, the CU freeskiing team took a trip to Park City’s water ramps, where skiers can practice tricks into a pool. The first day brought terrible weather — 45 degrees, rain and water cold enough to feel the chill through a wetsuit.
“Everyone else had gone inside. They were all warming up, and Chloe’s out there for like an hour on her own just trying to dial in her backflips over and over and over again,” Obleski says. “She just had no quit.”
As Hehir prepares for the Freeride World Tour over the summer, she’s building her endurance through running, weight training and working out in the gym where she grew up doing gymnastics and now coaches over the summer. Endurance is critical for the long, several thousand feet of vertical she’ll ski on the tour.