Yeah man, this was a good comment and especially this piece of it. For me, something that I've thought about for a while now but don't really know how to put into words is that a major difference from the "golden years" and today is that back then, the "pro skier" side of the sport seemed to be a really close knit group of people (skiers, filmers, some industry folks) that all kind of traveled around and lived/hung/skied together. It was kind of like this big All-Star team of skiers and their different personalities and line ups of sponsors and every single one of them shredded extremely hard... like big progression every year, true pro riding.
Today, because of what you said, it feels like the pro/industry or like insider/ "core" group of the sport or whatever you want to call is just this massive eclectic group of kids that are all over the place in terms of how they ski, how they document it, where they are located, what their attitudes are, etc. I believe that the vast majority of them wouldn't be around if they were held to the "All Star" standards of the "golden age".
There are pros and cons to both era's... but I miss the "All Star" feel that the pro side of the ski scene had back then. Those dudes were god damn rockstars.
You watch a Windell's edit from 2011 and the list of dudes skiing in that shit is insane.... now a days I watch a Windell's edit and its a bunch of kids I've never heard of doing hand plants in sweatpants.
Idk, does any of that make sense?
