MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
THANK YOU!
Thank you to the more than 500 volunteers at the 11th Annual Spokane River Clean-Up who picked up over 4 tons of trash, of which 810 pounds was recycled.
FROM POWDER TO POWDER Spokane’s John Stifter took his love of the slopes into print — and online BY ELI FRANCOVICH John Stifter says of skiiing: “It kind of gives you a reprieve from all the madness.”
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A Special Thanks To: American OnSite, Emde Sports, Gonzaga University, Jensen Distributing, NoLi Brewery, Northwest Whitewater Association, Power City Electric, REI, Rings & Things, SFCC, Sierra Club Inner City Outings, Spokane Fly Fishers, Spokane Mountaineers, Spokane Regional Solid Waste System, Spokane Riverkeeper, Spokane River Forum, Spokane Transit Authority, The Lands Council, Thomas Hammer Coffee, Trout Unlimited, Veterans Conservation Corps, WA Department of Ecology, Waste Management
10 SNOWLANDER OCTOBER 2013
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now or words? It’s hard for John Stifter, editor of Powder magazine and a Spokane native, to decide which has shaped his life more. “I think it was initially skiing, like that was the initial hook,” he says. “But [after time] I realized how much I enjoyed the creative process of media.” The Montana State graduate is well-versed in both. Stifter grew up hitting Schweitzer’s slopes. In high school he combined his passion for skiing and his creative muscles by making ski videos. “We just had so much fun, filming and building jumps and powder,” he says. That was in the winter of ’98/’99. After a short stint at college on
the East Coast, Stifter landed at Montana State University. While there, he applied for an internship at Powder, only to be rejected due to his lack of published writing. So he wrote for the local outdoors magazine. The next year he received a three-month internship at Powder headquarters in Southern California. “I just remember saying to myself, as I walked out of the office, this is not the last time I’m here,” he says. It wasn’t. Midway through his junior year in college he got a call from ESPN; they needed someone to help cover the X Games. “That was awesome,” he says. “That was my first big gig.” From there it was all downhill;