Jackson Hole Snowboarder Magazine 86
T
hree giant swords suited for a medieval castle hang on Julie Zell’s wall. Those first place accolades, from the King and Queen of the Hill competition in Alaska, did not come easy. The third time Zell competed in that big mountain snowboard competition, she did so with a sprained coccyx (the small bone at the end of the spinal cord). She fell snowboarding in the Hobacks at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort one week before the competition. It was one of the most painful injuries she’s suffered, but Zell refused to concede. She wanted to win alongside friend Steve Klassen, with whom she celebrated victory at the same event the year prior. Following that win, they also dominated at the Verbier Xtremes (now part of the Freeride World Tour). A repeat felt imminent in Valdez until they both got hurt. At the competition, Zell ignored the fact that she couldn’t stand up straight. In between runs, she filled a plastic bag with snow and pressed it along her tender low back. As she waited for her turn, she thought of a quote from the book The Tao of Pooh: “A fish can’t whistle and neither can I.” In other words, success meant understanding her limitations; failure would be to ignore them. That day Zell and Klassen both worked within the limits of their injuries and chose lines that played to their strengths. It was a decision that resulted in a first place win, one that cemented Zell’s pioneering status in the freeride world. Beyond her accomplishments in Valdez, Zell built her life around snowboarding, but it all began with dreams of surfing. “The first time I saw Gidget I was always sure that my soul landed in the wrong body and the wrong town,” she said. The 1966 sitcom depicted sand, palm trees and California beaches that were a continent away from her hometown of Syracuse, New York. So the next best thing to the crashing waves of the Pacific? Labrador Mountain, a modest ski hill of 700 vertical feet and roughly 250 acres just 30 minutes from Syracuse. Zell was ski racing there by the age of five. She saw possibility all over that mountain and also experimented with freestyle—ballet, moguls and aerials. Zell kept at it earning a ski racing scholarship to University of Alaska in Juneau. The snow had hardly dried off her skis when the school cut its team. Zell looked for a different university to pay her way and found herself at Montana State. The situation repeated; the school cut its
