When the mountains call, you must answer. Or at least that’s what happened to the three characters profiled in the newest season of Flylow’s webisode series, Westward, produced by KGB Productions and now in its fifth season. Westward follows the life stories of four unique individuals who’ve chosen to forgo traditional lives—like desk jobs in skyscrapers and 9-to-5 commutes—for alternative paths in the mountains. They have ventured out on their own, choosing to risk it all to follow their inexplicable devotion to snow-covered peaks. Through that leap, they have become their own bosses, setting their own destiny and breaking their own trail in a world that’s rugged, wild, and beautifully unknown.
First up in episode one is Ingrid Backstrom. You already know her name. She’s the pioneering big-mountain skier who dominated ski movies—often as the lone female—from Matchstick Productions for a decade, racking up Powder Awards for Best Female Performance along the way.
She inspired countless women skiers, who might not have realized that skiing could be their life, their job, their passion—until they saw Backstrom up on the big screen.
Backstrom is a Northwesterner from birth. She and her two younger brothers, Arne and Ralph, grew up near Seattle, the children of two volunteer ski patrollers at Crystal Mountain, Washington. The family spent most weekends on the slopes at Crystal and eventually, Ingrid entered the ski racing program there. She raced through college in eastern Washington, where she studied geology and contemplated a 9-to-5 job after graduating. Instead, she headed to Squaw Valley, California, where she cut her teeth as a ski bum by day, working restaurant jobs by night.