Oscar Reddington

At 6:00pm, Oscar and his friend set out into the dark toward the top of Notch Peak, where Oscar planned to film his friend's descent of Cross Couloir. The climb took hours, picking a route by headlamp, and when treeline broke, the wind turned into a blizzard, swallowing the ridge. They waited out the storm in the Notch Mountain Shelter. As his friend set off alone across Halo Ridge, Oscar settled in behind the camera. The moment his friend committed to the line, Oscar had his shot.  

The story is uniquely his, but it explains nearly everything about him. Ask what he values most about skiing and he will say the people – time with friends and the shared adventure. That is his version of pure fun, and the thread of pursuit running through his life.  

Oscar was born and raised in Golden, Colorado, and first stood on skis at two years old, in ski school at Winter Park. Today he lives in Bellingham, Washington, close enough to the Cascades to treat the range as his backyard.

There was no single day it clicked. It built slowly, over years, first on Colorado’s 14ers and then further afield in Rogers Pass. Standing atop his first serious couloir, Oscar understood this was no longer recreation. It had become who he was, his identity.  

There were no mentors and no coaches steering the ship, only friends, and the itch to be better than the last time. That drive shows up in how he measures himself. Some athletes count podiums, Oscar counts lines: the Aemmer Couloir, Seven Steps of Paradise, the Kirk, the Silver, the Coinslot, and Dead Dog Couloirs, the Roman Wall on Baker, and a finish at the Silver Rush 50 Miler. Oscar has also skied Mt. Hermon in Israel, a line on his resume few skiers can claim. Right now, that same drive is aimed at becoming an AMGA-certified mountain guide.  Skiing is no longer something he makes time for; it is the center his whole life is being built around.  

"The mountain doesn't care about your plan."

It’s the lesson Oscar returns to most. Hold the plan loosely, read conditions as they are, not as you want them to be, and know when the right move is to turn around. Injuries taught him a harder version of the same lesson. Stepping away from the sport and rebuilding, more than once, taught him more about persistence than any good day on snow ever could.  

Oscar calls himself a core-rider leaning soul-seeker, someone in it for both the terrain and people alike. The friends who set out at 6:00pm to hike into the dark. The ones beside him atop the Aemmer Couloir, three hours in, nerves and all.  He is not chasing a name for himself; he is chasing good lines with people worth chasing them with.