On the cover of Mountain Gazette
On the cover of Mountain Gazette
Seth Morrison starred in dozens of movies and graced numerous magazine covers before quietly leaving the limelight, leaving fans around the world wondering what happened, where he went, and why?
I wrote the cover story for Mountain Gazette issue 198 about “the top badass there was,” to quote one of his former colleagues.
When I was a teenager obsessed with ski movies, the coolest gear you could buy were Seth Morrison pro models. He was the face of freeskiing for two decades until 2016, when his longtime sponsor, K2, quietly fired him. Morrison disappeared into the mountains alone and has hardly been seen since, becoming a subject of legends.
He hasn’t given an interview in years. But my editor sent me off to do a write-around that would hopefully bring to a close the lore of his fall from stardom and finally let him retire in peace. Along the way, the narrative takes an excursion to a pivotal moment in the ski movie biz—when everything changed except Seth Morrison.
Morrison’s story is about a long and illustrious career that ultimately came to a fitting ending. But the other piece I wrote for this issue of Mountain Gazette is the opposite. It’s about Moriah Wilson, a 25-year-old cyclist whose life was cut short when she was murdered in May.
My assignment was to write a feature that focused on Wilson’s rapid rise as a professional athlete and how her death affected the cycling community. It also became a story about personal growth, friendship, and lost potential. I am grateful to Wilson’s family and friends for speaking to me and sharing their memories of a kindhearted, quirky, and strong young woman from Vermont who had—in the months before her death—become one of the best cyclists in the world.
If you’d like to hear more about these stories, my editor, Mike Rogge, recently discussed my work for Mountain Gazette on the Blister Podcast: