I met an 18-year-old Inga on my first season in Whistler Blackcomb in 2002.She was this cool Norwegian chick living up the road; I’d always see in the snowpark ripping the same features as me. I can’t remember how we met or when we became friends, but over the last 14 years we’ve stayed in touch, snowboarded and shared stories of adventure, travel and the trials and tribulations of dating in a ski town (basically a fucking nightmare). She hasn’t left Whistler since we met. Her dream was to stay and she made it happen.
Now the proud owner of a dog, truck, and a sled, she spends winter riding alongside Whistler’s top female snowmobilers and snowboarders and summer as a gold miner in Northern Canada. Living off the grid with her dog Lennard and selection of shot guns (serious bear and wolf territory up there), she is proof that if you want to do something, you should just go and bloody do it!
“I don’t think Alaska should be a place just for people who are sponsored and filming,” she says. “Fuck it — if you wanna go, just go for it.”
Taking the Snowmobile North to Alaska on a Solo Mission
“I wanted to do this trip for a while,” Inga explains, “but when I was finally ready and able to go, nobody else could, or would. I hate wasting time, and time waits for no one, so I took it as a challenge. I figured that even if I didn’t get much shredding in, it would still be a good adventure.”
The snow sucked this past winter on the Pacific Northwest, and despite not seeing each other for a year, my arrival in Whistler wasn’t enough to entice her to stay in baron British Columbia. She busted north a few days before my arrival, deadset on her pow and petrol fix. She brought a six-by-12-foot enclosed sled trailer, did some conversion to it so she could live in it, and took her dog, truck and sled (a Skidoo summit 800, 154 track) up the Alaska highway over the U.S. border.
This road trip isn’t easy at the best of times but doing it alone with the soul purpose of shredding (also alone) is incredible inspiring. Kept in the loop with photo updates through her mega Herd headwear Instagram account (Inga also owns the awesome Whistler hat company Herd Headwear) or the occasional email, I was blown away by what she was doing.
