I grew up with a passion for snow and the mountains, but my passion for life was melting. In 2019, I was diagnosed with a life-changing health condition.
At the time, I don’t think I fully understood how much it would impact my life. Health challenges do not just impact your body or energy levels. Sometimes they slowly affect your identity, motivation, confidence, and connection to the world around you.
There were periods where I felt disconnected from myself and from all the things I used to enjoy. There still are plenty of these moments. Life became smaller. Harder. More uncertain. Over time, I found myself trying to rediscover not just what I could still do, but who I still was, and am, underneath everything.
Over the last few years, skiing has quietly become a more important part of that process.
Not in some dramatic movie moment kind of way. More slowly than that. More honestly. The mountains gave me something I struggled to find elsewhere. Space to breathe. There is something about snow, movement, weather, rhythm, and complete concentration that cuts through the noise of life for a little while.
When I am skiing well, there are moments where everything reconnects again, just for a moment at first. Mind, body, movement, awareness, terrain, snow. For brief moments, life feels simpler and more grounded again. Those moments started meaning far more to me than simply having a good ski day.
Somewhere along the way, I realised I was no longer skiing only because I loved skiing. I was skiing because it helped me reconnect with myself again.
That was around the time I became curious about Carv.
At first, I was skeptical. I thought it might just become another skiing gadget focused on numbers and gamifying skiing. Skiing already has enough people chasing equipment, shortcuts, and external validation.
But what interested me was not really the Ski IQ score itself.
It was the possibility of honest feedback.
As skiers improve, progression becomes increasingly difficult to measure. At beginner and intermediate levels, improvement is obvious. You learn to carve. You ski steeper terrain. You gain confidence. Every season feels like a major leap forward.
Later on, improvement becomes subtle. Tiny changes in timing, pressure management, edge engagement, fore and aft balance, and turn shape start making the biggest difference. You can spend an entire season skiing reasonably well without truly knowing whether you are improving or simply reinforcing the same habits.
That is what fascinated me about Carv.
Not the score itself, but the ability to experiment and immediately understand what was actually happening underneath the feeling. Instead of relying purely on memory, occasional video clips, or vague sensations after a run, I suddenly had consistent feedback. Honest feedback.
And it changed the way I approached skiing far more than I expected.
I started skiing with curiosity again.
One run might focus entirely on outside ski balance. Another on smoother transitions. Another on pressure earlier in the turn. Tiny movement changes suddenly became visible. Sometimes what felt powerful actually produced poor skiing metrics. Other times, the smoothest and quietest runs produced the best scores of the day.
That feedback loop became strangely addictive, not because I became obsessed with numbers, but because skiing became intentional again.
I think one of the hidden realities of advanced skiing is that it becomes very easy to plateau without noticing. Experience and athleticism can compensate for technical inefficiencies surprisingly well. Confidence can disguise imbalance. Speed can disguise poor movement patterns.
Carv did not magically fix those things.
But it exposed patterns. It challenged assumptions. It made me pay attention again.
And honestly, that process became exciting.
The mountains stopped feeling repetitive and started feeling experimental again. Every run became an opportunity to test ideas, refine movements, and better understand the connection between body, balance, terrain, and awareness.
That is really where The 170 Project began.
People ask why 170.
For me, it is not really about the number itself. It is about what the number represents. Within the Carv ecosystem, 170 reflects a genuinely high level of consistency, balance, edge control, and movement quality. Not perfection or elite racing, but refined, intentional skiing.
More importantly, though, the project gave me something I had been missing for a long time.
Purpose.
Curiosity.
Structure.
It gave me a reason to keep learning again.
Skiing has slowly became more than just exercise or recreation. It is now part of rebuilding confidence, focus, and connection with myself again. Not perfectly. Not every day. There are still more difficult days, frustrating days, and disconnected days than good ones. But the mountains continue to pull me forward.
This Substack is going to follow that journey.
The breakthroughs, frustrations, technical discoveries, gear experiments, movement analysis, and reflections that come from chasing progression through skiing again. I will probably write more in the future about health, identity, family and rebuilding yourself after difficult periods in life.
But for now, I want this space to focus on skiing.
On progression.
On mountains.
And on the incredible feeling that comes from reconnecting mind, body, movement, and thought through snow again.
Welcome to The 170 Project.