At the beginning of Nika ’26’s first Junior Freeride World Tour competition, everything narrowed. “I was at the start gate and my ears got all fuzzy. I couldn’t really hear properly and my heart was beating. I could feel it in my helmet. I had never felt this kind of adrenaline and anxiety, excitement and fear all at the same time.”

“I heard them saying in the walkie-talkie, ‘Three, two, one: dropping,’ and all of a sudden I was pushing out of the start gate,” she said. The world reduced to a single marker on the mountain below. One tree. One ledge. One decision at a time. Two minutes later, standing at the bottom in one piece, she realized something had changed. That first competition run set the tone for her relationship with freeride.

Nika was born in Langley, British Columbia (just outside Vancouver) into a family where skiing was assumed. Her father taught her to ski. Weekends meant late night drives to the mountains, night skiing, and early mornings back on snow. “I was skiing as soon as I was walking,” Nika said. When her family moved to Leysin when she was nine, skiing remained a constant. 

As a child, Nika was not the fearless one. She describes herself as a timid skier, especially compared to her younger sister. Speed unsettled her. Jumps felt out of reach. Cliffs were something other people did. She could ski steep terrain and difficult snow, but combining that skill with jumping felt like a line she could not cross. Freeride sat in that gap.

Freeride is a style of skiing that takes participants off the marked trails and into natural, ungroomed terrain. Athletes often hike or skin uphill before they ski down. It’s about choosing a personal line down slopes, navigating cliffs, trees, steep faces, and fresh snow. In competitions, riders are judged on technical criteria like line choice, control, fluidity, and style. Freeride emphasizes creativity, adventure, and pushing own's limits in the backcountry.

One of her freeride coaches, Andie Flett, sees that kind of hesitation as self-awareness. “It's normal and healthy to feel afraid in the mountains because they're big. There are things that can hurt you,” Ms. Flett said. “It’s the sign of someone who's logical and smart, who looks at the situation and wonders where they should be and where they shouldn't be. What they can do now, and what they need to get stronger to be able to do in the future.”

Joining the LAS freeride team meant choosing discomfort intentionally. It meant skiing off piste with guides, carrying avalanche gear, touring uphill to reach remote terrain, and committing to lines she could only inspect from above. It also meant confronting the fear of the unknown. The skiing itself was not the challenge. Her mindset was.

Over time, freeride changed how she responded to fear. Training alongside teammates with similar technical ability but fewer reservations pushed her to act. “I've told my friends, ‘I need you to peer-pressure me into doing this,’” Nika said. “I know it’s good for me. It’s my own mental barrier, and I need encouragement.”

That willingness to voice her uncertainty became part of the progress. “I’ve seen her be courageous in asking for help and saying when she’s not comfortable,” Ms. Flett said. “She’s built confidence through an incremental approach to really difficult tasks.”

Looking back on runs she avoided, Nika often realizes she could have skied them. Looking back on the ones she did take, she can see that her fear did not limit her.

During her first year on the freeride team, Nika was the only girl. “I expected to be alone a lot of the time,” she said. Instead, she found a lot of support. Her teammates knew how underrepresented women are in freeride and made it clear they wanted her there. Ski buddies became friends. The mountain became her community.

Skiing now structures her weeks and her sense of self. Even on days when her motivation lags, once she is on snow, something clicks back into place. Skiing connects her to her past, her present, and shapes how she thinks about what comes next.

She plans to return to Canada for university, and her school choices are framed by access to the mountains and the effort required to reach them. She cannot imagine a life without skiing. Even in a worst case scenario, if her professional ambitions were to fall through, she knows she would still find her way back to the mountains, whether through ski patrol or as a ski guide.

If she could speak to her younger self, standing at the edge of her first cliff, Nika knows what she would say. “Do it. You’re scared, but do it scared. Your fear isn’t going anywhere. All you can do is learn to coexist with it.”