Kristen Ulmer was an American pioneer of the Extreme Sports revolution. Starting as a mogul skier on the US Ski Team, she quickly decided to leave the team to pursue a career jumping off cliffs for cameras and skiing you-fall-you-die ski descents around the world.
Subsequently, for a run of 12 years, Kristen was voted or named the best big mountain (extreme) and often overall woman skier in the world by the media and her industry peers, beating even Olympic Gold medalists. Around the turn of the millennium, Powder Magazine called her “The biggest icon the ski industry never expected” and the “protoplasmic mass of the ski industry” in a cover-feature about her life.
Expanding into and mastering other dangerous sports such as rock and ice climbing, paragliding, adventure cycling and kiteboarding also scored her the vote in Women’s Sports and Fitness Magazine as the most extreme woman athlete in North America.
Kristen became a popular speaker, television show host and sports journalist—writing for some of the most prestigious American sports magazines and scoring monthly columns in 4 different ski publications around the world. Jules Older, editor in chief of Ski Press—the largest ski magazine in the world—has said, “In my professional opinion, Kristen is the best ski writer in North America.”
That’s all behind her now. Kristen quit everything in 2003 in a sudden 180 degree turn to start a new and unique trend in sports training, introducing mental and Zen aspects to winter sports in a clinic called Ski To Live. To create these clinics, Kristen partnered with world famous Zen Master Genpo Roshi who in 1999 started developing Big Mind—a modern way to facilitate 30 years of Wisdom training and transcendental states of being to a student in mere hours.
In 2008 Roshi encouraged Kristen to facilitate the clinics herself. Two years later, after 7 years training with Roshi, she has moved on and continues looking for and developing numerous ways to tie ancient and other wisdom into not only skiing, but into adventure, all sports, business and our personal lives.
Ski to Live has gained national and international attention for being the only clinic of it’s kind in the world, in any sport, and 95% of her clients say that Ski To Live is one of the most significant experiences of their lives. Her private sessions, business events and talks reflect the same profound experience found in the clinics.
Humorously called the “Ski Guru” by Outside Magazine, she summarizes: “I’m proud of my ski career, and jumping off 70 foot cliffs was exciting, but not nearly as exciting as helping people access what they’re capable of- not just as athletes or business men and women, but as human beings.”