The art of staying local.
The art of staying local.
“I define myself by my skiing,” says freeskier and Rab athlete, Eva Walkner. “During my professional career I always tried to express myself with it. Jumping big cliffs or skiing fast in steep terrain, that’s the way I show people who I am.”
A two time Freeride World Tour (FWT) champion and Verbier Xtreme winner, Eva is known for her aggressive, fluid, and technical ski style. In 2018, after spending seven years on the FWT, she moved on from her competitive career to travel the globe in search of ski adventures. From Alaska to Iran to India to New Zealand, the Austrian freeskier took on high mountain expeditions and skied numerous notable descents.
“It is the descents of the couloirs and faces of the Eiger West Flank, the Y-Couloir in La Grave, the very steep Dirty Needle line in Alaska, or the Canale del Prete-Vallencant 5.2 in the Dolomites that I will never forget. I love the bizarre shapes of the rock towers in the Dolomites, and the rough and exposed French Alps.”
After a dazzling and intense ski career travelling the world, she has now returned to her roots in the Salzburg region in the northeast of Austria. These days Eva lives just 15 kilometres from where she was born, close to the Dachstein mountains. “I forgot about the mountains at home a little bit,” she says. “At the moment I'm enjoying micro adventures and just exploring the backcountry around my house and all the surrounding mountains. There is so much, you need a lifetime to explore it.” It’s here that she was joined in March 2024 by action sports photographer and mountain guide, Julian Bückers, and fellow Rab athlete, Annika Schlachter, for their own micro adventure.
The Dachstein mountain range in the Eastern Alps is home to sheer limestone peaks and tumbling glaciers. The area is perhaps most famous with Chinese tourists who flock to the quaint, lakeside town of Hallstatt, a World Heritage Site, of which there is an exact replica in China. The most famous mountain in the region, the Hoher Dachstein (2,995m), with its Dolomite-like turrets, was the team’s original goal. A bike-to-climb-to-ski mission that involved a glacier crossing and more than 2,000m of ascent.
“It's quite a big day, you really need a full day and calm conditions if you’re also shooting pictures,” Eva explains. “Unfortunately, the weather was not very stable. It was supposed to change in the afternoon, so we decided to go for another project, a smaller one where we had some rock walls and trees for a little contrast. If you're on the glacier in a snowstorm it's just white everywhere, there’s no definition which is really dangerous, so we took the safer option. The weather made the decision in the end, which is often the way.”
It had been a mild, wet winter and below 2,000m the region had seen a lot of rain, but the team were happy to get out and get something done despite the less than perfect conditions. “You choose a day and if it's bad snow or if it's bad weather, let's just go for it. I have my good gear and if you have great gear, rain or snow is not the problem. It’s very important to do good planning beforehand, check the Avalanche Bulletin, check the weather, and think, how is the weather changing the exposure? Sometimes the preparation can be a big challenge, it takes a lot of time and knowledge.” The skiers spent the first half hour just hiking to the snow line, but beyond that they enjoyed a cruisy skin up to their objective. The sun hit at noon and as temperatures climbed rapidly, the exposed rocks warmed enough for small snow slides to begin plunging down around them. They kept to northern aspects to reach their objective safely, and then it was time to get down. With spirits undampened, they managed to find pockets of powder for some well-earned turns on the descent.
“It was perfect. I think we made some good decisions and we had a really good day. The snow was challenging in places with a little rain crust, but Julian and Annika were just like, ‘Wow, wow, this is so cool. We need to come back and we need to go to the north side of the mountain.’ There is a lot around this area that they didn't see. You don't expect it because it's not Switzerland or Chamonix or the Dolomites. It’s just this little mountain range, it's very small, but it's a little diamond.”
For Eva, returning to her home mountains wasn’t a tough decision after years on the move, waiting for weather windows for filming or competing, and missing deep days back home. “I think the view people have of the professional athlete life is a little different to when you actually live it,” she acknowledges. “Like say, you're in Alaska, and Alaska heliskiing is every skier’s dream. If you're lucky, you get the best conditions and it's great and you get three amazing runs, but sometimes it's a week of sitting around waiting. And when the weather does clear, you go out filming to ski one run and then wait for the heli for another two hours because there are other filming groups.” She laughs at the lunacy of it all. “So, at the moment, I’m really enjoying just going out with my friends with our own camera. I'm not focused on an Insta story anymore, I just enjoy it to the fullest. I would never want to miss out on those travel experiences I had, it was such a great time, but I’m getting so much from staying local right now.”
Throughout her professional career Eva was a determined competitor. Despite being shy of the spotlight (“I always thought competing without the prize giving and all the crowds would be ideal” she admits), she took a stand for women’s freeskiing and paved the way for those coming after her. In 2014, the Freeride World Tour made the decision to exclude women from the main tour, relegating them to ski in the Qualifying Tour only.
“Their idea was that it would just be the Ski Men and Snowboard Men because there were too many people and it was costing too much. They thought they could just put the female tour athletes back into the qualifiers… I remember, it was just me and Aline Bock sitting at a table talking to the CEO of the World Tour with the main sponsor, luckily their head of marketing was a woman. It was just the two of us that stood up and said something and we really had to fight.”
The decision eventually sparked widespread criticism, leading the FWT to reinstate women on the main tour the following year. Although sometimes Eva heard from the production team that there was no room to put the women into the official news cut, or that the women’s competition had to be done by 10am before the Red Bull Live Stream started as they would only be broadcasting the men’s. For Eva this was just another fight in a long line of battles advocating for gender equality in what was, at the time, a sport completely dominated by men.
“I always had to stand up and argue, just because I’m a woman you want to pay me just a third of what you pay the guys? We had to fight a lot and there were a lot of challenges, but I had good partners and there were a few women in senior marketing positions which really helped. It's super good that there are more women in the industry now. They can allocate budgets, they can make decisions, and I think this really helps.”
In 2018, Eva went on to make a ski movie with fellow World Tour athlete Jackie Paaso. ‘Evolution of Dreams’ plots the women’s ski careers from Alpine racers to World Tour athletes to ski mountaineers. Culminating with a ski ascent and descent of the Eiger, the film portrays the ever-changing landscape of personal goals and the women’s never give up attitudes. Today, Eva works at Red Bull Media House as a documentary editor. Between her work and finishing the build of her own home from the ground up, she’s getting out on her skis in all weather. “Most people are staying at home here when it's bad weather and snowing. So, that’s my favourite time to go out. You go through the trees in one metre of powder and it's so silent and no people. I just love it.”
From claiming some of the world’s most challenging lines and standing up for women in her sport, to now finding adventure in her own backyard, Eva’s career has gone full circle. As she reflects on her years of travelling, she still encourages others to explore. “Travel the world if you can, you know, meet new people, new cultures. It's so much fun. I've been in England and Scotland too, and it's… Wow, the experiences and the people, it's so wonderful. But for me it was for like thirty years and now it's time for exploring home.”
While she may no longer be chasing lines in remote corners of the globe, her passion for skiing remains as strong as ever. In a world that celebrates constant movement, Eva’s story is a good reminder that adventure doesn’t always have to be far from home.
Words by @amywhereoutthere
