Nearing 60, This Skier and Filmmaker Still Drops Cliffs. Here's Why.

Scott Gaffney knows it’s a little odd—and maybe even comical?—for a guy in his late 50s to be putting out ski edits. To our benefit, though, that isn’t stopping him. He dropped his latest video earlier this week, chronicling the truly weird Western ski season and suggesting that age is more of a loose guideline than a number.

To make the edit, the former Matchstick Productions director, longtime Tahoe local, and 57-year-old skier slapped a GoPro on his head and went to town, hitting cliffs and otherwise skiing like someone a few decades his junior.

Shot mostly at Palisades Tahoe, California, the ten-minute cut also includes expert narration from Gaffney befitting a larger production, which makes sense given his background—he knows a thing or two about making ski movies.

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While his edits live on YouTube so the public can check them out, Gaffney likes to think of each entry as a personal photo album. 

“They’re way longer than they need to be,” he said. “I could condense everything I had this year into three minutes if I wanted to, but I want to tell some kind of story with it because I want to be able to remember the year rather than just by the shots.”

“It’s as much for me as it is for anyone else watching. If other people watch it and enjoy it, great,” he added.

If you’re looking for tips like I was, Gaffney’s strategy for longevity as a skier is pretty simple.

“I guess a lot of it just comes down to finding steeper landings,” he said, chuckling. “I used to have an equation which was: once you go over 25 feet, the landing, the slope angle has to match your age.”

That does pose a problem, though.

“You can’t find 57-degree landings anymore. 58-degree landings just don’t happen, so I have to deal with that,” he said.

As for why he isn’t interested in slowing down, that’s simply who Gaffney is: a stoked teenager in an older body. 

“I know I haven’t grown up, and I haven’t matured, and that’s both in my personality, my character, and my skiing,” he said, noting that he’s seen plenty of people venture into the backcountry in pursuit of peace and dad turns. “But that’s just not my thing so much. I like skiing lines and skiing fast and jumping off stuff.”

Beyond that, if there’s something deeper behind Gaffney’s persistent fascination with airtime, he hasn’t found it. “I’m just stunted overall,” he joked.

He’s also a “scientist,” though. Or, at least, that’s the nickname his buddies gave him because of his fastidiousness when it came to tracking wind direction and snowfall. Based on his edit, that trait benefited Gaffney last winter—plenty of the shots involve untouched snow.

“It doesn’t look as terrible when I watch the footage,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, I got a lot of fresh tracks.’”

For Gaffney, the previous season provided a reminder of climate change’s impact on Tahoe. He said he’s noticed that it seems like “extremes”—epic dumps or no snow at all—are more common than “normal years.” He had another less jarring insight, too, finding an appreciation for the smaller things. 

“Sometimes it was just the feeling of one or two good turns that really stood out, and you kind of relish those moments of the feeling of that turn,” he said.

As for next winter, don’t expect Gaffney to call it quits on the cliffs anytime soon. He said he’s still capable and keen to go bigger and huck some backflips. 

But at his age, he noted, “I don’t force it and go with what the conditions give me.”

Related: My Favorite Hobby Comes With a Side of Climate Dread