The Story Behind POWDER Magazine's 2026/27 Cover
The 2026/27 print issue of POWDER Magazine is here. Click here to have a copy shipped to your front door. Copies can also be found on newsstands at major retailers like Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and more.
Some time ago, the Sandpoint, Idaho-raised photographer Jasper Gibson headed into the mountains with two Kiwis.
These weren’t average Kiwis, though. One was Sam Smoothy, a Freeride World Tour charger turned steep-skiing extraordinaire. The other was the man behind what might be the most iconic Olympic slopestyle run of all time: a zero-spin extravaganza that fired up die-hards and left non-skiers scratching their heads—and that’s just one bullet point on Jossi Wells’ near-endless resume.
The group was scrambling around New Zealand’s Tasman Glacier to shoot photos. They did that. They also came away with POWDER’s newest cover, a vision of Wells levitating through a narrow channel in the glacial ice.
While it isn’t Gibson’s first published photo, it is his first ski magazine cover.
“I was in complete shock and disbelief when [the photo editor] told me that I got it,” he said. “I’m very excited and psyched to get it, but it almost doesn’t feel real.”
Gibson didn’t have a celebration planned when we spoke recently, but he had at least one idea.
“[I’ll] maybe pop a bottle or something,” he said, chuckling.
Wells has landed on numerous New Zealand ski magazine covers, but the only U.S. ski magazine cover he could recall notching was with Freeskier. Gibson hit up Wells to break the news that he’d made another and caught him mid-cab ride.
“Man, I’m so hyped. I was tripping,” Wells said.
For Gibson, 33, the moment follows years spent dedicated to photography and skiing. The son of two skiers, he said he was “pretty much born and raised” on the slopes of Sandpoint’s local hill, Schweitzer. When he was two months old, his parents took him skiing in a backpack. At two, he was skiing himself.
“It’s kind of in my lifeblood,” Gibson said.
Photography came later through his school’s yearbook and newspaper. The passion meshed with skiing in Schweitzer’s terrain park, where Gibson cut his teeth shooting his buddies. As a teenager, a mentor showed him he could make a living with his camera. And when Gibson graduated college, he leaned in.
Since then, he’s been all over, pointing his lens at skiers, climbers, and kayakers in far-flung locales, from Alaska to Chile. This past winter, he joined the photo team at Alta Ski Area in Utah and snapped photos of a childhood hero, Pep Fujas.
“It’s been a cool way for me to see the world and experience new places in the world,” Gibson said of photography. “I feel very fortunate to have it.”
Izzy Lidsky
Ahead of the cover shot, Gibson posted up with Wells and Smoothy at the Tasman Saddle Hut, a 14-bunk outpost surrounded by peaks and ice in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. They had their eyes on a zone where they could play around in the otherworldly, crevasse-laden environment.
One ice tunnel, about 30 feet long, looked promising. Gibson had his talent, Wells, hop through several times as he dialed in the shot, which ended up including towering blue ice walls. Upon landing, Wells had to pin it through the tight corridor before he could slow down.
“The landing was kind of hairy because it was like straight glacier ice,” said Wells. “So I was kind of going as big as I could in there without completely launching into dead flat.”
“I was trying to work the angles and get in the right position to get a good frame that I really liked,” added Gibson, who aimed to—and succeeded in—showing off the “wild natural, glacier hole feature.”
Gibson had met Wells a few years prior on a North Face shoot and reconnected with the Kiwi skier during a yearlong stint in New Zealand. The glacier trip came about when Wells, searching for some alpine-ready companions, tapped Smoothy and Gibson. In Wells, Gibson didn’t just find a more-than-able ski model.
“He’s so humble and so kind,” said Gibson. “Definitely one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and very encouraging, and he’s very inquisitive. He wants to know about you and the people that he’s with.”
The excursion marked Wells’ first time venturing into that part of New Zealand’s backcountry. Since then, the seasoned park skier has developed a stronger affinity for the alpine—hanging out with Gibson and Smoothy at the hut helped plant the seed.
“In the context of this photo, that trip really showed me what those mountains are like out there,” said Wells.
He couldn’t have known it would happen, but Wells—alongside Gibson and Smoothy—now has something a little bigger than a postcard to remember that inspirational time on the glacier. Well, a lot bigger.
The 2026/27 print issue of POWDER Magazine is here. Click here to have a copy shipped to your front door. Copies can also be found on newsstands at major retailers like Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and more.
Leave a Reply