A Comeback? No, Dane Tudor Is in His "Fourth Prime"

Somewhere in Colorado, hundreds of miles away, Dane Tudor held an umbrella aloft and peered down at me.

He strolled about and patiently answered my many questions, a gray sky creeping into the edge of the frame behind him. I’d signed in to the video call to talk about his new movie, The Fourth Prime, but first I wanted to figure out where he’d been the past few seasons. The answer? Still skiing.

Now 37, the Rossland, British Columbia, and Palmer, Alaska, raised skier lived through and embodied a rapid evolution in snow sports. Skis got fat, twin tips went big, and techy tricks started showing up everywhere. Tudor did it all. 

People continually refer back to his 2009 Everyday Is a Saturday segment with Poor Boyz Productions, a stunning mishmash of everything that was—and still is—sick in freeskiing. To kids of a certain generation, Tudor was one of those figures: above reproach in the style department yet more than handy on skis when he wasn’t flying through the air.

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After winning the iF3 Standout Male Skier of the Year award in 2022, though, Tudor parted ways with his sponsor, Scott, and went, for a time, without brand support. He last appeared in a ski movie for Blank Collective’s Feel Real, which, confoundingly, also earned him the iF3 award. You’d think that would be worth a contract or three. 

But it isn’t uncommon for gifted skiers to fade in and out of the film scene. There are only so many brand dollars to go around, talent keeps skyrocketing, and social media has completely changed the ski movie- and magazine-driven environment Tudor came up in. During our chat, he wondered aloud if not knowing how to crack the algorithm held him back. 

While he’d grown tired of pitching sponsors, the same wasn’t true of skiing. Tudor kept ripping around his home mountain, Red, and, though he didn’t want the “break” from being a professional, he found inspiration in the downtime.

“I was able to really think about my philosophy in skiing and work on the next phase of my riding style,” Tudor said, his umbrella hovering in the background. “Rethinking everything from how I ride to what is challenging and what is pushing the limits or boundaries, and how to balance all those things while working on mastering the craft into the future.”

The Fourth Prime is part of that evolution. With help from the athlete management crew Pangea Collective, Tudor recently signed two new sponsors, Fischer Skis and the outerwear company Nivis. That unlocked the budget he needed, and last winter Tudor shot with longtime ski filmmaker Jeff Thomas. Fellow skier and up-and-comer Jonathan Rollins coined the film’s name. While building a jump together last winter, Rollins kept saying Tudor was now in his “fourth prime.” It stuck.

“The project means a lot because I’m still in the game and I still get to enjoy the backcountry and ride with friends and practice my style and create content,” Tudor said. “It’s just that creative process that’s so fulfilling.”

Given the duration of Tudor’s career—he blew up at 19—you could probably slice it into any number of “primes.” He’s filmed street, pillow lines, and big mountain, plus covered most of the snow in between. Tudor admitted that he didn’t know what Rollins’ breakdown of the “primes” was. His assessment, though, was in part guided by the ski movie production outfits he worked with, starting with Poor Boyz, bouncing between Teton Gravity Research and Sherpas Cinema, and ending with Blank. Well, not quite.

“Now this is the fourth prime, which is pretty cool,” Tudor said.

The trailer is packed with his usual wizardry: dubs, hefty backcountry jumps, and capped blunt grabs. It might come as a surprise, then, that when I asked Tudor about his highlights from filming The Fourth Prime, he nodded to a jibbier, lower-impact trick: the humble but flexible butter. 

One flavor of the move appears early in The Fourth Prime when he locks into an extended butter 360. Perfecting it is, in a way, emblematic of the direction he wants to go. A fat backflip is mind-blowing, sure. But a well-executed butter—no small feat, mind you—can also get the neurons firing. 

“That’s how I’ve been working on progressing my skiing: how can I do things differently than everybody else and make it look cool while not taking massive risk?” he said.

For Tudor, it slots into a broader approach: squeezing the most out of his environment. Or, turning less into more. Last winter royally sucked for much of the West. That impacted Tudor, who regularly dealt with rain and the crusty layers it brought while filming The Fourth Prime. In the past, understandably, Tudor always wanted the perfect conditions. But he said he’s gotten better at tailoring his skiing to what the mountains provide.

Choosing those features wisely and not taking chances, along with the usual maintenance hacks—eating well, going to the gym—is Tudor’s strategy for staying healthy. He’s had only one season-ending injury: a hip dislocation in 2013. Tudor thinks that’s a product of his careful approach, though he also cited another reason he stays away from the burliest stunts: nerves.

“I have a certain level of conservatism in my writing. I’m not a total wild guy,” he said. “I do battle with more internal fear than maybe some other guys do … I think that’s part of what’s helped me along the way.”

Fear for Tudor and fear for the average skier look a little different. In the spring, Tudor ventured to Blackcomb’s imposing terrain park alongside Kye Petersen. He wanted to revitalize his freestyle skills, getting them close to what they were in 2012, when Tudor’s time spent training in the park coalesced. That involved going upside down twice. Then, on one air, he slipped up, missing his pop, landing sideways, and twisting his ankle pretty good. He offered the moment as an example. It showed that even when you’re careful, mistakes can happen. 

As the years pass, the size and frequency of those mistakes matter. Outside of skiing, Tudor works for the bike park company Gravity Logic, but he’s also into trading, buying and selling stocks. In trading, there’s a metric called “win rate,” which measures the percentage of someone’s trades that result in a profit. Tudor’s found that the concept applies to skiing.

“You can take many small hits and stay in the game,” he said, drawing the comparison. “But if you go massive and you blow up a couple times big, that could be the end of it.”

As of this fall, it’s fair to say Tudor’s in the green, with the latest video—his first in years—premiering across North America on Pangea’s Freeride Film Tour. He doesn’t take this second round in front of the lens for granted. Whenever he gets the chance to shoot, he said, he gives it everything because he doesn’t know if it’ll happen again—the ski industry remains fickle, after all, perhaps more than ever. 

Still, Tudor spoke excitedly about the momentum around The Fourth Prime, and is hatching plans with filmmakers to make another movie happen this season. He’s even considering, if only in a distant way, getting back into the streets. However the future looks, Tudor’s having fun. That isn’t contingent on the ski career thing.

“I ski the way I do because I enjoy that,” he said, adding that he’ll continue venturing into the mountains regardless. “I grew up as a passionate skier—it’s what I love to do.”

Related: The Freeride World Tour Is Headed To Snowbird, Utah