piphunt
Jumper Megan Michelson first wrote this for Skiing magazine in 2007, but little Pip-Piperoo, as we call her in the S-K-I Sorority in Salt Lake City, is just as feisty as ever.

WHEN PHILLIPA HUNT was a junior in high school, she launched off a freshly-built jump in Crested Butte’s terrain park and overshot the landing. She belly-flopped onto the flats, rupturing her spleen and spending four days in the intensive care unit. Most teenage girls would call it quits after that. But not Hunt, who at 5’2”, 115 pounds, packs a lot of punch into a small frame. The following year, at age 17, she came back to win the women’s junior division at the Crested Butte Extreme Freeskiing Championships. She picked up sponsorships from Smith and Salomon and began filming big lines with a small production company out of Aspen. She transferred to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to purse a ski career and a full course load—a double major in English and photojournalism with a minor in Spanish.

Her luck, it seemed, was looking up. But then, she tore her minuscus and LCL skiing the Headwall at Crested Butte, and the next summer, she broke her clavicle downhill mountain biking. Can this girl take it easy? “No, my theory is that when I hold back, I hurt myself,” she says. “Every time I’ve had a serious injury is when I’ve been hesitant. I just like to go all out.” If there’s any question as to where this blond firecracker gets her enthusiasm, one need only look as far as her parents. Both English, her mom and dad brought four-year-old “Pip” over to the States, rented an RV, and toured the country until they found the perfect ski town to raise their only daughter: Crested Butte, Colorado. She was on skis at age one and a half, and shredding powder up to her forehead by age five. Fast forward to high school. A few years of ski racing under her belt, and Hunt is ready to follow in the footsteps of her freeride coach and mentor, Wendy Fisher, who helped her scout lines for the first freeskiing competition she entered, and won. “I think Phillipa has the heart and the energy to go far in the skiing industry,” Fisher says. “It’s just a matter of convincing other people to go along for the ride.”