Gus Schumacher: “I can be outside with my own thoughts.”
The key, Schumacher explains, to maintaining just the right temperature in the snow is an age-old weatherproof trick: layers.
“It’s classic, just layers,” says Schumacher of his on-the-hill approach.
“For example, where you’re backcountry skiing and you’re going to walk uphill for two hours, in zero degrees Fahrenheit you can only wear a long-sleeved T-shirt because there’s no wind,” he continued. “And then you put on your big jacket and stuff and ski down. That’s kind of the way to do it.”
Cross-country skiing isn’t just a sport for the Anchorage resident, who learned to ski as soon as he could walk — it’s a whole lifestyle.
Schumacher feels at one with the mountains and nature, especially during his training periods, when he often goes without headphones and listens to the world around him as he crushes his practice runs.
What he initially felt like a “forced meditation” has turned into something he enjoys, focusing on his deep breathing and the pattern of his skis on the snow.
“That I can be with myself and my own thoughts outside of time,” he said.
Like many cross-country skiers, he turned that passion into activism by joining the Protect our Winters Athlete Alliance and – in March 2024 – testifying at a U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing, where he shared his own experiences with climate change as a skier.
“Giving back is super important,” Schumacher said before going on to describe another passion project: influencing the next generation of cross-country skiers.
“For me, it feels best to give back in my home community, where I feel like it makes the biggest difference,” he says. “My favorite is when there are 10 kids and it’s my old coach and I just hang out. I’m just a kid again… and show them that I’m actually one of them. That’s pretty special.”
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