Skinet Talk

Mike Wilson and Tim Dutton's Plans for 2010
[ December 31, 2009 - 1:30pm ]

Mike Wilson goes head over heels at Las Lenas, Argentina. Learn tips from Mike on how to throw a backflip here.

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Will Wissman
Pro skier Tim Dutton is pressuring fellow pro Mike Wilson to throw a switch backflip off a 15-foot cliff near Squaw Valley’s Granite Peak chairlift on a day just after Christmas last week. I’m standing on top of the cliff waiting to see what happens. Pro skier Jackie Passo is watching from below. The landing is filled with week-old compressed powder, and Wilson seems nervous about the take off.

“You always get me to do stuff like this!” Wilson yells from the top of the cliff, where he’s scouting the jump.

“Come on,” Dutton hollers back from the bottom. “Do it already!”

And then without further hesitation, Wilson pushes off, turns around, skis off the lip backwards, and throws a massive backflip. He doesn’t quite complete the rotation and botches the landing, but it’s spectacular regardless. This is just another day at Squaw Valley for the three locals rippers. I spoke to Dutton and Wilson on the chairlift about their plans for the new year.

Last winter, Dutton, at the age of 22, entered his first big-mountain comp—the Freeskiing World Tour at Kirkwood—and won. He used his $5,000 winnings from there and traveled to Alyeska to compete in the Freeskiing World Tour Championships, and much to everyone’s surprise, he won there too. Another interesting fact about Tim: His aunt, Deborah Dutton, was one of the ski bunnies in Hot Dog...the Movie. This winter, Dutton will be competing on the Freeride World Tour, with stops in Chamonix, Russia, Verbier, and Squaw Valley. “I’ll be traveling a ton,” he says.

Mike Wilson, who invented the Wilsonflip, a series of off-axis maneuvers involving a double flip and a spin and a half in each flip, will be spending 2010 traveling everywhere from Hawaii to Asia to South America to shoot footage for a new television pilot, shot with Poor Boyz Productions and UnofficialSquaw.com potentially for the Discovery Channel, on action sports adventures, including BASE-jumping, skiing, and more.

At the end of the day, I decided on my new year's resolution: Studying Mike Wilson's tips on how to throw a backflip and next time I'm following those guys around, I'll try to do one myself. —Megan Michelson