Wanaka-based freeride skier and POW NZ athlete, Ben Richards, has just wrapped the northern hemisphere competition season taking home pretty much every crown he could. Walking away with a remarkable hat-trick of titles: Freeride World Tour Champion, Freeride World Champion, and YETI Xtreme Verbier, Ben has cemented his status among the sport’s elite.
Achieving this kind of result is impressive under any circumstances, but doing so in a winter marked by unstable snowpack, avalanche closures, and unseasonable warmth (with three competitions cancelled along the way) speaks to Ben’s real skill.
Being shaped by New Zealand’s notoriously variable conditions has always been part of what makes Kiwi athletes different. Wind-stripped ridges, thick crust layers, whiteouts, tussock, and rocks (often all on the same day) have a way of building resilience and adaptability that’s hard to replicate elsewhere.
But what we saw across this Northern Hemisphere season isn’t just the familiar NZ style variability. When even the most reliable of locations like Austria are experiencing 15°C days mid winter on the regular, the changing pattern of our winters on a global scale is hard to ignore.
As Ben himself explains:
“As a freeride skier, I experience climate change in a very direct way. It’s not something abstract or distant—it shows up in the snowpack, in the terrain, and increasingly, in whether events can even run.
New Zealand has always had variable conditions. That’s part of what shapes you as a skier here. You learn to deal with wind, mixed snow, and making the most of what you’ve got. But over the past few years, it feels like the rest of the world is having winters just as unpredictable as ours.
What I’m seeing more of now is broken-up seasons. Instead of consistent snowfall building a solid base, it comes in waves—long dry spells, then a big storm, then rapid warming or even rain.
That kind of pattern makes it really hard to build quality terrain, especially for freeride events. You need coverage, stability, and features that actually fill in properly. When that doesn’t happen, everything becomes more limited.
Even when snow does arrive, it’s often not the same quality. Warmer temps mean heavier snow, more crust layers, or rain events that damage what’s already there. It doesn’t just affect how it skis—it affects how safe it is.
As a result of this we had three events cancelled this year in a row. We are no longer able to go to events knowing they are going to run as the reality of it is, the conditions we need to run events safely are becoming harder and harder to come by.”
When it comes specifically to this year’s challenges for Ben, the struggle with snowpack was the only consistency across the whole tour.
“With fluctuating temperatures came unstable snow packs which we encountered when arriving in Georgia. The day before the event the slope to access the venue slid and was one of the biggest avalanches I’d ever seen, leading to the event getting cancelled.
We then moved the event to Austria and although it was still winter there we had temperatures as high as 15 degrees on the mountain leading to another cancelled event.
Meanwhile earlier in the season we had the first ever world championship event held in Andorra, a location renowned for having unpredictable snow conditions similar to New Zealand. But that happened to be some of the best skiing we had all winter. That event was particularly memorable for me as I became the first FIS Freeride World Champion ever and got to wave the NZ flag not only for me but the whole nation.”
It can be an overwhelming burden when looking at these changes on a global scale. But as a community connected by its love of the outdoors, we simply can’t afford to look away.
Our suggestion is always to start at a local level. Even small actions combine to bring about collective change. Join a local organisation, advocate for climate policy with POW, Ben, and many others who love winter. Connect with your local and national representatives, use your vote for these changes, and support the initiatives doing the work on the ground. Most importantly, stay informed, but give yourself permission to step away from the screen, get outside, and enjoy the nature we’re working to protect.
We’ll have plenty of opportunities to take positive climate action together throughout the winter season and beyond – keep an eye on our newsletter, blog, and socials for ways to get involved.
