Podcast #201: 'The Ski Podcast' Host Iain Martin

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Who

Iain Martin, Host of The Ski Podcast

Recorded on

January 30, 2025

About The Ski Podcast

From the show’s website:

Want to [know] more about the world of skiing? The Ski Podcast is a UK-based podcast hosted by Iain Martin.

With different guests every episode, we cover all aspects of skiing and snowboarding from resorts to racing, Ski Sunday to slush.

In 2021, we were voted ‘Best Wintersports Podcast‘ in the Sports Podcast Awards. In 2023, we were shortlisted as ‘Best Broadcast Programme’ in the Travel Media Awards.

Why I interviewed him

We did a swap. Iain hosted me on his show in January (I also hosted Iain in January, but since The Storm sometimes moves at the pace of mammal gestation, here we are at the end of March; Martin published our episode the day after we recorded it).

But that’s OK (according to me), because our conversation is evergreen. Martin is embedded in EuroSki the same way that I cycle around U.S. AmeriSki. That we wander from similarly improbable non-ski outposts – Brighton, England and NYC – is a funny coincidence. But what interested me most about a potential podcast conversation is the Encyclopedia EuroSkiTannica stored in Martin’s brain.

I don’t understand skiing in Europe. It is too big, too rambling, too interconnected, too above-treeline, too transit-oriented, too affordable, too absent the Brobot ‘tude that poisons so much of the American ski experience. The fact that some French idiot is facing potential jail time for launching a snowball into a random grandfather’s skull (filming the act and posting it on TikTok, of course) only underscores my point: in America, we would cancel the grandfather for not respecting the struggle so obvious in the boy’s act of disobedience.

In a weird twist for a ski writer, I am much more familiar with summer Europe than winter Europe. I’ve skied the continent a couple of times, but warm-weather cross-continental EuroTreks by train and by car have occupied months of my life. When I try to understand EuroSki, my brain short-circuits. I tease the Euros because each European ski area seems to contain between two and 27 distinct ski areas, because the trail markings are the wrong color, because they speak in the strange code of the “km” and “cm” - but I’m really making fun of myself for Not Getting It.

Martin gets it. And he good-naturedly walks me through a series of questions that follow this same basic pattern: “In America, we charge $109 for a hamburger that tastes like it’s been pulled out of a shipping container that went overboard in 1944. But I hear you have good and cheap food in Europe – true?” I don’t mind sounding like a d*****s if the result is good information for all of us, and thankfully I achieved both of those things on this podcast.

What we talked about

The European winter so far; how a UK-based skier moves back and forth to the Alps; easy car-free travel from the U.S. directly to Alps ski areas; is ski traff