Text by Kelly J. Hayes
Images by Sam Ferguson, Tamara Šuša, Presto Media, and courtesy of the Maytin Family
Standing atop the podium last April in Copper Mountain at the USASA Snowboard and Freeski Association National Championships, then 15-year-old Hunter Maytin had the distinct look of a champion.
With a Monster Army logo on a hat atop his head, a Giro helmet perched on his Head skis, and a first-place prize check held in hand, it was clear Maytin could get very comfortable winning gold medals. Representing the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club (AVSC), the precocious athlete had just captured his first national win in the FIS Open division of the freeski halfpipe competition, bagging a 92.75 score on his final run for the victory. He was amongst the youngest performers in the competition.
Halfpipe freeski marries the intense excitement of freestyle skiing with high-in-the-air, above-the-pipe theatrics and tricks. There are three freeski disciplines—halfpipe, slopestyle and big air—contested in the Winter Olympic Games. The sport first made its Olympic appearance in the Games in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, and has been growing in popularity ever since.
Maytin, who turned 16 this year, is an Aspen High School junior, and though he is barely old enough to have a driver’s license, he is already accumulating the stamps of a world traveler on his passport. This past September, he was a competitor in New Zealand at Cardrona in the first World Cup event of the 2024-25 season. That followed a January trip to Gangwon, South Korea, where he captured a fifth-place finish at the Winter Youth Olympics, an invitation-only event put on by the International Olympic Committee. China and Europe are already beckoning for the current ski season. “Traveling can take its toll, especially with school,” he says. “But it’s crazy. You get to see new places and ski while you do it.”
While just beginning to travel the globe with his sport, it would seem Maytin has been destined for this journey since he was born in Aspen on April Fools’ Day in 2008. No joke. “When he was a baby, my wife Lauren and I would take Hunter up to the Sundeck, and we would alternate taking laps and baby-sitting him,” Jay Maytin, a long-time local and Hunter’s father, says with a laugh. By age three, Hunter was clocking 60 or so ski days a season on Aspen Mountain (and occasionally napping in the gondola between runs). At four, he won the NASTAR National Championships. In second grade, he chose a path to become a competitive freeskier, and, at age 11, he was forerunner for the Winter X Games at Buttermilk. Precocious indeed.
Fortunately, Maytin lives in a community that hosts one of the great youth ski programs, AVSC, and he has had the opportunity to work with world-class coaches, including Knutzen Hoff, Sam Ferguson, Greg Ruppel, and his current mentor, Dave Zweig. “The best coaches [tell it like it is],” he says in earnest. “If I do a trick and it’s not great, I need to know what was wrong. It gives me more motivation.”
Maytin’s sport is not for the faint of heart. “At the top of the run, before you start, you are getting hopped up, but you are also a little scared. It’s a dangerous sport,” he says. “But once you drop in, you are so focused, and you just go. I listen to music before and during the run, but when I’m in the pipe I’m so in the zone that I can’t even hear it. I’m so comfortable in the air I’m just thinking about what comes next.”
Depending upon the size and length of the pipe, a run will consist of four or five separate tricks and Maytin maintains and practices a repertoire of around 10 tricks at any given time. “It’s a lot like writing left-handed for a right hander,” he notes. “You are spinning in different directions, and you have to be able to do [the tricks] both ways.”
And when a run goes just right, the satisfaction is immense. “At the U.S. Revolution Tour in Aspen, I hit my best run. There is so much adrenaline and such relief when you know that you just landed a great run,” he says.
In addition to the thrill of the pipe, Maytin loves the lifestyle his sport offers. “There is such a great community,” he says. “We all grew up skiing in different places, but we all connect on the same level. And the older guys come and root and support the younger guys.” He counts freeski legends like three-time U.S. Olympian Aaron Blunck and Aspen’s own Alex Ferreira, who’s won a pair of Olympic halfpipe medals, as mentors.
“I would love to go to the Olympics one day,” he says with an eye towards the future. “But I am trying to take it just one season at a time.”