Athlete Interview: The Profundity of Telemark Skier Meghan Kelly

On a hut trip to the Selkirk Mountains some eleven years ago,Meghan Kelly, one of the strongest telemark skiers of her generation, was with a group of fellow female snowriders on SheJumps’ inaugural Alpine Finishing School, a program that would become a linchpin in the advocacy group’s aim to inspire more women to tackle technical backcountry skiing.

There, the ensemble began to envision the future. Specifically; Kelly’s.

“I was kind of saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is kind of my last trip,’ because I had been married for a bit and I was planning on having kids soon,” Kelly remembers telling the group. “And we kind of all sat around in the hut and we manifested that I would have twins so I would only miss one ski season.”  

That group, including pro skiers and industry luminaries, would bond over the shared experience of skiing. Many present would reconvene a few seasons later for a visionary adventure from Iceland to Greenland combining sailing, skiing, and environmental advocacy, a trip that would be captured in the KT Miller film Shifting Ice + Changing Tides.

“We did the Iceland to Greenland trip with a bunch of people from that Selkirk Lodge trip in 2014. And then after that, I decided I was ready to have kids.” Kelly remembers. “Then I found out I was pregnant. With triplets.” 

The manifestation had done its work, though “it was a little bit of an overshoot,” Kelly says laughing.

But the good-natured and thoughtful Meghan Kelly–who evokes Buddhism’s middle path, partakes in meditation retreats, and works as a stream and wetland restoration engineer in the Lake Tahoe Basin–doesn’t merely invoke the cosmos on a whim; the telemark skiing mother of three taps into an energy that is holistic, inspiring, and, judging by the admiration she’s earned from many, perhaps transcendent.

In a sport where few if any athletes truly make a living, the steadfast Meghan Kelly ranks as amongst telemark’s most accomplished skiers. Her feats run a broad spectrum; from being a finalist in all three of the now shuttered Big Mountain Telemark Series comps during the 2011/2012 season, to receiving the acclaimed Polartec Challenge Grant in 2013–an award that outdoor legends like Anatoli Boukarev, Conrad Anker, and Andrew McLean have also won. But her accomplishments go beyond skiing. Kelly is also a mother to triplet boys, an Ivy League-trained engineer, and a role model to most she comes in contact with.

“She's the coolest,” legendary outdoor writer and former telemark champion Megan Michelson noted of Kelly over email. “She’s my hero.” 

Similar to the impact of other legendary free-heel skiers like the late Kasha Rigby, Kelly has long transcended the telemark label. While a devout free-heel skier who has even been called “stubborn” by former tele rippers for sticking with The Turn, Kelly has also rubbed shoulders with some of the strongest skiers of her generation, regardless of discipline. And while she competed at the highest level when telemark-specific comps still reigned, and has proudly carried the tele torch for decades, she has also appeared in films and projects with leading alpine skiers where her technique of choice was but part of the story; not novelty nor separator.

And Kelly sees her achievements as a telemark skier largely as a bridge between worlds. “I think just being that connection and not seeing it as any different, but just being out there doing the same thing on telemark; I think that would probably be the most impactful thing I did,” Kelly says.

And that prowess was imprinted on some of the leading big mountain skiers of the day. “I was skiing with Lynsey Dyer, I was skiing with Rachael Burks, and they kind of were like ‘whoa okay, you can ski that on telemark skis?’ I kind of just stuck with it and I didn't really bow to the pressure to change, I guess, because I think a lot of people did.”

Kelly’s crossover strength was prominently featured in KT Miller’s 2016 film Shifting Ice + Changing Tides, the film that chronicled Kelly’s adventure with Nat Segal, McKenna Peterson, Pip Hunt, and Martha Hunt as they sailed from Iceland to ski remote and serene lines in Greenland while documenting the rapid climate change occurring on the massive Arctic island. 

“The team bagged 10 first descents, battled seasickness and storms, and balanced each other’s strengths and weaknesses with their own,” Abbie Barronian wrote of the trip in POWDER in the spring of 2015. “They enjoyed the benefits of an all-ladies trip–lots of communication, empathy, and laughter–and began making decisions and taking the lead in situations in which they would usually have deferred to someone else. Perhaps most importantly, they saw firsthand the effects of climate change and began to make changes in their own behaviors,” the piece continued.

Kelly’s recollection of the seminal trip is perhaps both pragmatic and modest. “We won a grant from Polartec; we chartered a sailboat; we did first descents in Iceland and Greenland. And I think that was an incredible experience”. 

While the 46-year-old still telemarks a hundred days a year, Kelly not only transcends the telemark label, but that, too, of simply being a skier. Her triplet boys are now ten years old, and Kelly is a senior project manager and restoration engineer for the Nevada Tahoe Conservation District, working to restore the streams that feed Lake Tahoe. Kelly received her undergrad from Cornell, taught math in inner city Baltimore with Teach for America, and earned her post-graduate degree in fluvial ecology at the University of Michigan, all before raising her three boys with her husband Pat in South Lake Tahoe. 

It’s all been part of a life full of evolution, growth, and reflection.

“The thing about having triplets is that I was pretty fiercely independent, probably to a fault,” Kelly says. “And sometimes with triplets, I had no choice but to ask for help. It was probably really good for me to lose that independence, but then also kind of gain it back. And it felt like a huge accomplishment when I had all three of them by myself skiing, you know, it was like, ‘wow, I did it.’”

Warm, holistic, perhaps even spiritual, Kelly’s energy is hard to miss. Our interview over the phone began with as many questions from her as there were from me. “Sorry, I’ll stop interviewing you,” she said after genuinely inquiring about my own life, including how old my young son was, and ruminating on how much she loved my hometown of Steamboat Springs.

That down-to-earth mentality is what seems to anchor Meghan Kelly, whose organic, positive view on life is not only contagious, but at times deeply philosophical. And Kelly remains optimistic about the fortunes of telemark, speaking of innovative new bindings (while also wishing there were smaller boot sizes available; something the industry over doesn’t offer in number). And she gives a nod to CJ Coccia and TELE COLO for the energy the newschool movie house has injected into the sport. “There's a lot to be excited about telemark skiing,” Kelly says.

But while the zeitgeist in skiing may have moved away from the heady telemark skier, Kelly remains the spiritual free-heeler. Beyond simple equipment availability and stoke, Kelly sees telemark’s future as linked to a coming, perhaps even necessary, reimagining of mindfulness in the face of an ever-devolving digital wilderness. 

“Okay, here's the big one,” she says excitedly. “I think there is going to be a transition away from this very computer-centric social media,” Kelly says. “We're going to just have to do that to survive as a species.”

And that evolution unavoidably includes free-heel skiing. “That's where the local telemark skier is really going to have an impact on people again because it's going to be, ‘Oh, hey, look at that guy shredding down the mountain. Look at that woman shredding. I want to do that.’ And that's how most of us started that are my age. We saw somebody. It inspired us,” Kelly says. 

“And so I think as we find out the dangers of social media to children and smartphones and things like that, we're going to have more human-to-human interactions and that's something I'm excited and optimistic about and I think that's going to help society. And telemark skiing.”