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On the Radar: Quinn Wolferman & Ferdinand Dahl
This month's On The Radar interview goes to not one, but two standout young skiers: Quinn Wolferman and Ferdinand Dahl.
Skiing reaches beyond borders to connect people, as the unlikely tag team of Quinn Wolferman and Ferdinand Dahl shows. One hails from the rugged vistas of the American West, the other from the posh suburbs of Oslo. But in a friendship bred along the stops of the international freeski circuit, Quan and Ferdy found common ground in music, style, nightlife, a do-it-yourself attitude and of course, ripping on two planks.
Interview: Ethan Stone
KimboSessions photos: Josh Bishop
Ferdinand Dahl
Born: 17 July 1998
Residing: Oppegård, Norway
Home mountain: Oslo Winterpark
Sponsors: Monster Energy, K2, Spyder
Quinn Wolferman
Born: 6 October 1997
Residing: Salt Lake City, Utah
Home mountain: Montana Snowbowl
Sponsors: Monster Energy, Spyder, Armada. That’s it for the support in the game.
Ferdinand Dahl: What about the CBD?
Quinn Wolferman: I got dropped! I didn’t post on Instagram enough.
Ethan Stone: You got dropped by a CBD company?
Quinn: Yeah, they weren’t too hyped on how I much I was willing to post about a roll-on CBD, so they cut me.
Ethan: What have guys you been up to lately? What’s your quarantine hobby?
Ferdy: Sewing. I made a pair of pants and I’m on the second pair right now. Other than that we’ve been hiking a lot, setting up rails and filming. We were lucky enough to be able to ski last week in Norway so we filmed some more, and hopefully we can film more next week. Other than that, right now I’m moving into the first Capeesh Supply office.
Quinn: Definitely not as much as Ferdy. I’ve just been hanging. I don’t want to say that people are more strict here in the U.S. about skiing and whatnot, because I’ve definitely been touring. But as far as hitting rails and stuff, that’s kind of a no-go right now. You can’t really go onto people’s mountains. So I’ve just been laying low, swimming a lot and stretching. It’s a rare opportunity to let the body rest and recover. I’ve got a little sewing project myself, this vest that I’m pretty hyped on. Other than that, pretty much kicking it and skating.
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Ethan: Ferdy, you mentioned Capeesh Supply. What’s good with that?
Ferdy: There’s a lot of secret stuff going on, but it will all come out eventually. Belts are the first up on the list.
Quinn: Essentially Capeesh is Ferdy’s brainchild that he’s been working on for some time now, and it’s kind of transcended into more and more things. It’s coming to life slowly but surely.
Ferdy: It’s me, Quinn and another friend, Sebastian Bergan, who’s a friend of mine from back home. We want to try to make some dope stuff for freeskiers. Hopefully people will rock it and we’ll get the opportunity to make more stuff, and make some cool videos too.
Capeesh? (YouTube) 2019 adventures of Ferdy & Quinn.
Ethan: Tell me about where you’re from.
Ferdy: The place I’m from is kind of a suburb about 20 minutes south of Oslo. We’ve got a house, I live in a basement apartment under my mom and dad. You can do a lot here. There’s a forest, you can bike, skate, and the city and the resort are close by. The local hill unfortunately doesn’t build a park anymore, so that’s my only complaint.
Quinn: I’m from Missoula, Montana. It’s got three different rivers running through it, so you can do a lot on the water. It’s in a big valley, the beginning of the Bitterroot Valley. If it were up to me—well, it is up to me (laughs)—I probably would have never left. I had to drive at least a couple hours to ski a park, but when it comes to overall skiing, Snowbowl is pretty epic, especially with some new snow. It’s a small mountain with two lifts, and a dirt road all the way up with no guard rail, so it’s kind of wild style. Every time I get to go back, I feel blessed to be from there.
Ethan: How do a guy from Oppegård and a guy from Missoula get to be friends?
Ferdy: I remember the first time I met Quinn was in Stubai, and he said what up.
Quinn: It was a pretty brief encounter. He had the wristband to cut the lift line and I was with the peasants in the long line, so there wasn’t much conversing. But there was an afterparty after the contest, and we were able to link up then.
Ferdy: That was the 2017/18 season. Then we hung out at the SLVSH Cup and then we both got onto Spyder, which definitely boosted the camaraderie.
Quinn: I remember being surprised by Ferdy’s knowledge about music. I just kind of listened to music—if I liked it, I liked it, you know? I wasn’t dedicated to any artists and didn’t have a music subscription, I just listened to free music on Soundcloud. Ferdy was like, “What do you think about this, what do you think about that?” And I was like, “I have no stance.” (laughs) But then I showed him a Travis Scott song that leaked, and I think he was stoked.
Ferdy: Fire track. One of the few tracks that he put me on (laughs). Then we went to Australia with Spyder, I spent a couple weeks filming in Park City, and Quinn came to Norway and we filmed some more. We did the same thing this season, which I’m super hyped about considering everything that’s going on right now with an early stop.
Ethan: What have you been filming for?
Ferdy: A little bit for Capeesh, and we’ve been filming a lot with the SLVSH crew for a full-length SLVSH movie, which got postponed until fall 2021. The crew is Joss, Napes, me, Quinn, Jonah Williams, and there’s a couple other homies that aren’t confirmed yet. We’ll try to go on as many trips and be as productive as we can next year.
Ethan: How’d you guys end up together on the Spyder team?
Quinn: To be honest that’s one of the coolest things about Spyder for me, how we were able to get brought on. Bobby (Brown) was kind of the head guy on the freeski side of things, they had signed him about a year and a half prior to us getting on board. If I’ve heard correctly, they threw some names at him, but he had the final say, and he was like, “Nope, I want Quinn from the US, and from Europe I want Ferdy.” For me that was one of the biggest honors in my ski career to have something happen like that. Companies don’t usually give that opportunity to let someone lead the way and make the decisions for them. To make it all happen with such a cool crew, I was pretty stoked.
Ferdy: I was definitely a bit skeptical at first, but then I heard that they were also talking to Quinn. Me and Quinn started talking about it, and it’s a great opportunity for both of us.
Ethan: I saw a photo of you guys on a billboard in Times Square.
Ferdy: That was as big a shock to us as to anyone else. It’s dope though, those pictures are from a great trip we had last summer filming for the Spyder launch. We had pretty much free rein to do what we wanted.
Quinn: I woke up one day and got a text, and it was me and Ferdy in Times Square. At first I just thought it was dope, but then I thought, “Why am I getting a text about this? We should be there checking that out.” That’s an insane, insane thing that’ll probably never happen to us again. I ended up talking to Spyder and telling them I wanted to go, so I flew to New York for 18 hours with Oliver Hoblitzelle. We filmed the whole experience, and I didn’t sleep. I tried to get Ferdy to come, but he was at a camp in Austria and flying from Europe would have been a pain. But I Facetimed him from New York and showed him, so I think he got a feel of what it was like to be there.
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Ethan: You guys have played a lot of SLVSH. Quinn, you’ve been in two Cup finals, one against Henrik Harlaut and one with Vinnie Gagnier, and took the L on both. Which was the harder loss?
Quinn: When it comes to the harder loss, I think obviously against Dollo (Henrik) just because of the circumstances. To have beaten the GOAT in his own park would have been epic. I was pissed for a brief moment, but then I saw everyone and got hyped again. The game was good and I knew it was going to be good on video. The loss against Vinnie sucked more because I skied so poorly, probably the worst I’ve skied on camera. It sucked to fall on a 360 and end the game like that. So I took the L, and then I had to watch the video and know it was going to be online. Ferdy knows all about that. I used to think Ferdy was cursed in SLVSH games because he couldn’t win for the first couple.
Ferdy: It can be pretty nerve-wracking to play SLVSH, because you know how many people watch it. Your rep is on the line, every trick, very call.
Quinn: For me that’s motivating. It’s my favorite form of competing, because I’m a very competitive person. When you’re skiing in slopestyle, you’re competing mostly against yourself. SLVSH is sick because it’s really about how deep your bag is, and how much you’re willing to try. It’s truly a contest.
Ethan: What’s an edit or ski movie that changed your life?
Quinn: Every Day Is A Saturday is still one of my number ones. The music was so sick, and they had the titles roasting all the skiers. It wasn’t too serious, but at the same time it was like, “This is groundbreaking shit, so don’t take it too lightly.” There are so many good segments in that movie, so many insane skiers.
Ferdy: I would probably say… hold on, let me look…
Quinn: Ferdy has Vinnie’s stockpile on the hard drive.
Ferdy: Yeah, Vinnie has pretty much every ski movie. I’ve been watching a bunch. Okay, I’ll say Hugo Burvall’s season edit, 2015/16. I remember watching that a lot.
Quinn: When it comes to edits, definitely Muddy Winter, B&E Episode 4. We watched that too many times. That’s when Phil (Casabon) became my favorite. Shoutout to my boy Jonah Elston for showing me that one.
Ferdy: I was kind of late to the whole ski-movie scene. I was introduced to some of the movies early on like Mind the Gap from Andreas Håtveit’s brother, but I was still a ski racer at that point. The first movie I watched a lot was Eye Trip. Actually I’ve got a theory on this, because everyone always says that old ski movies are better. They’re great movies, but I do think that everyone has the association of what skiing was like for you at that time. When you rewatch it, you get the feeling of what skiing was like when you first watched it early on. With that said though, I’ve been watching a lot of really old movies that Vinnie showed me this winter, and I think it’s so dope to see how much they made happen, just going out and filming and making sick features. I really miss seeing sick park footage from shoots with big features.
Quinn: Sketchy features too. Mad sketchy.
Ethan: When you look at the park shoots from back in the day, some of the rail setups were just massive.
Ferdy: Yeah, with huge gaps too, and they just went off. I would love to try to get some park shoots going next year. So if any resort reads this and wants to link up and give us the freedom to build some features, drop me a line. It’s sick to see resorts like Kläppen that get into it. You don’t need that much; the most important thing for is owners that are willing to help you out.
Ethan: Tell me a good story about the other guy.
Ferdy: When Quinn bought reflective pants off Instagram and we took him to a high school graduation party here in Norway where you go on these party buses. It's called Russettid.
Quinn: You’re basically just rolling around town partying. Ferdy told me that basically the whole time they’re in high school, these kids save up for this one moment. They pimp out these buses, paint all over them, there’s a theme and everyone has these outfits. It lasts pretty much the whole month of May, and these kids dump all their money into these buses. They’ve got huge speakers and lights, and the drivers are doing it illegally—if they get pulled over they could lose their licenses. And then they just drive around until everyone’s done partying every night. It’s like a ghetto limo pretty much. We had our heads out at 4am with the sun coming up.
Ferdy: It was great timing, because we might be too old this year.
Quinn: My story is about Ferdy being a super dope homie. It was this winter at the Big Air in Atlanta. I don’t really know what happened to me—I blacked out way too early pretty much. We were going to this bar, and you had to wait in line to get your ID checked. I ran and jumped over this barrier, and before I knew it this guy had me by the shirt and was like, “You’re outta here!” I was super bummed and thought I blew it for the night, but Ferdy was nice enough to let me switch outfits with him. So I switched my whole kit up and tied my hood super tight so only a bit of my face was showing. I got in like that and had a super epic night. That was a real homie move from him.
Ethan: What’s up next for you guys?
Ferdy: Stay tuned, we’ve got some dope stuff in the works. What’s next is try to let everyone know what Capeesh is really about, and hopefully stack some clips.
Quinn: You have to think small right now. There’s no guarantees in the world right now, so you can’t make any massive plans. So it’s about taking a step back and seeing what we can do with what’s right in front of us. And with Capeesh, making sure that we’ve got that locked down and can show people what’s good.
Ferdy: Stay positive.
Quinn. Stay positive, stay stoked and stay creative. DIY.
Ferdy: DIY!
