Stratton’s Caroline Claire, 17, Makes the Slopestyle Team

Caroline Claire, 17, Slopestyle

When she was in eighth grade, Wilmington’s Caroline Claire had a chance to meet her idol, Devin Logan, when she came to Mount Snow where Claire was training. “Devin came up to me and said ‘I know who you are,’ and showed me her medal—I never thought she would know who I was,” Claire remembers.

In the next few months, Claire and Logan will be competing on the U.S. Ski Team  in PyeongChang, South Korea. Logan qualified in halfpipe and slopestyle and  Claire in slopestyle. (To see who else made the team, see Who’s Made the Team?   Not coincidentally, Jesse Mallis, now at Stratton Mountain School and formerly at Mount Snow Academy, has coached them both in freeskiing.

Claire, still a  Stratton Mountain School senior, has been pretty much unstoppable the last few years. A member of U.S. Freeskiing’s The North Face Rookie slopestyle team, in 2017 she earned her first World Cup podium—a bronze in Seiser Alm, Italy— and four Toyota U.S. Revolution Tour podium appearances, including three wins. In March, she capped off a stellar season by winning a bronze at the FIS Freestyle Ski Junior World Championships in Valmalenco, Italy. Last December, she was named one of the top 10 Junior Athletes of the Year by Vermont Sports magazine.

“I was just excited to be at my second World Cup, and then to make the finals,” Claire said about the Valmalenco event.  “I landed a trick I never thought I could do off this huge 70-foot jump—it was the run of my life!” she says. Claire, who also is a leading scorer on her soccer team, wants to keep competing, but she’s also applying now to Dartmouth and University of Vermont, so the there’s a good chance we’ll keep seeing her on Vermont’s slopes for a while.

Photos by Jesse Mallis

Updated: January 23, 2018  A previous version incorrectly said that Claire would compete in the inaugural Big Air. That will most likely take place in 2020.