When Greg Stump was an earnest young prodigy at Maine’s Pleasant Mountain, en route to becoming the North American freestyle champion, he kicked off one of his ballet runs by detonating a bomb. The judges quickly rewrote the rules to ban such pyrotechnics,
but it was a sign of the fireworks to come.

A decade later, Stump exploded the staid norms of ski filmmaking with his thumping soundtracks and never-seen-before action, culminating with his most publicly acclaimed work, the turbo-charged “Blizzard of Aahhh’s.”

“‘Blizzard’ had 10-times more impact on my career than all the Warren Miller features I did before it,”
says the soft-spoken extreme skier Scot Schmidt, who played a starring role in the 1988 classic.

Stump’s brash, bad-boy image concealed the hard work and preparation behind the bravado, as he actually brought impressive ski, film and music credentials to the field when he released his first film in 1984, “The Droids.”

He made extreme, mainstream, not just for skiing but for American culture, and encouraged the athletes to tell their stories. He inspired a generation of skiers and riders as well as the founding of film companies like Teton Gravity Research and Matchstick Productions.
He welcomed snowboarders to the party, and built and filmed the first boardercross course in 1999, when Skiing magazine released its list of the “25 Most Influential People in Skiing” of all time, Stump was on it,
and his ski film library still wins coverts today.

Stump grew up in Portland, Maine, the son of a theater history professor and a professional singer. He bought his first Super 8 camera and projector with proceeds from a paper route, and started as a DJ at the local college radio station in the seventh grade

At nearby Pleasant Mountain (now Shawnee Peak),
Stump found himself at the forefront of a juggernaut junior freestyle program that would produce six national championships in a single season, including titles from Stump and his siblings Kim and Geoff.

Stump was thrust into a featured role in Dick Barrymore’s last film in 1979, the globe-trotting “Vagabound Skiers.” Stump fell in love with the lifestyle,
and studied everything Barrymore did.

Stump would eventually strap on 75 lbs. of camera equipment and do exactly the same, but he brought new energy and original music to the party, the latter thanks to London-based Trevor Horn of ZTT Records.

He would bring the skiing, and the personalities, to a never-before-imagined level. Stump supported the ski gig by doing high-profile commercial work, including
for large corporate clients and dozens of music videos.

For his role in reinventing the ski film industry and bringing personality to the sport, Greg Stump earns induction into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.