A 17-year-old Basalt High School Student, Hanna Faulhaber, has become a famous Women’s Halfpipe skier. This year, at the 2022 X-Games in Aspen, Faulhaber got 3rd place for her first time ever in this year’s competition. Before this year’s X-Games, Faulhaber also got 3rd place on the Dew Tour 2021, which is an extreme sports circuit organized by the Adventure Sports Group as well as 2 world cup podiums. Faulhaber has now completed at the Beijing olympics

Faulhaber was able to speak over social media about her experiences right after X-games, “I first got into skiing by growing up in the valley and having my mum take me to buttermilk. I got into halfpipe skiing because of the X-Games and growing up and watching them every year. I grew up skiing with AVSC and grew towards the park and pipe program pretty quickly. I then continued with halfpipe and somehow ended up on the US team,” Faulhaber said.

Hanna Faulhaber has gotten to where she is in skiing just by following her passion. Faulhaber would go skiing with friends after the season was over by walking up the halfpipe during mid-summer days.

Faulhaber says she has not even noticed that she is one of the youngest pro ski athletes out there because it never bothered her, especially at the X-Games.

“There was such a good atmosphere and it was so cool to have friends, family, and people from the valley there supporting me,” Faulhaber said.

Hundreds of fans and friends of Faulhaber came to cheer on her runs down Buttermilk with a crowd of over 120,000 people.

Even though Faulhaber is a pro athlete now and has a bright future ahead if she continues forward in her skiing, she never gets behind on her other responsibilities that she needs to keep up on, especially her academics at Basalt HS.

Faulhaber got most of her classes done over the summer in online school so she could focus on skiing this winter season. Faulbualar now only has her Capstone Project, an integrative experience project, along with an accuplacer test which helps colleges make accurate course placement decisions and set students up for success. With only two projects left to do before she can graduate, she is very excited about her journey ahead.

Faulhaber doesn’t know at the moment what she wants to do for college nor does she know when she is going to go but what she does know is that “ skiing will never pay enough for me to just do that, so I will one day go to college.”

Faulhaber said she has a very good mindset for her course ahead in the future and for right now she is gonna keep her head down and grind on her training..