Full Send with with hall of famer Wendy Fisher

Whether you recognize her as ski racing Olympian and big mountain freeskiing trailblazer, proud mom and cheerleader of two boys, or as DJ Red bringing the tunes and vibes to Crested Butte parties, you know longtime local Wendy Fisher takes on life full-send.

By Kendra Walker

Wendy’s drive, grit and passion for any challenge she tackles came about early on when she started skiing at age two. Wendy and her two brothers, Mark and Craig, all grew up skiing in Squaw Valley, California. “My parents moved us up to Tahoe with the mission that we would be on the ski team,” she says. “They had a passion for it. They say I loved following my older brothers around. My oldest brother Mark loved skiing so much.”

In a heartbreaking turn of events, Mark had a bad ski accident and passed away when Wendy was seven years old. He was 13. “It’s one of my first solid memories of skiing. I don’t remember much before that. It was such a massive change of events, and as I reflect back, I think it had a bigger effect on me than I realized. In a weird twist, it is what put my heart and soul into skiing even more.”

Wendy recalls that her parents were adamant that she and Craig continue skiing in Mark’s honor. “He had such a love and passion for it, and he wouldn’t get to do it. It was ingrained in me that our family skis, I am a skier. Any time I thought about quitting skiing it just devastated me. It’s a big part of my story and my drive for why I continued.”

As Wendy got older, her love for skiing continued to grow along with her skills. “I was good at it. It was natural for me and I loved it. I excelled and kept getting better.” She remembers skiing for the Squaw Valley Ski Team, but “everyone had counted against me because I was too petite and didn’t look physically capable.”

Coaches told her that she was too small and would never make it. “Other girls were bigger and stronger than me.” But despite the noise, Wendy kept at it. “I just put my heart and soul into it. Whenever I went out on the ski slope, whatever the coaches told me to do, I put 100% into it to accelerate my ability.”

Wendy would go on to high school at Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont and made the U.S. Ski Team at just 15 years old. She made the World Junior Teams in 1989 and 1990. Wendy’s first time visiting Crested Butte was for the U.S. Nationals in 1991. “Crested Butte used to have the U.S Nationals where all the top athletes would come together. We would compete to see who the best skiers were at the time.” It was that year in Crested Butte when Wendy won the U.S. Nationals overall title. “I became the overall national champion for women,” she says, remembering it was a big deal because it was the first year in ski racing that amateur athletes could win prize money on the podium.

Wendy continued to excel in all the ski racing disciplines, and at age 20 earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. “The downhill/slalom combined and giant slalom were my events,” she says.

Unfortunately, Wendy didn’t get to compete. “I had a bad crash during my training run in the downhill portion for my combined events,” she says. “But overall, just being named was so rewarding because of all the people thinking I couldn’t do it. In the end it’s just another race, you show up, there’s crowds. For me it was more just relief for all the hard work my parents put into my skiing and the support they gave me and being able to honor the path my brother set us on.”

Wendy continued ski racing, but slowly began to fall out of love with it. “I started climbing to the highest ladder, but there’s only a handful of people that can be there. At the top, your teammates become your biggest enemies. You’re traveling together, rooming together, working out together, eating together. But you’re competing against each other every day and those friendships become stressful. It became a battlefield every day. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions and personalities,” she says. “I didn’t want to quit because I loved showing up to train and work hard. I had put so much time and energy into it.”

Wendy remembers she started to get very depressed. “I was at the height of my career and I hated it. I could barely ski anymore. I was so emotionally and physically drained. I was at rock bottom.”

She left the ski team in 1994. Two years later, she also gave up a college skiing scholarship. “I packed up all my stuff, packed it up in my car and I hit the road.”

Wendy set off on a “never skiing again” tour in 1996. “I called my friends in different ski towns and went on a road trip. It would be my last hoorah, one last time before quitting.”

Wendy found herself in Crested Butte, staying with her friend Kim Richhelm, and there happened to be an extreme skiing competition. “People were telling me I should compete…but I never wanted to compete again, I was just trying to have fun skiing again.”

But as fate would have it, Wendy decided to stick around and enter her first big mountain freeride competition. Wendy remembers after her first run she watched the guys compete on Headwall. “They were all skiing into Angle Gully into the chute doing all this crazy stuff.” She ran into her old friend Shane McConkey, who she grew up skiing with in Tahoe. “As we watched these guys come down, I kept asking Shane, ‘I’m a better skier than that…can I do that?’ Shane kept telling me, ‘Yes.’”

So Wendy picked out a new line for her second run of the competition. “I started skiing where the guys had been skiing, and when the crowd at the bottom realized where I was going…the roars and screams I could hear were insane. It was so exhilarating to hear everyone screaming, and I thought this is so cool. I hit my air and stuck it.

“It went really well…and I never stopped skiing,” she laughs.

After that, Shane and her friends told Wendy she should keep doing freeride competitions. “I realized I needed to do more of these and it just kind of took off. That contest in ‘96 changed my path. The rest is history.”

And Wendy fell in love with skiing all over again. “You didn’t have coaches or teammates that you’re constantly battling with. The sport back then was so new and so supportive, and everybody wanted everybody to do well,” she says. “It just became fun and I felt alive again. It took me back to the roots of why I fell in love with the sport.”

Wendy’s newfound passion for freeskiing would lead her to win two World Extreme Skiing Championships, a Pro Tour title and a spot in the first X Games Women’s Skier-Cross. Wendy has also appeared in numerous ski films for Warren Miller Entertainment, Matchstick Productions and Switchback Entertainment.

Wendy married Woody Lindenmeyr, who already had roots here, and she settled into life in Crested Butte. “And then I never left. What’s kept me here is the beauty of the place. I just love mountains,” she says. The access here opened up her world to endless backcountry skiing and mountain biking opportunities. “I remember my first backcountry ski tour was South Maroon Bell with Woody in the spring of ‘96. I had strap-on skins and Alpine Trekkers. It was very minimal equipment. I was terrified. But it was an early highlight in my freeskiing career.”

Although Wendy is no longer with Woody, she notes, “He was my main ski partner for many years. We are still friends, and he was a big part of my transition into big mountain and backcountry skiing.”

Wendy laughs at her first impression of Crested Butte back in ‘91 for the U.S. Nationals. “I remember the ski team was driven down Elk Avenue for a parade, you know, because Crested Butte loves a parade for whatever reason. And a handful of people were cheering us on and I was taking it all in. It was so remote here, and I remember having this thought… ‘Who the hell would live here?’

“Obviously now I find it to be the best place in the world.”

Once she retired from competitive free skiing, Wendy transitioned into ski coaching and started a series of girls’ ski camps. “I loved traveling, and skiing is what brought me to Crested Butte and so much of what I focused on in my career. I still wanted to do it but in a different way.” Today, Wendy still offers ski experiences with clients around the world, along with speaking, teaching and coaching opportunities.

Wendy has two sons with Woody, Aksel and Devin, and it was while raising two boys in Crested Butte that Wendy developed a new passion: music. “When I got pregnant it really slowed things down all of a sudden. I still needed something.”

She remembers going into the Talk of the Town one night with a girlfriend. “There was a DJ and we started dancing and had so much fun. So we would try to get out every once in a while and go dancing,” she says. “I remember one time I didn’t like the DJ, and thought maybe I could do a better job.”

With the help of some friends, Wendy got booked for a New Year’s party, shopped for equipment and started DJing for different parties, events and eventually weddings. Many in Crested Butte now know Wendy as DJ Red, spinning tunes for local events, celebrations at the base area and Move the Butte after-parties. “I’ve been in Crested Butte for 30 years and so many people knew me as the skier. Now a whole different group of people know me as DJ Red, it’s funny. But I love wearing a lot of different hats.”

Wendy also manages the live music for the Elevation Hotel, booking musicians and DJs for shows at the hotel’s restaurants, Jose and billy barr. “I didn’t know about all the musicians we have in the valley. It’s been really cool meeting another side of the Crested Butte community and working with them all. I love being able to help local musicians play their music.”

When she’s not hustling in the winter and summer for skiing and music, Wendy prioritizes time with her two boys, now 18 and 20, and they have developed a similar passion for skiing as their mom.

“Aksel loved skiing from a young age. I remember the day it clicked for him, he realized this mountain is his playground,” she says. “Devin was a late bloomer, he wasn’t fully convinced… but once he started freesking more and discovered the park, he fell in love. All he wanted to do was just hit the jumps and rails.”

For high school, Aksel attended the Apex2100 ski academy in France. “One of my clients started it. It was brand new and we didn’t know anything about it. But we took a chance and put Aksel on a plane. It’s now one of the top ski academies in the world,” she says proudly. Aksel now trains with the U.S. Ski Team and is racing competitively. “He is forerunning a bunch of world cups this winter. I’m hoping to sneak away for a bit and go see him ski.”

Devin is a senior at Wy’East Mountain Academy in Oregon. “He’s always putting so much time and energy into getting better,” says Wendy. “I honestly didn’t want them to get this deep into skiing, but I’m so happy they both have this foundation and grew up with it and we can do this sport as a family forever.”

This year, Wendy was inducted into the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame. “That was super exciting. I’m still riding the high of that and celebrating with my friends and family,” she says. “Peers vote you in and it was an honor that people believed in me in that way. I was super psyched. It’s an incredible feeling to feel that people have respected my career and what I’ve done.”