Sierra Quitiquit Gallery
You may not know Sierra Quitiquit by name. But you may recognize her face. The Park City, Utah, native and sponsored big-mountain skier recently signed with a modeling agency and has been pursuing a full-fledged modeling career.
The former Freeskiing World Tour competitor has walked runways or shot campaigns for companies like Nike, adidas and Fred Meyer, and for several designers, and she filmed an episode of the TV show "Portlandia." After her mom dragged her to an audition for the reality show "America's Next Top Model," she was flown to Los Angeles but, "It became obvious early on that this [the show] was not for me," she says.
"I'm fully, completely in love with skiing," Quitiquit says. "But I'm hoping to be able to model full-time, too. It's kind of a strange thing to go after. But I figure, why not? I don't want to have any regrets in life. I'm going to go after both skiing and modeling and see where it leads me."
So far, it has led her to places she never would have expected: She spent this winter chasing storms from Alaska to Wyoming and landing modeling gigs from Oregon to Bali and beyond. "I was at a shoot recently and was thrown into full hair and makeup, with stylists everywhere," Quitiquit says. "Compared to my ski season of wearing the same long underwear for three or four days in a row, I was like, this is fun."
Quitiquit, 23, grew up in Utah, spending time living out of her parents' van. A conversation with her easily leads to tangents and she seems to have dozens of different things going on at once (she's also a yoga teacher and a massage therapist). "I'm an Aquarius -- we're flowy, airy," she says, as if to explain herself. "We seep into different places and spaces."
In a few weeks, She Jumps co-founder Lynsey Dyer and Quitiquit will be debuting a new, still-unnamed online webisode series, which will carry on through next fall and winter. The first edit will highlight Dyer and Quitiquit's recent all-girl snowmobile-and-ski trip to Alaska this spring.
"You're standing on top of a peak and you look around and all you can see is big, gigantic white peaks," she says about her time in Alaska. "I'm the chattiest person of all time but I couldn't speak. I was so taken aback by the vast greatness."
And then, as if on cue, the chattiest person of all time goes silent.
