FasterSkier

Category: FS Team

Bios of FasterSkier staff
  • Miles for the Cause

    Miles for the Cause

    FS reporter Gabby Naranja closing down the media center at the 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland.

    Help us get to World Championships in Seefeld, Austria! We’re committed to bringing you unrivaled coverage of the 2019 FIS World Championships, but we need your help. We are seeking a couple of avid readers/kind souls to donate their airline miles to purchase a roundtrip plane ticket and send an intrepid reporter to the center of  the nordic racing universe this February. Please share with friends and email us at info@fasterskier.com if interested.

    Thanks.

  • Chelsea Little

    Chelsea Little

    Chelsea Little

    Editor-At-Large

    Chelsea Little began skiing with the Ford Sayre ski club in Hanover, NH, her sophomore year of high school as a way to stay in shape between cross-country and spring track. What began as fun soon turned into her primary athletic passion: after walking onto the team at Dartmouth College, she skied her way onto varsity, collected a few Carnival top-10’s, and if she were faster they’d say “the rest is history.” After college she continued to race at a high level as one of the original members of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project and has raced in Alaska, the Rockies, the Midwest, the Northeast, Canada, Norway, and Finland.

    Chelsea earned her journalistic chops as a weekly columnist with the White River Junction, VT-based Valley News. She joined FasterSkier in 2010 as the site’s first biathlon reporter. While continuing to focus on biathlon, Chelsea has also become an expert in sport governance and anti-doping. As the staff member with a science degree, she’s also especially interested in the science of sport. Chelsea currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland, where she is working on her PhD in aquatic ecology and eating way, way too much chocolate.

  • Jason Albert

    Jason Albert

    Jason Albert

    Here’s a little blasphemy. Jason’s favorite pair of skis aren’t his white-base Rossis. Or the creaky pair of two-decade-old Atomic classic skis he’s done the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse on a few times. No doubt it’s the 160 cm pair of featherweight ski-mo skis that have opened up big and fast and sometimes scary days in the mountains.

    Clearly, since Jason writes about nordic skiing, it’s a passion. But all the kilometers logged, trying to get faster on the gerbil wheel, he claims it’s so he feels better on those few days a year he can climb a peak and ski off the summit. Beyond the work and family, that’s what makes him tick.

    Just having completed his 48th trip around the sun, Jason could spend hours trying to make one or two sentences in an otherwise banal story on, say, the wax of the day, truly sing.

    As a FasterSkier stalwart, he’s supported by a much-smarter partner whom he followed to Madagascar for a year while she watched Lemurs and he watched their two-and-a-half-year-old son Aidan. (He’s now 13 years old.) There’s a 9-year-old named Aamion (sounds like Damion with no D and a double A) in the mix as well.

    Jason’s best day in the last twelve months, besides helping start the ‘Nordic Nation’ podcast, of course, was climbing and skiing Oregon’s Mt. Hood with his oldest child.

    Jason Albert and his older son climbing and skiing Oregon’s Mt. Hood.

  • Gabby Naranja

    Gabby Naranja

    Gabby Naranja

    Gabby Naranja considers herself a true Mainer, having grown up in the northern most part of the state playing hockey and roofing houses with her five brothers. She graduated from Bates College where she ran cross country, track, and nordic skied. She is excited about the present opportunity to work with FasterSkier and relishes the adventures yet to come.

  • Gerry Furseth

    Gerry Furseth

    Andy Newell would! Gerry Furseth on the slalom course behind the Hotel Panorama in Seiser Alm, Italy.
    Andy Newell would! Gerry Furseth on the slalom course behind the Hotel Panorama in Seiser Alm, Italy.

    A fanatical cross-country skier, Gerry prefers the outdoors to his day job.  If there isn’t any snow at Sovereign Lake, he can be found running and biking at Kal Park. Past lives include a magazine column on sailboat racing, timing ski races from the Olympics to the Boxing Day Open, and being an also-ran in most sports.

  • Gavin Kentch

    Gavin Kentch
    Alaskan Contributor (Anchorage Bureau Chief)
     
    Gavin Kentch is a lifelong Alaskan. He learned to ski while skiing into the family log cabin in the Alaska wilderness at age three. He received more formal instruction in the Anchorage Junior Nordic League youth ski program soon after. After a two-decade break he resumed formal ski training with the Alaska Pacific University Masters Team, and learned that there is a reason why real skiers have coaches.
    Gavin founded the school newspaper, The Ellipsis, at his public high school. He earned a B.A. in Classics from Reed College, where he was copy editor of The Quest, and a J.D. from Michigan Law School, where he was an editor of the Michigan Law Review.
    Gavin will ski on literally anything, and is locally renowned in Anchorage for posting trail reports following unlikely skis in godawful conditions. He has raced broadly, with results ranging from DFL in an RMISA mass start in his mid-30s to multiple victories in the prestigious Race to the Outhouse #2. Upon meeting Gavin for the first time, Ben Husaby exclaimed, “You can write more words about cross-country skiing than anyone I’ve ever met.”
    Gavin enjoys the company of two amazing daughters, Bridget and Audrey, and one exceptionally patient wife, Julie. He previously worked as an attorney in solo practice, with a focus on indigent criminal defense, before leaving the field of law to be a full-time stay-at-home dad. He has a cat named Marit.
    Gavin Kentch on a Denali ski
  • Peter Minde

    Peter Minde

    Peter Minde

    My first encounter with skiing was when friends took me to an alpine ski area, where I was nearly decapitated getting off the lift, and pretty much fell all the way downhill to the lodge. By comparison, cross-country skiing was more fun… although I learned the hard way that one can fall while going uphill.

    I began contributing to FasterSkier during a period when I stayed home with our daughter, because I wanted to give back to the ski community.

    After I earned my bachelor’s degree in history, a mentor suggested that I “spend time in the real world” before going to graduate school. That led to 27 years in the wine business. Three years ago, I leveraged my athletic experience with scientific knowledge to become a personal trainer. I specialize in functional strength and corrective exercise; and I’ve helped people lose weight too. Whether skiing, trail running, or cycling, there’s an adventure out your back door: you don’t always have to drive for it.

    From the wilds of north NJ, I ski for Peru Nordic. On Twitter @PeteMinde or at www.oxygenfedsport.com.

  • Harald Zimmer

    Harald Zimmer

    European Contributor, Biathlon Correspondent, proficient in German, Austrian, Swiss-German, English, French

  • Ian Tovell

    Ian Tovell

    Ian Tovell

    Ian Tovell began skiing when he went to a practice with his friend to see what it was all about, and after that the rest is history as they say. Ian skied throughout middle school and high school where he raced at a high level at Vermont Academy. He attended University of Vermont where he decided to “hang up the skis” and pursue his other passion, cross-country running. After an injury sidelined him from running, he picked up triathlon and has been racing triathlon across the country for the last eight years. After graduation, Ian found his love of skiing again, and now races the American Birkiebeiner every year.

  • Aleks Tangen

    Aleks Tangen

    Aleks Tangen

  • Jake Ellis

    Jake Ellis

    Jake Ellis

    Jake Ellis hails from the North Woods of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, from the same community that hosts the North American Vasa, and the Iceman Cometh Challenge. Skiing, cycling, running, and working as a forester keeps him outside enjoying nature’s bounty enough to make most others jealous! When not skiing this winter, you can assume he’s nerding out talking about waxing techniques, giant robots, and Star Wars. Jake hopes to look as good as Thomas Alsgaard does when he reaches 44 years old.

  • Jon ‘Fast Big Dog’ Schafer

    Jon ‘Fast Big Dog’ Schafer

    Fast Big Dog's dog,.

    Fast Big Dog is a paradoxically gregarious yet reclusive, self-absorbed mystic and world traveler. In addition to his calling to right the wrongs in the ski fashion and gear world, he also brings his style, wit and devilish charm to the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club as the Nordic High Performance Director and Worldwide Director of Morale and Awesomeness. Savor his articles while you can, as his Great Dane puppy may burn down his house at any moment, possibly making this his last transmission.

  • Hunter Greene

    Hunter Greene

    Technical Guru/Excavator Operator

    Hunter Greene assists in the technical development of FasterSkier.  He brings his years of experience from running his own Information Technology company.  He started Brainspiral Technologies in 2001.  Brainspiral initially focused on small-scale Information Technology consulting, but has grown to encompass consulting for small businesses and schools, network installations, systems maintenance, web applications, website development and software programming.

    Hunter did all race timing for Western Massachusetts Nordic events, including the State Championships for many years.  He is a former high school racer and member of the Greene ski family (his father has been a ski coach at Mount Greylock High School since 1989 and his sister since 1999).  Hunter is a graduate of Williams College.

    In addition to being a technology genius, Hunter is passionate about soccer, travel, the classics and working with his excavator.

  • Matthew Voisin

    Matthew Voisin

    Director of Marketing

    Matthew Voisin runs the day-to-day operation of FasterSkier, focusing on marketing and advertising. Matthew started nordic skiing at the age of two and since then has made it a central focus of his life.  Matthew graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he was a four-year member and co-captain of the nordic ski team.

    Since graduation he has been coaching at Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown, Mass., one of the largest public high school teams in the country and he and Topher run an elite training group for junior skiers in the summers.

    Matthew has participated in events from small citizen races to senior nationals, skied from the Rockies to Norway, and has been coached by some of the top coaches in the country.

    In addition to ‘All Things Nordic’, Matthew and his wife, Sarah, spend their time at home trying to keep up with their two boys, Finnegan and Ryder.  He is also passionate about cooking; in fact, he would love to be included in on one of the SVSEF’s Iron Chef throw downs.  He spends his summers trying to make up for too much time at a computer during the winter by pretending he is a triathlete – less the tri-geek factor…