After graduating from CC, Veronica Paulsen ’16 moved to Jackson, WY, and set her sights on big mountain skiing. In 2020, she was first woman to land a backflip into Corbet’s Couloir at Jackson Hole, an expert run that requires a 20-to-35-foot free fall, and was crowned the Queen of Corbet’s.
“I wanted to have a ski bum year and ski as much as I could,” says Paulsen. “But then I got lured into these freeride competitions.”
She was ready for something different after participating in freestyle mogul skiing since her early teens and competing internationally through college. “From that first year [in Jackson], my skiing was going really well and I started doing well in competitions. A few years down the line I became a professional skier and I’m still doing that.”
Paulsen chose CC because of the flexibility of the Block Plan. “I took the winter blocks completely off and I caught up in the summer,” Paulsen says. “The professors were always so helpful, and they knew that I was taking time off. I was always worried about catching up and getting back into the school mindset when I came back, and they helped me so much with that.”
One of her favorite blocks at CC was Drawing. “If I was on the semester program, I would have had to put drawing on the back burner and focus on computer science and math,” Paulsen says. “But because we were fully immersed in it, I could fully focus on drawing as a Computer Science major.”
These days, Paulsen participates in life drawing sessions at the Center for the Arts in Jackson and brings her notebook with her into the mountains. But drawing isn’t Paulsen’s only artistic skill. She is also interested in film and photography, and created her own video series.
“I’m not just a professional skier,” she says. “I’m also a film producer and there is so much work that goes behind that. It’s so fun to get creative with the editors and everyone else I’m working with to put together a storyline.”
She didn’t do any film studies at CC, but “filmmaking and skiing go hand in hand,” Paulsen says. “Each film, I can pick a new objective. This year, one of the objectives will be to ski the Grand Teton,” which Paulsen has never done. “Or we really like to do interviews with other professional skiers.” These films are about showcasing other professional athletes, and Paulsen learns from them as they reach toward their goals.
Paulsen’s next goal is to be the first woman to land a double backflip into Corbet’s Couloir. And she says the Block Plan fueled her drive. “I think part of the culture around CC with the Block Plan is to dive into whatever you are doing, one hundred percent, for three and a half weeks. That really helped me be committed to whatever I wanted to do.”
Paulsen is all-in to land a double backflip in February of 2025 and continue to make her films.