For Seth Masia, AB’70, skiing is an intellectual pursuit as well as a physical one. Over the course of his 56-year career as a ski writer, ski historian, and environmentalist, he has examined the sport’s past and fought for its future. And as the current president of the International Skiing History Association, he shares the legacy of skiing with aficionados worldwide. This interview has been edited and condensed.

When did you start skiing?

In the summer of 1968 I was hitchhiking around in Europe, and I wanted to do some climbing. So I went to Chamonix. It was right after the Olympics, and the French were absolutely nuts about skiing. That was the year that Jean-Claude Killy won three gold medals, which were all the skiing gold medals that were to be had in those days. Half the population of the town was up on the glacier running slalom gates.

I couldn’t find anyone to climb with, but somebody suggested, why don’t you grab a pair of skis and come on up to the glacier? So I rented some old wooden skis and leather boots, went up to the glacier, and rolled around in the corn snow for a couple of days and really got hooked.

A few years later, I came out to Colorado and got a job at a little start-up ski area called Stagecoach, south of Steamboat Springs. I skied every day that winter, followed the ski patrol guys around and helped them out, and got to be pretty good. Two years after, I arrived in New York to do magazine work. I was invited to join the staff of Ski Magazine. I jumped at it.

What was it that got you hooked on skiing?

It’s a thrill. The thing that has always appealed to me about the sports I get involved in is the sense of mastery. Of being able to be proud of your own skill. And that combined with the speed, the wind in your face. Rock climbing, skiing, motorcycling—I’ve always been most attracted to sports that have a thrill of danger.

You also have a background in environmentalism. How did you get into that?

The ski season has grown several weeks shorter over the course of my career. Working for Ski Magazine, I was traveling all over the world, skiing on different continents. Everywhere I went I could see glaciers melting. So I started writing about climate change in 1989. Eventually I went back to school and got a master’s in environmental journalism, and that’s what led me to work for the American Solar Energy Society. I guess that’s one of the decisions I made because I wanted to be a good guy. Skiing has such a self-involved culture. I always felt a little bit guilty that skiing was not making a great contribution to the health and wealth of humanity in general.

How was your early writing about climate change received by the ski world?

It’s interesting. I wrote a feature story for Ski Magazine in 1989 on the future of skiing on a warming planet. It was too distant for a lot of people to want to pay attention to. There was a fair amount of positive reaction and a whole lot of shrugged shoulders. But now everybody understands what’s going on. A number of ski areas have closed permanently. Glaciers continue to shrink. No one industry is large enough to fix the problem by itself. As no one nation is. Everybody wants it to be somebody else’s problem.

Do you consider yourself a climate optimist?

Yeah, I sort of am. There are some technologies on the periphery that might help a lot. It’s already too late in some respects—we’re going to lose enough glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica that we’re going to lose a lot of coastal habitat. That’s going to be a serious issue, and I’m pessimistic about that. But I also see that there are some genetic engineering disciplines that hold the very real possibility of greatly reducing the CO₂ output of agriculture, particularly meat production. And with the revival of rainforests over the next 40 or 50 years, I think there’s a decent chance that humanity will survive this epoch without too much of a dramatic population crash.

What drew you to ski history?

My minor in college was Tudor and Stuart history. I’ve always had a good mind for remembering dates and perceiving patterns. Things that go on in larger society have a direct impact on the sporting world, and following the history of sports can provide some interesting insights into society at large. For instance, the big boom in skiing in North America happened more or less as a direct result of the takeover of skiing by the Nazis in the ’30s. There’s a long history in Austria and Germany of mountain sports being reflective of German nationalism. The Alpine clubs and the ski associations excluded those they considered to be non-Aryans from their activities. When the Nazis came to power in the ’30s, a lot of people fled to Britain and North America, and they brought their passion for skiing with them. That’s really what got Alpine skiing rolling in North America. To do ski history, you have to have a pretty keen sense of how it all fits into the wider world.

You’ve been skiing for decades. What is your fondest skiing memory?

Oh boy, so many of them. I love skiing powder, so skiing in Canada is always at the top of the list. I got to spend three days skiing in France with Jean-Claude Killy at one point. I enjoyed teaching skiing. It’s hard to single out the specific days. It’s all good.