Marcus Goguen’s Body is his Armor
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Following explosive wins in the 2025 Freewride World Tour in Georgia and Kicking Horse, 4-year tour veteran Marcus Goguen claimed his first FWT world champion title. His unflappable style and huge tricks are not by chance. The 21-year-old Whistler skier has spent almost a decade following a strict training regimen. And now he’s sharing. His Adrenaline Performance program offers skiers customized strength plans to ward off injuries and boost performance. Listen in as the big-mountain boss shares how he is infusing...
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McRae Williams is the Mindful Mountain Athlete
Next Level Skiing
McRae Williams navigated from a childhood on trampolines to aerials on his hometown water ramps at the Olympic Training Center in Park City to become one of the most explosive slopestyle skiers in the sport. He’s a World Cup world champion, two-time Olympian and three-time X Games medalist who is channeling years of Olympic-level training into audacious filming performances in remote backcountry locations. Listen in as the 35-year-old slopestyle pioneer explores his work as a mindful athlete with a keen focus on his mental game honed through passions for diverse mountain sports, from...
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For the Right Reasons with Josh Daiek
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Josh Daiek skis remote, highly technical terrain with jaw-dropping speed and flow. After a decade competing on the Freeride World Tour, he’s moved into ripping the loneliest lines in the lower 48, snowmobiling deep into Nevada’s Sierra and Ruby ranges and skiing down steep, rock-choked chutes far from anywhere. The 42-year-old Salomon-sponsored skier has made two movies — Mountain State and Mountain State 2.0 — detailing his crew’s exploration of overlooked terrain in Nevada. You’ve seen his clips in the...
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Tom Wallisch is Skiing’s Jack of All Trades
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. From the concrete staircases of Pittsburgh to the steepest and deepest lines across three continents, Tom Wallisch has pushed skiing into new realms for more than 25 years. The pioneer of urban skiing infuses a one-of-a-kind creativity and style across all sorts of powdery landscapes. His mastery of park and big mountain steeps is coupled with a filming prowess and business acumen that sustains a vibrant ski career at age 38. Listen in as Tom talks about his Pittsburgh roots, an “East Coast work ethic” that grows...
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Fun Comes First with Maggie Voisin
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Maggie Voisin soared from her Whitefish, Montana, roots into three Olympics and 11 X Games, where she’s collected 7 slopestyle medals. Now 26, she’s bounced back from several injuries and surgeries to build a soaring career in front of the cameras, filming with Teton Gravity Research and announcing for the X Games. She’s navigated incredible pressure as one of the youngest American Winter Olympians, as devastating grief, finding strength and solace on skis. Listen in as Maggie talks about transferring her...
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Mali Noyes is The Insatiable Skier
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Salt Lake City skier Mali Noyes, in the spring of 2025, channeled her Nordic skiing roots and more than a decade of ski touring in Utah’s Wasatch to set a new bar for swift steep skiing in the West. The 36-year-old skied all 93 lines detailed in Andrew McClean’s seminal steep skiing bible “The Chuting Gallery. It took her only 47 days. An epic achievement. Listen in as Mali shares insights into how her Nordic skiing background fueled her exploration of backcountry steeps, pushing through mental fatigue,...
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Pillow Popping with Parkin Costain
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. 26-year-old Parkin Costain grew up in Whitefish as a skiing prodigy. For the last decade, he has been pushing big-mountain skiing with a high-speed, swift-footed style in the heaviest, most technical terrain around. With bust-out performances (like stomping a ridiculous double backflip into Corbets at Kings and Queens) and jaw-dropping segments in Warren Miller and TGR, Parker’s fluid, athletic style is helping to define today’s big mountain skiing. In this episode of Next Level Skiing, Parker discusses...
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A Ski For Every Skier with Pete Wagner
Next Level Skiing
Pete Wagner was building proprietary software to customize golf clubs when he bought a pair of skis in the early 2000s. The mechanical engineer and computer scientist wrestled those skis for a season before realizing he had purchased the wrong skis for his style. Why wasn’t anyone designing skis like he was designing golf clubs or like boot fitters adjusted ski boots? In 2006, the expert skier launched Wagner Custom Skis with an exploratory questionnaire that helps skier identify their dream skis and software that guides a warehouse full of machines in building those skis. Nearly 20...
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The perfect turn is the next turn, with Willie Volckhausen
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Willie Volckhausen started skiing when he was 2 and raced with Sunlight's local ski club for over a decade. He spent 18 years coaching young skiers with the Aspen Valley Ski Club, developing not just ripping racers but athletes with a lifelong passion for skiing. And now he’s a ski instructor with the Aspen Ski School who spends his summers working his family’s farm near Paonia. Over his decades of being coached and coaching, Willie’s picked up more than a few techniques for improving our turns. Listen in and...
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Staying balanced with Brody Leven
Next Level Skiing
Welcome back to the Next Level Skiing podcast, brought to you by Wagner Skis. Brody Leven doesn’t dabble. He’s an all-in type of skier. When he decided he was done with park skiing, he moved from 100 days of high-flying park time every season to 100 days of climbing and skiing mountains. And now it’s been 10 years since the Fischer Ski-sponsored athlete has ridden a chairlift. He’s never eaten meat. During the pandemic, he started exercising outside every day. Now he’s more than four years in without missing a single day. He’s a lifelong vegetarian, a vehement climate advocate,...
info_outlinePete Wagner was building proprietary software to customize golf clubs when he bought a pair of skis in the early 2000s. The mechanical engineer and computer scientist wrestled those skis for a season before realizing he had purchased the wrong skis for his style. Why wasn’t anyone designing skis like he was designing golf clubs or like boot fitters adjusted ski boots? In 2006, the expert skier launched Wagner Custom Skis with an exploratory questionnaire that helps skier identify their dream skis and software that guides a warehouse full of machines in building those skis.
Nearly 20 years later, Wagner’s team of 15 ski builders in Telluride are crafting skis built precisely for individuals taking their skiing to the next level. Tune in to hear Pete's riff on ski design and the manufacturing process, trends in ski designs, and how a customized ski - like a custom-fit ski boot — can improve your every minute on snow.
Topics:
1:00 - A background in material science and design software for golf
6:00 - Buying the wrong skis. How come no one is focusing on fit like in golf and cycling?
7:10 - 2006 launch of Wagner Skis with “rapid prototyping” software
8:00 - How custom ski boot fitters inspired the Wagner business plan
13::40 - Building a database of ski designs
16:00 - Customization for beginner and intermediate skiers
18:00 - Optimizing ski design with 2,500 different material combinations
19:00 - Versatility for beginners
23:00 - Ski design trends in the mid-2000s to now
25:00 - Adding rocker to the tip and tail with camber underfoot
27:10 - Matching individuals to skis
28:20 - Manufacturing without molds
36:00 - Repeat customers and changing designs as skiers refine their demands
Quotes:
“A ski that has the right flex pattern and stiffness, the benefit of that is that it will be stiff enough to give you good stability if you’re going fast.” - Pete Wagner
“The business model of the big companies is not about customization or agility. Their business model is that they go out in the late winter and spring, get people to try their next year’s models, collect orders, mass produce stuff throughout the spring and summer, and then deliver them to the shop in the fall.” - Pete Wagner
“What we realized is that you can keep things simple.” - Pete Wagner
“Skiing has a lot to offer people. There are different things you can focus on and that’s what makes it such a great activity and way to spend your time. And that’s our goal.” - Pete Wagner
Resources:
Wagner Custom Skis