It was a dreary day at Government Camp, OR. Temperatures hovered around 33 degrees. Humidity was 99.9 percent. Chris “Topher” Newett and I had intended to hit the local rail yard, but something caught his eye just off the main drag: a long VW Bus-sized mound of snow in the middle of the street, begging to become a jump. Topher and I spent the next few hours wiping rain drops out of our eyes as we shaped a clean takeoff and lip into the pile. After we pushed enough slush into the road for the run in, I waddled soaking wet to the Govy General Store for some Morton salt to firm up the snow.
For 10 months of the year, you’ll find the 38-year-old jibber on the hill at Timberline, coaching the Mt. Hood Academy freestyle kids. Even among the hundreds of park riders in similar cotton hoodies and baggy pants, Topher is easy to recognize—he’s always rocking an XL button-up shirt (unbuttoned, to maximize airflow) and oversized pants held up by trademark “Toph” suspenders. He might be body sliding on a propane tank, throwing a base grind 270 butter on a concrete water tower or a tail press on the coping of the pipe. But he’s also the first to pull out his phone and clip up a friend. He never needs to be asked and he never misses.
Hailing from Ellsworth, ME, and son to a father who ran marathons, Topher was raised around road races. When he was six, at a race in Kingfield, ME, his mom pulled the winning raffle ticket for the grand prize—a fully paid trip for four to ski at Sugarloaf. It was a big deal for his family. But Topher didn’t like skiing at first. “I wasn’t down with stopping,” he says. “The instructor wouldn’t let me have my poles unless I would do the pizza, and I wasn’t into the pizza.” The rigidity of lessons turned Topher off from skiing at first. Then in 4th and 5th grade, Topher and his dad cashed in on a program the State of Maine had for students and parents where they could get two tickets to use at any of the 19 ski resorts in the state. That’s when his passion for skiing truly began.
Through his late teens and most of his 20s Topher worked for terrain park crews at Breckenridge, CO, and Timberline, OR. Breckenridge in the early 2010s was filled with aspiring park skiers, and there Topher honed his freestyle skills. Inspired by the creativity that jibbing allowed, Topher spent years skiing alongside the likes of Gus Cotten, Pat Goodnough, Andy Parry and Joey Van Der Meer. But it was coaching over competing that drew Topher in. For him, it was an easy choice—he comes from generations of educators. His grandparents were teachers, his parents are teachers, even his sister teaches pilates.
Topher lights up when he talks about the kids he’s coached at Mt. Hood Academy, where he’s worked since 2018. He coached 22-year-old Konnor Ralph, who’s now on the US Freestyle Team, and 24-year-old Jed Waters, who’s become known for his creative street skiing videos like “Headache” (2024).
While Topher’s daffy butters and pipe presses have spurred rumors of his participation in the X Games Knuckle Huck, for him, it’s more about sharing than showing off. As he says, “It’s fun to build the coolest feature possible, but it’s more rewarding to teach how to hit it.”