Maggie Voisin has spent her career learning how to break skiing down into its smallest details; speed, trajectory, timing, rotation, terrain. Years of competition taught her how to calculate a trick before leaving the lip, while filming in the mountains has forced her to make an entirely different set of decisions on the fly.
So when we asked her whether skiing is actually rocket science, she had plenty to say.
“I think skiing is rocket science in some ways,” Voisin says.
For her, the science goes far beyond physics. It’s snow science, weather, avalanche conditions and jump construction, but it’s also intuition, experience and knowing when to trust your gut.
And that balance between calculation and instinct has become especially relevant as Voisin has moved from competition into filming. Four TGR films into her career as a film skier, she’s still pushing herself to learn new parts of skiing; while figuring out how much of that old competitive mindset she wants to carry with her.
Voisin has spent much of her career thinking about skiing in very technical terms.
“Conditions, avalanche danger, snow science, meteorology, weather,” she says. “There’s so many different things that go into it.”
Then there is the physics of actually moving through the air.
Jump building, angles, trajectory, speed and distance all become part of the equation when you’re at a big hit. Voisin knows that side of skiing particularly well.
Her biggest trick at X Games was a double cork 1260, a maneuver that required her to understand exactly what needed to happen between takeoff and landing.
“I would break it down in my head,” she says. “It’s like, 720, flip, 540.”
But eventually, the thinking disappears.
“You’re not really thinking about it. It’s muscle memory. It’s intuitive.”
And that intuition is something she believes can’t be separated from the science.
That relationship with instinct has become even more important as Voisin has moved beyond her competitive career.
Competition gave her a framework built around progression, precision and getting things right. But eventually, the mindset that had helped make her successful also became exhausting.
“I got burnt out on the way that I was approaching contest skiing, and I was ready to move on too,” she says.
Some of those habits followed her into filming.
“I’ve taken some of those patterns with me into my later career, which have also made me successful,” she says. “But I don’t 100% want to operate from that place anymore.”
Now she’s trying to approach skiing differently.
“I just want to freaking love what I’m doing.”
Voisin still wants to push herself and become a better skier. What has changed is why she wants to do it. 
“Of course, there’s this athlete drive to strive to be our best,” she says. “But I want that to come from a place of pushing myself, but really that enjoyment and fulfillment of being in the mountains.”
Voisin’s transition into filming has also meant learning how to approach skiing when the goal isn’t a podium.
Her first TGR shoot took her to Wyoming. At the time, she was looking for experience and hoping to find lines she hadn’t skied before; ideally lines the guys weren’t already skiing.
Pretty quickly, the experience escalated.
“Those first few days it was like, holy shit, this is rad,” she says.
Then came the realization that being there also meant people were expecting something from her.
“Then you were just like, oh my gosh, the pressure’s on. They could have chosen somebody else and it’s me here.”
That pressure is familiar. But filming has given her a different way to work through it.
Rather than having one clearly defined competitive goal, she has had to figure out what she wants her skiing to look like; and what kind of skier she wants to become.
That became particularly apparent this season in Whistler.
Voisin spent a significant amount of time there skiing the backcountry with Nick McNutt and Teal Harle. She had spent plenty of time in Whistler before, including competing in the park and winning an event there at 14, but this was her first real stretch of time exploring the backcountry.
The terrain gave her plenty to work with. So did the people she was skiing with.
McNutt, in particular, gave her a different perspective on what makes a good day of skiing.
“McNutt, it doesn’t matter,” Voisin says. “I don’t think he’s looking at, like, ‘OK, what’s going to be the gnarliest shot?’ He’s just like, ‘Can I make something out of nothing?’ And it’s fucking sick.”
Watching that changed the way she approached her own skiing.
“I was just more relaxed and wanted to try things.”
She became more willing to try something, miss it, reset and try again.
“Try it more than once,” she says. “Yeah, the landing might be beat up and not perfect, but just keep trying until you get it.”
That mentality has carried beyond Whistler.
“I want to progress and push my skiing. I might not land all the time, but I’m just going to give it a go.”
For Voisin, one of the biggest areas of growth now is line skiing.
She enjoys bringing the tricks and movement she developed through park and competition skiing into the backcountry, but she sees skiing technical lines as a place where she can still be a beginner.
A gnarly tomahawk in Alaska a couple seasons ago reminded her how much power a mountain has, and how much she still has to learn.
Now she’s focused on becoming better at reading terrain, understanding lines and building the confidence to ski them.
“You understand it from the bottom, and then you get to the top and I’m like, what the fuck?” she says. “This is not at all what it looked like down there. This is scary.”
That’s part of what makes it interesting.
She’s not just trying to become the best line skier in the world. She’s trying to get better at something that still challenges her.
“I want to progress and push my skiing,” she says.
The more Voisin talks about the science of skiing, the more obvious it becomes that some of the most important parts can’t really be calculated.
You can understand the snow. You can study the weather. You can build the jump and calculate the trajectory.
But at some point, you still have to make a decision.
That’s where experience comes in.
“You’re not really thinking about it. It’s muscle memory. It’s intuitive.”
The same thing happens in the mountains. Knowing when to commit is important, but knowing when not to is just as important.
For Voisin, that’s where the years of experience start to matter most.
Voisin isn’t looking at her career as a straight line anymore.
She’s interested in finding out what kind of skier she wants to become, making films that tell more personal stories and exploring opportunities outside of the traditional competition path.
She’s also found another way to stay connected to the sport through broadcasting.
After stepping away from X Games competition, she was brought on as a color analyst for women’s ski events. With X Games moving into a league format, she’ll be back behind the microphone for several events this year.
She also wants to remain involved with the US team, attend camps and help mentor the next generation of women coming through the sport.
The goal isn’t to replace one version of her career with another. It’s to keep following the parts of skiing that still excite her.
“Just do what you love and new doors will open and old doors will close and just see where it takes me.”
Which brings the whole equation back to where it started.
There are measurable things in skiing. There are technical things. There are things you can calculate down to a fraction of a second.
And then there are the things you only learn by doing it.
“As long as I’m just following my heart and doing what I love and doing it with intention, we’ll see.”
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