Photo by Cliff Grassmick

Brett Buckles is a CU student who is one of the best female skiercross racers in the country.

The Steamboat Springs campus of the Colorado Mountain College makes no secret of its proximity to powder.

Students come to classes dressed in their gear, whether coming back from or on the way to the mountain. The cover photo of the campus brochure is a wide, untouched slope of pristine snow tucked into the trees.

The classrooms of that school, where Brett Buckles spent two years of her life, also have wall-length windows that face the slopes of Steamboat. That's where a girl who was on a path to the Olympics would sit and watch the snow fall.

"The kids would come in full ski outfits, and I would watch it dump," Buckles says. "I didn't even touch the mountains."

That was quite a change for a kid who grew up on the mountains. Buckles, 25, was born-and-raised Steamboat Springs and started skiing as early as 2 years old. She eventually worked her way on to the U.S. ski team as a teenager before injuries forced her from the sport. They also took away her fire for the sport before a new brand of skiing brought it back and changed the course of the University of Colorado student's life.

"I started racing at about age 5. From there it was kind of a funnel. I stayed at it and I made the U.S. Ski team when I was 16," she says. "I was doing downhill and super-G when I had a shin injury that was undiagnosable and that forced me out of it. I had a pretty good chance if I stayed healthy of skiing on the Salt Lake Olympic team. But when it got to that point, I couldn't even train because I was so tired."

Buckles made such a commitment to skiing that she went to the Lowell Whiteman School, a college prep school with a curriculum designed for kids who miss big chunks of school. That was definitely Buckles. She had to travel and train often and couldn't keep up at a public school.

But the injuries to her shins — not an especially good thing for a ski racer — took a toll. She could have easily skied at the University of Colorado or the University of Denver, but her body wasn't really interested in getting beat up anymore. Even then, those who knew her figured it wouldn't be long before she found success on the slopes again.

"She rarely fails," said Deb Smith, the director of development at the Whiteman School, who is also the mother of Buckles' childhood friend. "When she was here she made the U.S. ski team and had one crazy injury after another. She just let her body rest and got better. Everybody here loved her and still loves her."

So she spent two straight years at CMC, watching two winters go by outside a window. Then she went to Arizona State, where the competitive desire in her emerged in a dryer climate.

She got into rodeo. Skiing is the biggest deal in the Yampa Valley now, but cattle have been around there a lot longer than chair lifts. And who better to rodeo than someone named Buckles? They could've called her Gold.

"I grew up doing rodeo and focused on rodeo with my dad every weekend," she says. "I thoroughly lived my alter-ego life. Then I came home over spring break, and it just dumped the whole time."

By then it had been three years since Buckles had skied. Then a friend told her to try a ski cross race. Buckles had heard of it but never done it. She decided she would at least try it and took second at the event, which happened to be a 2005 X-Games qualifier. After basically giving up being a pro skier, Buckles had a bib for the biggest extreme sports event in the country.

"Then it was like, 'OK. Now what do I do?" she says. "I don't want to go the X Games and just flail. So I entered into the U.S. Freeskiing Open in Vail and got third there, and it was pretty fun."

There was a problem, though, with getting back into skiing. Buckles had already decided to attend CU. She could either spend the 2005 spring semester remaking herself into a ski cross and big mountain skier, or she could take the safe, responsible route and stay in school. It came down to the last few hours before the withdrawal deadline.

"On the withdrawal date night I was bawling, just bawling," she says. "I called every influential person in my life and I knew my heart was back in skiing, and I couldn't turn away from it."

She seems to have made the right decision. Buckles is one of the top Americans in ski cross and is sponsored by — among others — Dynastar, Lange, Look, Swix, Bolleri, Bait, Steamboat Ski Corps, Wired and Skull Candy. She won a gold medal at the Gravity Games in 2005 and is on the Jeep King of the Mountain Tour. That's where she picked up a fifth place earlier this month at Snowbird.

While she has been turning heads as a skier, Buckles also has managed to continue her education by attending fall classes and skiing in the spring. She is close to graduating with a journalism degree from CU. So her skiing days may be over if she decides to write full-time.

But there is a big, enticing event on the horizon. Ski cross was added to the 2010 Olympics schedule last month. Buckles hasn't ruled out staying in the sport until then, when the Games are held in Vancouver, Canada.

So, who knows, maybe they can still call her Gold Buckles.