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Sibling rivalries
Ingrid and
Ralph Backstrom
Ingrid, 33, is a big mountain skier. Ralph, 28, is a big mountain snowboarder.
When singling out the moment he felt most proud of his sister, Ralph Backstrom thinks back to last October, when Ingrid was in Seattle as part of a speaker series for The North Face. "She talked about growing up a ski racer, filming in the backcountry, her love of the mountains," Ralph says. "And she talked about trying to understand how something she loves so much could take away something else she loved so much: our brother." The three Backstrom siblings stood on skis before most kids could walk. Ingrid, the oldest, was the first to travel the world to film with major companies, the first to win freeskiing competitions. But Arne and Ralph were never far behind. In January 2010, Arne won the world freeskiing championships. Five months later, he was killed in a skiing accident while filming in Peru. Today, Ingrid and Ralph carry Arne's memory into the mountains and, with it, an even greater respect for dangers they can't predict. "It was my greatest fear to see something happen to someone I love," Ingrid says. "But it was an accident, and skiing is still so much a part of my family. It's who we are."
