25 years of Fall-Line

Publisher Dickie Fincher reflects on Fall-Line’s Silver Jubilee

Fall-Line started as a reaction: to magazines not showcasing photographers; a reaction to the outstanding imagery and stories simmering under the radar of skiers who simply couldn’t get to see them, or hear about them otherwise. The few magazines at the time covered holidays and resorts, but actually featuring the mountains and the skiers wasn’t done. Since they’re the inspiration and the environment that creates the desire for us to go skiing, Fall-Line picked up a keen following from the off.

In a way it’s barely changed, though the look and feel are very different, as is everything compared with two and a half decades ago. You’ll find a list in the mag of 25 changes and developments since the early 90s which make us realise just how far skiing has come in that period. There’s been enough time for entire genres to rise and fall – back in the day we tested monoskis… The route to powder for all, we claimed; or perhaps not. Even snowboarding, which Fall-Line covered as soon as it appeared, exploded and then contracted.

Skiing remains as potent a pull as ever; more accessible to more people, and more ways and places than ever to take part. Fall-Line is fully online to spread the love further than our physical presence can be felt, just like skiing. Watching videos, researching gear and booking trips is ever-present across the web, and we’ve had our corner of digital heaven staked out since 1996, so that’s the 20-year anniversary coming up right about now to add to the magazine’s quarter-century.

There’s still a permanence about a good magazine that frames and defines a moment, a piece of information, or an image. Being published in a magazine is definitive – every issue of Fall-Line is in the British Library as a journal of record, I’ll have you know – and has a cachet that appearing online hasn’t yet caught up with. It’s never lost the “Have you seen THAT!” effect since those first days, despite the rise of the internet, mobile phones, instant sharing and all the immediacy we hold in our hands.

We love making this magazine and all that surrounds it, and we love being involved in, and in our own small way, adding to what it is to be skiing in the 21st century. We are ski, and, with huge thanks from us and our predecessors at Fall-Line, so are you.

Dickie Fincher, publisher

Taken from Fall-Line’s 25th Anniversary issue, out now