Three deep breaths in, three deep breaths out, the ritual accompanied by music dispels Piper Arnold’s nerves and takes the pressure off. Then she lets her body take control and heads towards the halfpipe.
“When I’m in the halfpipe doing my run, it sounds horrible,” she says, “but I’ll zone out a little bit and my body does the work.”
The new member of the U.S. Freeski Team explains, “I’m still focused, but when I’m competing, I’m kind of zoned in and it’s just muscle memory what I’m doing.”
After years of work, the most masterful of skills have become second nature to Tahoe’s rising ski star who recently made the U.S. halfpipe rookie team in the spring of 2024 at the age of 16.
“I have an American flag next to my name when I’m competing and I represent the United States,” Piper says, “it’s crazy to think about that.” She was 12 when she told her parents she wanted to be a pro-skier and making the U.S. team was a part of that goal.
Where the dream started
It all began on the humblest of hills. “We started in the driveway on little cross-country skis for kids…,” Piper’s father remembers, “we couldn’t get her out of them.” At just 18 months, Piper was already hooked on the feeling of skis beneath her feet.
“I don’t remember anything without skiing,” she says, “which is special to me because it’s basically who I am and part of me.”
The next year it was the bunny slope at Kirkwood, where according to her parents, she felt right at home. “She would be cruising down the hill with her little leash on…” her dad begins explaining.
“Oh cruising?,” her mom interjects. “She would have her snack, a banana, singing Scooby Doo…,” her mom says while making a quick motion with her hand, “so fast!” She explains Piper was intent on pointing her skis down the bunny hill to gain speed.
“Yeah,” her dad says laughing, “she was out of control early.”
Piper’s passion for skiing was evident from day one. It didn’t take long for the talent-telling moment where her parents got an idea of her potential.
The future-defining moment was at a national-level competition. “I was just going for fun,” Piper recalls. The family was going through the motions like any other competition, cheering her on and telling her good job at the end. To their surprise, she won overall national champion, competing in the nine and under category—she was just seven years old.
“I guess we’ll keep doing this,” her dad had said.
She had started competing a few years prior to that, at the age of 4, cutting her teeth on Heavenly’s ski race team from ages 4-7. At the age of 5, she competed in her first slopestyle competition and fell in love.
It was a rebellious kind of love. “I always liked going in the park and hitting the boxes and the jumps instead of doing the racecourse,” she remembers. “So, I’d get in trouble a lot when I was little because I’d go into the park.”
At seven years old, she started competing in the local USASA competitions and that’s the year she went to nationals and won.
The next year, at eight years old, the newly crowned champion started skiing with the Sierra at Tahoe competition team and has been there ever since.
She competed in all the USASA competition types, from slopestyle, halfpipe, and skicross, to rail jam, until she was around 12 years old. After that, she started shifting her focus toward halfpipe.
The scarcity of halfpipes on mountains drew her to it. “There’s always jumps and rails at almost every mountain you go to. And so, I think I was drawn to halfpipe just because it was so different and I didn’t always have one.”
She joins a well-known local name, David Wise, on the U.S. halfpipe team.
“I love competing,” she says. In fact, it’s in her blood. Piper’s father is nineties Freeride World Tour big mountain professional snowboarder, Eric Arnold. He and his wife, Terri Arnold, raised Piper and her twin brother, Parker, in Christmas Valley, near South Lake Tahoe, just a 12 minute drive to Sierra at Tahoe.
The father and daughter’s trophies share shelves in the family’s downstairs game room. The shelves are quickly running out of space with Piper’s contributions.
Passing the torch
As Piper grew, she quickly followed in Eric’s footsteps, though Terri remembers, “There was also a moment where he passed the torch on to Piper.”
At 13, Piper competed in a Futures Tour, which her mom explains is the jump from the amateur to the pro class.
“Eric was out there with her and the jumps were as tall as the chairlift towers,” Terri says, “and you don’t even know if your kid can make that leap from amateur to pro.”
After working through some fear, Terri says, “Piper just started killing it.” Eric reported back to Terri that Piper had hit the next level 70-foot jump. “She’s better than me,” he had told her.
“Our kids,” Eric says, “are supposed to be better than us.”
“I probably cried that day,” Eric jokes. “He did,” Terri confirms. And with that, Piper went from amateur level to pro, at 13 years old.
By 15, she made it to her first World Cup. As an amateur, she was a three-time national champion with 14 podiums at nationals. Since moving to the pro level, she has not taken a worse than fourth-place finish at the NorAm level. She placed third at the Junior World Championships and fourth in 2024 at the Youth Olympics in South Korea.
In the 2023-2024 season, Piper made three top 10 World Cup finishes.
Her father provides support and advice having walked the pro path himself. Piper finds the advice invaluable, especially on the hard days. “Something he always tells me to keep me going,” Piper says, “is ‘if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.’”
While dad coaches, Piper says it’s her mom that gets them places. “If she didn’t plan everything, I don’t think we’d make it to half the places we go.”
Piper doesn’t think she would have ever reached this level if she hadn’t grown up in South Lake Tahoe, what she describes as the mecca of skiing. “I think it’s almost everything.” Growing up in the ski community has provided her with more than talent and skill. “It’s how I met all of my best friends.”
She was inspired by other pros the region developed. “I loved growing up going skiing and also seeing Jamie Anderson and Maddie Bowman and Hannah Teeter,” she says, “and see their past and go, ‘whoa that’s really cool. I want to do that.’”
She hopes to continue her ski career from here in Tahoe.
The sacrifice
Reaching pro level isn’t without its sacrifices.
“I won’t lie, I’ve missed a lot of things in school,” she says, “I missed my first day of senior year this year.” The senior at South Tahoe High School does most of her school online and is completing it a term early. This is an impressive feat considering her demanding competition and training schedule and at times, patchy international Wi-Fi.
“I haven’t gotten a high school experience,” she says, “like a real one, but I think this year as a senior, I’ve kind of realized I’m perfectly fine with that.”
She has found the silver lining, “I don’t think I’d trade it because I love the people I’ve met and what I’m doing.”
Piper talks about the mindset she’s carried towards competing. “I was just always trying to get better every single day and I was just having fun with it.” Putting her whole body into the sport, learning something new, and landing a new trick provides a special feeling she can’t find anywhere else.
“I’ve always been told, if I’m not having fun, quit.” By those standards, she won’t be quitting anytime soon. “Of course, I mean you’re not going to have fun every single day when you’re at such a high of a level,” she says, “but I have fun probably 99% of the time.”
She attributes much of her success to her coach from Sierra at Tahoe, Jeremy Witters, who has not only coached her for many years but traveled with her to numerous competitions in one of her most monumental years. “He’s always been super close to us and he’s been a great coach.”
She knows she wouldn’t be where she is without her parents, “They do so much for me and they’ve given me every opportunity.”
Piper completes her classwork in January, but skiing will have already started heating up by then. November takes her to a three-week-long training camp in Austria, followed by two World Cups, one in China and the other in Colorado. After a small break for the holidays, Piper goes back to Colorado for a Revolution Tour in the new year. Then it’s to Aspen for another World Cup, followed by another Revolution Tour. February takes her to Canada for a World Cup in Calgary and then it’s back to training camps.
It’s Piper’s goal to consistently stay in the top ten at her World Cup appearances and has her sights on the Olympics in February 2026 and X Games.
“The path for her, it’s unlimited,” her dad says, “She can do whatever she wants. She just has to do it.”
