Editor’s Note: Hundreds of students to come to the University of Utah each year to both study and to shred the Greatest Snow on Earth. Some become pretty well known, like Grete Eliassen, Tom Wallisch and Jen Hudak. Most shred unto the utmost while maximizing their educational opportunities to fullest. This is a look into the life of one of these students, Nik Aksamit, whose closest brushes with fame come from his cameos in GNAR The movie. (Hopefully, he pursues work in a field more closely related to his studies.)
Idaho bred Nik Aksamit, born 1988, crushed his first big dump no more than two years later. Proud as pickles, his parents gave him gratuitous amounts of high-fives. Several years later, in 2006, Aksamit, the duke of axe-caster, slayer of intermountain west (IMW) dumps everywhere, moved to Utah to pursue a degree in Mathematics at the University of Utah. Number cruncher he is not (just wikipedia algebraic topology), thigh-five cruncher he is. His Idahomies invented the thigh-five somewhere in the vicinity of the 2006-2007 ski season. He has been a purveyor of thigh-fives ever since.
Aks-him-a-kestion graduated with a BS in Math in Fall 2009. He spent the following season shralping all over the west, having a great time thigh-fiving his friends and placing poorly in big-mountain comps. Now, he is pursuing a graduate degree at the U in Pure Math, currently undertaking the beautiful trifecta of Algebra/Analysis/Topology. He loves math more than you love your parents, smiling babies, and gangster rap combined.
Nik loves jumping off big cliffs, too. Check out this sweet photo of him stomping lincoln at snowbird.
When Nik is not stomping everything, he is no doubt proving something awesome, which in turn is a proof to how awesome he is. When asked recently whether his Math skills help him model the trajectory on huge flips he is no doubt going to stomp, Nik replied “No, they probably, in fact, do not.”
Nik Aksamit lives in an apartment that has mice. He sleeps on an aerobed. While he enjoys sleep quite a bit, he has trouble falling asleep sometimes and often reads books before he goes to bed. Most recently Nik has been climbing lots of rock and ice in the mountains with all around Idaho Badass First Ascensionist father Curtis Olson. (Peep the 1982 American Alpine Journal for the first route on the north face of Mt. Breitenbach.)
Nik skis at Snowbird with his friends where he can be seen “setting and forgetting on grips-o-OTR’s” and not seen “shredding quintuple black diamond lines sending double x-l airs in the worst flat light you’ve ever been in.” Nik is from Idaho where his fondness for the mountains started early. Nik likes how Eric Hjorleifson skis but looks up to dudes that are putting up nasty multi-pitch routes on the north shore of Norway, and guys that are developing Geometric Group Theory and other “super rad maths.”
Nik thinks farts are super funny. He has been a Level Four Dungeon Ogre since 2001 and often grows a dirty mustache, but don’t count on it.
One Response to Student-Shredder Profile: Nik Aksamit
Nik is a gaper.