Vancouver-born extreme skier Shane McConkey dies BASE jumping in Italy

This morning (March 27), extreme skiing lost a pioneer and legend. Vancouver-born Shane McConkey died in an accident in Italy, his sponsor, Red Bull, has said.

In a statement, Red Bull said that McConkey was in Corvara, Italy, on a ski-BASE jump for a movie when he experienced a mid-air malfunction. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Speaking from McCoo’s in Whistler, co-owner Jeff Coombs reacted to the news of McConkey’s death: “It’s very tragic. He was an icon. He was the creator of everything we were talking about a couple years ago. For big mountain and extreme, he was the guy.”

Coombs’s partner at McCoo’s is George McConkey, Shane’s brother. All Coombs would say on George was that he was shaken up.

Coombs agreed that there is of course an inherent danger in the sport that McConkey championed, but that the reaction in Whistler was still one of shock.

“That guy was sorta the creator of many of those moves that he did and big mountain skiing,” Coombs said. “He was the best big mountain skier in the world, undoubtedly. Then it seemed to have evolved to BASE jumping, once you felt that he was done with the big mountain skiing. And that’s part of his demise, I guess.”

Though he had been living in California, McConkey could often be spotted in Whistler, Coombs said. He spent much of last season in B.C. shooting a movie for Matchstick Productions and took part in Whistler Blackcomb’s opening of the Peak 2 Peak gondola by BASE jumping from it.

McConkey is one of a small group of skiers largely credited with the rebirth and resurgence of skiing in North America. In the mid-to-late 1990s, snowboarders began to take over the mountains. As the millennium ended, McConkey and a few others pushed skiing in a new direction. They carved out a freestyle movement that focused on jumps, tricks, and big mountain skiing.

Today, freestyle skiers often outnumber snowboarders in the terrain parks that were once reserved only for snowboarders.

McConkey, 39 at the time of his death, is survived by his wife, Sherry, and their three-year-old daughter, Ayla.

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.