Nikolai Schirmer

About

Big-mountain skier, award-winning documentary filmmaker, environmental activist, and popular YouTube personality. He is highly celebrated across the extreme sports industry for combining death-defying alpine descents with cinematic, long-form narrative storytelling that details the emotional struggles, safety risks, and decision-making behind backcountry skiing

Before fame

He officially joined his core clothing partner in 2011 to launch his professional skiing path and started shifting heavily toward digital video self-production on YouTube over the following years. His dedicated channel grew consistently to cross hundreds of thousands of subscribers, ultimately earning him the prestigious European Skier of the Year Award.

Trivia

He is an incredibly multifaceted individual who holds a formal university degree in Law, balancing rigorous legal studies with intense big-mountain skiing and self-taught filmmaking during his early career. He is highly recognized for his climate activism, actively attempting to run an entirely carbon-conscious, climate-neutral ski career by traveling locally fossil-free via trains and boats rather than carbon-heavy flights. One of his major visual milestones includes directing the award-winning 2024 documentary film SKI: The Greatest Ski Tour of All Time, which won the Audience Award at the Trento Film Festival for chronicling a jaw-dropping run climbing and skiing 27 mountains in a row.

Family life

He is based in Norway.

Associated with

He has shared many skiing sites with Vegard Ulvang.