Dan Egan’s autobiography is a colorful inside look at the evolution of “extreme” skiing into what we now call big-mountain free-skiing. Dan was a multi-talented athlete with a good business head. Emerging from a large, devout yet unruly Catholic family, he found success in skiing, soccer, and sailing. But sports, and the related party scenes, interfered with academics. It took a sporadically heroic effort of self-discipline to complete a college degree in marketing.
After joining his older brother John as a star of Eric Pelrman and Warren Miller films, his talent for marketing enabled him. To line up lucrative sponsorships. He seized on emerging VCT technology to become a video-distribution mogul as president of Egan Entertainment Network. Twenty-five years later, after digital technology made VCR distribution obsolete, Dan had to reinvent himself. He went on to careers in ski resort management and marketing, coaching skiing, soccer and sailing, journalism, and consulting on a wide range of video and sponsorship projects in skiing and sailing.
Sibling rivalry was brought to a crisis in 1990, after Dan survived a fatal 38 – hour storm high on 18,500-foot Mt. Elbrus in the Russian Caucasus. The brothers went on to collaborate on many more projects, including their X-Team ski clinics held across North America, in Chamonix, Val d’Isère and other European destinations. Dan and John Egan were elected to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2016.
Co-author Eric Wilbur is a journalist who has been covering the New England sports, travel, and skiing scenes for nearly three decades. His written work has appeared in The Boston Globe, New England Ski Journal, Boston.com, Boston Metro, and various other publications. He fell in love with skiing at an early age, a dedication to the sport that only increased upon moving to Vermont during his college years. He lives with his wife and three children in the Boston area. This is his first book.
– Seth Masia
