For well over a decade, rails were strictly for skateboarders, snowboarders, inliners, BMXers, and pretty much anybody else considered X-Games worthy. Rails were like the prerequisite to be considered a cool extreme sport in the 90s, and anything from Soap shoes to skiboards (sorry Line) were legit, because you could slide rails. Unsurprisingly, skiing was not considered cool back then. Much of this is attributable to the fact that skiers still didn’t have the nerve to risk nutting themselves in terrain parks or urban settings.

In some kind of collective consciousness, skiers realized we could slide rails with the best of them and be as cool as all those Dew-chugging, wide-leg-jean-wearing “extreme” kids. Well now we’ve seen more than a decade of skiing on rails, every kid under the age of 18 can do all eight, and every pro can do unimaginable things to any urban rail. It’s amazing to see the progression in skiing’s rail game and I want everyone to take a step back and appreciate this progression. Pros used to just slide rails and that was good enough. If there was a kink, even better, and not moving your body an inch was ideal.

Now this all leads to the real reason I’m writing; skiing has come so far with rails and urban, yet the major ski mags have only given the coveted cover shot to an urban photo a dozen times or less in the last 12+ years. Skogen was the first one on the October 2000 issue of Freeze, and the most recent was Max Hill on an issue of SBC Skier. AXIS magazine, which only had 5 issues, had three covers with a skier sliding an urban rail; best ratio in skiing. Seems unacceptable when 50% of videos are urban shots, and kids are more preoccupied with rails than learning to actually ski.

Freeskier, Powder, and every other ski magazine– why are you neglecting the urban shots? Tom Wallisch, Mike Hornbeck, Will Wesson, Phil Casabon or any other urban slayer should be snagging covers left and right. We need you to represent skiing accurately on newsstands. Same question goes to Poor Boyz, TGR, Level 1 and MSP. Name me one movie cover with a skier sliding a rail or urban feature (other than Exact Science).

It's a bit of a stretch to call some of these "urban." And why does Sammy Carlson get so many covers?

Let us know who should be bagging more covers and fill in the blank:

I want to see __________ get a cover.