Tatiana Elizabeth Lawson’s mother told her that she was skiing even before she could walk. Tatiana was born in Alta, Utah in 1982. Her great-grandfather Joe Quinney was one of the original founders of Alta in 1939. She grew up with a sister and two brothers in a small house on a glacier-carved bypass road in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Her father, Peter, was a cat driver, ski patroller, summer lift crew and Assistant General Manager for Alta Ski Lifts.
Tatiana says, “I grew up watching my father’s team shoot the 105 recoilless rifles and later the Howitzer over our house onto Superior and Hellgate. There is something captivating about watching the initial fracture and then the billowing river of a white avalanche. I loved watching avalanches at age two; that fascination has never changed.”
Her parents divorced in the 1990s, and she moved to Oregon with her mom and siblings and started racing with the ski team for Mt. Hood Academy. As a teenager, her role model was her grandmother, Janet Eccles Quinney, who regularly regaled Tatiana with stories of her youth—ski racing in the 1940s. Tatiana’s grandmother, Janet, was so competitive that she put rocks in her pockets to increase her weight so she could ski even faster. Joe grew weary and wary of Janet’s intrepid nature and actually hid Janet’s skis in 1957 when she was pregnant with Tatiana’s father, Peter!
Janet was a member of the 1944 Olympic Ski Team and was ready to race for the USA. Unfortunately, for all the athletes, the games in Cortina d’Ampezzo were canceled because of WWII. She was a true pioneer for women in winter sports.
Tatiana graduated from Colorado College in 2006 with a degree in English and Film and immediately went to work ski-patrolling at Alta. Having been involved in several large avalanche operations and rescues in Alta, she says, “I have a passion for mountain medical response. I watched my partner, Bruce, go over a cliff in the Low Notch while I clung to a tree my rookie year. Then I descended to help dig him out. Another winter, when we were facing deep slab instability, one of my shots partially buried my route partner, Coleman, propagated up High Greely and completely buried another patroller, Grovesie, and air blasted a third patroller, Jonathan. I learned a lot that day. I learned that I cared more about my team than skiing.”
For many years, identifying as a “water chaser, ” Tatiana ski-patrolled in winter and river-guided in summer in Moab, Utah. She then moved to Haines to work for Alaska Mountain Guides. Eventually, Tatiana received a Master’s in Education and Counseling, graduating with honors in 2012 from Lewis and Clark School of Education and Counseling. That year, she attended Piney’s Alta patrol refresher and traveled to the Himalayas to teach school in Asia.
In 2013, she applied to patrol at Alyeska, where Mike Welch, whom she knew from Alta, was working as a patrolman and helicopter ski guide. They both went to work for Chugach Powder Guides and soon fell in love. Following in her grandmother’s footsteps, Tatiana heli-guided during the day and worked the ski patrol night shift at Alyeska until she was four months pregnant in 2019.
Tatiana and Mike now have two children, Sylvie Winter, 4, and Sylas Snow, 2. While pregnant, she was hired as the first female Ski Patrol Director at Alyeska. She says of that job, “Alyeska captured my heart in a way that no place ever has. I went to Gun School to learn how to use the Howitzer. Alyeska still has three of them. There is no better tool for the job. And I loved working those early mornings. I believe that likely has to do with watching avalanches across the street as a small child. It’s intoxicating and satisfying, and you can feel it in your guts.”
Today, Tatiana is the first female ski patrol director at Sun Valley. She describes her job as “one of the greatest honors in my life, and I want to care for this team like a mama bear.”