Stories - Egan Bruthas

Dan and John Egan “Egan Bruthas” pioneered the extreme movement through film appearances, adventure travel, work ethic and unrivaled passion for the sport.

It had dumped for a week straight at Wyoming’s Grand Targee in 1990 when the sun finally broke through the clouds. The Egan brothers – John and Dan – rushed to the summit to capitalize, while a Warren Miller camera crew set up the money shot across the valley. With Dan leading the way down a powder-filled summit ridge outside the resort’s boundary, a cornice the size of two semi-trailers broke off under their skis. Someway somehow, the brothers miraculously floated above the fracture line, while several tons of snow dropped below their skis.

The cornice break clip in “Extreme Winter” would become the most viewed ski film segment of all time.

The Egan brothers, who Warren Miller called “the ATVs” of ski adventure, came along at just the right time. It was the early 1980s and the ski industry was searching for something new and different beyond ski racing. With their down-to-earth New England manners, aw-shucks humor and gritty knack for slaying big mountains and tackling new adventures, they became the popular, relatable leaders of the then-nascent extreme skiing movement.