Nat Segal is a professional big mountain skier and film producer based in Revelstoke, British Columbia. Segal began skiing in Australia at an early age. “I came into the competitive world through moguls,” Segal said. Come high school, Segal took time off from skiing. Skiing was fun, but her heart was set on getting a degree in fine arts.
“Partway through that, I just got the urge to start skiing again,” she admitted. “I went overseas to France, and I learned all about freeride skiing and the Freeride World Tour. The minute I graduated university, I put all my savings into that and just started traveling the world to ski.” Segal did back-to-back winters for six years between North America and Australia and New Zealand, chasing an endless winter. “I was the biggest competitive ski bum,” Segal laughed.
While competitive skiing had its thrills, when the media world began offering opportunities, Segal leapt at the chance to start storytelling through expeditions, films, and writing. “I realized how much more it filled my cup than competitive skiing,” she said. Segal began working as a film producer, and Segal and her sister (Olympian and X Games Slopestyle champion Anna Segal) independently produced Finding the Line, a feature documentary about fear and risk in action spots. Since then, Nat has been involved with a couple of short films, some as a producer, some as an athlete.
Nat’s latest project? Mountain Joy, a short documentary ski film exploring “the challenges of navigating and managing a chronic disease while being active for a living.” The film details Segal’s journey after being diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease that causes flare-ups of inflammation in the spine, hips, and back.
At just under five minutes, Mountain Joy packs a lot into a ski film: clips from the Freeride World Tour, clips of general sendiness, hard-hitting quotes about how the outdoor industry addresses pain, and intense mountaineering adventures. But this isn’t just a story about one individual: this is a documentary that invites us all to examine our own relationships with our physical bodies and the culture of the outdoors as a whole.
One of the biggest themes that comes up throughout Mountain Joy is the idea of pushing through pain. “I was only diagnosed two years ago, but I’ve had back problems since I was in my late teens,” Nat explained. “I think they were from impact and crashing from skiing. In the film, I talk a lot about pushing through pain, because that’s what I did a lot of my ski career. I’d have back pain. I would think, ‘I just need to train harder and be stronger because I have a bulging disc in my back, and I just need to have a stronger core to protect it.’”
It took Segal having “episodes,” her term at the time for flare-ups, where she became incapacitated, to realize that something was wrong. “Now, I understand I was having inflammation in my body and when your body’s inflamed, your muscles turn off, and then you start overusing things.”
Like many athletes who simply refuse to rest, Segal’s mentality was, “I just need to fix myself. I need to just be better. No one else has this problem.” But in 2020, when Segal had had a small knee surgery, all of a sudden, everything just got worse. “The film really nods to those two years I spent living in Revelstoke, a mountain sports hub, and a lot of the time, I would just be shuffling around the house trying to do things. I’d have these moments where I could ski for a week, and then I’d be back on the couch.”
Nat’s advice: know when to ease off, and know when to charge, especially on a pow day. Photo: Nat Segal//Facebook
It became a constant cycle, and Segal saw doctors, physios, and was taking painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Finally, a blood test revealed her diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis. “I’ve been rehabbing for two years,” Segal said, “and I’m still in that process.”
Last winter, Segal began conceptualizing the idea for the film. “I was working with two other filmmakers on a short documentary which I was producing. It was just as I was starting to go on to the drugs that I am currently on. This weight lifts because you’re out of pain for bigger periods of time.”
Segal began thinking it would be interesting to create a project around the idea of having goals and dreams that revolved around going to the mountain but being stuck on the couch. When Nat and a friend began spit balling ideas about getting different athletes together to make a larger documentary discussing physical pain in skiing, and the brain and body being in different places, an opportunity with Helly Hansen came about. Suddenly, everything fell into place.
“I jumped on that and explored this conversion through making a short little piece about me. I asked myself what my segment might have been like if I had made this documentary.”
Even more than telling her own story, Segal wanted to approach a larger conversation about the culture of the outdoors. “The outdoors can be a really intimidating place,” Segal said. “I talk about mainly mountain sports, but, for example, I’m Australian, and I didn’t grow up surfing. Surfing is this strong culture, and it can feel like you need to be good at this. When you’re learning, you get injured, or if you’re getting into a sport, there’s this whole world you need to learn about.”
“It often feels like you need to throw yourself into sports in order to be accepted or good at them,” Segal admitted. “I coach a lot of skiing, and people often think, ‘I suck at this. I’m not good enough. I can’t join you.’ Knowing that you can approach things at your own time. I talked about, like, pain and pushing yourself to your limits versus just being there, turning up, and enjoying your time, and just trying to start a conversation to shift that a little bit.” Segal is careful to define this perspective, saying, “it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge ourselves. I still really love challenging myself. But I think it’s good to set boundaries for yourself and also set barriers to stop yourself from hurting. There’s just a lot of people who also get into certain sports and they get injured so quickly because of the culture you’re around.”
We see this too often in professional skiing. Teenage freeskiing phenom, Kai Jones, for example, broke both of his legs in 2023 while attempting to drop a cliff in the backcounty, ending his season and forcing him to undergo significant surgery and rehab. While some refer to these events as freak accidents, many skiers realize they are simply the result of the culture continuing to push boundaries for bigger, better, and crazier stunts which can’t turn out perfectly every time.
Segal said her intention with this documentary was to reiterate how everyone can enjoy the mountains together, despite their varying levels of commitment or expertise. “It was a stark conversation around how we manage injury in sport and health issues in sport and also creating a space where you can turn up at any level and be accepted.”
Ending with a personal example, Segal said, “a friend would want to go skiing with me, but I was at 60 percent because I was having a really hard time. It took me a while to realize how to go and spend time with my friends in the mountains because I was like, I can only do X. Realizing that they were creating space for me was really nice, but it didn’t feel like that all the time. I either had to turn up and perform to a 100 percent, or just don’t go out at all.”
Mountain Joy is Segal’s message to the ski community, giving “permission to be vulnerable and honest about where they’re at and not being ashamed of it. The likelihood is we’ve all been through something like that before. If you haven’t, maybe seeing a film like this will give you empathy for a friend who is going through something hard, even if it just feels like a standard thing.” Because at the end of the day, skiing is more fun when shared with friends, whether that means boot-packing a couloir or simply lapping a blue groomer.
