Crested Butte Hosts 30-Year Ski Film Tradition

Crested Butte —Mark Abma is 46 years old. He’s a professional skier who has been putting on the same face in the same place for over two decades. Every fall, he drives back to Crested Butte. Not just for the snow. For the premiere.

On paper, it sounds like a niche hobby. In practice, it’s a 30-year-old business model that outlasted the companies that tried to copy it. Matchstick Productions, founded by Steve Winter, is still on tour. Their 2026 film, “The Way Out,” premieres Saturday in CB. Abma has been in their films since 2003. He was 23. He’s still there.

Winter moved to Crested Butte from Seattle in the early 1990s. He released Matchstick’s first film in 1993. That first tour? “Maybe four showings, all in Colorado,” he said. No national circuit. No streaming platform. Just a movie, a venue, and a room full of skiers who needed to get stoked before winter hit.

Let’s do the math on why this matters. By the late 1990s, Winter estimated there were about 60 companies making ski films. Most disappeared. Why? “Because none of them had a tour where they could control their own content,” he said. Matchstick did. They rented venues, advertised shows, and assumed the financial risk of bringing a movie to town. That control kept them alive when the industry went through a boom-and-bust cycle.

During the DVD era, Matchstick boomed. They sold some 70,000 discs at $30 apiece. Let’s break that down: 70,000 times $30 is $2.1 million. That’s not pocket change. That money allowed the company to travel more and produce bigger films. Then DVDs collapsed. Online video exploded. Skiers could watch extraordinary footage without leaving their phones. The traditional model was supposed to be dead. It wasn’t.

“Having a tour is the only thing that’s kept us in business,” Winter said. That’s not a marketing line. That’s a survival strategy. The tour brings people together before winter. It creates anticipation. It turns a movie into a ritual. For Abma, it’s the gathering that happens around the films. That’s what keeps him coming back.

For locals, this isn’t just a movie night. It’s a preseason ritual that has been happening for more than three decades. It’s a business that survived the collapse of the DVD market, the rise of social media, and the shift to streaming. It’s a company that controls its own content and its own tour. And it’s still on the road.

The practical bottom line? If you’re in Crested Butte this Saturday, you’re not just watching a ski film. You’re participating in a 30-year-old tradition that outlasted the industry it was built in. And that’s not a small thing.