He penned Squallywood during his medical residency, mostly between the hours of 9 p.m. In 1995, Gaffney left Tahoe to attend medical school in Denver, and then for a four-year psychiatric residency at the University of California at Davis, but he would visit Tahoe regularly during that time, often filming ski segments during short breaks from med school. While Robb was studying pre-med at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he and Scott would road trip out to Tahoe to go skiing and he eventually moved to the area after graduating in 1993.įor two winters in Tahoe, Gaffney worked in race services and as a grocery bagger, and he and Scott, who’d also moved to the area, started filming their exploits on the mountain, with his brother always lugging around heavy camera equipment. Their parents, who’d spent time in Tahoe before having kids, took their three boys out to Tahoe on a summer vacation, and that planted a seed in Robb and Scott. He was the youngest of three boys, including older brothers Steve and Scott. Gaffney grew up in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, learning to ski at age two at Big Tupper Ski Area. It was a call out to the rest of the ski world.” And Robb loved to share that fun, that passion. “The Gaffneys brought another aspect to having fun in the mountains. ![]() “I was always like, what are those guys up to? They brought a lot of fun,” says pro skier Daron Rahlves. Gaffney wrote Squallywood during his medical residency at California’s UC Davis. points could be amassed by, say, airing a big cliff, with bonus points awarded for doing it naked or on snowblades.) He and his brother Scott created 2011’s “G.N.A.R., the Movie,” a mockumentary that reminded us all that skiing is supposed to be-above all-fun. In 2003, he authored the book Squallywood, a guidebook to the 150 rowdiest lines at what is now called Palisades Tahoe, and he and McConkey co-created the game of G.N.A.R (which stood for Gaffney’s Numerical Assessment of Radness), a point-based system that celebrated getting rad while not taking yourself too seriously. “We had this feeling that we were part of something bigger.” “Everyone knew when you were on the mountain, you were there to celebrate,” Gaffney told me once. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he appeared in now-classic ski movies like “Immersion,” “1999,” and “Walls of Freedom,” during the early heyday of extreme skiing, alongside the likes of Shane McConkey, Kent Kreitler, and JT Holmes. Gaffney’s impact on the world of skiing dates back decades. And to the backcountry skiers in my life, I say I’m way ahead on the skintrack and happy to be there for anyone as they work their way up.” ![]() “I let my friends and family know I need no reassurance. “The outdoors has provided the best therapy by far,” he wrote on CaringBridge. He was transparent about his battle with cancer in the hopes that it might help others, and at the time of his death, Gaffney was at work on a book about his experience fighting cancer. Over those years, Gaffney still got out to adventure whenever his body allowed, climbing mountains with his kids, Noah and Kate (both in their 20s), jumping into waterfalls, and ice skating on frozen alpine lakes, taking advantage of every day he had. In June 2022, his doctors identified a recurrence. He underwent years of treatment, including stem cell transplants, but the cancer eventually progressed to acute myeloid leukemia. A post shared by Scott Gaffney was first diagnosed with myelodysplastic disorder-which often leads to leukemia-in September 2019.
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