ArgentaWorks goggles’ Garen Riedel skis each of 12 months, all in Utah

Garen Riedel with Glacier his dog that accompanied him during each/all 12 months of Utah skiing for new Park City goggle company, ArgentaWorks. Photo: courtesy of the Riedel family

The 39-year-old skied with several different people over the past year, but his fluffy white dog/"partner in crime," Glacier, was the only one to accompany him all 12 months

PARK CITY, Utah — “Doesn’t everybody in Utah ski 12 months a year?” quips Park City’s Garen Riedel when TownLift asked about his year-long adventure. “It’s a fun box to check.”

Of the many skiers who have attempted and/or accomplished this feat in previous years, Riedel picked a good one, in 2022, with all its seemingly never-ending snowfall. Last year, yes, he played hard, but yes, he also worked hard planning for this week’s announcement of the new goggles company he’s founded, ArgentaWorks.

Just in time for today’s Cyber Monday when the website has extended sales from Black Friday.

The 12 months included:

• Deer Valley
• Park City Mountain
• Wasatch Back backcountry
• His Old Town-neighborhood backcountry
• Big Cottonwood Canyon resorts and backcountry
• Little Cottonwood Canyon resorts and backcountry
• Guardsman Pass’s Mt. Clayton
• Mt. Timpanogos

The 39-year-old skied with several different people over the past year, but his fluffy white dog/”partner in crime,” Glacier, was the only one to accompany him all 12 months. “She rips,” he told TownLift.

When Riedel’s asked if he prefers resort or backcountry skiing, he answered, “I’m an equal-opportunity skier.”

He’s run his own business and creative services agency, Riedel Creative, for the past decade which has partnered with clients like Nike, and the US Ski & Snowboard Team, for which he designed World Cup and Olympic race suits from 2018 to 2022.

ArgentaWorks is a ski and snowboard goggle company. “The goggles are packed with tech and features unavailable on the market at any price point, additionally they have interchangeable colored straps so you can mix and match colors to pair with any ski/snowboard outfit. I’m extremely proud of the product! We have some exciting upcoming partnerships and collaborations, so hopefully you’ll see a lot more of us in the future.” 

He said, “Skiing 12 months of the year isn’t necessarily inherently dangerous, though the snow can be horrific at times, it’s just super fun. Especially when you get to ski pow on ‘Timp’ on Halloween with your dog, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.” He added, “However, being benighted and having to sleep under a rock at 12,700 feet while climbing the Grand Teton this September because there was ice on the west face of the descent route, not so much. But it was great acclimatization for alpine climbing the Matterhorn in Zermatt Switzerland one week later.”

Riedel raced alpine in high school in the Northeast, and triathlon professionally, “So, I have a pretty big engine, which comes in handy climbing bigger mountains.”

What gear was he on? “Whatever skis have the fewest core shots in them.”

He’s going on five years living in Park City full-time, but has been coming out much longer for work partnerships with USA Nordic. A fact which grants him the right to giving grief to his friend and oft-times fellow backcountry buddy gold and silver medal Olympic skier Billy Demong of Park City, acknowledging that logistically, Demong didn’t join Glacier and Riedel this particular year, joking, “Billy’s too soft for that kind of adventure. However, I did drag him up Mt. Rainier for a 9,500-foot ski descent on the Fourth of July in 2020, with the other Park City local retired nordic combined athlete, Nick Hendrickson.”