When people talk about being a digital nomad, the picture is nearly always the same. Laptop, beach, somewhere in Southeast Asia, suspiciously photogenic coffee.
That’s never been the version that appealed to us.
We’d (obviously) rather spend winter in the mountains.
And we’ve actually done it in quite a few different ways. We’ve picked up freelance work through Fiverr and Upwork, written content for other companies, done marketing work, filmed UGC in the mountains and built our own websites.
Including this one.
None of that happened overnight, and it definitely isn’t the permanent-holiday lifestyle Instagram likes to sell you. You still have to work, you just get more say over where you do it.
How We’ve Actually Made Money From the Mountains
We’ve made money remotely in quite a few different ways over the years, although I should probably point out that we’ve also tried a shitload of things that went absolutely nowhere.
Fiverr and Upwork have both made us money. We’ve written for other companies, done marketing work, created content for brands and filmed UGC out in the mountains. That last one makes a fair bit of sense when you’re working with ski and snowboard companies anyway.
We’ve also built our own websites, including the one you’re reading now.
That’s probably been the biggest part of it for us, but I really don’t want to sell the usual “start a website and fund your travels” dream here. We’ve built sites that worked, sites that didn’t, spent months on things that barely made anything and wasted plenty of time doing stuff that, in hindsight, was a terrible idea.
The ones that do work are incredibly useful if you want to spend time in the mountains, though. Most of the work involved in running The Snow Chasers can be done anywhere I’ve got my laptop and decent Wi-Fi. Obviously, some of the testing is a bit harder without the snow.
I don’t think there’s much value in trying to find the perfect “digital nomad job.” For us it’s always been a fairly messy combination of our own projects, freelance work and doing work for other people. Some of it stuck and plenty of it didn’t.
Start With a Ski Season
If you don’t already have work you can do remotely, a normal ski season is still probably the easiest way to spend a winter in the mountains.
That normally means working for the resort or one of the businesses around it. Hotels and chalets need staff, bars need bartenders, restaurants need chefs and servers, rental shops need people who know which end of a snowboard is which, and there are jobs in childcare, transport, guest services and plenty more.
Accommodation is often the difficult bit in ski towns, so a job that comes with somewhere to live can be worth considerably more than the salary initially suggests.
The trade-off is that your employer gets a fairly major say in when you can ski. I’ve known plenty of people who’ve gone away for a winter imagining endless powder days and discovered that working in a ski resort involves rather a lot of… working.
That’s one of the big advantages of eventually getting some of your income online. Instead of having to find a job wherever you want to spend the winter, you can start taking the work with you.
You Don’t Need to Become a Full-Time Nomad Overnight
There’s this strange idea online that becoming a digital nomad involves quitting your job, buying a MacBook and immediately earning money from a hammock. I’d suggest having some income first.
You don’t need enough remote work to support yourself completely from day one either. Building some freelance work alongside a normal job or a ski season is a much less terrifying way of doing it, particularly because freelance income can be all over the place when you’re getting started.
A lot of people also have more useful remote skills than they realise. Hospitality teaches you to deal with people, solve problems quickly and keep smiling when you’re dying inside. Tourism and front-desk work can give you experience in bookings, customer support, sales and travel operations. If you’ve already worked in marketing, design, IT, finance, writing, video or social media, the jump is even more obvious.
None of that guarantees somebody will pay you to do it online, of course, and finding the first few bits of work can be a pain in the arse. But you probably don’t need to invent an entirely new career before you can start.
Working Remotely From a Ski Resort
Having work you can do remotely gives you a lot more choice, but actually taking it to a ski resort introduces a whole new set of problems.
The obvious one is cost. Ski towns are rarely cheap places to live, particularly if you’re trying to book accommodation for a month rather than signing a normal residential lease. And Wi-Fi suddenly becomes something you need to investigate before booking somewhere rather than just assuming it’ll be fine.
Working hours matter more than I expected too. Depending on who you’re working for and where they’re based, the time difference can either leave most of the ski day completely free or make the whole thing fairly pointless.
Then there’s the slightly ridiculous situation of moving somewhere specifically because you want to snowboard and having to sit inside working while it’s dumping outside.
That’s just part of it. If you’re relying on the work to pay for being there, you can’t suddenly decide every powder day is a day off. Otherwise you’re basically on an expensive ski holiday while occasionally opening your laptop.
I don’t think you need to go all-in and move to a ski town for five months either. Spending a few weeks or a month somewhere is much easier to fit around work and normal life, and you still get to spend a decent chunk of winter somewhere you actually want to be.
For us, that’s much more appealing than the whole “digital nomad” thing anyway. We don’t particularly care about travelling permanently. We just like having enough flexibility to spend more time in the mountains.
The Arctic Digital Nomads Grant
The Arctic Digital Nomads Grant is probably the best example I’ve found of how far this idea has gone.
It’s a real programme designed to bring remote workers into small communities in Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands during the quieter months. Successful applicants get accommodation and coworking space covered for between one and three months while bringing their existing work with them.
The current locations are Vágur in the Faroe Islands, Þingeyri in Iceland’s Westfjords, and communities around Geirangerfjord in Norway. The whole point is that you’re not just hiding in an Airbnb either. The programme wants people who’ll actually get involved in local life and contribute something while they’re there.
People clearly like the idea. The 2025–26 round received 14,846 applications covering more than 20,000 people, compared with only a few hundred the year before, so your odds aren’t exactly spectacular.
Still, free accommodation and a workspace in a tiny Nordic community for part of the winter? I’d fill in the form.
The next round is due to open in October 2026.
Skiing Before Work or After?
This is the part nobody seems to put in the dreamy digital-nomad photos: you need to decide when you’re actually going to work.
If your hours are completely flexible, brilliant. Ski when conditions are good and work around them.
If you have fixed hours, time zones suddenly become your friend or your enemy. Working North American hours from Europe can leave a decent chunk of the ski day free before work. Keeping UK hours somewhere further east can do the opposite.
Sometimes you just have to work while it’s snowing, and I think accepting that is an important part of making this sustainable. If every sunny day, powder day and invitation to go skiing becomes a reason not to work, you haven’t really created a remote career.
Is It Actually Worth It?
I’ve never been particularly interested in becoming a “digital nomad” for the sake of it. I just like being able to decide where I spend more of my winter without work making the entire decision for me.
How far you take that is up to you. It might mean doing a normal ski season while you build some freelance work on the side, keeping your existing remote job and spending a month in the mountains, or eventually getting to the point where you can disappear somewhere snowy for most of the winter.
You don’t need six passive-income streams or to become some phoney life coach selling a course from Bali. You need work that you can actually do remotely, decent internet and enough discipline to get it done when everyone else is heading out to ski.
For us, that’s enough. We get more time in the mountains, and ultimately that’s what all of this was supposed to achieve anyway.
