Bangor Daily News profiles backcountry ski series creator Ben Leoni ’05

The Bangor Daily News looks at Working for the Weekend, a new Web series that follows Ben Leoni ’05 and fellow backcountry skiing friends into the boondocks of the Northeast.

Leoni, who created the series, tells the Bangor Daily News that the target audience is people like him: skiers “in their late 20s and early 30s [who] are living a more professional life. We’re weekend warriors like the majority of people are.”

The series begins its five-episode first season at www.skitheeast.net this month.


View the trailer:


Filming took place last winter, and the contributing videographers included Lincoln Benedict ’09, whose own day job is as a video producer at L.L.Bean.

A lawyer with the Portland firm of Curtis Thaxter, Leoni says that backcountry skiing is “my release. You have to have a good work-life balance.”

In 2011, the story notes, Leoni won the Burton Award for Distinguished Legal Writing, the highest U.S. honor in legal writing, from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“In other words,” writes Sarnacki, “Leoni works hard. So perhaps it’s only natural that he also plays hard.”

Bangor Daily News staff writer Aislinn Sarnacki notes that “it was while attending Bates College that [Leoni] became interested in backcountry skiing and met some of this closest ski buddies, many of whom he still skis with today.”