Don’t let her size fool you. She snowboards with people nearly twice her height. She’s a natural. For Bailey Duran snowboarding is effortless, a beautiful thing. She dances with the snowboard, hurtling down slopes. Riding toeside, heelside, linking turns, acid drops, board slides, switch stance, 360 spins, down the mountain she goes, seldom falling, never scared. “I like to go on the halfpipe, the little one, not the superpipe, and go really fast,” she says.

Bailey has been an athlete a quarter of her life—and she’s only four years old. After a year in gymnastics—“I like doing the flips and rolls,” she says—Bailey learned to snowboard on the slopes of Southern Vermont. During the 2009-10 winter, with not enough snow for snowmobiling on the trails, her parents were prompted to buy her a snowboard so she could hit the resorts. She only had to be shown once how to do it. She has been snowboarding ever since.

Bailey has carved turns in two Olympic-size superpipes. She has trained one-on-one with Olympic snowboarder Kelly Clark's former instructor. That was a personal highlight for Bailey because Clark is her role model. After evaluating her, the management of the Mount Snow Snowboard School found her talent so exceptional they accepted Bailey into the program at the age of four, even though the entrance age is seven.

In addition to snowboarding, Bailey also loves to ride her: snowmobile, bike, and skateboard, she also enjoys swimming, jumping on her trampoline, taking ballet and karate lessons. She has her own snowmobile and rides tracks in her backyard built by her dad and older brother, Blake, 19. Blake has made a few big jumps that Bailey fearlessly launches off. Sure, she has rolled the snowmobile, and once was stuck underneath, but she's a tough girl, her dad says, and she gets right back on and rides. Bailey and her father like to go for long rides together on their snowmobiles on the trails in Vermont.