James Saito, who played Kendo, couldn't actually speak Japanese. He fooled the entire crew for the first three weeks. During an interview with Outside magazine in 2016, he said, "At the audition, they asked me if I could speak Japanese. I don't speak any of it, but all the guys at the table were white guys, so I thought they'd never know the difference. I just said any household words in Japanese that I knew from growing up. When I got the part, I had a friend translate my lines. But during the course of the shooting, my part got bigger, and so the director would say, 'Jimmy, can you say this?' And I'd go, 'Uh, yeah, sure. When are we gonna shoot?' And they'd say, 'About 30 minutes.' So I'd ski down to the lodge and call my friend. Every day I had like three Japanese-English dictionaries in my pockets and a whole list of things to say."
None of the lead actors could ski. Patrick Houser, in particular, was brought up a week early for ski lessons but never looked comfortable so most shots of the leads on skis are in close-up.
Lynn Wieland, who played Michelle (aka Banana Pants), was a member of the United States freestyle ski team from 1979 to 1981. She was also the 1981 US champion in aerials and 1981 US/Canadian champion in moguls. She said in a 2016 interview with Outside magazine that she was in four Greg Stump skiing movies, two Warren Miller skiing movies, and had covers on Powder and Skiing magazines, but people still remember her as Banana Pants decades later, and she's fine with that. She had a great time making the movie.
Many locals from Squaw Valley, California appear as extras in the wet t-shirt contest sequence.
Edward S. Feldman: Uncredited, the picture's producer and film financier as a man in a bar watching a wet t-shirt contest.
Mike Marvin: The movie's writer-producer as the Starter of the Downhill Race who was billed as the "Downhill Starter."