Q&A

• What are your plans for this upcoming season? I’ll be filming with Travis Rice on his new project but that’s going to be another two year project. I’ll be filming with that for a month or two then probably another film with the Forum guys. I’m not sure what’s going on with that though.
• How has Baker changed your riding having it as your local mountain? aker is awesome. It is so different than every other mountain. People just go up there to shred. It’s not a fashion show or anything, people just love shredding up there with their huge boards and their Carhartt’s or whatever. They don’t give a ****. The terrain is unbelievable. It has really opened my eyes to natural terrain since I’ve been riding here. I’ve really been learning to just use the mountain and get creative with my riding. It also really helps with my board control because there really aren’t too many groomed runs.
• Describe the feeling you usually have waking up to head out filming? I guess you always feel some similar things. You’re always tired waking up at 4:30 in the morning. You don’t know what to expect with any storms that could’ve changed things over night. If you spotted something the previous day and know that it’s kind of gnarly you definitely have some butterflies.
• The contest vs. filming conversations seem to really be referencing you as a pioneer and someone who has chosen a specific path, I know you’re not opposed to contests so why the staunch decision to not do many? Well it’s funny because I don’t want to limit my riding to just filming. I want to keep broadening my horizons with my snowboarding so I will still do some contests that are rider oriented like the Arctic Challenge, and the Banked Slalom. I try not to stress too much on my snowboard and it kind of seems like at contests style isn’t really rewarded. It kind of seems like it’s just spin to win and so I just think style is one of the biggest things in snowboarding. With filming you can really focus more on style and being creative. It’s not to say that you can’t do that in a contest, but it doesn’t seem as focused on it.
• Forum Forever comes out in a little bit. Tell us about a memory, good or bad, that stands out in your mind from filming it. The first filming trip was in January to Cook City, Montana and the first hit on a jump out there I dislocated my shoulder and I couldn’t really ride for like a month after that. When I was healthy again I headed right back to Cook City with John Jackson and a few others because it was really good there again. It turned out it wasn’t really that good. It came out to be later February and I still didn’t have any shots, not one, so I started to really stress out. I went to Tahoe in early March and we went into gnarly film mode and just filmed for like three weeks straight. I pretty much filmed my whole part in those three weeks. I didn’t get every shot I wanted to but it just goes to show that persistence and a positive attitude pays off.
• If you weren’t a pro snowboarder, what would you be doing professionally? If I could some how become a professional traveler I think that would be the best. I don’t know how I’d get money for that but it would be awesome just to travel around as a professional gypsy. For more of this interview Click Here