Chris Benchetler

Chris Benchetler is a legendary skier with his own line of skis at Atomic, the Bent Chetlers. The 120 cm version is the standard of big mountain powder skiers the world over. Chris is also a graphic artist and a filmmaker. He designed the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary logo and has two new movies, "Ship of Fools" and "Butterfly in a Blizzard."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back the Bob Left That's podcast. My
guest today is skier artist filmmaker Chris ben Scheffler. Chris,
how'd you get involved with the Grateful?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Did straight to the punch? That is a long winded question.
Luckily we're on a long form podcast here. Ah. I
got introduced to the music by let's call him an uncle.
He's a family friend, but he comes to all the
holidays and has been a part of my life for
quite some time now. And he's been following him since

(00:43):
he was sixteen and gone to many, many hundreds of
shows and listened to him in the car pretty NonStop.
And it's slowly in my early twenties, just started infiltrating,
infiltrating my mind a little bit, and I started listening
into them more and more. And it is very synonymous

(01:04):
with mountain culture and growing up in the mountains and
being a skier. It was always around and always something
that I was really into, and so I just kept
getting more into it. And then twenty sixteen, when Dead
and Co started touring, I believe that was when it
was might have been twenty fifteen. He took me to

(01:24):
my first show and I got to see the magic
in person and just see Shakedown Street and see the community,
and I was hooked ever since. And then around that time,
I picked up a guitar started playing songs myself, and
then it just kept going. And I can keep talking
if you want, because then we'll go.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Into no no keeping talking.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I'm listening, Okay, Okay, Well, I just don't want to
say too much. But then it keep fast forwarding. Get
to twenty eighteen. An offer comes across my desk to
help make some Grateful Dead skis. The Grateful Dead had
success in the snowboard community with Burton Snowboards for a
few years, and I have my own skis that I

(02:08):
designed with Atomic. I'm also an artist, so I do
the artwork on my skis, and I'm also a fan
of the music at this point a big fan. And
then I get the offer to do do a ski
with the Grateful Dead. And instead of just putting artwork
on a ski, because I'm an artist both on skis

(02:28):
and with my paintbrush, I wanted to create something more meaningful.
So through that process I get introduced to Mark Pinkis
and David Lemieux, and I pitched them this concept of
Fire on the Mountain, which was a film.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Okay, okay, second, okay, you're sitting in Mammoth Lakes, You're
fucking around. All of a sudden you get an email
out of the bloom about the Grateful Dead.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's not entirely out of the blue. I'm glad we're
backtracking here. So uh, this guy Todd Jones, who owns
a production company in the ski world called Teton Gravity Research.
His son skis on My skis on Atomic, and we
were doing this little film in Mammoth kind of born

(03:14):
on Bent because I called my skis the Bent Chetler
because my last name is Ben Chetler and the skis
are rockered, so little play on words there. We're filming.
I'm playing guitar. I also have a nice vinyl collection.
Dead is a part of that vinyl collection. I can't
quite recall if a record was playing, or if I
was playing Ripple or going down the Road. And Todd

(03:36):
had this light bulb moment because this other gentleman, Brian Francis,
was moving from New York and helping Todd launch an
apparel business within TGR and Brian Francis had done a
dead license on some shoes. I don't believe it was Nike,
but some shoes or something. Previously in New York, Brian

(03:57):
asked Todd, do you know any ski companies that would
want to do a Grateful Dead license? Todd sitting on
my couch, We're playing dead music, and the light bulb
hit him. He introduced me to Brian, and then the
story continues to unfold from there.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, Mark pinkis who runs Rhino Records, which distributes the
Grateful Dead stuff. You reach out to them and tell
us exactly what you pitch them.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
You're testing my memory here. I pitch them a concept
because I'm a fan of the music, because I'm a filmmaker,
and because of my past life experience. I had this
concept to invent led skeleton suits and make these skis

(04:43):
with the Grateful Dead and make a film that was
inspired by their improvisational music. Because their improvisation ties directly
into how we ski and snowboard and surf and move
through the mountains and kind of riding the pulse of
the universe, if you will. It's very connected to music.

(05:04):
So I pitched this idea. Mark didn't get it, so
I tell Mammoth Mountain, who's another sponsor and supporter of mine,
that we I'm gonna be doing this ski with the
Grateful Dead, and we are going to be licensing their music.
And I stretched the truth a little bit because at
that point Mark did not agree to me licensing the music.

(05:26):
So I knew I believed in myself enough that my
concept and my past experience. I did another night film
years prior with a company called Sweet Grass, and the
movie was called Afterglow, and so I knew what was
possible and I knew what was living within my head.
So we filmed the segment at Mammoth, sent it to
Pinkis and Lemieux and they gave two thumbs up.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Basically, Okay, you're gonna make a film. How much money
were you asking what was the budget?

Speaker 2 (05:55):
The budget was not nearly enough. It was a passion
project and it was there was no real budget because I,
as an artist, tend to create these things and invest
in myself, believing in this overall creation of the artwork.
So the budget was coming from there was you know,

(06:17):
tens of thousands of dollars from the Atomics and Mammoth
and these places. And then of course Mammoth was putting
in resources like cat hours and employees and operators and
all of these things. So I was scrummaging together money
anywhere and everywhere I could to create this concept and

(06:37):
through sponsors, through different outlets and fundraising, just like you
do to make an indie film.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
I guess, okay, you have the concept. Does the ski
come out before or simultaneously with simultaneously?

Speaker 2 (06:51):
So this concept was to be a marketing effort and
an art piece that would tie directly to the skis
Because of my relationships with other brands, I then tied in.
I introduced The Grateful Dead to Smartwroll and some of
my other sponsors and TGR obviously, so I gave this

(07:12):
film in this concept. I directed it and produced it
and created it, and then I gave it to them
for distribution. And at that time, Brian was launching the
apparel business which then licensed TG licensed Grateful Dead as well.
So it was this big, this big uh I guess
capsule if you will, of different products and the film

(07:35):
and all of these things that just kept growing and growing.
That will obviously get into as you continue to ask
me questions here, But.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Okay, if someone wants to see the film today. Can
they They can?

Speaker 2 (07:47):
It is on YouTube for free.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Fire on the Mountain is okay, let's go back a second.
You're gonna make this ski with the Grateful Dead. How
do you decide how many to make?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
That is negotiated between the Grateful Dead and Atomic Skis,
and they wanted something valuable. There was work on my end.
Atomic is an Austrian based ski company. The Grateful Dead
are not big in Austria. I had to educate them
on what the Grateful Dead was, why it was so

(08:22):
important to me all of these things. And they believe
in me through the decade plus of what we had
created together and the success of my skis, so they
trust me. And so the first release we did was
not a lot of skis. I want to say it
was three to four hundred skis or so. I can't

(08:42):
even recall the number, but they sold out immediately. So
then the Grateful Dead and Atomic worked on the second
year after things kept going, and I think our second
release was around fifteen hundred pairs. And then that's all
dictated by I mean, I know you're a skier just
based on our conversations at the sphere, but that's all

(09:04):
dictated by all the different brands and how successful Atomic
is and what wastewidth ski you're gonna put it on,
and all of the things. And I was putting it
on a powder ski, which inherently sells less skis just
because there's not as many powder skiers as normal skiers
out there.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Okay, is this relationship with Atomic the Grateful Dead played out?
Or will there be any skis in the future.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
There will definitely be skis in the future. There's a
pair of sitting in Bernie's office right now.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
So Bernie Bob Weir's manager. Okay, In any event, you
get the go too to make this ski, how do
you come up with the concept and the artwork you're
going to employ.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Luckily, my creation of art is the same, and I
just approach it with an open mind and an open heart.
I don't I obviously have decades of iconography to pull from,
but I wanted something to be an extension of me
and a representation of my love for the music and

(10:11):
the deep history of some of that iconography. I'm putting
my own spin and twist on all of these things.
So how I paint is quite literally and figuratively, just
with colors, and compositions and emotion, and I don't go
to the canvas being like I'm going to paint a
skeleton right now. I start with fluid acrylics and I

(10:33):
let the paint kind of do its thing, and through
the process of days, weeks, months, that starts to take shape.
And I just help bring this painting out into the
world kind of through me as a as a vessel,
if you will. So I just paint a lot in
my studio, and then once I land on something that

(10:54):
I feel represents what I want it to represent, I
then take a ski template on the computer with my
art scanned in, and then I start moving the template
around the different pieces of artwork, deciding compositionally what looks
good onto long pairs of skis and so on and
so forth.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
So, okay, this is the first project, but you've continued
to work a lot with the Grateful Dead. Tell me
I have.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
So let's just stay on this project for a moment.
So I send the footage to David and Mark. They
obviously get Bernie's sign off on it as well, and
then I need someone to narrate the film. So that
same friend that introduced me to the Dead is also

(11:42):
vary into traditional sports. I do not play any traditional sports,
nor do I watch them on television. Really, and I
knew who Bill Walton was more from the dead community.
So my friend Conrad and David Lemieux suggests that I
reach out to Bill Walton to do this, to see

(12:03):
if he'll be willing to narrate my film. So I
sent a cold call or an email in this case,
to Bill Walton explaining my whole idea. He deletes it,
moves on to the next thing. But luckily, as I
explained earlier, I have a very successful scheme of atomic
His assistant at the time owned a pair of my skis,
knew who I was, brought the email back out of

(12:24):
the trash, and Bill read it again. Didn't understand it still,
so Bill, I left my phone number. Bill cold calls me.
It's like, first I believe he told me. He called
Pinkus and Lemieux to verify that I was really who
I said I was, and they confirmed. Bill calls me.
We end up talking for an hour or more and

(12:46):
have He just had a lot of passion and was
very happy and inspired by what I was hoping to
accomplish and what I was creating and signed up to
help me, help me to bring it to life. So
we go and record Bill Walton for the narration. Then

(13:10):
a lot of other things happened. There's other sports within
this film, and Rob Machado is a surfer Hall of
Fame surfer and a very good friend of mine. He
actually lives in San Diego and knows the Machado family
and the Walton families know each other. There was more
synergy happening as this continued to unfold, and then Bill,

(13:30):
it was we were releasing the film at the World
of McIntosh. Our world premiere was going to be World
of McIntosh in New York, which they did the Wall
of Sound for the Dead in nineteen seventy four, I believe,
and Bill's birthday was the following day, and Dead and Co.
Were playing at NASA Coliseum or I don't know if
I pronounced that correctly. They were playing at NASA, and

(13:55):
he came to our world premiere we were doing a
Q hosted by GQ. Bill kicked off Will Welch, who
was director or editor in chief of GQ, I believe,
and brought up Mickey Hart on stage and then so
that was my introduction in person to Mickey. We did
this Q and A together talked. Then Carol invited my

(14:19):
wife and Rob and a few of us to the
show the following night. Carol is Mickey's wife, and we
went to the show and things just kept building and progressing.
And then fast forward to COVID and Bill's relationship with ESPN,
and we had all of these amazing photos that were

(14:40):
gonna go unseen just because print is not what it
once was. So I pitched once again to Mark and
Bernie and David to do a coffee table book and
a vinyl LP of the soundtrack. And so I created
this big coffee table book size of a vinyl record,
and in conjunction with that, I called Bill again and

(15:03):
asked if he'd be willing to do a behind the
scenes to kind of talk about his involvement. So he
introduced me to Burke Magnus over at ESPN and we
did a sixty minute special. Once again, Micky got involved
with us. We all did some Zoom interviews, had this wonderful,
wonderful release on ESPN that was widely appreciated, I guess

(15:28):
you could say, And my relationship with Mickey and Bill
kept growing fast forward to twenty twenty three Dead We're
doing their final tour, and Mickey wanted to use the
footage for drums in Space, and so I sent him
all the footage that he wanted to use and that
was great. And then keep fast forwarding, I learned about

(15:49):
the Sphere. I called Bill and Mickey asked Mickey what
he had planned for his drums and space for the Sphere,
and pitched him this whole concept of his rhythm and
his drumming bringing the mountains to life. So Mickey came
up to Mammoth, we shipped his drums, We built this huge,
beautiful sculpture, and Mickey played the drums as we were

(16:10):
jumping over him, and we had all this incredible footage
that we're creating for another film and so on and
so forth. And then it was part of his drums
and Face at the Sphere, which you and I watched together,
which was great.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Okay, just to get into technology here, you shoot this
stuff at Mammoth with Mickey. Is it as simple as saying,
project this in the sphere or do you have to
go through all these different chapters to get it so
you can see it at the sphere.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
There's hundreds of chapters to get it there. Yes, so
we there was a lot of complications. But the Sphere
team also came up to Mammoth. They have a camera
called Big Sky Camera. I don't pretend to know anything
about the technological side of that, but it shoots out
a very high resolution and they invented it specific for

(17:09):
the Sphere. It shoots in a certain way. So we
had their team come up. We had cranes for their team.
How should I say this. I took every effort possible
to make it as good as it could possibly be,
and all the while not knowing if the camera could
shoot in that low of light because we were shooting
at night, and if the camera shoots that well in
the cold, and there was a lot of limitations up

(17:31):
against me. So I had my team of filmers capturing
additional eight K resolution content. Because we're making a film
in conjunction with The Grateful Dead as I don't want
to call it a sequel because it's not. It's just
an abstract art piece and an extension of the last film.
But we were already working towards something and so when
I learned about the Sphere, I talked to Mickey we

(17:54):
added this whole element to it, and then the Sphere
team came up and those shots actually didn't end up
working because of those things that I mentioned, because of
I think the cold, because of certain lighting things, and
a number of things. So our footage ended up saving
the show to some degree. And because, as you saw
in Drums and Space, because it was built in Notch

(18:16):
and fragmented into kaleidoscopic different pictures and images, it didn't
have to be at the same resolution as the entire
Sphere camera. So technologically we were okay at eight K resolution.
Because Mickey was playing in real time and they were mixing,

(18:37):
every show was different, and so they were mixing in
our footage wherever wherever it worked with those live programs.
They had a Notch operator on site at the Sphere.
Every time Mickey hits a drum a different beat and
things then translate back to the screen and all the
technology I don't understand, but our footage was a part

(18:59):
of that.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
I'm gonna ask again, which in the terms of the
money the budget, because to create an overall Sphere show
is unbelievably expensive.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yes, So this second film, I now had a proof
of concept. I once again fundraise it for fundraised in
the same way I did the first time, but I
had something to show for it, and I had more
belief in my ability to create this art, and so
my sponsors came forth with more support and it's all

(19:32):
being spent once again to make the art. And it's
not it's hard for corporations or people to quite comprehend,
like I have no interest in this being a return
on investment, and so for a company to get involved,
that's a very big risk on their part. They have
to be the right company for the right reasons and
all the things. And fortunately my sponsors, I mean, I

(19:56):
have a couple decades now in the ski industry and
a successful career, and Architeix is my clothing sponsor, and
they're based up in Vancouver and there they've been massively supportive.
And Atomic is being massively supportive. And another really good
friend of mine, who is from the Jack Daniels family,

(20:17):
has his own distillates and that he is helping make
this come to life. It's high and wicked whiskey and
he has tequila and things. And there's a few key companies,
Mammoth being one of those, or the whole greater group
that you're probably familiar with, al Tara. They own Mammoth
and CMH and Mike Wiggley and all these different operations

(20:37):
that we're kind of using to make this thing. And
then Kelly Slater's surfranch was extremely helpful with us capturing
some of the footage of rob and everyone just believed
in art for the sake of art, which is wildly
unique in this day and age. And so you're not wrong.

(20:57):
It's been very expensive, it's been very stressed. I think,
I don't know if you watched it, but I might
have sent you a couple of clips of me being
pretty stressed out creating this whole thing. So it's been
it's been an experience.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Okay, there are a lot of questions I want to ask.
It ultimately come out from the beginning. So let's get
some facts. You're born, where you grow up.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Where I'm born in Bishop, California, just south of Mammoth Lakes, California,
where I live now. My parents met in Mammoth in
nineteen seventy one, I believe, and they lived in Mammoth
in the eighties. You could not have babies up here
because there was no pediatric that you had to have

(21:39):
your babies, and Bishop so and they were sick of shoveling.
Had my brother and I lived in Bishop for a while.
Then in my early teens, my father died and we
moved bat. My mom, my brother and I moved back
up to Mammoth and I grew up skiing here, grew
up on the race team.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
All those Okay, wait, wait before we get there. Were
your parents refugees from the world so to speak? Were
they hippies who said, you know enough of La or Denver,
wherever the hell they came from, We want to leave
the ski bomb life.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yes, it's funny you use the word refugee. My dad
was quite literally a refugee from Hungary. They escaped Communism
in nineteen fifty six and he was only six years old,
I believe. And my grandfather and grandmother were ballet dancers
in the bullsh or sorry, in the Hungarian opera, and
my grandfather was also a tailor, and so he made

(22:31):
the costumes and things for the ballet in Russia for
the Bolsha, and so he was living a quite prestigious lifestyle,
but didn't believe in where the country was going and
all everything that was happening during that revolution. So they escaped,
ended up in New York in a refugee camp, and

(22:53):
then ultimately landed in South or North Carolina, I believe,
for a while till my grandfather earned enough money to
get to California. And then my dad definitely grew up
a surfing hippie, listening to the dead and all the things.
And now, I mean, he died when I was sixteen,
So it would be so fun to share some of
the past, Like I've heard stories from my grandfather, who

(23:16):
also died quite some time ago, but of him, you know,
going to jail in Mexico and my grandfather having to
go and use his street smarts and take his Russian
visa from back in the day and wear a white
suit and get escorted across the border to go get
my dad out of jail and do all these things.
So he was certainly he was certainly having a good

(23:38):
time and living in California in the sixties and came
up here and never left.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Okay, that's a very traumatic experience to have your father
died at age sixteen, you know, so what was your experience?
It was?

Speaker 2 (23:56):
It was difficult, for sure, but it also shapes me
as a human, shape me as an artist. It's I'm
grateful for it, really, because it's the one thing none
of us are going to be able to escape his death.
And I think when you learn that young, and you
appreciate the life that I got to live and all

(24:20):
of the good that came with the risk and effort
that my grandparents and my father and all the however
I got here, if I really would strip it back,
and if I started stripping it back at a young age,
which I was, it was difficult. I had to My
dad was a builder, a contractor, so I had to
drive him to work every day because he got diagnosed

(24:41):
about fourteen, so fourteen to sixteen, he was extremely sick
with stage four lung cancer. And I was a fourteen
year old kid, So of course I was complaining and
didn't want to be working and missing school and doing
all the things that I was doing. But I was
still getting to ski. I was still getting to have

(25:04):
this amazing life in the mountains, and so it just
it just gave me perspective. It was. It was certainly difficult,
and just selfishly, or I don't know if this is selfish,
but I would love to you know, have another day
to ski with my dad and just ask him all
the adult questions that I never got to ask. That's all.
That's the only real sad part about it is you

(25:25):
just don't get to learn some of those important things
that your parents went through from their perspective.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Okay, so tell me your mother's backstory.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Mother's backstory is a little more simple from what I
know of. I mean, her father was from Italy, but
she grew up in Culver City in Los Angeles, and
her father was a furniture maker, and she came up
here after high school and just wanted to just wanted
to check it out and be a skier. She's not.

(25:56):
My dad was a very passionate skier. My mother is
more of a fair weather. She goes a couple times
a year only when it's sunny and soft and beautiful out.
So she certainly came up here, I think more for
the social atmosphere of it and just escaping the hustle
and bustle of the city life. And she has worked

(26:19):
retail for the Mountain, so she works for Mammoth Mountain
and Alterra and she's in a manager role, and she's
quite social and loves it, and I think she's, yeah,
just a happy, happy She's she's had tough life too.
She did get remarried and that has been sadly died

(26:41):
unexpectedly too. But other than that, she's she's very happy
living in the mountains. Let's just say that.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Okay, your father dies, she's a contractor. Doesn't that mess
up your family economically?

Speaker 2 (26:55):
It does? But right at that time, I at sixteen
years old, I was just getting my first sponsors and
becoming a professional skier. So because we sold our house
and Bishop and my mom bought a house in Mammoth,
I was able to support myself By being able to
live with my mom, I could buy my food and

(27:18):
pay I didn't have to pay rent, so I could
purchase my snowmobile and invest in myself for my career.
And as that began to blossom, it became a legitimate
career that then was able to obviously support myself, purchased
a home and went down that road.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Oh okay, So when do you first put on skis
and how much are you ski?

Speaker 2 (27:43):
I before I can remember, so two years old, I
probably was put on skis. I was told I did
not like it, and my mother did save a little
illustrated book that I made of from second grade that
says that I want to and am going to be
I'm a pro skier. So clearly, somewhere early early on,

(28:05):
after I apparently didn't like it, I turned my love
around for it and then skied every chance I can remember.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Okay, if you're growing up in Bishop, which is about
forty five minutes through now depending on the weather, away
from Mammoth Lakes, and you're going to school, you're basically
skiing on the weekends or what's going on.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, early days, But I was starting to show some
promise in ski racing, and so I started living with
my friends in Mammoth and my parents were supportive. I mean,
my dad was a ski bomb at heart, and so
I was living his dream. So he was letting me
as long as I got a's in school. He was

(28:46):
letting me miss school. And I wasn't necessarily academically gifted,
so I was doing the school and probably not the
best way. I was having my friends help me with
homework and all the things, just to make sure that
I can I could keep skiing and keep missing missing class.

(29:06):
And so that went on until he died, and then
I did. I joined what's called independent study, which is
at school you go to once a week and you
turn in your work and take a test. And the
teacher saw promise in my skiing, so I would take
big chunks of time off from that, just turn in
all my work at once and carried on. And I

(29:30):
was able to finish school early just by completing all
the work. And I never actually walked in a graduation.
So I just finished my high school and focused on skiing.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Okay, when did you express an interest in.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Art before skiing? I drew on every blank piece of paper.
I still am the classic doodler, but in class I
was always drawing on my homework or any any paper
in front of me. So I was kind of pinned
as the kid that could draw in school, and so
I always took an interest in it. But until I

(30:05):
had my own ski, that's when I could share my
art with the world. I guess, and that I never
sought to become an artist per se. I was focused
on my ski career and art making was always a
passion in conjunction with skiing. And then once I had

(30:27):
a ski that represented me and my style of skiing,
and the top sheet and the base where my artwork.
That then gave me this global my artwork a global stage,
if you will, and almost like became its own gallery
to some sort. And then because my ski was widely

(30:48):
appreciated in Europe and China and Japan and all of
these different places, then people started expressing interest in my artwork,
and then that just continues to grow.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Okay, you're a racer racing and free skiing, although a
lot of racers end up in free skiing. But when
you're young coming up, how good a racer were you
and how did you make a transition into free skiing?

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Well? I wasn't good enough, So that's why I transitioned.
I just I don't have the fire that you need
to be the best. I'm way more of a creative
and way more of an artist, and I always cared
more about having fun and racing felt like a job

(31:39):
to me, and wearing a downhill suit in the cold
on a powder day and training gates when my snowboarder
friends were riding powder just did not sit well with me.
So as soon as I as soon as I my
parents let me, I quit racing, basically, and that was
around age fourteen, right around the time my dad got sick,

(32:01):
and then that very first year the terrain parks. So
I'm thirty eight, so when I was fourteen, let's call
that I could do some fast math. I'm born eighty six.
So in two thousand, as around that time, the terrain
park was getting really big, and I all of the
industry came to Mammoth because Mammoth was one of the

(32:23):
first terrain parks that allowed both snowboarding and skiing. All
the professionals came here and I was recognized, given a
free pair of skis and.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Who wha, wha, wha, wha, Wait a little bit slower,
because it's really a religious issue. Did you ever snowboard?
Because what happened was everybody went to snowboarding, and then
all of a sudden, the skiers started performing amazing tricks
in the pipe and skiing became hip again. Where were
you on this spectrum?

Speaker 2 (32:52):
I am the young side of that generation that invented
the free ski movement. I guess you could say there
were people certainly before me, A couple of my mentors,
one in particular that died in an avalanche. But his
name was JP Elclaire, and they called them the Canadian
Air Force. There was a few of them that helped

(33:16):
invent Solomon's first twin tip ski and then once you
could ski backwards. I was just coming out of racing,
and now my brother had switched to snowboarding. He's two
years older than me, and his best friend was one
of the world's best snowboarders. I was a skateboarder. All
of these things, I was headed in the snowboard path,

(33:37):
but right at that time, skiing, as you said, was
just being reinvented. So I was on the forefront of
helping reinvent it and shape it into something where I
was taking influence from the snowboard culture and putting that
into the ski culture.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
In terms of the terrain park, because you're most famous
is a big mountain skier. In terms of the terrain park,
how much time did you put in it? How good
were you? What was your experience there?

Speaker 2 (34:06):
I put in a lot of time. That's how we
had to learn how to do all these tricks. We
didn't have air bags and trampoline, foam pits and all
these things that they use nowadays to train. So everything
I did was done in the train park and I
had broken femurs and collar bones and all the things.

(34:27):
So it was it was trial by error basically, and
that once you get enough of a base, like you
learn the basics the back flip, the three sixties, the
seven twenties, and you kind of build every there's a
structure that you build upon, and then you just keep
taking it. More spins, more flips, all the things that
you see today if you were to watch the Olympics

(34:49):
slope style or X Games or anything. And I once
I got to a point where I felt like I
had the basics down, then I put all of my
effort into the backcountry, and then I became more obsessed
with how a ski turns, and how to slash like
they do with surfing, and how to read the terrain

(35:12):
quite creatively and differently. And I was on the forefront
of rockered skis and being the first to kind of
experiment with these different, fatter, wider ski shapes and just
influencing my ideas into actual ski engineering and technology, even
though I'm not an engineer and I don't under pretend

(35:35):
to understand how all the layers do what they do
and why you put in certain types of wood versus others.
But what I do know is how it feels under
my feet, and I have a pretty strong knack for
flex patterns and with and how torsionally how a ski feels.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
So okay, let's go back. How's your body today?

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Well, it's funny you should ask I was. It's not good.
At the moment, I was skateboarding. I was in San
Diego and I was skateboarding to get a coffee. And
I used to skateboard a lot, don't skateboard nearly as
much anymore, so I'm a little rusty. And I hit
a rock unexpectedly, went flying and hit my hip, and

(36:18):
I thought I just had a bruised hip. But I
just got an MRI result like yesterday, two days ago,
and I have a couple of little fractures on my
hip right now. So I've been limping around a little
at the moment. But I thought I went skiing. I
was just in Canada, and I've been trying to push
through the pain, thinking I was just being a baby.
But it turns out I have a little fracture in

(36:41):
my top of my femur.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
So okay, irrelevant of this recent accident, you've broken certain bones,
you know, what have you in pain as a result?
You know you're moving okay, or basically you're fine, just
came out the other side.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Ah, there's pain. But I take good care of myself.
I eat quite healthy in the grand scheme of things.
I have two small children, so I am their garbage
disposal on all the casadillas and things they don't finish.
But I eat relatively healthy, and I rock climb a lot.
I used to rock climb a lot more before I

(37:20):
became a filmmaker. This la last film has been taking
all of my time. And then I mountain bike and
I'm very active, so my body is in constant use,
and I feel like that keeps me pretty limber and loose.
And I've gone through stages of yoga and jim like

(37:41):
if I do have an injury, once I'm able to
rehab this, I'll spend a little bit of time in
the gym, but traditional working out is a bit stale
to me. So I like to go climb up a rock,
and I live close to Yosemite and Bishop so I
have the world's best right right in my front and backyard.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Basically, Okay, he kind of answered the question. But I'm
gonna go there again? Are you the type of guy
who cuts the cast off early and defies the doctors
and pushes through very much?

Speaker 2 (38:14):
So, since a very young age, I was that guy.
I broke my wrists wrists plural, maybe six to seven
times when I was a young kid, and I got
to the point where I would bring my ski pole
in so the doctor could form my cast around my
ski pole because I was going to ski anyways. So yes,

(38:34):
very much. I'm always pushing and I just I need
to be I need to be moving. I don't sit
very well.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Okay, let's go back to the park. For those who
don't know, Mammoth is the epicenter with the best park.
You're there, you live in Mammoth, whatever. People have no
idea how big a deal it is to get sponsored
and get a free payer of sky. So there's this
threshold there. Everybody's talking about getting sponsored. Tell me your experience.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
It was very humbling, exactly that, like my peers, my friends,
my mentors. There's so many people. Everyone was in this
movement trying to get seen and recognized. But there's a
very very very small percentage of people that stand above
the rest. And if you're in racing, you're just the

(39:27):
fastest in our world. It's creativity, it's style, It's all
of these elements that you can't really teach or coach.
You just are born with it and you it. It's
the same as how I started this podcast, how my
art comes through me. It's just something that lives deep
within and is maybe from a past life. I don't know,

(39:49):
but it is. Style is very much how how someone
is looked at as unique and different. And you can
and see that in the style that Jerry Garcia played
the guitar. It was very different than anyone else and
that's why he stood out and was what he was.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
So okay, so who was your first ski sponsor?

Speaker 2 (40:16):
K two was my first key sponsor and I stayed
with them until two thousand and seven and then I
switched to Atomic. So I think, as I mentioned, I
want to say I was fifteen, fourteen, fifteen when so
about ninety eight ninety nine when K two sponsored me
and then switched over to Atomic in two thousand and seven,

(40:39):
and then we built something truly remarkable at Atomics.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Okay, let's go back. Why just switch from K two
to Atomic?

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Instinct and opportunity and the ability to express my artistic concepts.
So K two had the best team in this new
skiing movement, and I was just one of many, if
you will. Atomic on the other hand, was so solely

(41:10):
focused on racing, and they had Darren Rahlves and Body
and some of the people that you know, and they
were crushing it in a race environment, but so focused
on the European skier they did not understand North America.
And so as we talked about, with the influence of

(41:32):
snowboarding and skiing was on this huge uprise, Atomic was
falling way behind. So this gentleman Jordan Judd, who I'm
now working with again on some Grateful Dead stuff, which
is story for later. But Jordan Judd got brought on
to help ramp up that North American market. He called me.

(41:55):
It was just after one of my more successful seasons. Say,
I'd had the cover of Powder magazine, the Photo Annual,
which is a highly acclaimed cover. To have it's like
the in the top issue of that year, I guess,
and so that was amazing. I had a segment with

(42:17):
Warren Miller over in Japan. I had the closing segment
in a Poor Boys production, which is closing and opening
segments are generally seen as the two most important segments.
And then I had a segment with I think I
might have well. So there was another nimbus independent which

(42:40):
I ultimately helped start. The next year had made a
film called Idea, and I had a segment in there.
So anyways, I was just widely spread in that two
thousand and seven year, and Jordan came to me asking
for my help to put Atomic on the map. And
because K two was doing so well and Atomic was not,

(43:02):
I saw this as an opportunity for me to be
able to put my art on skis and to design
a shape and do all of these things that felt
more like an extension of me. And so I believed
in Atomic. Atomic believed in me, and I was kind
of at the forefront of what they're known as today,

(43:25):
and they're the number one globally recognized ski brand, which
is pretty incredible.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
So, Okay, you're now in this world. You talk about
cover of powder and different other things. It is a
very small community. Everybody knows everybody. Was it just the
fact that people knew you or were you working it?
Were you saying, man, this is what I want to do.
Let me talk to these people when you get an opportunity.

(43:54):
How did these covers in these opening and closing segments
actually come together?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
The covers in the segments came through performance and creative ideas.
But I certainly, as you know, just based on our conversations,
I have the personality that likes to likes to meet
people and so and build relationships, and I think I

(44:22):
have an ability I'm realizing more and more to just
build build meaningful relationships with people and connect with them
on a very authentic level, so that just it kind
of goes hand hand in hand if you will.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Okay, how does it go for you? From the pipe
to big Mountain?

Speaker 2 (44:44):
It was an easy transition because I and I was
more of a slope style skier, which is the jumps
and pipe I did. Everyone did everything back in those
early two thousands. But pipe always terrified me actually because
your margin of error is so minimal. You're either land
if you screw it up, you're landing on complete flat
on the top, or you're missing the whole transition and

(45:06):
landing in the bottom. So I hated the pipe just
because I never quite figured it out. But the park
was an easy transition because, like I said, once I
figured out how to do all of those tricks, my
true passion and my true calling was in the mountains,
and so hiking up mountains and being active and riding powder,

(45:30):
all of that was deeply inspiring to me, and so
it was it was very easy to just merge those
two worlds together.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
And how about the Free Ride World Tour?

Speaker 2 (45:43):
I never did the Free Ride World Tour. It's it's unfortunate.
It had has potential, and it's just once again going
back to my racing days, any of my competitive days,
I'm just not a competitive person, way more into the
artistry and the creation of it all. So I just

(46:05):
never had any interest in competing in it. And I
didn't need to compete in it because my creativity was
making enough of a splash, if you will, or it
was grabbing attention of my sponsors and things, so I
didn't have to go prove myself in a competition setting.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Okay, that's the key element, you said, sponsors. He gets
skis from K two. This is where you were mentioning
this earlier. I didn't want to stop you. Then you
have a cornucopia a sponsor. How did you build all that?

Speaker 2 (46:48):
It goes really to the relationship building and the trust.
And I think the two decades of proving that I
have a work ethic that is desirable. I take every
effort and I also invest in myself, which is rare

(47:08):
most athletes. Most people just expect everything to be given
to them, and they want everything handed to them on
a silver bladder. And I had just a deeper respect
for what I was getting to do and a work
ethic that kept wanting to push further and push new

(47:30):
concepts and ideas and creations, and so sponsors take note
of it. When you have when you have video segments,
when you have magazine coverage, when you have relationships of
other athletes or other team managers. People like you said,
it's a small world, So people talk to people and
they see what you're capable of creating. And my ideas

(47:53):
were always new and fresh, and I just keep putting
ideas like the Grateful Dead film, or I made some
films with GoPro when I was early on in GoPro
as one of their athletes and did some pretty uh
successful films with them as well.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
So when you say you invest in yourself, what exactly
do you.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Mean Financially like if you need to go spend the
time in Alaska and pay for helicopter time that your
sponsors aren't going to cover because you want to get
the right footage that represents your skiing in the right way,
or if you travel to Europe more than you initially

(48:33):
agreed to, or if you like I just take opportunities
and efforts to get myself out there and get myself
in front of in front of opportunity, if you will,
And situations like if I a film project that sounds interesting,
if a sponsor is not going to pay me to

(48:55):
be in it, I would still choose to be in
it because I believe in it.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
So okay, very granular. You start with K two, who's
the next sponsor?

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Dragon? I wear so my goggles I've been on for
over twenty years now, which is incredible. I still have
them today, which is amazing. So them and Dekine, which
makes gloves and backpacks, and I left to Kine a
few years ago for Artarix clothing, but I was with

(49:28):
Dekine for a long time, and then I've been with
smart Wolve socks and bass layers for quite some time,
and I've been with Mammoth since day one, Mammoth Mountain
has has a very strong marketing presence in the world
of mountains. I guess you could say like they use
they utilize me a lot, from my go pro videos
to my photos to whatever, like billboards when you're driving

(49:52):
from LA to Mammoth a lot of times are myself
or there's all these different opportunities that they use with
me and then pro. I've been on this for over
over a decade as well, and I've now invested in
some companies and kind of have part ownership if you will,
and in some different concepts and ideas, and then atomic

(50:15):
like we mentioned, and I'm probably forgetting a few, but
I've been very supported in my career. So the thanks
to everyone that's listening.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Okay, there's in kind sponsorship where people give you the
goods and then there's cash involved. In the racing world,
you know, they have victory schedules, so if you're successful,
the pay goes up whatever. Traditionally in free skiing, I
haven't seen that. So how does a compensation work.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
It's annual or multi year contracts, and it is I'm
at a point in my life I'm approaching forty and
I've proved myself for over twenty years that I don't
do any in kind sponsorships anymore. That's very much when
I was getting started. That's how you have to start.
You have to get yourself out there. You have to

(51:03):
prove yourself. But I certainly don't have the I mean,
I have a family to support and mortgage and all
the things. So it's what's your time worth basically, It's
just like anything. So generally speaking, I try to align
myself with sponsors that I see a very long career

(51:24):
path with and a roadmap into a legend stor legacy
status like a Glenn Blake, for instance. He still has
a lot of sponsor support because of what he built.
And I mean, I know this is a podcast about me,
but I want to know more about your skiing and
where you've skied and who you've skied with it stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Okay, I'll make it very short because you know I
want to make it about you. I grew up. I
grew up in Connecticut, so that your weekend skier that
we got a house in Vermont. I was on the
ski racing team at Bromley, which is skiery and Vermont.
I was a shitty ski racer. We could basically talk
about that. I went to Middlebury College and Vermont because

(52:06):
the college had its own ski area. I skied more
than anybody there. I'm type person if it's raining whatever,
I'm still out there. And the last year I was
at Middlebury was a really shitty year, and I wanted
to go where the most guaranteed snow was, which it
was Little Cottonwood Canyon, Alton Snowbird, Okay, And little did

(52:27):
I know at the time that was the epicenter of
freestyle skiing. You know, it's really spread. So everybody was there,
Scott Brooks Bank, you know, all these other people. So
the second year, I mean, this is really kind of
funny because I broke my leg in a freak accident
at the beginning of the year, got to Snowbird in January.

(52:50):
Snowbird closes, it doesn't anymore, and we all want to
ski more. So we all went to Mammoth for the
month of May seventy five. We all agree with the
best time of our entire lives. Amazing and you know,
and you know we were these you know.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
I wonder if you met my parents, Well.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
I know your mother wants in a retail thing. But
you know, we were the guys from Utah. You know,
in May there aren't that many people there. We're cutting
figure rates off of Philips just to the side of
there what you can see from their lives. And they say,
you know, did you see it? They go, yeah, no,
these guys did it. So I was skiing with the
best skiers in the world at their level. And then

(53:30):
you know, the freestyle thing is very official. I mean
Park Smally he came. You know, there's all these people.
At the beginning, I knew yeah, and then I competed
the next year, and then I realized, wait a second,
this is you know, people like Brooks baking. There are
people who thrive on competition, and we're better in competition.
And you realize to get over that hump so you

(53:52):
don't choke. That's going to take years. And they say,
and there's only some. There was a guy, Dirk Douglass,
who skied with a who did a flip in Vermont
and became paraplegic. He still is a youthais a photographer
and as a result, you know, they banned in vertage
and the whole scene died. And this is sort of

(54:14):
you know, one thing I want to get back to
you with you because I had the world's worst case
of mononoucleosis from we went to a competition in Keystone
and then I went to Aspen Highland. You know, I'm
really going too deep here. Back in the day, the
only Aspen mountain that you could get a pass at
was Aspen Highlands. That's where all the locals were, and

(54:34):
that's where my friends keied and we all shared a joint.
And I got the world's worst case of mononucleosis. So
I ended up going to law school because my father
said he would always pay because I was sick. I
was down and out, and then until twenty eleven twenty twelve,
which is a really shitty ski season. The worst ski
season was seventy six to seventy seven, which I used

(54:56):
to bring this up all the time and people would say, huh.
But when it was so bad at twenty eleven to twenty twelve,
they started writing about seventy six seventy seven. So I
called all my friends and you took us. I was
gonna drop out and said, this is Christian time, this
is before it's snowmaking in Western resorts. And they said,
you know, we're going home for Christmas. There's no snow. Okay.

(55:16):
So I found with some girl. It carried me through
law school, just talking about the skiing thing. If you
ski every day, it is very difficult to ski occasionally
you're gonna look as good to everybody else. But there's
a very fine edge that, you know. I used to
say it take thirty days. It's talking about a thing.

(55:38):
Maybe you can do it in twenty days. It's like
you're just recovering in this circumstances whatever. Yeah, And then
in ninety six, this is all music business people, and
I'm leaving that side of my life out. So I
was skiing fifteen to twenty days because it was too
painful to be honest with you. And this friend of

(55:59):
mine said, come out. I got a place in Veil
and I was going to cancel at the last minute,
and I literally called to cancel and they said, oh,
he's got his wife over so excited you're coming, blah
blah blah blah blah. So he moved to Aspen and
had a convention. I just came home from there. So
now I'm skiing like twenty twenty five days a year,
getting it. You know, you know, the equipment is a

(56:22):
thing unto itself. Let's not talk Marcel Herscher, who's really
about the angle of the boot whatever. But the boots
are the skis. You have to I mean, every once
in a while you louck into it and it works out.
Other times you gotta work. This is not really if
you've really lived for this, not something you can do occasionally.
Then my girlfriend turns out her family had a condo

(56:45):
in the Logit Veil since the seventies. I don't know
if you know veil, but Logit Veil is the closest
place to the lift. And I used to pooh, pooh veil.
Oh it's so flat, et cetera, et cetera. But as
I get older, so I ski a lot. I mean
last year I skied eighty nine days. Oh wow. Oh

(57:06):
usually I ski like two years before, probably sixty or
seventy days before that. For like the last twenty years,
forty to fifty days.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
You're gonna have to come back to Philip's. Take a
run with me.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Absolutely. I just remember skiing Philip's. Now, now there's video
of all this stuff, because Philips, you're skiing straight in,
you're skiing right toward the rock and then you got
to make that left.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yeah, yep. I remember the first time I skied it too.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
I was terrified, and of course, you know, skiing the
hole in the wall back in the backside of Mammoth As. Listen,
what people don't understand about Mammoth is there's very serious
skiing at Mammoth. You know, in the seventies they didn't
have a lift up Lincoln Peak, but now they have that.
But you know, all the stuff you know, off the

(57:52):
cornice whatever. I mean, there's just really serious skiing there.
And you know, it's got a Southern California culture, so
there's more snow orders in Manmit than anywhere else. So
I got a lot of skis.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
That's awesome. You have any atomics, I don't, Man, we
got to change that.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
I was always into French skis, okay, the old days, Rosie.
Then I got really into Dina Star. Dina Star turns
it a certain way that I love. But listen, we're
all connected. So you call you somebody and you're getting
them at like maybe twenty five cents of the dollar,
at most sixty cents of the dollar, and then you

(58:32):
got a pure of skis Yo, these keys are not
that great, okay, in that they turn what they don't hold.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
And then it's because you haven't been on atomics. We
got it.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
But then I actually, two years ago I paid retail
for a couple of seas because they let me demo everything,
and it was not what I thought. You know, a
lot of people like those stokely storm writers. They're silky,
they're shitty and in the bumps. You know, the Nordica's
the hype of about the Norda because I don't understand whatsoever.
They're planks.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Okay, they're great. I tend to agree with.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
And the Blizzards are similar. So I got a bunch
of K two's and still have a couple of des Stars.
And then Body sent me four pairs of his skis
Oh Cool, which are very interesting. Skis the eighty eight
not good, and therefore he told me he designed that

(59:26):
off of Vlon was the only ski that wasn't an original,
and he redid it this year. I don't have a
pair at this point in time. Yeah, and you know,
if you're in veil, the average with in veil is
a ninety something. Okay, this is what people don't understand.
You need certain numbers of skis. You need your ninety
five to ninety nine, you need your one hundred, one

(59:46):
hundred and ten, you need your one hundred, one hundred
and fifty, and you need your one hundred and sixty
two hundred and twenty because you got to have the
right tool. You know. People say, oh, yeah, you know,
and then they're the instructors. I got no type of
instructors over they're scheming on their seventy eights. Why why
beyond your seventy eighth? So boty skis ski like a

(01:00:06):
French ski, which is you know, the one oh four
is a great ski that just stands above the other ones.
I have. The ninety eight to one tens are good,
but the one oh four because normally a one oh
four is too wide for all day every day, but
for some reason it's not the other thing about it

(01:00:27):
for skis like that because they're not heavy whatever they hold,
which blows my mind. I mean I was out on
a pier today.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
So yeah, when I switched from K Twoto Atomic, it
blew my mind because they had been making the best
skis in the world for the racers for so long
and they're still hand crafted in Austria.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Well, you know, Atomic in the seventies had limited distribution
and limited sales in America. They had these orange skis
they set atomic in the front in the back. People
call me atomic atomics. And then of course in the
her era, you know, that became about a top. I
mean the thing about atomic race skis. You know this

(01:01:06):
is before your time when they had the dampening systems,
the vas on the rosies, that was when the first thing.
But you had the atomic duel deck and now they
have a double deck. Now they have those little you know,
like silver things in that and you know it's it's

(01:01:27):
in the old days. In the seventies you went to
a shop, they had everything. Now shops only by certain stuff.
Now in terms of you know, skiing is a sport
where everybody boasts. You know, I go to college at Middlebury.
I mean it's like, oh, I don't I'm a great skier.
You gotta everybody talks. But I have a friend big

(01:01:47):
in the live business who got very into Hella skiing,
and he keeps telling me, oh, at the time I
had a pair of s seven's, you know, the rosie
who won seventeens. And now I have a pair of
the K two one sixteens. He says, oh, you're hell
is skiing. The standard is the one twenty bench chiller. Yeah,

(01:02:09):
whatever you have, it's nowhere near as good as that.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah. I mean he really
put me down one night we were at shit what
venue is in that la b l ray. It was
really kind of funny.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
They'll have to thank him for me. I'm glad he
likes to right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
You know, as I say, you're not going to have
a need for a one twenty most inbounds places. But
the days that you have the one fifteen, you know,
one sixteen, the days you have them, you want them.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Yeah, and there is that's similar with the one twenty.
It is. It's it just gets skied out so fast
on resorts nowadays, is the issue. But if you go
over to Europe, they still seem to just be so
widespread and lifts and resorts connected lifts and resorts and
valleys and it just stays fresh for a bit longer.

(01:03:01):
But I still ski the one twenty pretty often actually
on Mammoth here. But I also know exactly where I'm
going and where to find all the fresh pockets.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
You know. The good thing is, I mean I have
the you know, since we're right at the foot of
the mountain, you can change them because you don't want
to ski, you know, you're un here. One to fifteens
are good for a couple of hours and then the
rest of the days. I know, I want something different. Okay, okay,
let's get back. Hey. Are you a gear freak?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
A gear freak know in the sense that I don't
research gear and try to find out every little nuance
about it, but a gear freak in the sense that
I'm very intuitive and I know what I want it
to feel like. So my translation to an engineer and
to the people building the skis is very productive and

(01:03:53):
they appreciate it, and they always are surprised. They'll give
me like a blind test on different flex patterns things,
and I can sniff it out really easily and like
tell them down to down to very minute changes what
I want to see. And so yes in the sense
of performance. No, in the sense of I just don't

(01:04:17):
have enough time in the day to dive deep on
the internet to find out what does what and why
it does what it does and all those things.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Okay, let's start outside the skis what boots.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Do you use atomic as well?

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Okay, which model? I use?

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
The Hawks one thirty, the X Extended XTD because it's
it has a walk mode, ski tour a lot, and
it has the BOA system on the lower lower half
as well, which I'm a big fan of in the
last couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Why are you a big fan of Boa?

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
It's just my feet in general get freezing. I have
I think what's called raynods. It's like a circulation disease,
and I can never for two decades now, could never
use my lower buckles because I have a high instep
as well in my arch, so that top buckle would

(01:05:15):
always just cut off circulation to my foot. But now
with the Boa system, it really pulls everything evenly and
wraps the shell around your foot versus applying pressure points
into locations. So it just makes a ton of sense,
and it's designed well. It's robust. I snowmobile to access

(01:05:35):
terrain a lot, and if or if I kick it
off on a rock hiking or anything, the BOA systems
made to detach and just pop back in. So I
personally haven't had any issues with it, which has been great,
but I am. I am a fan just for maybe
getting my boots a little more snug, because, as you know,
any little minute adjustment you make, it starts with your boots.

(01:05:59):
That's what's going to roll your ski over on edge.
So I like a stiffer boot. I have one thirty
is the stiffest I can get. I might even go
stiffer if they offered it, but that's a rare occurrence
unless you're skiing world.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Well, I always skied in layings till my feet. I
almost had to give up skiing, and I skied in
the Nordicas for a while, and then five years ago
I went back to the RS one thirty and it
has a very progressive flex. Nordica is a little hard
on the initiation. Then you go, we're the laying irrelevant

(01:06:32):
of its reputation. I just got a new pair of
the new ones because I woke up and I said,
the liners I'm gonna get to the middle season want
new boots, and they're not gonna be No one's going
to have them.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Yeah, and liners are important too. I do a foam.
I like a foam injected molded liner.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Oh well, who does your foaming?

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
The factory that I go over to Austria.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Okay, wait wait, I'm really interested because there's this uh.
I mean it's great talking to someone because most people
then you get really deep things. They don't care, they
don't know because on Instagram they got this place hun
Sport in Austria and they show their foaming whatever. And
now the guy works for leg he's in French. Okay,
you go to the factory. Hey, what do they do

(01:07:16):
for a footbed?

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
I actually use a it's not a custom, it's it's
there's three different models, but I have a sponsor and
a collaboration with a footbed that's always worked or not always,
it's worked well for me. I've been trying it for
the last little bit and it's called remind in Soul.
So I use that for my footbed.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Well, before you know, if there are three different models,
what's the difference.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Is the medic like the medium model? You just find
what works best.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
For well, it's high for that okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Exactly, and so I slip that in. Then I go
foam foam injected at the atomic factory.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Yeah okay, I mean you know I have pham boots
back at the beginning, like Boa in the begin you
can get a bad foam job.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Oh you can, And so I use who used to
do Marcel's? I was told that I think Marcel went
through forty boots one season when he was in his
prime racing at Atomic. He's no longer there, but I
can't remember the name. And I'm so sad. He'll be
sad if he ever hears this. But he's amazing. He's

(01:08:24):
been at Atomic forever and he's done a lot of
foam liners. Let's just put it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
And how dense is your ful?

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
I go as dense as possible. I go with what
they're given the World Cup skiers.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
And then to what degree is there a breaking period?

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
That varies, as you know, depending on how long your
skin and actually ski touring, so walking uphills breaks in
your boots pretty fast, which I enjoy because you're you're
constantly flexing back and forth because you put it in
walk mode. Now your boot's flexing backwards and forwards. So
they break in much faster than they used to because

(01:09:02):
skiing around the mountain, you're just absorbing, You're hitting bumps
and absorbing, and they're just doing their little minute adjustments.
But once you start doing big strides and walking yourself
up five thousand foot peak or whatever, five thousand feet
vertical of a bigger twelve thousand foot peak. Really but yeah,
that really happens fast.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
Oh okay, you know you have the hawks? Do you
have any red stors for inbounds? Did?

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
I went that way? But sadly, I probably skied less
than you last year, which makes me sad to hear
myself say that. But I because of this project, because
of my ambitions, because of my artwork, because of all
these different things, I don't ski as much as I
would like to in that and I also have two

(01:09:51):
small kids, so a lot of my skiing on the
mountain is with them, which is amazing, and it's just different.
So I try to get used to my boots so
that way, if I get called tomorrow to go on
a Helli trip in Canada, I'm skiing the same boots
that I was skiing on the hill. So I've been
pretty much the last couple of years just sticking to

(01:10:13):
one boot a season.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Okay, And every season you get a new pier. Yeah,
and at this point you only have one pair, you
have multiple piers.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
I have multiple I luckily have access right, Okay, but
bindings bindings also atomic, but that's the one technology that
Atomic actually companies widely share. Solomon had the Solomon Shift, Yes,
the shift and for touring, and then that they had

(01:10:43):
an sth binding which is now called the strive, which
I ski of fifteen to sixteen din because I don't
like to come out, so crank them down.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
I've only been hurt when they came out.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Yeah, exactly, you want to stay in there. So yeah,
that's than the most bomber binding. And I've I skied
it long before I was on Atomic. They just have
if it's not broke, don't fix it kind of mentality.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Well, do you on your back country skis you ski
on the shift? I do, yeah, And so the shift
allows you to move the mounting point, move the setter.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Not necessarily frontward and backwards. It's not on a track system,
so it's still mounted toe piece, heel piece, but it
allows you to click the heel down and then put
it into walk mode. So now your heel releases.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Oh I guess that body skis And I mean he
was telling me that you could move them back and forth.
That's not what I ski on.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Yeah, there there's one that was called the tracker that
you can move forward and back. I'm pretty sure. But
the shift, the shift is mounted directly into the ski,
so and stays stays put.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Okay, So mounting point.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Mounting point this is this is useful. Actually, I should
do this on a ski podcast. I get that question
more than any other question. I because I create my
own skis. I now have a model that is an
eighty five, a ninety at one hundred, a one ten,
and a one twenty, and so I try to put

(01:12:16):
the factory line. There's there's lines that go above the
factory line and lines that go behind it, and I
try to put the factory line at where I personally
love to skim. And the one twenty we just changed
the mold. We had carbon stringers in the mold for
a long time and we just took those out because
they have a new wood core that they were able

(01:12:38):
to accomplish the same flex pattern and actually a little
stiffer in the tip while again the same I guess
rebound and everything. The ski performed equally, but it was
a lesser impact on the environment to just have wood
in there. And so they built that mold with my
one ten and my one hundred, so we were able

(01:13:00):
to test it on those skis years prior, and now
they implemented it in the one twenty. But because I
told you how sensitive I am, the factory line stayed
where I've always skied it. But now, because the tip
is just a minute percent stiffer, I now move one
and a half centimeters behind the factory line. So moving

(01:13:20):
forward everything is like years out, sadly, but moving forward
in I want to say in the twenty six twenty
seven ski, the factory line will not be correct again.
But we've only just figured this out in the more
recent years, so it will take time to implement.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
Okay, nail this down. The ski redone got a stiffer tip. Yeah,
you're mounting it minus one point five.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Correct, And I recommend it for general people to even
go back minus two because I personally spin and flip
and like my tails to release turns, and I do
what's called butters where I jump into like a three
sixty and push my noses into the snow, and so
swingweight is important to me, but it swingweight is also

(01:14:10):
important for anyone skiing powder in the trees, and how
the where the tip releases and how the tails release,
so I do recommend staying close to where I ski,
but a little more tip for people that never jump
or go backwards or spin is always is always a
good thing because the more tip you have, the more
float you have. So I personally like them at minus

(01:14:35):
one point five, but I think that in between that
minus two all the way to minus three range is
great for the everyday directional skier.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Okay, but the line that comes on the ski is incorrect.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Is incorrect. It's still skis great there, but I'm just
so sensitive and it is the line that comes on
the ski is exactly where it's been for the last
however many years, so atomic had no way of knowing
until I had enough time on them to be like,
wait a second, this isn't feeling right. Let's try this.
So I played around with it for quite a while

(01:15:10):
until I landed on exactly where I want to go.
But luckily, more often than not, people mount wherever they
feel like they should be mounting their skis, So a
lot of people go all over the place anyways, and well.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
You know, they used to have that mark or binding.
We could the skitzo, we could move faster. But you know,
there's so much discussion on this in line, but unless
you're someone with a lot of skis a lot of stuff,
people don't have the opportunity to try on all these
different mounting points totally.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
And what I hope happens someday it would be so
amazing is that all binding companies get together and decide
that one universal hole pattern is agreed upon, and then
skis could come pre drilled with in set inset screws,
just like snowboards, and all you have to do is

(01:16:03):
move your toe piece heel piece. When you travel overseas,
you could take your binding off and it's easier to
pack like. There would be so much benefit to everyone
being in the same hole pattern and not having to
drill skis because you can. You can. It's contrary to
what people believe. You can drill skis a lot, especially
if you're plugging the holes just for water proofing the

(01:16:25):
wood core. But you can drill and re drill and
drill and redrill quite a lot. I've done five six
different binding mounting points and skis still feel great and
have the same response and liveliness and stuff. So as
long as you're plugging plugging holes.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
It's it's fine, let's go back to the beginning. You
make this deal after seven years, the K two with
Atomic and what's the first ski.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
The bent Chetler. It was the bent Chetler. It was
a one to twenty three at that point in time.
And so I don't know if you would have met
this gentleman, but he was widely respected and appreciated. His
name was Rupert and he went by Keighley, and he
worked for Atomic for sixty years. He just recently passed away.

(01:17:13):
But I came on board myself, Darren Rahlves and the
Eric Gay. He was a ski racer and I want
to say he had a brother too. It was there
was a few of us and mostly racers and myself
and we were testing the very first prototype of my ski,

(01:17:36):
this other ski called the Atlas, and kind of figuring
things out in Alaska and Wolfgang the president of Atomic,
was there, Keighley was there, a lot of the senior
leadership was there to try and figure out where we
were taking the brand. And the skis performed horribly. My
ski did the very first proto. They were just an

(01:17:58):
all gray top sheet, black bass and just the first
iteration of what I tried to translate to the Austrians,
and so Keighley and I sat down, marked them all up,
decided exactly how we wanted them to look and change,
and he went back. This was we skied Alaska in April.
He went back had a new prototype for me to

(01:18:18):
test in the middle of summer. So I flew over
to Austria and skied them on a glacier without any
powder whatsoever, and they performed. Like I said earlier, I
can very much feel how they'd perform, and they outperformed
anything I've ever skied in my life. And so we
committed to it and released them that January of two

(01:18:39):
thousand and eight, I want to say, or really really
early in two thousand and eight, and they just built
built steam, I guess you could say it just like
kind of became a cult following to some degree, and
then it just kept building and building and building, and
it won. The skis won some awards over the years,

(01:19:01):
and just we kept pushing and progressing the mold and
trying new shapes. And I took a lot of influence
from the way Rob Machado shaped surfboards and tried some
different horizon tech technology where there was multidimensional rocker, and
just because I don't understand hydrodynamics like a surfer does.
But Rob is one of the world's best surfers. So

(01:19:23):
his glide and how he can where he can gain
speed on a wave and how he rides on top
of water translates well to frozen water as well. So
I talked to him all the time about different concepts
and things.

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):
Okay, let's start. The original one was a one twenty three.
Why'd you change the standard to a one twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Because as we were testing rocker profiles, and then once
we came up with the horizon tech the multidimensional rocker.
When you have something that's bent on the edges too,
you have as much or more surface area than if
it were to flat, so you're actually getting a similar

(01:20:06):
amount of floatation, so you can change the shape, and
though that's not underfoot where your tip is floating in
the powder and not diving. We were just testing different
things there. And then for that same swingweight concept, the
narrower the ski, the less less reaction time it has

(01:20:27):
if you are spinning and doing things you want. If
you go too wide and too fat, it just it
just doesn't work. I've tried all different kinds of things,
so there is there is a very fine balance on
where you want that waste width to be, and I've
found one twenty to be just a very sweet spot
for fresh powder.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
Tell me about Horizon Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
Horizon Tech was exactly that, just to gain more surface
area and more floatation without changing the width of the
tip and actually slimming down the ski. Like I just said,
So we wanted to bring things down but not lose
performance and flotation. So it was just we beveled edges,

(01:21:10):
we added like a whole spoon concept, like just plastered
it on the ski. We tried a bunch of different
stuff until we landed on the horizon tech. But how
it cuts through snow and where if you have an
edge all the way around, even in variable snow, you're
still going to get hook a tip from time to time,
And so how that smears through variable snow was also

(01:21:34):
another thing I was trying to to accomplish. And and yeah,
it just had a number of different a different reasons,
I guess you could say, of why I wanted it
to be the way I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
Okay, you get a pair of skis from the factory.
You dull the tips and tails.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
I do not.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
I do not either.

Speaker 2 (01:21:56):
I don't believe it factory factory. I don't. I don't
even wax them. I do after a time, but I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
I'm on the exact same page. I never had this
problem they're talking about. No, Okay, the original skis, what
was inside of them? There was.

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
Now you're testing me because we've gone poplar, We've gone
oh wait.

Speaker 1 (01:22:16):
Wait wait wait wait wait wait, let's forget that, because
let's just the president. You have the one twenty. How
do you decide to expand the brand narrower? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Sorry to ask that question again. How do I decide
to expand the brand narrower? Mean?

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
I mean you start with the one twenty. How do
you decide to have small.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
To get more skis? Oh? Okay, that I mean simple.
It's because you said it on this call. You need
a quiver of skis. I don't ski a one twenty
all the time. Nobody in their right mind with Skia
one twenty all the time. You it's just like surfing,
or just like anything. There's skis designed for a type

(01:22:57):
of skiing, and you've go out in the rain, rain, sleet,
or snow, you know, and that is going to be
what ski you decide. So in the park I like
a narrower ski in coolar season where I'm skiing these
long sierra coolars, I like around a one hundred waist

(01:23:18):
ski and every day soft snow crud skiing, I really
like skiing a one ten. I find it has a
perfect balance for me to be able to jump off
cliffs and do the things and still ride through very
cut up, chopped, skied out powder. And then a one
to twenty is fantastic for untouched virgin powder.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
So it's uh, it just gives you the.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Okay, I looked online what you just redid the narrower
ones last year? Okay? Yeah, So other than waste with
what is the difference in these skis.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
That you're also testing me because we're two years ahead,
So I'm always trying to remember really we're yeah, we're
years ahead of like where we land for commercial skis.
But it's mold shapes, its wood blends, its materials. There
is a big initiative to have more environmentally conscious materials.

(01:24:20):
There's we're always trying different resins, different like there's poplar
and there was Karuba wood for a while, which was
a blend. And there's there's been so many things that
I get lost. Like I told you, I know the
feeling and like.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Yeah, okay, I mean that's a couple of things. The
big breakthrough in the fifties and sixties was the metal
ski that it was the fiberglass ski. Yeah. Then in
the late seventies there was the Rosie rock, which brought
back a metal ski. Okay, forget the foam cor era. Okay. Yeah,
So now you have people say, I mean the bizards

(01:25:02):
they're made with two layers of titanol. Okay, So do
you feel that just whatever the right pick of wood
is and some glass resin is enough. You had carbon
in one ski, you took it out.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
We have carbon. We've put aluminum inserts for the binding
so it doesn't rip out. We have certain things and
then the horizon tech is a tech insert so that
breaks up the wood. But long story short, yes, I
think everything that you see in skis that moves away
from wood is a marketing effort to try and make

(01:25:41):
the next thing. But we all go back to wood.
It performs the best. And if you're creating a world
Cup downhill ski. Yes, you're gonna have a ton of
metal in there, but for the everyday skier, you do
not need metal skis. There's no reason to have that
stiff of a ski opinion. Skiing should be fun and

(01:26:02):
not hard work. Like you're trying to do so many
things with our companies are trying to do so many
things to make themselves stand out or be different. But
I think I mean, Atomics turns seventy years old this year.
They've tried a lot of things, and there's a reason
where landing back at wood would molds.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
Okay, if you have a non metal ski, what do
you do about torsion control and holding on hard snow.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
That goes into the layers the fiberglass layers and how
many they put in because there is more than just
wood in the ski, but the edge, what the edge
is made of. There's the sidewalls make a huge different.
The cap sidewall versus a multi dimensional sidewall that breaks down.
That is a massive on the torsional side. I mean

(01:27:05):
even the horizon tech affects it torsionally. Everything that you
build into it is going to affect it torsionally. So
you add layers or remove layers according and the metal,
in my opinion, is just too aggressive for your everyday skier.

(01:27:25):
I mean, you have Darren Ralves still and there's I
guess I could take that back. It depends if you're
really railing rumors and trying to pretend you're ski racing.
It's fun, like there is time and a place for that,
and so I do. I do take back what I said.
But generally speaking, if you're ski in the mountain after

(01:27:48):
some fresh snow and it's chopped up and you're just
having a trying to have a good time on a
pair of skis, You're going to be happiest with a
woodcrese ski.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Okay, Generally speaking, your skis are a cycle of two years,
three years, or just when you come up with a
new thing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
I try to keep it to when we come up
with a new thing. I've I certainly we're not exempt
of marketing efforts by any stretch of the imagination. But
luckily for me, because I'm an artist and because there's
such an authentic tie to what we're creating, there is

(01:28:28):
a marketing story always present. Because I'm expressing myself both
artistically and in the shape of the ski. So we
try really hard. We constantly we want to progress, and
we want to so sustainability is a huge way to progress.
There's so many new materials. There's flax instead of fiberglass.
There's all these different things that are being tested and tried,

(01:28:51):
but and tell they're guaranteed to be at the performance
that atomic is known for. They're not willing to take
a you see it happen with I think K two
had to recall a ton of skis. They went with
some eco friendly resin or something else, and that every
ski was just splitting and blowing apart. So it needs

(01:29:12):
to be deeply tested. And that's why we're two three
years out on skis and why I don't know what
I'm skiing half the time because we're like constantly the
factory is trying to push the boundaries of ski technology
and think of what is new, and explore materials and
do all of those things, but ultimately they won't put

(01:29:34):
it out to the world until it's tried and tested.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
As a practical matter, how much are you testing skis?

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
That's a good question. I don't have Like a for example,
talking to Rob, I had this crazy idea to put
channels in the bottoms of my skis to talking about
gliding on the surface for a our specific ski and
having the edges almost wrap. And we tried this concept.

(01:30:05):
I had the factory build me something and it almost
killed me. It was like racetracks, just like staying straight
in the snow, and they wouldn't turn at all, and
by like concept totally failed. So if I come up
with an idea like thinking outside the box, which I
do quite often, they'll I'll test it if they if
they have the time, which they generally make the time

(01:30:26):
for me because they want to progress. So we'll test
something and see if it makes a difference, and then
if we're onto something, then the rest of the team
starts testing it. Like Darren rahlves is one of the
best ski testers, and he was a World Cup Downhill
GS superdude skier that now skis Big Mountain primarily and

(01:30:48):
his understanding of skis it's deep too. So it's all
the atomic team, from the free skiers to the racers. Well,
I mean, Mikayla's stay in on what she knows and
she's just winning in racing and doing her thing. But
the skier, the racers that are not on the hunt

(01:31:09):
for the globe, if you will, are testing new skis
a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
So okay, so you have your skis, You're happy with
your skis. Does the change come from the fact we're saying, hey,
we have a new material.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
Yeah, that stems it a lot. They have something for
me to try. They have something that they've been working
on or think it will make a big enough impact
environmentally to try it. So yeah, it does stem from
that a lot. And then shape and weird ideas come

(01:31:44):
from me generally speaking.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
Okay, Atomic has your line which has expanded into all
those widths, but it also has the Mavericks. I mean,
what's up with that? That is.

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
I going back to what we I mean, they are different.
There's stiffer, there's they're a bit more chargey than my ski.
But it's it's there's no getting around it. It's marketing
as well. It's like, we have something that's working extremely
well with my ski, but my ski is not made
for everyone. So streamline it a little bit, make it

(01:32:23):
a bit stiffer, make it less tail rocker, take the
twin tip out of it. Do all of these things
and use the same construction and the waste widths and
the tip withs and the side walls and all of that,
because we know that performs well on my ski, and
now let's try that in a different mold, in a
different shape. And so the Maverick and the Backland and

(01:32:47):
my ski all have similarities for sure, but they are
different enough. That goes back to what you're saying of
that quiver, because you personally might not I mean, I
would love for you to try my skis because I
think you would be pleasantly surprised, But you personally might
not need tail rocker, or you might not care for

(01:33:09):
the same swing weight that I care for, which is
totally fine. I ski differently than you ski, and that's
why there should be a wide array of skis is
because people do ski differently. We're all at different levels,
we're all at different abilities and all that kind of stuff.
So I do think there's kind of a ski atomic
wants to make a ski for everyone essentially.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
Okay, but we could say, generally speaking, you like a
softer ski.

Speaker 2 (01:33:36):
That's that's a loose term, yes, And no, I don't
like too soft of a ski. And and but I mean,
if you are so, let me take it back. If
you're comparing me to other ski brands. Yes, I like
a softer ski.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
I mean, you know, the original DTA Star Pro rock
Yeah Provider was just, you know, really stiff.

Speaker 2 (01:33:56):
Stiff and straight. And when I came to Atomic, the
turn radius was forty this it was so it was
like writing a piece of just like dense board, and
my turn radius is nineteen meter now it has rocker
and all these things. So yes, I if you're comparing
me within within some like line skis, there's some that

(01:34:18):
are extremely soft that are too soft for me. But
in the grand scheme of things, I do like a
softer ski.

Speaker 1 (01:34:24):
How many pairs of these skis do you sell?

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
I'm not really supposed to know those numbers, but what
I do know is that it's the number the bent
line and is the number one ski sold globally. My
skis and particularly I think the hundred waste width, so

(01:34:48):
I think I'm allowed to say that. But it does,
it does very well.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
Okay, people know to what degree are you marketing the
ski to both reach new markets and reach people that
might be skiing on something.

Speaker 2 (01:35:03):
Different that falls a lot on Atomic And they would
have those answers much better than me. I'm my job
is tasked with. They give me a creative director role,
but there very much is a creative director at Atomic
that sits in an office and deals with all the

(01:35:24):
video creative in the photos. And I don't have to
sit in an office or be in a meeting weekly.
But my art direction of where I take my skis
influences the creative for the brand because the skis are successful.
So the art that I put on my skis is
then going to translate to T shirts and hats and
ski poles and bindings and all of these different things

(01:35:47):
and colors will then tie back to my skis, and
then they'll build their creative direction for the Mavericks and
the Backlands and the race skis, and everything will start
to stem off of some of those ideas that I'm presenting.
And then of course they have their own ideas and
their own concepts and things and race too, But it

(01:36:10):
starts with that. And then I am pretty detached from
the daily marketing efforts. That's like the ad buys and
the social and the website. All of that I have
no idea. I just I create.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
Okay, let's say you broke all your relationships with all
your sponsors on Atomic. Can you live on the money
you make from Atomic? I could yes, Okay, yeah, switch
gears completely. What about avalanches?

Speaker 2 (01:36:44):
Oh boy, they're very real and they're very scary and
it's important to respect them as much as you can.
And Arctics makes one of the best avalanche airbags in
the industry at the world, I guess you could say,

(01:37:04):
And that is hugely beneficial in something new in the
recent years of technology. They've designed an extremely lightweight, battery
powered air bag, so if you get in an avalanche,
you can pull it. And it's the Brazilian nut theory.
Anything bigger is going to shake, shake to the surface,
so it's just making your mass much bigger. And so

(01:37:28):
that saved a lot of lives. Avalanche beacons save a
lot of lives. But you need to know how to
use them and practice and take avalanche courses and learn
how to use your probe and learn how to dig
someone out because when it shit hits the fan, you
need to stay calm. You need to check everyone's beacon.
There's protocol that you really need to follow. So if

(01:37:49):
you just buy a beacon and the avvy stuff and
never practice with it and don't know how to use it.
It's not necessarily going to save your life. So that's uh,
that's the first step. And then reading avalanche terrain is
an art in itself, and you learn that in AVIY courses.
You learn that from being in the mountains. You learn
that from watching whind loading off the peaks and snow

(01:38:13):
falling and just understanding layers and depths and snow packs.
There's a maritime snowpack, which is more moisture in a
coastal snowpack, which is what we have in Mammoth because
we're the first big mountain range off the coast. And
then there's inner Mountain which is more like the Utah snowpack,
which tends to avalanche a bit more but have a

(01:38:34):
little more moisture. Then there's the Colorado which is a
continental snowpack, which is the beautiful ice crystals that you
see when you walk outside and it hasn't snowed for weeks,
but it still looks all crystally. And then when snow
falls on those crystals, it never gets warm enough or
heated by the sun, and there's not enough moisture in
the snow to crush those crystals. So crystals on crystals

(01:38:56):
is a very unstable slope, whereas when in California in
the sun and coastal snow packs, it snows so much
feed upon feet it crushes those bad layers and can
strengthen it over time. Essentially, so the deeper, the deeper
east you go, than the more dangerous it gets.

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Basically, though, have you had close calls?

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
I yes, I have. I've triggered quite a few. I've
not necessarily been buried. Was I skid a pillow line,
which is pillows of snow stacked on top of each other,
and it was late in March, so it was heating up.
I was in Canada, and it collapsed. The whole thing

(01:39:42):
collapsed and kind of steam rolled me and trapped me
under the snow quickly, and my friend got to me,
but I wasn't like I could still breathe, and I
was on the surface. And so that that is the
closest I've been to being stuck in the snow. But then, yes,
I've I've had I've had friends get buried, I've had

(01:40:04):
friends die, I've had lots of I've been around a
lot of avalanches. And my wife, my wife is a
personal border She's triggered some too, and all the things.

Speaker 1 (01:40:14):
So to what degree does pure pressure involve in the
decision to go or not go?

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
Peer pressure not so much. It's it's ego, I would say,
of like thinking that you know you could, you're safe
because of X.

Speaker 1 (01:40:35):
Y and Z.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):
You talk yourself into stupid decisions and I am guilty
of it too, So peer pressure no. But it's beautiful.
It just snowed. There's two feet of snow. Oh, we'll
go over here in the trees because trees are anchors
and this will do this, and you just you talk
yourself into situations that you probably shouldn't at times. But

(01:40:55):
I try really hard to remove the ego when I can.

Speaker 1 (01:40:59):
What a greedy consider herself a good reader of the snow.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
Same as the research. I think I could take more
ABVY courses. There's AVI two's, there's AV threes to understand
the science of the snow and everything on a granular level,
but I do. I do not go that deep. I
understand intuition and reading the mountains and convex rolls and
windloading and snowpack and that like the true markers of

(01:41:30):
what's going to trigger and then understanding every little like
putting snow under a microscope. I've I've not gone that far,
but people certainly do.

Speaker 1 (01:41:47):
So tell me about the film you made with your wife.

Speaker 2 (01:41:50):
Oh boy, well, we okay, this is gonna be a
long story. She is pro snowboarder. She is an only child.
Her father passed away when she was fourteen from cancer,
which was our bond very early on. Was raised by

(01:42:11):
a single mother. Her mother then got cancer right at
the height of her career, and that was in twenty sixteen.
I want to say, I was in the middle of
making a pretty large project and went through the journey
of losing her mother, and then she we had the

(01:42:35):
very real conversation the only grandparent left was my mother,
and so we started trying to have children. Four months later,
after her mom passed, we got pregnant with our first child.
She was approaching forty. I mean, she just turned forty,
so at that point in time, what was it. Anyways,
she was mid thirties and she wanted to stay a

(01:42:57):
pro snowboarder. Most women at that age, once they become pregnant,
walked away from snowboarding. There wasn't really maternity clauses and
contracts and all of those things, so she approached Donna
Carpenter at Burton and basically proposed supporting her as a
as a mother, and so they they chartered New Territory

(01:43:21):
together added verbage in her contract that was widely used
at that time. Nike had come out with a campaign
to Dream Big, and a couple of their runners, Alicia Montano,
went against Nike with a dream Maternity campaign because Nike
was cutting their runners when they would get pregnant and
treating it like an injury clause. And so Donna men

(01:43:45):
Burton went against Nike. They got Kimmy, my wife, Kimmy
and Donna got an article and I think New York
Times are in some other media making her verbiage in
her contract available for any female athlete which supported through maternity.
So that was a big deal. It was awesome. We
had our child. Once we had our child, we were

(01:44:09):
and so talking this. We were going to document this
year of being pregnant and then having the baby and
make a little pretty surface level film. And so my
good friend Tyler Hamlet, who's made my dead films to
him and I have worked together for twenty years, and
he and I started just filming together and we got pregnant,

(01:44:37):
had had CoA, our firstborn, and then she didn't know
it at the time, but it triggered some past trauma,
kind of had I guess postpartum depression a bit. And
all of this was being unveiled on camera. And then
fast forward, I make the movie with the Dead. We
talked about fire on the Mountain. I'm very busy as

(01:44:58):
a husband and a father and we're just navigating having
a lot of conflict at times. All of this is
being captured on film, and then our son gets deathly ill.
His kidneys fail. He had to be life lighted put
in a hospital. And that was right before COVID. That
was its own journey brought us back together. And during COVID,

(01:45:21):
we yeah, like everyone just spent a lot of time together.
It was amazing. We rekindled with her and I have
been together since we were children. We've been together since
I met her when I was sixteen turning seventeen, so
a long time. And we had our second child. Then
as she's breastfeeding our second child, she finds a lump

(01:45:43):
and has a very severe stage three breast cancer. And
so we go on the whole cancer journey and she's
fighting for her life and we just keep documenting this
whole thing, and so long story long, it's a very exposing, raw,
beautiful film of her life story, and it has a

(01:46:04):
ton of depth and layers, and it's not something we
ever intended set out to make. It's very strange that
we have as much documented as we do. But because
of the circumstances of her mom and then pregnancy and
what we were aiming for at the beginning, we just
saw the saw the reason to keep filming because these

(01:46:25):
things just kept happening and coming up. And so it's
called Butterfly and a Blizzard. It's the world premiere will
be at the Big Sky Film Festival in February, and
then it'll be on streaming platforms early March, I believe.
And yeah, it's just it's it's it's sit on the
couch and watch. It's like a It's a very emotional

(01:46:48):
and and exposing, raw documentary of seven years or even
more of our relationship in life. So it's pretty it's
pretty wild. Did you did you end up watching the
cut that I sent you.

Speaker 1 (01:47:02):
I'll be honest, I've been crazy. I haven't watched the
complete cut.

Speaker 2 (01:47:05):
Okay, well, it's a. It's a heavy one, but I
know there's a lot. There's a lot to it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
Personally, I prefer heavy. I like the real issues. Let
me ask, Yeah, So, what were all the projects you're
working on presently?

Speaker 2 (01:47:21):
So I which just came out today, Actually The Dead
the Dead just announced their sixtieth anniversary logo. I was
tasked with creating the sixtieth logo, which was a complete
honor and very humbling and so on. All the licensed
products will be the art that I came up with

(01:47:42):
for that, so that's amazing. And then in conjunction with that,
I mentioned the sphere with Mickey, but we were working
on another film which is this big abstract art piece.
And the film itself will come out in September of
twenty twenty five, so we're halfway through a little more
than halfway through of filming. And it's going to have

(01:48:05):
skiing and snowboarding, a surfing and mountain biking, rock climbing,
free diving like ocean free diving. It'll have plant life, mycology,
it will have animal life, it will be very inspired
by the natural world and dive deep into red light.

(01:48:27):
It'll dive deep into my cilium. It'll dive deep into
all of these things visually and conceptually, less beating you
over the head with like a storyline per se, and
the film is the centerpiece. And then off of that
film has Tentacles upon Tentacles. On February fourth, we'll be
releasing I'm starting a YouTube channel, which is hilarious that

(01:48:48):
it's taken me this long to start one, but with
all the videos I've done for twenty years. But I'm
going to put a YouTube channel and release weekly episodes
starting February fourth that are a bit of a behind
the scenes look at the a creation of this whole
art project and introducing certain characters and people like Jay

(01:49:11):
Blakesburg came on one of the photoshoots. Mickey will be
a part of it. There will be all of these
different moments in time that have been very fun to capture,
and then we'll release the film in September. Then there
will be during that time, there will be an experiential
art exhibit that I'm hoping to accomplish, and that will

(01:49:32):
be in Los Angeles, and I'm looking at big, you know,
ten thousand square foot warehouse type buildings to build out
a full art exhibition. Essentially, the first room will have
a very museum behind the scenes feel of things we've invented,
like the lighting suits with arctics and the skis. I

(01:49:53):
tried some UV reactive powder and surfboards. We did LEDs
and so that'll give you a feel. Second room will
have more art and then it'll just dive deeper and
deeper and be a bit more immersive, and that will
that will hopefully come to fruition end of September, and
then following that will do a bigger doc series, or

(01:50:16):
at least that's our plan as of now, is kind
of a four to six part dock series that dives
deeper into some of the stories we're telling because we
have a I'm producing directing it, but I have a
DP on the on the art vision side, and then
I have a DP on a a DP and a
co director on the main movie side, and a DP

(01:50:37):
and a co director on the documentary side, so we
can capture as much as possible. Because that was one
thing I mentioned. We went back to Bill Walton to
film some of the making of We weren't doing it
in real time because I didn't know at that point
in twenty nineteen what I was creating, whereas now I
have a bit more of a roadmap of how I

(01:50:57):
want to see this all come together. And then if
that exhibition works, I would like to see it go global.
I maybe because Atomic and Atomic and Arctics have such
a big presence globally, I have some ideas with them,
particularly Arctics. There's really cool opportunities. They have so many

(01:51:18):
retail spaces in some of these big buildings on a
global scale. So I want to do some art installations
and build outs and experiential stuff. And then my two
true dream, which maybe this where we'll ski together, is
to collaborate with Altara and Mammoth and bring my lighting
team in because this whole film is based at night,

(01:51:40):
and bring my lighting team in, build a very large
movie set if you will, off the lighting on the
mountain and have everyday consumers be able to come and
ski under the lights. And then have a band play,
ideally a Dead cover band or most ideally if Bernie's
listening to this, I'll come to him to try and

(01:52:00):
hire Dead and Code to come play. It would be
It would be the ultimate dream, obviously. And then I yeah,
I would like to have live music, have the film
play have have people skiing under the lights and and
create this Dead on the Mountain concept that I'm going

(01:52:22):
to be running running by our old pal Bernie and
marking them to see if they're into it. But there's
there's layers upon layers. I guess that's what I'm trying
to say.

Speaker 1 (01:52:32):
Ok Okay, you know there's so many live shows that
have been released. But in terms of the commercial albums,
what are your two favorite Dead albums albums?

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
That's a I am. I can't say I have a favorite.
I don't even have a favorite song. I'm like, I
think that's the beautiful thing about the Dead. I'm discovering
a new version all the time of some live song
from here, but yeah, I mean Cornell's and I can't. Okay,

(01:53:06):
there's there's some incredible ones. But luckily David Lemieux is
helping me pick the music for these things, so he's
sending me tracks that I've never even heard where I'm like,
oh my gosh, this is incredible. So it's it's an
endless vault, if you.

Speaker 1 (01:53:20):
Will, Okay, tell me about your involvement with the Eagles
in the sphere.

Speaker 2 (01:53:25):
Okay, Well, I hope there's involvement and maybe we could
do this off the record until we know for sure,
but it came my way. We're still working it out.
I very well might have. I had some texts before
our before our call, and I'll have some after. But
there's there's hope for them to update their their current residency,

(01:53:50):
and particularly I've been tapped on the shoulder to help
with Rocky Mountain Way and potentially some creative ideas that
I sent them for decks to review, and from my understanding,
Irving and Joe and Don like them. So if all
goes well, it's going to happen. But at this point

(01:54:12):
nothing is official, so I'm staying hopeful. But it is
like very much happening in real time as we speak.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
So, Okay, it's a very interesting time in skiing. You know,
skiing is a mature sport. It's not like they're building
new ski areas in America, et cetera, et cetera. There's
been consolidation and manufacturers. I grew up during the ski boom.
Everybody talked about skiing, people went seeing. Skiing has never
been inexpensive, but it was not seen as an upper

(01:54:43):
class sport. Okay, well, this is like ticket fees. People
are bitching about the price of skiing. Yes, the walk
up price at a Veil Resource Mega Play is going
to be two hundred and ninety seven dollars at Christmas. Yeah,
you can and advertise that all day long. But for
someone who's a dedicated skier, skiing has never been cheaper

(01:55:06):
because of the Icon Pass and the Epic Pass. How
can we grow the number of skiers?

Speaker 2 (01:55:15):
That's a great question. I agree with you. There's there's
a devil in the details, if you will, or there's
there's evil, but there's also beauty in it all. Tara
and Icon specifically is a lot of the leadership at
all Tara has come from Mammoth and they are care

(01:55:37):
they care about the community, they care about skiing, and
they want to introduce skiers. And so from a if
I put my business hat on, the Icon Pass makes
so much sense because you're getting your capital up front
and you're guaranteeing that you can update your chairlifts and
build new lodges and do all of the amenities and
all the things that they need to do to keep

(01:55:59):
these things operation. Whereas if you rely on ticket sales
and it's a bad season, or it's a this, or
it's a that. Like I completely understand it, and it's
just a matter of more skiers is fantastic and what
we want to share, you and me being extremely passionate skiers.

(01:56:19):
That's the whole reason I've built my life around around
the mountains. It's just it's really hard to know, like
once the lift lines get so long, how how many
more skiers do we really want out there? But I
think there's technology that exists, like Mammoth, for instance, replace
their two main lifts with six seaters that are faster

(01:56:42):
than the old four quads, So it's going to get
people up and dispersed much quicker, which is fantastic. And
then also everything we're doing and at arctics and atomics
in the back country like the Eastern Sierra is endless.
You could ski a new mountain. I could ski a
new mountain every day for the rest of my life,

(01:57:02):
or a new run on a new mountain if I'm
if you're willing to put in the time and the effort.
So backcountry skiing is how I personally. If people go
to the resort to get their runs in and be
less frantic of the powder and take your avalanche courses
and learn how to use your avy gear and go
for a walk in the mountains and see how beautiful

(01:57:26):
nature is. Because like, that's all we really want to
do is get people outside. I would way rather have
more passes sold and more skiers than more video games
and more people sitting inside on a computer doing who
knows what it's like. Get yourself outside and embrace this

(01:57:47):
beautiful world that we live in.

Speaker 1 (01:57:51):
How into skiing are you at this point?

Speaker 2 (01:57:55):
I'm extremely into it. It's just it looks differently for
the reasons I shared. I'm more busy than I've ever
been in my life, and these opportunities that are coming
my way, whether it's this stuff with the dead or
the creation of the artwork, is super inspiring to me.

(01:58:19):
So I'm willing to put skiing aside because I've skied
my entire life. I haven't created movies and created art
my entire life, per se. So it's kind of just
trying to find balance where I'm never going. I'm never
going to find balance between my family and my kids
and everything I explained about my wife and all the

(01:58:42):
trials and tribulations we go through, plus my busy ambitions
as an artist and I'm filmmaker, plus my skiing, plus
my rock climbing, Like, there just is not enough time
in the day. So I'm into it. I just don't
ski enough, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:58:59):
Let me put it this. If I tell you for
the next six years you can only ski ten times
a year, how upset would you be about that?

Speaker 2 (01:59:07):
Extremely? I ski wave more than ten times a year,
and I need to go tour and walk in the mountains.
If you told me I could only ski a resort
ten times, but I had as much access as I
want to walking in the mountains, I would be more
okay with it. I still love resort skiing, but I
really enjoy walking being in the back country. It's my

(01:59:29):
happy place.

Speaker 1 (01:59:33):
Well, we've covered a lot of ground. I could talk
about this. I'm really into it. You know. The problem is,
you know, there are very few people you're talking about
swing weight. It's like, you know, Soloman's came out like
a pair of these solomon you know, the one thirties.
They were too light, couldn't get forward. You know, there's
the light, there's the heavy boot. You know, there's swingweight.

(01:59:54):
Never mind mounting it all. The problem is not to
get too quezy that I've gotten crazy, were the point
where it interferes with your raw enjoyment. But when it's wrong,
it's so wrong. When you're out on a pair of
skis and it's not working, it's like it's possible.

Speaker 2 (02:00:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, if you get if you get your
hands or if you want hands on a pair of
one hundreds, you just let me know. I feel like
that would be a great, great starting place for you,
and I would love to see you. I wish we
need to go skiing with Bernie too. He's on my leg.

Speaker 1 (02:00:28):
Absolutely. Wait wait, wait, let me make it very clear.
Definitely want the pair of one hundreds.

Speaker 2 (02:00:35):
Okay, Okay, well, maybe why don't I take that back?
How about we do the Grateful Dead skis you asked
about that'll be coming out, will be a limited release.
They're beautiful, they'll be celebrating the sixtieth in this project
and they'll be on the one ten. So why don't
we try to get you a pair of something extra special.

Speaker 1 (02:00:56):
It all sounds good. There we go. It all sounds good, good, Chris, Okay,
I think we've come to the end of the feeling
we've known. You've got to wait to hear from Irving
and all those people. I'll let you text up a
storm in any event. Thanks for taking the time to
speak to my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:01:14):
Absolutely, I really appreciate you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:01:17):
Out, you bet. Until next time, This is Bob Leftsticks