Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Chris Benchetler

Transcript

Chris Benchetler · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back the Bob Left That's podcast. My
0:12
Speaker 1: guest today is skier artist filmmaker Chris ben Scheffler. Chris,
0:20
Speaker 1: how'd you get involved with the Grateful?
0:21
Speaker 2: Did straight to the punch? That is a long winded question.
0:27
Speaker 2: Luckily we're on a long form podcast here. Ah. I
0:31
Speaker 2: got introduced to the music by let's call him an uncle.
0:35
Speaker 2: He's a family friend, but he comes to all the
0:38
Speaker 2: holidays and has been a part of my life for
0:39
Speaker 2: quite some time now. And he's been following him since
0:43
Speaker 2: he was sixteen and gone to many, many hundreds of
0:46
Speaker 2: shows and listened to him in the car pretty NonStop.
0:51
Speaker 2: And it's slowly in my early twenties, just started infiltrating,
0:57
Speaker 2: infiltrating my mind a little bit, and I started listening
1:00
Speaker 2: into them more and more. And it is very synonymous
1:04
Speaker 2: with mountain culture and growing up in the mountains and
1:07
Speaker 2: being a skier. It was always around and always something
1:10
Speaker 2: that I was really into, and so I just kept
1:14
Speaker 2: getting more into it. And then twenty sixteen, when Dead
1:19
Speaker 2: and Co started touring, I believe that was when it
1:21
Speaker 2: was might have been twenty fifteen. He took me to
1:24
Speaker 2: my first show and I got to see the magic
1:27
Speaker 2: in person and just see Shakedown Street and see the community,
1:31
Speaker 2: and I was hooked ever since. And then around that time,
1:35
Speaker 2: I picked up a guitar started playing songs myself, and
1:38
Speaker 2: then it just kept going. And I can keep talking
1:41
Speaker 2: if you want, because then we'll go.
1:42
Speaker 1: Into no no keeping talking.
1:45
Speaker 2: I'm listening, Okay, Okay, Well, I just don't want to
1:48
Speaker 2: say too much. But then it keep fast forwarding. Get
1:52
Speaker 2: to twenty eighteen. An offer comes across my desk to
1:57
Speaker 2: help make some Grateful Dead skis. The Grateful Dead had
2:01
Speaker 2: success in the snowboard community with Burton Snowboards for a
2:04
Speaker 2: few years, and I have my own skis that I
2:08
Speaker 2: designed with Atomic. I'm also an artist, so I do
2:11
Speaker 2: the artwork on my skis, and I'm also a fan
2:13
Speaker 2: of the music at this point a big fan. And
2:17
Speaker 2: then I get the offer to do do a ski
2:22
Speaker 2: with the Grateful Dead. And instead of just putting artwork
2:25
Speaker 2: on a ski, because I'm an artist both on skis
2:28
Speaker 2: and with my paintbrush, I wanted to create something more meaningful.
2:33
Speaker 2: So through that process I get introduced to Mark Pinkis
2:36
Speaker 2: and David Lemieux, and I pitched them this concept of
2:41
Speaker 2: Fire on the Mountain, which was a film.
2:43
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, second, okay, you're sitting in Mammoth Lakes, You're
2:49
Speaker 1: fucking around. All of a sudden you get an email
2:51
Speaker 1: out of the bloom about the Grateful Dead.
2:53
Speaker 2: It's not entirely out of the blue. I'm glad we're
2:56
Speaker 2: backtracking here. So uh, this guy Todd Jones, who owns
3:02
Speaker 2: a production company in the ski world called Teton Gravity Research.
3:06
Speaker 2: His son skis on My skis on Atomic, and we
3:10
Speaker 2: were doing this little film in Mammoth kind of born
3:14
Speaker 2: on Bent because I called my skis the Bent Chetler
3:17
Speaker 2: because my last name is Ben Chetler and the skis
3:19
Speaker 2: are rockered, so little play on words there. We're filming.
3:24
Speaker 2: I'm playing guitar. I also have a nice vinyl collection.
3:27
Speaker 2: Dead is a part of that vinyl collection. I can't
3:31
Speaker 2: quite recall if a record was playing, or if I
3:33
Speaker 2: was playing Ripple or going down the Road. And Todd
3:36
Speaker 2: had this light bulb moment because this other gentleman, Brian Francis,
3:40
Speaker 2: was moving from New York and helping Todd launch an
3:44
Speaker 2: apparel business within TGR and Brian Francis had done a
3:49
Speaker 2: dead license on some shoes. I don't believe it was Nike,
3:53
Speaker 2: but some shoes or something. Previously in New York, Brian
3:57
Speaker 2: asked Todd, do you know any ski companies that would
4:00
Speaker 2: want to do a Grateful Dead license? Todd sitting on
4:02
Speaker 2: my couch, We're playing dead music, and the light bulb
4:05
Speaker 2: hit him. He introduced me to Brian, and then the
4:09
Speaker 2: story continues to unfold from there.
4:12
Speaker 1: Okay, Mark pinkis who runs Rhino Records, which distributes the
4:16
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead stuff. You reach out to them and tell
4:19
Speaker 1: us exactly what you pitch them.
4:22
Speaker 2: You're testing my memory here. I pitch them a concept
4:28
Speaker 2: because I'm a fan of the music, because I'm a filmmaker,
4:31
Speaker 2: and because of my past life experience. I had this
4:35
Speaker 2: concept to invent led skeleton suits and make these skis
4:43
Speaker 2: with the Grateful Dead and make a film that was
4:48
Speaker 2: inspired by their improvisational music. Because their improvisation ties directly
4:54
Speaker 2: into how we ski and snowboard and surf and move
4:57
Speaker 2: through the mountains and kind of riding the pulse of
5:01
Speaker 2: the universe, if you will. It's very connected to music.
5:04
Speaker 2: So I pitched this idea. Mark didn't get it, so
5:08
Speaker 2: I tell Mammoth Mountain, who's another sponsor and supporter of mine,
5:13
Speaker 2: that we I'm gonna be doing this ski with the
5:16
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead, and we are going to be licensing their music.
5:21
Speaker 2: And I stretched the truth a little bit because at
5:23
Speaker 2: that point Mark did not agree to me licensing the music.
5:26
Speaker 2: So I knew I believed in myself enough that my
5:30
Speaker 2: concept and my past experience. I did another night film
5:34
Speaker 2: years prior with a company called Sweet Grass, and the
5:38
Speaker 2: movie was called Afterglow, and so I knew what was
5:41
Speaker 2: possible and I knew what was living within my head.
5:44
Speaker 2: So we filmed the segment at Mammoth, sent it to
5:46
Speaker 2: Pinkis and Lemieux and they gave two thumbs up.
5:50
Speaker 1: Basically, Okay, you're gonna make a film. How much money
5:53
Speaker 1: were you asking what was the budget?
5:55
Speaker 2: The budget was not nearly enough. It was a passion
5:58
Speaker 2: project and it was there was no real budget because I,
6:04
Speaker 2: as an artist, tend to create these things and invest
6:09
Speaker 2: in myself, believing in this overall creation of the artwork.
6:13
Speaker 2: So the budget was coming from there was you know,
6:17
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of dollars from the Atomics and Mammoth
6:21
Speaker 2: and these places. And then of course Mammoth was putting
6:25
Speaker 2: in resources like cat hours and employees and operators and
6:29
Speaker 2: all of these things. So I was scrummaging together money
6:34
Speaker 2: anywhere and everywhere I could to create this concept and
6:37
Speaker 2: through sponsors, through different outlets and fundraising, just like you
6:41
Speaker 2: do to make an indie film.
6:43
Speaker 1: I guess, okay, you have the concept. Does the ski
6:47
Speaker 1: come out before or simultaneously with simultaneously?
6:51
Speaker 2: So this concept was to be a marketing effort and
6:56
Speaker 2: an art piece that would tie directly to the skis
7:00
Speaker 2: Because of my relationships with other brands, I then tied in.
7:05
Speaker 2: I introduced The Grateful Dead to Smartwroll and some of
7:08
Speaker 2: my other sponsors and TGR obviously, so I gave this
7:12
Speaker 2: film in this concept. I directed it and produced it
7:15
Speaker 2: and created it, and then I gave it to them
7:17
Speaker 2: for distribution. And at that time, Brian was launching the
7:20
Speaker 2: apparel business which then licensed TG licensed Grateful Dead as well.
7:25
Speaker 2: So it was this big, this big uh I guess
7:31
Speaker 2: capsule if you will, of different products and the film
7:35
Speaker 2: and all of these things that just kept growing and growing.
7:37
Speaker 2: That will obviously get into as you continue to ask
7:40
Speaker 2: me questions here, But.
7:42
Speaker 1: Okay, if someone wants to see the film today. Can
7:46
Speaker 1: they They can?
7:47
Speaker 2: It is on YouTube for free.
7:49
Speaker 1: Fire on the Mountain is okay, let's go back a second.
7:54
Speaker 1: You're gonna make this ski with the Grateful Dead. How
7:58
Speaker 1: do you decide how many to make?
8:00
Speaker 2: That is negotiated between the Grateful Dead and Atomic Skis,
8:05
Speaker 2: and they wanted something valuable. There was work on my end.
8:13
Speaker 2: Atomic is an Austrian based ski company. The Grateful Dead
8:16
Speaker 2: are not big in Austria. I had to educate them
8:20
Speaker 2: on what the Grateful Dead was, why it was so
8:22
Speaker 2: important to me all of these things. And they believe
8:25
Speaker 2: in me through the decade plus of what we had
8:30
Speaker 2: created together and the success of my skis, so they
8:33
Speaker 2: trust me. And so the first release we did was
8:36
Speaker 2: not a lot of skis. I want to say it
8:38
Speaker 2: was three to four hundred skis or so. I can't
8:42
Speaker 2: even recall the number, but they sold out immediately. So
8:46
Speaker 2: then the Grateful Dead and Atomic worked on the second
8:50
Speaker 2: year after things kept going, and I think our second
8:54
Speaker 2: release was around fifteen hundred pairs. And then that's all
8:58
Speaker 2: dictated by I mean, I know you're a skier just
9:01
Speaker 2: based on our conversations at the sphere, but that's all
9:04
Speaker 2: dictated by all the different brands and how successful Atomic
9:07
Speaker 2: is and what wastewidth ski you're gonna put it on,
9:10
Speaker 2: and all of the things. And I was putting it
9:12
Speaker 2: on a powder ski, which inherently sells less skis just
9:17
Speaker 2: because there's not as many powder skiers as normal skiers
9:20
Speaker 2: out there.
9:22
Speaker 1: Okay, is this relationship with Atomic the Grateful Dead played out?
9:27
Speaker 1: Or will there be any skis in the future.
9:30
Speaker 2: There will definitely be skis in the future. There's a
9:33
Speaker 2: pair of sitting in Bernie's office right now.
9:36
Speaker 1: So Bernie Bob Weir's manager. Okay, In any event, you
9:41
Speaker 1: get the go too to make this ski, how do
9:45
Speaker 1: you come up with the concept and the artwork you're
9:48
Speaker 1: going to employ.
9:50
Speaker 2: Luckily, my creation of art is the same, and I
9:56
Speaker 2: just approach it with an open mind and an open heart.
9:59
Speaker 2: I don't I obviously have decades of iconography to pull from,
10:04
Speaker 2: but I wanted something to be an extension of me
10:08
Speaker 2: and a representation of my love for the music and
10:11
Speaker 2: the deep history of some of that iconography. I'm putting
10:15
Speaker 2: my own spin and twist on all of these things.
10:17
Speaker 2: So how I paint is quite literally and figuratively, just
10:24
Speaker 2: with colors, and compositions and emotion, and I don't go
10:28
Speaker 2: to the canvas being like I'm going to paint a
10:30
Speaker 2: skeleton right now. I start with fluid acrylics and I
10:33
Speaker 2: let the paint kind of do its thing, and through
10:38
Speaker 2: the process of days, weeks, months, that starts to take shape.
10:42
Speaker 2: And I just help bring this painting out into the
10:45
Speaker 2: world kind of through me as a as a vessel,
10:48
Speaker 2: if you will. So I just paint a lot in
10:51
Speaker 2: my studio, and then once I land on something that
10:54
Speaker 2: I feel represents what I want it to represent, I
10:57
Speaker 2: then take a ski template on the computer with my
11:00
Speaker 2: art scanned in, and then I start moving the template
11:03
Speaker 2: around the different pieces of artwork, deciding compositionally what looks
11:07
Speaker 2: good onto long pairs of skis and so on and
11:10
Speaker 2: so forth.
11:11
Speaker 1: So, okay, this is the first project, but you've continued
11:16
Speaker 1: to work a lot with the Grateful Dead. Tell me
11:20
Speaker 1: I have.
11:21
Speaker 2: So let's just stay on this project for a moment.
11:26
Speaker 2: So I send the footage to David and Mark. They
11:31
Speaker 2: obviously get Bernie's sign off on it as well, and
11:35
Speaker 2: then I need someone to narrate the film. So that
11:39
Speaker 2: same friend that introduced me to the Dead is also
11:42
Speaker 2: vary into traditional sports. I do not play any traditional sports,
11:46
Speaker 2: nor do I watch them on television. Really, and I
11:51
Speaker 2: knew who Bill Walton was more from the dead community.
11:55
Speaker 2: So my friend Conrad and David Lemieux suggests that I
11:58
Speaker 2: reach out to Bill Walton to do this, to see
12:03
Speaker 2: if he'll be willing to narrate my film. So I
12:06
Speaker 2: sent a cold call or an email in this case,
12:09
Speaker 2: to Bill Walton explaining my whole idea. He deletes it,
12:13
Speaker 2: moves on to the next thing. But luckily, as I
12:16
Speaker 2: explained earlier, I have a very successful scheme of atomic
12:19
Speaker 2: His assistant at the time owned a pair of my skis,
12:22
Speaker 2: knew who I was, brought the email back out of
12:24
Speaker 2: the trash, and Bill read it again. Didn't understand it still,
12:29
Speaker 2: so Bill, I left my phone number. Bill cold calls me.
12:33
Speaker 2: It's like, first I believe he told me. He called
12:36
Speaker 2: Pinkus and Lemieux to verify that I was really who
12:39
Speaker 2: I said I was, and they confirmed. Bill calls me.
12:43
Speaker 2: We end up talking for an hour or more and
12:46
Speaker 2: have He just had a lot of passion and was
12:50
Speaker 2: very happy and inspired by what I was hoping to
12:55
Speaker 2: accomplish and what I was creating and signed up to
13:00
Speaker 2: help me, help me to bring it to life. So
13:03
Speaker 2: we go and record Bill Walton for the narration. Then
13:10
Speaker 2: a lot of other things happened. There's other sports within
13:12
Speaker 2: this film, and Rob Machado is a surfer Hall of
13:17
Speaker 2: Fame surfer and a very good friend of mine. He
13:19
Speaker 2: actually lives in San Diego and knows the Machado family
13:22
Speaker 2: and the Walton families know each other. There was more
13:24
Speaker 2: synergy happening as this continued to unfold, and then Bill,
13:30
Speaker 2: it was we were releasing the film at the World
13:33
Speaker 2: of McIntosh. Our world premiere was going to be World
13:35
Speaker 2: of McIntosh in New York, which they did the Wall
13:38
Speaker 2: of Sound for the Dead in nineteen seventy four, I believe,
13:42
Speaker 2: and Bill's birthday was the following day, and Dead and Co.
13:46
Speaker 2: Were playing at NASA Coliseum or I don't know if
13:49
Speaker 2: I pronounced that correctly. They were playing at NASA, and
13:55
Speaker 2: he came to our world premiere we were doing a
13:59
Speaker 2: Q hosted by GQ. Bill kicked off Will Welch, who
14:05
Speaker 2: was director or editor in chief of GQ, I believe,
14:08
Speaker 2: and brought up Mickey Hart on stage and then so
14:11
Speaker 2: that was my introduction in person to Mickey. We did
14:14
Speaker 2: this Q and A together talked. Then Carol invited my
14:19
Speaker 2: wife and Rob and a few of us to the
14:22
Speaker 2: show the following night. Carol is Mickey's wife, and we
14:26
Speaker 2: went to the show and things just kept building and progressing.
14:31
Speaker 2: And then fast forward to COVID and Bill's relationship with ESPN,
14:37
Speaker 2: and we had all of these amazing photos that were
14:40
Speaker 2: gonna go unseen just because print is not what it
14:43
Speaker 2: once was. So I pitched once again to Mark and
14:46
Speaker 2: Bernie and David to do a coffee table book and
14:50
Speaker 2: a vinyl LP of the soundtrack. And so I created
14:55
Speaker 2: this big coffee table book size of a vinyl record,
15:00
Speaker 2: and in conjunction with that, I called Bill again and
15:03
Speaker 2: asked if he'd be willing to do a behind the
15:06
Speaker 2: scenes to kind of talk about his involvement. So he
15:09
Speaker 2: introduced me to Burke Magnus over at ESPN and we
15:13
Speaker 2: did a sixty minute special. Once again, Micky got involved
15:17
Speaker 2: with us. We all did some Zoom interviews, had this wonderful,
15:21
Speaker 2: wonderful release on ESPN that was widely appreciated, I guess
15:28
Speaker 2: you could say, And my relationship with Mickey and Bill
15:31
Speaker 2: kept growing fast forward to twenty twenty three Dead We're
15:35
Speaker 2: doing their final tour, and Mickey wanted to use the
15:38
Speaker 2: footage for drums in Space, and so I sent him
15:43
Speaker 2: all the footage that he wanted to use and that
15:45
Speaker 2: was great. And then keep fast forwarding, I learned about
15:49
Speaker 2: the Sphere. I called Bill and Mickey asked Mickey what
15:53
Speaker 2: he had planned for his drums and space for the Sphere,
15:56
Speaker 2: and pitched him this whole concept of his rhythm and
16:00
Speaker 2: his drumming bringing the mountains to life. So Mickey came
16:03
Speaker 2: up to Mammoth, we shipped his drums, We built this huge,
16:06
Speaker 2: beautiful sculpture, and Mickey played the drums as we were
16:10
Speaker 2: jumping over him, and we had all this incredible footage
16:12
Speaker 2: that we're creating for another film and so on and
16:16
Speaker 2: so forth. And then it was part of his drums
16:18
Speaker 2: and Face at the Sphere, which you and I watched together,
16:23
Speaker 2: which was great.
16:32
Speaker 1: Okay, just to get into technology here, you shoot this
16:36
Speaker 1: stuff at Mammoth with Mickey. Is it as simple as saying,
16:40
Speaker 1: project this in the sphere or do you have to
16:43
Speaker 1: go through all these different chapters to get it so
16:45
Speaker 1: you can see it at the sphere.
16:47
Speaker 2: There's hundreds of chapters to get it there. Yes, so
16:50
Speaker 2: we there was a lot of complications. But the Sphere
16:57
Speaker 2: team also came up to Mammoth. They have a camera
16:59
Speaker 2: called Big Sky Camera. I don't pretend to know anything
17:03
Speaker 2: about the technological side of that, but it shoots out
17:06
Speaker 2: a very high resolution and they invented it specific for
17:09
Speaker 2: the Sphere. It shoots in a certain way. So we
17:12
Speaker 2: had their team come up. We had cranes for their team.
17:15
Speaker 2: How should I say this. I took every effort possible
17:18
Speaker 2: to make it as good as it could possibly be,
17:21
Speaker 2: and all the while not knowing if the camera could
17:24
Speaker 2: shoot in that low of light because we were shooting
17:26
Speaker 2: at night, and if the camera shoots that well in
17:29
Speaker 2: the cold, and there was a lot of limitations up
17:31
Speaker 2: against me. So I had my team of filmers capturing
17:34
Speaker 2: additional eight K resolution content. Because we're making a film
17:39
Speaker 2: in conjunction with The Grateful Dead as I don't want
17:42
Speaker 2: to call it a sequel because it's not. It's just
17:44
Speaker 2: an abstract art piece and an extension of the last film.
17:47
Speaker 2: But we were already working towards something and so when
17:50
Speaker 2: I learned about the Sphere, I talked to Mickey we
17:54
Speaker 2: added this whole element to it, and then the Sphere
17:57
Speaker 2: team came up and those shots actually didn't end up
18:00
Speaker 2: working because of those things that I mentioned, because of
18:03
Speaker 2: I think the cold, because of certain lighting things, and
18:06
Speaker 2: a number of things. So our footage ended up saving
18:10
Speaker 2: the show to some degree. And because, as you saw
18:13
Speaker 2: in Drums and Space, because it was built in Notch
18:16
Speaker 2: and fragmented into kaleidoscopic different pictures and images, it didn't
18:23
Speaker 2: have to be at the same resolution as the entire
18:27
Speaker 2: Sphere camera. So technologically we were okay at eight K resolution.
18:31
Speaker 2: Because Mickey was playing in real time and they were mixing,
18:37
Speaker 2: every show was different, and so they were mixing in
18:39
Speaker 2: our footage wherever wherever it worked with those live programs.
18:45
Speaker 2: They had a Notch operator on site at the Sphere.
18:49
Speaker 2: Every time Mickey hits a drum a different beat and
18:52
Speaker 2: things then translate back to the screen and all the
18:56
Speaker 2: technology I don't understand, but our footage was a part
18:59
Speaker 2: of that.
19:00
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask again, which in the terms of the
19:03
Speaker 1: money the budget, because to create an overall Sphere show
19:06
Speaker 1: is unbelievably expensive.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yes, So this second film, I now had a proof
19:15
Speaker 2: of concept. I once again fundraise it for fundraised in
19:19
Speaker 2: the same way I did the first time, but I
19:21
Speaker 2: had something to show for it, and I had more
19:24
Speaker 2: belief in my ability to create this art, and so
19:28
Speaker 2: my sponsors came forth with more support and it's all
19:32
Speaker 2: being spent once again to make the art. And it's
19:36
Speaker 2: not it's hard for corporations or people to quite comprehend,
19:40
Speaker 2: like I have no interest in this being a return
19:45
Speaker 2: on investment, and so for a company to get involved,
19:48
Speaker 2: that's a very big risk on their part. They have
19:50
Speaker 2: to be the right company for the right reasons and
19:52
Speaker 2: all the things. And fortunately my sponsors, I mean, I
19:56
Speaker 2: have a couple decades now in the ski industry and
19:58
Speaker 2: a successful career, and Architeix is my clothing sponsor, and
20:02
Speaker 2: they're based up in Vancouver and there they've been massively supportive.
20:08
Speaker 2: And Atomic is being massively supportive. And another really good
20:13
Speaker 2: friend of mine, who is from the Jack Daniels family,
20:17
Speaker 2: has his own distillates and that he is helping make
20:20
Speaker 2: this come to life. It's high and wicked whiskey and
20:23
Speaker 2: he has tequila and things. And there's a few key companies,
20:27
Speaker 2: Mammoth being one of those, or the whole greater group
20:30
Speaker 2: that you're probably familiar with, al Tara. They own Mammoth
20:33
Speaker 2: and CMH and Mike Wiggley and all these different operations
20:37
Speaker 2: that we're kind of using to make this thing. And
20:39
Speaker 2: then Kelly Slater's surfranch was extremely helpful with us capturing
20:45
Speaker 2: some of the footage of rob and everyone just believed
20:49
Speaker 2: in art for the sake of art, which is wildly
20:53
Speaker 2: unique in this day and age. And so you're not wrong.
20:57
Speaker 2: It's been very expensive, it's been very stressed. I think,
21:00
Speaker 2: I don't know if you watched it, but I might
21:02
Speaker 2: have sent you a couple of clips of me being
21:04
Speaker 2: pretty stressed out creating this whole thing. So it's been
21:08
Speaker 2: it's been an experience.
21:09
Speaker 1: Okay, there are a lot of questions I want to ask.
21:11
Speaker 1: It ultimately come out from the beginning. So let's get
21:14
Speaker 1: some facts. You're born, where you grow up.
21:17
Speaker 2: Where I'm born in Bishop, California, just south of Mammoth Lakes, California,
21:23
Speaker 2: where I live now. My parents met in Mammoth in
21:26
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, I believe, and they lived in Mammoth
21:32
Speaker 2: in the eighties. You could not have babies up here
21:35
Speaker 2: because there was no pediatric that you had to have
21:39
Speaker 2: your babies, and Bishop so and they were sick of shoveling.
21:42
Speaker 2: Had my brother and I lived in Bishop for a while.
21:44
Speaker 2: Then in my early teens, my father died and we
21:47
Speaker 2: moved bat. My mom, my brother and I moved back
21:50
Speaker 2: up to Mammoth and I grew up skiing here, grew
21:53
Speaker 2: up on the race team.
21:54
Speaker 1: All those Okay, wait, wait before we get there. Were
21:57
Speaker 1: your parents refugees from the world so to speak? Were
22:01
Speaker 1: they hippies who said, you know enough of La or Denver,
22:05
Speaker 1: wherever the hell they came from, We want to leave
22:07
Speaker 1: the ski bomb life.
22:09
Speaker 2: Yes, it's funny you use the word refugee. My dad
22:12
Speaker 2: was quite literally a refugee from Hungary. They escaped Communism
22:16
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six and he was only six years old,
22:19
Speaker 2: I believe. And my grandfather and grandmother were ballet dancers
22:24
Speaker 2: in the bullsh or sorry, in the Hungarian opera, and
22:28
Speaker 2: my grandfather was also a tailor, and so he made
22:31
Speaker 2: the costumes and things for the ballet in Russia for
22:35
Speaker 2: the Bolsha, and so he was living a quite prestigious lifestyle,
22:39
Speaker 2: but didn't believe in where the country was going and
22:44
Speaker 2: all everything that was happening during that revolution. So they escaped,
22:49
Speaker 2: ended up in New York in a refugee camp, and
22:53
Speaker 2: then ultimately landed in South or North Carolina, I believe,
22:56
Speaker 2: for a while till my grandfather earned enough money to
23:00
Speaker 2: get to California. And then my dad definitely grew up
23:03
Speaker 2: a surfing hippie, listening to the dead and all the things.
23:07
Speaker 2: And now, I mean, he died when I was sixteen,
23:09
Speaker 2: So it would be so fun to share some of
23:12
Speaker 2: the past, Like I've heard stories from my grandfather, who
23:16
Speaker 2: also died quite some time ago, but of him, you know,
23:20
Speaker 2: going to jail in Mexico and my grandfather having to
23:23
Speaker 2: go and use his street smarts and take his Russian
23:27
Speaker 2: visa from back in the day and wear a white
23:30
Speaker 2: suit and get escorted across the border to go get
23:32
Speaker 2: my dad out of jail and do all these things.
23:35
Speaker 2: So he was certainly he was certainly having a good
23:38
Speaker 2: time and living in California in the sixties and came
23:44
Speaker 2: up here and never left.
23:47
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a very traumatic experience to have your father
23:51
Speaker 1: died at age sixteen, you know, so what was your experience?
23:56
Speaker 1: It was?
23:56
Speaker 2: It was difficult, for sure, but it also shapes me
24:01
Speaker 2: as a human, shape me as an artist. It's I'm
24:05
Speaker 2: grateful for it, really, because it's the one thing none
24:09
Speaker 2: of us are going to be able to escape his death.
24:11
Speaker 2: And I think when you learn that young, and you
24:15
Speaker 2: appreciate the life that I got to live and all
24:20
Speaker 2: of the good that came with the risk and effort
24:24
Speaker 2: that my grandparents and my father and all the however
24:28
Speaker 2: I got here, if I really would strip it back,
24:30
Speaker 2: and if I started stripping it back at a young age,
24:33
Speaker 2: which I was, it was difficult. I had to My
24:36
Speaker 2: dad was a builder, a contractor, so I had to
24:39
Speaker 2: drive him to work every day because he got diagnosed
24:41
Speaker 2: about fourteen, so fourteen to sixteen, he was extremely sick
24:45
Speaker 2: with stage four lung cancer. And I was a fourteen
24:51
Speaker 2: year old kid, So of course I was complaining and
24:53
Speaker 2: didn't want to be working and missing school and doing
24:57
Speaker 2: all the things that I was doing. But I was
25:00
Speaker 2: still getting to ski. I was still getting to have
25:04
Speaker 2: this amazing life in the mountains, and so it just
25:08
Speaker 2: it just gave me perspective. It was. It was certainly difficult,
25:11
Speaker 2: and just selfishly, or I don't know if this is selfish,
25:14
Speaker 2: but I would love to you know, have another day
25:16
Speaker 2: to ski with my dad and just ask him all
25:19
Speaker 2: the adult questions that I never got to ask. That's all.
25:22
Speaker 2: That's the only real sad part about it is you
25:25
Speaker 2: just don't get to learn some of those important things
25:28
Speaker 2: that your parents went through from their perspective.
25:32
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me your mother's backstory.
25:35
Speaker 2: Mother's backstory is a little more simple from what I
25:39
Speaker 2: know of. I mean, her father was from Italy, but
25:41
Speaker 2: she grew up in Culver City in Los Angeles, and
25:45
Speaker 2: her father was a furniture maker, and she came up
25:48
Speaker 2: here after high school and just wanted to just wanted
25:53
Speaker 2: to check it out and be a skier. She's not.
25:56
Speaker 2: My dad was a very passionate skier. My mother is
25:59
Speaker 2: more of a fair weather. She goes a couple times
26:02
Speaker 2: a year only when it's sunny and soft and beautiful out.
26:05
Speaker 2: So she certainly came up here, I think more for
26:09
Speaker 2: the social atmosphere of it and just escaping the hustle
26:13
Speaker 2: and bustle of the city life. And she has worked
26:19
Speaker 2: retail for the Mountain, so she works for Mammoth Mountain
26:22
Speaker 2: and Alterra and she's in a manager role, and she's
26:26
Speaker 2: quite social and loves it, and I think she's, yeah,
26:32
Speaker 2: just a happy, happy She's she's had tough life too.
26:39
Speaker 2: She did get remarried and that has been sadly died
26:41
Speaker 2: unexpectedly too. But other than that, she's she's very happy
26:45
Speaker 2: living in the mountains. Let's just say that.
26:47
Speaker 1: Okay, your father dies, she's a contractor. Doesn't that mess
26:53
Speaker 1: up your family economically?
26:55
Speaker 2: It does? But right at that time, I at sixteen
26:59
Speaker 2: years old, I was just getting my first sponsors and
27:02
Speaker 2: becoming a professional skier. So because we sold our house
27:08
Speaker 2: and Bishop and my mom bought a house in Mammoth,
27:11
Speaker 2: I was able to support myself By being able to
27:14
Speaker 2: live with my mom, I could buy my food and
27:18
Speaker 2: pay I didn't have to pay rent, so I could
27:20
Speaker 2: purchase my snowmobile and invest in myself for my career.
27:23
Speaker 2: And as that began to blossom, it became a legitimate
27:27
Speaker 2: career that then was able to obviously support myself, purchased
27:32
Speaker 2: a home and went down that road.
27:34
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So when do you first put on skis
27:39
Speaker 1: and how much are you ski?
27:43
Speaker 2: I before I can remember, so two years old, I
27:47
Speaker 2: probably was put on skis. I was told I did
27:50
Speaker 2: not like it, and my mother did save a little
27:53
Speaker 2: illustrated book that I made of from second grade that
27:57
Speaker 2: says that I want to and am going to be
28:00
Speaker 2: I'm a pro skier. So clearly, somewhere early early on,
28:05
Speaker 2: after I apparently didn't like it, I turned my love
28:09
Speaker 2: around for it and then skied every chance I can remember.
28:13
Speaker 1: Okay, if you're growing up in Bishop, which is about
28:16
Speaker 1: forty five minutes through now depending on the weather, away
28:19
Speaker 1: from Mammoth Lakes, and you're going to school, you're basically
28:23
Speaker 1: skiing on the weekends or what's going on.
28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, early days, But I was starting to show some
28:31
Speaker 2: promise in ski racing, and so I started living with
28:34
Speaker 2: my friends in Mammoth and my parents were supportive. I mean,
28:38
Speaker 2: my dad was a ski bomb at heart, and so
28:41
Speaker 2: I was living his dream. So he was letting me
28:43
Speaker 2: as long as I got a's in school. He was
28:46
Speaker 2: letting me miss school. And I wasn't necessarily academically gifted,
28:51
Speaker 2: so I was doing the school and probably not the
28:57
Speaker 2: best way. I was having my friends help me with
28:59
Speaker 2: homework and all the things, just to make sure that
29:02
Speaker 2: I can I could keep skiing and keep missing missing class.
29:06
Speaker 2: And so that went on until he died, and then
29:10
Speaker 2: I did. I joined what's called independent study, which is
29:14
Speaker 2: at school you go to once a week and you
29:17
Speaker 2: turn in your work and take a test. And the
29:20
Speaker 2: teacher saw promise in my skiing, so I would take
29:24
Speaker 2: big chunks of time off from that, just turn in
29:26
Speaker 2: all my work at once and carried on. And I
29:30
Speaker 2: was able to finish school early just by completing all
29:33
Speaker 2: the work. And I never actually walked in a graduation.
29:36
Speaker 2: So I just finished my high school and focused on skiing.
29:41
Speaker 1: Okay, when did you express an interest in.
29:43
Speaker 2: Art before skiing? I drew on every blank piece of paper.
29:49
Speaker 2: I still am the classic doodler, but in class I
29:53
Speaker 2: was always drawing on my homework or any any paper
29:57
Speaker 2: in front of me. So I was kind of pinned
29:59
Speaker 2: as the kid that could draw in school, and so
30:03
Speaker 2: I always took an interest in it. But until I
30:05
Speaker 2: had my own ski, that's when I could share my
30:10
Speaker 2: art with the world. I guess, and that I never
30:15
Speaker 2: sought to become an artist per se. I was focused
30:20
Speaker 2: on my ski career and art making was always a
30:24
Speaker 2: passion in conjunction with skiing. And then once I had
30:27
Speaker 2: a ski that represented me and my style of skiing,
30:31
Speaker 2: and the top sheet and the base where my artwork.
30:34
Speaker 2: That then gave me this global my artwork a global stage,
30:39
Speaker 2: if you will, and almost like became its own gallery
30:44
Speaker 2: to some sort. And then because my ski was widely
30:48
Speaker 2: appreciated in Europe and China and Japan and all of
30:51
Speaker 2: these different places, then people started expressing interest in my artwork,
30:55
Speaker 2: and then that just continues to grow.
31:05
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a racer racing and free skiing, although a
31:09
Speaker 1: lot of racers end up in free skiing. But when
31:11
Speaker 1: you're young coming up, how good a racer were you
31:15
Speaker 1: and how did you make a transition into free skiing?
31:18
Speaker 2: Well? I wasn't good enough, So that's why I transitioned.
31:23
Speaker 2: I just I don't have the fire that you need
31:27
Speaker 2: to be the best. I'm way more of a creative
31:31
Speaker 2: and way more of an artist, and I always cared
31:36
Speaker 2: more about having fun and racing felt like a job
31:39
Speaker 2: to me, and wearing a downhill suit in the cold
31:43
Speaker 2: on a powder day and training gates when my snowboarder
31:47
Speaker 2: friends were riding powder just did not sit well with me.
31:51
Speaker 2: So as soon as I as soon as I my
31:55
Speaker 2: parents let me, I quit racing, basically, and that was
31:58
Speaker 2: around age fourteen, right around the time my dad got sick,
32:01
Speaker 2: and then that very first year the terrain parks. So
32:05
Speaker 2: I'm thirty eight, so when I was fourteen, let's call
32:09
Speaker 2: that I could do some fast math. I'm born eighty six.
32:11
Speaker 2: So in two thousand, as around that time, the terrain
32:15
Speaker 2: park was getting really big, and I all of the
32:20
Speaker 2: industry came to Mammoth because Mammoth was one of the
32:23
Speaker 2: first terrain parks that allowed both snowboarding and skiing. All
32:27
Speaker 2: the professionals came here and I was recognized, given a
32:31
Speaker 2: free pair of skis and.
32:32
Speaker 1: Who wha, wha, wha, wha, Wait a little bit slower,
32:36
Speaker 1: because it's really a religious issue. Did you ever snowboard?
32:42
Speaker 1: Because what happened was everybody went to snowboarding, and then
32:45
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the skiers started performing amazing tricks
32:48
Speaker 1: in the pipe and skiing became hip again. Where were
32:51
Speaker 1: you on this spectrum?
32:52
Speaker 2: I am the young side of that generation that invented
32:58
Speaker 2: the free ski movement. I guess you could say there
33:02
Speaker 2: were people certainly before me, A couple of my mentors,
33:05
Speaker 2: one in particular that died in an avalanche. But his
33:08
Speaker 2: name was JP Elclaire, and they called them the Canadian
33:12
Speaker 2: Air Force. There was a few of them that helped
33:16
Speaker 2: invent Solomon's first twin tip ski and then once you
33:19
Speaker 2: could ski backwards. I was just coming out of racing,
33:23
Speaker 2: and now my brother had switched to snowboarding. He's two
33:26
Speaker 2: years older than me, and his best friend was one
33:30
Speaker 2: of the world's best snowboarders. I was a skateboarder. All
33:33
Speaker 2: of these things, I was headed in the snowboard path,
33:37
Speaker 2: but right at that time, skiing, as you said, was
33:40
Speaker 2: just being reinvented. So I was on the forefront of
33:43
Speaker 2: helping reinvent it and shape it into something where I
33:47
Speaker 2: was taking influence from the snowboard culture and putting that
33:52
Speaker 2: into the ski culture.
33:54
Speaker 1: In terms of the terrain park, because you're most famous
33:57
Speaker 1: is a big mountain skier. In terms of the terrain park,
34:01
Speaker 1: how much time did you put in it? How good
34:04
Speaker 1: were you? What was your experience there?
34:06
Speaker 2: I put in a lot of time. That's how we
34:10
Speaker 2: had to learn how to do all these tricks. We
34:12
Speaker 2: didn't have air bags and trampoline, foam pits and all
34:16
Speaker 2: these things that they use nowadays to train. So everything
34:21
Speaker 2: I did was done in the train park and I
34:24
Speaker 2: had broken femurs and collar bones and all the things.
34:27
Speaker 2: So it was it was trial by error basically, and
34:34
Speaker 2: that once you get enough of a base, like you
34:36
Speaker 2: learn the basics the back flip, the three sixties, the
34:39
Speaker 2: seven twenties, and you kind of build every there's a
34:41
Speaker 2: structure that you build upon, and then you just keep
34:44
Speaker 2: taking it. More spins, more flips, all the things that
34:47
Speaker 2: you see today if you were to watch the Olympics
34:49
Speaker 2: slope style or X Games or anything. And I once
34:55
Speaker 2: I got to a point where I felt like I
34:58
Speaker 2: had the basics down, then I put all of my
35:01
Speaker 2: effort into the backcountry, and then I became more obsessed
35:05
Speaker 2: with how a ski turns, and how to slash like
35:09
Speaker 2: they do with surfing, and how to read the terrain
35:12
Speaker 2: quite creatively and differently. And I was on the forefront
35:16
Speaker 2: of rockered skis and being the first to kind of
35:20
Speaker 2: experiment with these different, fatter, wider ski shapes and just
35:25
Speaker 2: influencing my ideas into actual ski engineering and technology, even
35:32
Speaker 2: though I'm not an engineer and I don't under pretend
35:35
Speaker 2: to understand how all the layers do what they do
35:38
Speaker 2: and why you put in certain types of wood versus others.
35:41
Speaker 2: But what I do know is how it feels under
35:43
Speaker 2: my feet, and I have a pretty strong knack for
35:47
Speaker 2: flex patterns and with and how torsionally how a ski feels.
35:52
Speaker 1: So okay, let's go back. How's your body today?
35:57
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you should ask I was. It's not good.
36:01
Speaker 2: At the moment, I was skateboarding. I was in San
36:04
Speaker 2: Diego and I was skateboarding to get a coffee. And
36:08
Speaker 2: I used to skateboard a lot, don't skateboard nearly as
36:12
Speaker 2: much anymore, so I'm a little rusty. And I hit
36:15
Speaker 2: a rock unexpectedly, went flying and hit my hip, and
36:18
Speaker 2: I thought I just had a bruised hip. But I
36:20
Speaker 2: just got an MRI result like yesterday, two days ago,
36:24
Speaker 2: and I have a couple of little fractures on my
36:26
Speaker 2: hip right now. So I've been limping around a little
36:29
Speaker 2: at the moment. But I thought I went skiing. I
36:33
Speaker 2: was just in Canada, and I've been trying to push
36:35
Speaker 2: through the pain, thinking I was just being a baby.
36:37
Speaker 2: But it turns out I have a little fracture in
36:41
Speaker 2: my top of my femur.
36:43
Speaker 1: So okay, irrelevant of this recent accident, you've broken certain bones,
36:51
Speaker 1: you know, what have you in pain as a result?
36:53
Speaker 1: You know you're moving okay, or basically you're fine, just
36:57
Speaker 1: came out the other side.
36:58
Speaker 2: Ah, there's pain. But I take good care of myself.
37:02
Speaker 2: I eat quite healthy in the grand scheme of things.
37:06
Speaker 2: I have two small children, so I am their garbage
37:09
Speaker 2: disposal on all the casadillas and things they don't finish.
37:12
Speaker 2: But I eat relatively healthy, and I rock climb a lot.
37:18
Speaker 2: I used to rock climb a lot more before I
37:20
Speaker 2: became a filmmaker. This la last film has been taking
37:24
Speaker 2: all of my time. And then I mountain bike and
37:28
Speaker 2: I'm very active, so my body is in constant use,
37:33
Speaker 2: and I feel like that keeps me pretty limber and loose.
37:36
Speaker 2: And I've gone through stages of yoga and jim like
37:41
Speaker 2: if I do have an injury, once I'm able to
37:43
Speaker 2: rehab this, I'll spend a little bit of time in
37:45
Speaker 2: the gym, but traditional working out is a bit stale
37:51
Speaker 2: to me. So I like to go climb up a rock,
37:53
Speaker 2: and I live close to Yosemite and Bishop so I
37:58
Speaker 2: have the world's best right right in my front and backyard.
38:00
Speaker 1: Basically, Okay, he kind of answered the question. But I'm
38:04
Speaker 1: gonna go there again? Are you the type of guy
38:07
Speaker 1: who cuts the cast off early and defies the doctors
38:11
Speaker 1: and pushes through very much?
38:14
Speaker 2: So, since a very young age, I was that guy.
38:18
Speaker 2: I broke my wrists wrists plural, maybe six to seven
38:22
Speaker 2: times when I was a young kid, and I got
38:26
Speaker 2: to the point where I would bring my ski pole
38:28
Speaker 2: in so the doctor could form my cast around my
38:31
Speaker 2: ski pole because I was going to ski anyways. So yes,
38:34
Speaker 2: very much. I'm always pushing and I just I need
38:40
Speaker 2: to be I need to be moving. I don't sit
38:42
Speaker 2: very well.
38:42
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the park. For those who
38:45
Speaker 1: don't know, Mammoth is the epicenter with the best park.
38:48
Speaker 1: You're there, you live in Mammoth, whatever. People have no
38:52
Speaker 1: idea how big a deal it is to get sponsored
38:56
Speaker 1: and get a free payer of sky. So there's this
38:58
Speaker 1: threshold there. Everybody's talking about getting sponsored. Tell me your experience.
39:05
Speaker 2: It was very humbling, exactly that, like my peers, my friends,
39:11
Speaker 2: my mentors. There's so many people. Everyone was in this
39:15
Speaker 2: movement trying to get seen and recognized. But there's a
39:19
Speaker 2: very very very small percentage of people that stand above
39:24
Speaker 2: the rest. And if you're in racing, you're just the
39:27
Speaker 2: fastest in our world. It's creativity, it's style, It's all
39:32
Speaker 2: of these elements that you can't really teach or coach.
39:36
Speaker 2: You just are born with it and you it. It's
39:40
Speaker 2: the same as how I started this podcast, how my
39:43
Speaker 2: art comes through me. It's just something that lives deep
39:46
Speaker 2: within and is maybe from a past life. I don't know,
39:49
Speaker 2: but it is. Style is very much how how someone
39:57
Speaker 2: is looked at as unique and different. And you can
40:00
Speaker 2: and see that in the style that Jerry Garcia played
40:03
Speaker 2: the guitar. It was very different than anyone else and
40:08
Speaker 2: that's why he stood out and was what he was.
40:11
Speaker 1: So okay, so who was your first ski sponsor?
40:16
Speaker 2: K two was my first key sponsor and I stayed
40:20
Speaker 2: with them until two thousand and seven and then I
40:23
Speaker 2: switched to Atomic. So I think, as I mentioned, I
40:27
Speaker 2: want to say I was fifteen, fourteen, fifteen when so
40:31
Speaker 2: about ninety eight ninety nine when K two sponsored me
40:35
Speaker 2: and then switched over to Atomic in two thousand and seven,
40:39
Speaker 2: and then we built something truly remarkable at Atomics.
40:42
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. Why just switch from K two
40:45
Speaker 1: to Atomic?
40:48
Speaker 2: Instinct and opportunity and the ability to express my artistic concepts.
41:00
Speaker 2: So K two had the best team in this new
41:03
Speaker 2: skiing movement, and I was just one of many, if
41:07
Speaker 2: you will. Atomic on the other hand, was so solely
41:10
Speaker 2: focused on racing, and they had Darren Rahlves and Body
41:15
Speaker 2: and some of the people that you know, and they
41:17
Speaker 2: were crushing it in a race environment, but so focused
41:23
Speaker 2: on the European skier they did not understand North America.
41:28
Speaker 2: And so as we talked about, with the influence of
41:32
Speaker 2: snowboarding and skiing was on this huge uprise, Atomic was
41:38
Speaker 2: falling way behind. So this gentleman Jordan Judd, who I'm
41:43
Speaker 2: now working with again on some Grateful Dead stuff, which
41:46
Speaker 2: is story for later. But Jordan Judd got brought on
41:51
Speaker 2: to help ramp up that North American market. He called me.
41:55
Speaker 2: It was just after one of my more successful seasons. Say,
42:00
Speaker 2: I'd had the cover of Powder magazine, the Photo Annual,
42:03
Speaker 2: which is a highly acclaimed cover. To have it's like
42:08
Speaker 2: the in the top issue of that year, I guess,
42:13
Speaker 2: and so that was amazing. I had a segment with
42:17
Speaker 2: Warren Miller over in Japan. I had the closing segment
42:20
Speaker 2: in a Poor Boys production, which is closing and opening
42:25
Speaker 2: segments are generally seen as the two most important segments.
42:29
Speaker 2: And then I had a segment with I think I
42:36
Speaker 2: might have well. So there was another nimbus independent which
42:40
Speaker 2: I ultimately helped start. The next year had made a
42:44
Speaker 2: film called Idea, and I had a segment in there.
42:47
Speaker 2: So anyways, I was just widely spread in that two
42:51
Speaker 2: thousand and seven year, and Jordan came to me asking
42:55
Speaker 2: for my help to put Atomic on the map. And
42:59
Speaker 2: because K two was doing so well and Atomic was not,
43:02
Speaker 2: I saw this as an opportunity for me to be
43:05
Speaker 2: able to put my art on skis and to design
43:08
Speaker 2: a shape and do all of these things that felt
43:11
Speaker 2: more like an extension of me. And so I believed
43:18
Speaker 2: in Atomic. Atomic believed in me, and I was kind
43:21
Speaker 2: of at the forefront of what they're known as today,
43:25
Speaker 2: and they're the number one globally recognized ski brand, which
43:30
Speaker 2: is pretty incredible.
43:31
Speaker 1: So, Okay, you're now in this world. You talk about
43:37
Speaker 1: cover of powder and different other things. It is a
43:41
Speaker 1: very small community. Everybody knows everybody. Was it just the
43:45
Speaker 1: fact that people knew you or were you working it?
43:48
Speaker 1: Were you saying, man, this is what I want to do.
43:51
Speaker 1: Let me talk to these people when you get an opportunity.
43:54
Speaker 1: How did these covers in these opening and closing segments
43:57
Speaker 1: actually come together?
44:00
Speaker 2: The covers in the segments came through performance and creative ideas.
44:05
Speaker 2: But I certainly, as you know, just based on our conversations,
44:10
Speaker 2: I have the personality that likes to likes to meet
44:16
Speaker 2: people and so and build relationships, and I think I
44:22
Speaker 2: have an ability I'm realizing more and more to just
44:27
Speaker 2: build build meaningful relationships with people and connect with them
44:32
Speaker 2: on a very authentic level, so that just it kind
44:36
Speaker 2: of goes hand hand in hand if you will.
44:38
Speaker 1: Okay, how does it go for you? From the pipe
44:42
Speaker 1: to big Mountain?
44:44
Speaker 2: It was an easy transition because I and I was
44:47
Speaker 2: more of a slope style skier, which is the jumps
44:50
Speaker 2: and pipe I did. Everyone did everything back in those
44:53
Speaker 2: early two thousands. But pipe always terrified me actually because
44:57
Speaker 2: your margin of error is so minimal. You're either land
45:01
Speaker 2: if you screw it up, you're landing on complete flat
45:03
Speaker 2: on the top, or you're missing the whole transition and
45:06
Speaker 2: landing in the bottom. So I hated the pipe just
45:09
Speaker 2: because I never quite figured it out. But the park
45:14
Speaker 2: was an easy transition because, like I said, once I
45:17
Speaker 2: figured out how to do all of those tricks, my
45:21
Speaker 2: true passion and my true calling was in the mountains,
45:24
Speaker 2: and so hiking up mountains and being active and riding powder,
45:30
Speaker 2: all of that was deeply inspiring to me, and so
45:34
Speaker 2: it was it was very easy to just merge those
45:38
Speaker 2: two worlds together.
45:40
Speaker 1: And how about the Free Ride World Tour?
45:43
Speaker 2: I never did the Free Ride World Tour. It's it's unfortunate.
45:48
Speaker 2: It had has potential, and it's just once again going
45:54
Speaker 2: back to my racing days, any of my competitive days,
45:57
Speaker 2: I'm just not a competitive person, way more into the
46:01
Speaker 2: artistry and the creation of it all. So I just
46:05
Speaker 2: never had any interest in competing in it. And I
46:09
Speaker 2: didn't need to compete in it because my creativity was
46:14
Speaker 2: making enough of a splash, if you will, or it
46:19
Speaker 2: was grabbing attention of my sponsors and things, so I
46:22
Speaker 2: didn't have to go prove myself in a competition setting.
46:32
Speaker 1: Okay, that's the key element, you said, sponsors. He gets
46:38
Speaker 1: skis from K two. This is where you were mentioning
46:40
Speaker 1: this earlier. I didn't want to stop you. Then you
46:42
Speaker 1: have a cornucopia a sponsor. How did you build all that?
46:48
Speaker 2: It goes really to the relationship building and the trust.
46:52
Speaker 2: And I think the two decades of proving that I
46:58
Speaker 2: have a work ethic that is desirable. I take every
47:04
Speaker 2: effort and I also invest in myself, which is rare
47:08
Speaker 2: most athletes. Most people just expect everything to be given
47:14
Speaker 2: to them, and they want everything handed to them on
47:19
Speaker 2: a silver bladder. And I had just a deeper respect
47:24
Speaker 2: for what I was getting to do and a work
47:26
Speaker 2: ethic that kept wanting to push further and push new
47:30
Speaker 2: concepts and ideas and creations, and so sponsors take note
47:35
Speaker 2: of it. When you have when you have video segments,
47:38
Speaker 2: when you have magazine coverage, when you have relationships of
47:42
Speaker 2: other athletes or other team managers. People like you said,
47:45
Speaker 2: it's a small world, So people talk to people and
47:49
Speaker 2: they see what you're capable of creating. And my ideas
47:53
Speaker 2: were always new and fresh, and I just keep putting
47:57
Speaker 2: ideas like the Grateful Dead film, or I made some
48:00
Speaker 2: films with GoPro when I was early on in GoPro
48:03
Speaker 2: as one of their athletes and did some pretty uh
48:06
Speaker 2: successful films with them as well.
48:08
Speaker 1: So when you say you invest in yourself, what exactly
48:12
Speaker 1: do you.
48:12
Speaker 2: Mean Financially like if you need to go spend the
48:17
Speaker 2: time in Alaska and pay for helicopter time that your
48:22
Speaker 2: sponsors aren't going to cover because you want to get
48:25
Speaker 2: the right footage that represents your skiing in the right way,
48:29
Speaker 2: or if you travel to Europe more than you initially
48:33
Speaker 2: agreed to, or if you like I just take opportunities
48:38
Speaker 2: and efforts to get myself out there and get myself
48:42
Speaker 2: in front of in front of opportunity, if you will,
48:47
Speaker 2: And situations like if I a film project that sounds interesting,
48:52
Speaker 2: if a sponsor is not going to pay me to
48:55
Speaker 2: be in it, I would still choose to be in
48:57
Speaker 2: it because I believe in it.
49:00
Speaker 1: So okay, very granular. You start with K two, who's
49:05
Speaker 1: the next sponsor?
49:08
Speaker 2: Dragon? I wear so my goggles I've been on for
49:11
Speaker 2: over twenty years now, which is incredible. I still have
49:14
Speaker 2: them today, which is amazing. So them and Dekine, which
49:19
Speaker 2: makes gloves and backpacks, and I left to Kine a
49:24
Speaker 2: few years ago for Artarix clothing, but I was with
49:28
Speaker 2: Dekine for a long time, and then I've been with
49:31
Speaker 2: smart Wolve socks and bass layers for quite some time,
49:34
Speaker 2: and I've been with Mammoth since day one, Mammoth Mountain
49:38
Speaker 2: has has a very strong marketing presence in the world
49:42
Speaker 2: of mountains. I guess you could say like they use
49:45
Speaker 2: they utilize me a lot, from my go pro videos
49:47
Speaker 2: to my photos to whatever, like billboards when you're driving
49:52
Speaker 2: from LA to Mammoth a lot of times are myself
49:55
Speaker 2: or there's all these different opportunities that they use with
49:59
Speaker 2: me and then pro. I've been on this for over
50:03
Speaker 2: over a decade as well, and I've now invested in
50:07
Speaker 2: some companies and kind of have part ownership if you will,
50:11
Speaker 2: and in some different concepts and ideas, and then atomic
50:15
Speaker 2: like we mentioned, and I'm probably forgetting a few, but
50:18
Speaker 2: I've been very supported in my career. So the thanks
50:21
Speaker 2: to everyone that's listening.
50:23
Speaker 1: Okay, there's in kind sponsorship where people give you the
50:27
Speaker 1: goods and then there's cash involved. In the racing world,
50:32
Speaker 1: you know, they have victory schedules, so if you're successful,
50:35
Speaker 1: the pay goes up whatever. Traditionally in free skiing, I
50:38
Speaker 1: haven't seen that. So how does a compensation work.
50:43
Speaker 2: It's annual or multi year contracts, and it is I'm
50:48
Speaker 2: at a point in my life I'm approaching forty and
50:50
Speaker 2: I've proved myself for over twenty years that I don't
50:54
Speaker 2: do any in kind sponsorships anymore. That's very much when
50:58
Speaker 2: I was getting started. That's how you have to start.
51:01
Speaker 2: You have to get yourself out there. You have to
51:03
Speaker 2: prove yourself. But I certainly don't have the I mean,
51:09
Speaker 2: I have a family to support and mortgage and all
51:12
Speaker 2: the things. So it's what's your time worth basically, It's
51:16
Speaker 2: just like anything. So generally speaking, I try to align
51:19
Speaker 2: myself with sponsors that I see a very long career
51:24
Speaker 2: path with and a roadmap into a legend stor legacy
51:30
Speaker 2: status like a Glenn Blake, for instance. He still has
51:32
Speaker 2: a lot of sponsor support because of what he built.
51:36
Speaker 2: And I mean, I know this is a podcast about me,
51:39
Speaker 2: but I want to know more about your skiing and
51:42
Speaker 2: where you've skied and who you've skied with it stuff.
51:44
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll make it very short because you know I
51:48
Speaker 1: want to make it about you. I grew up. I
51:51
Speaker 1: grew up in Connecticut, so that your weekend skier that
51:54
Speaker 1: we got a house in Vermont. I was on the
51:56
Speaker 1: ski racing team at Bromley, which is skiery and Vermont.
52:00
Speaker 1: I was a shitty ski racer. We could basically talk
52:03
Speaker 1: about that. I went to Middlebury College and Vermont because
52:06
Speaker 1: the college had its own ski area. I skied more
52:09
Speaker 1: than anybody there. I'm type person if it's raining whatever,
52:12
Speaker 1: I'm still out there. And the last year I was
52:15
Speaker 1: at Middlebury was a really shitty year, and I wanted
52:19
Speaker 1: to go where the most guaranteed snow was, which it
52:22
Speaker 1: was Little Cottonwood Canyon, Alton Snowbird, Okay, And little did
52:27
Speaker 1: I know at the time that was the epicenter of
52:30
Speaker 1: freestyle skiing. You know, it's really spread. So everybody was there,
52:34
Speaker 1: Scott Brooks Bank, you know, all these other people. So
52:39
Speaker 1: the second year, I mean, this is really kind of
52:42
Speaker 1: funny because I broke my leg in a freak accident
52:45
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the year, got to Snowbird in January.
52:50
Speaker 1: Snowbird closes, it doesn't anymore, and we all want to
52:54
Speaker 1: ski more. So we all went to Mammoth for the
52:58
Speaker 1: month of May seventy five. We all agree with the
53:00
Speaker 1: best time of our entire lives. Amazing and you know,
53:03
Speaker 1: and you know we were these you know.
53:05
Speaker 2: I wonder if you met my parents, Well.
53:07
Speaker 1: I know your mother wants in a retail thing. But
53:10
Speaker 1: you know, we were the guys from Utah. You know,
53:12
Speaker 1: in May there aren't that many people there. We're cutting
53:16
Speaker 1: figure rates off of Philips just to the side of
53:19
Speaker 1: there what you can see from their lives. And they say,
53:22
Speaker 1: you know, did you see it? They go, yeah, no,
53:24
Speaker 1: these guys did it. So I was skiing with the
53:27
Speaker 1: best skiers in the world at their level. And then
53:30
Speaker 1: you know, the freestyle thing is very official. I mean
53:32
Speaker 1: Park Smally he came. You know, there's all these people.
53:36
Speaker 1: At the beginning, I knew yeah, and then I competed
53:39
Speaker 1: the next year, and then I realized, wait a second,
53:43
Speaker 1: this is you know, people like Brooks baking. There are
53:45
Speaker 1: people who thrive on competition, and we're better in competition.
53:49
Speaker 1: And you realize to get over that hump so you
53:52
Speaker 1: don't choke. That's going to take years. And they say,
53:56
Speaker 1: and there's only some. There was a guy, Dirk Douglass,
53:59
Speaker 1: who skied with a who did a flip in Vermont
54:02
Speaker 1: and became paraplegic. He still is a youthais a photographer
54:06
Speaker 1: and as a result, you know, they banned in vertage
54:10
Speaker 1: and the whole scene died. And this is sort of
54:14
Speaker 1: you know, one thing I want to get back to
54:16
Speaker 1: you with you because I had the world's worst case
54:18
Speaker 1: of mononoucleosis from we went to a competition in Keystone
54:22
Speaker 1: and then I went to Aspen Highland. You know, I'm
54:25
Speaker 1: really going too deep here. Back in the day, the
54:28
Speaker 1: only Aspen mountain that you could get a pass at
54:31
Speaker 1: was Aspen Highlands. That's where all the locals were, and
54:34
Speaker 1: that's where my friends keied and we all shared a joint.
54:36
Speaker 1: And I got the world's worst case of mononucleosis. So
54:41
Speaker 1: I ended up going to law school because my father
54:43
Speaker 1: said he would always pay because I was sick. I
54:45
Speaker 1: was down and out, and then until twenty eleven twenty twelve,
54:50
Speaker 1: which is a really shitty ski season. The worst ski
54:53
Speaker 1: season was seventy six to seventy seven, which I used
54:56
Speaker 1: to bring this up all the time and people would say, huh.
54:59
Speaker 1: But when it was so bad at twenty eleven to twenty twelve,
55:02
Speaker 1: they started writing about seventy six seventy seven. So I
55:05
Speaker 1: called all my friends and you took us. I was
55:07
Speaker 1: gonna drop out and said, this is Christian time, this
55:09
Speaker 1: is before it's snowmaking in Western resorts. And they said,
55:13
Speaker 1: you know, we're going home for Christmas. There's no snow. Okay.
55:16
Speaker 1: So I found with some girl. It carried me through
55:20
Speaker 1: law school, just talking about the skiing thing. If you
55:24
Speaker 1: ski every day, it is very difficult to ski occasionally
55:29
Speaker 1: you're gonna look as good to everybody else. But there's
55:33
Speaker 1: a very fine edge that, you know. I used to
55:36
Speaker 1: say it take thirty days. It's talking about a thing.
55:38
Speaker 1: Maybe you can do it in twenty days. It's like
55:40
Speaker 1: you're just recovering in this circumstances whatever. Yeah, And then
55:45
Speaker 1: in ninety six, this is all music business people, and
55:49
Speaker 1: I'm leaving that side of my life out. So I
55:52
Speaker 1: was skiing fifteen to twenty days because it was too
55:56
Speaker 1: painful to be honest with you. And this friend of
55:59
Speaker 1: mine said, come out. I got a place in Veil
56:02
Speaker 1: and I was going to cancel at the last minute,
56:04
Speaker 1: and I literally called to cancel and they said, oh,
56:06
Speaker 1: he's got his wife over so excited you're coming, blah
56:09
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. So he moved to Aspen and
56:12
Speaker 1: had a convention. I just came home from there. So
56:15
Speaker 1: now I'm skiing like twenty twenty five days a year,
56:19
Speaker 1: getting it. You know, you know, the equipment is a
56:22
Speaker 1: thing unto itself. Let's not talk Marcel Herscher, who's really
56:26
Speaker 1: about the angle of the boot whatever. But the boots
56:30
Speaker 1: are the skis. You have to I mean, every once
56:32
Speaker 1: in a while you louck into it and it works out.
56:34
Speaker 1: Other times you gotta work. This is not really if
56:36
Speaker 1: you've really lived for this, not something you can do occasionally.
56:40
Speaker 1: Then my girlfriend turns out her family had a condo
56:45
Speaker 1: in the Logit Veil since the seventies. I don't know
56:48
Speaker 1: if you know veil, but Logit Veil is the closest
56:51
Speaker 1: place to the lift. And I used to pooh, pooh veil.
56:56
Speaker 1: Oh it's so flat, et cetera, et cetera. But as
57:00
Speaker 1: I get older, so I ski a lot. I mean
57:03
Speaker 1: last year I skied eighty nine days. Oh wow. Oh
57:06
Speaker 1: usually I ski like two years before, probably sixty or
57:10
Speaker 1: seventy days before that. For like the last twenty years,
57:13
Speaker 1: forty to fifty days.
57:15
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to come back to Philip's. Take a
57:17
Speaker 2: run with me.
57:18
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I just remember skiing Philip's. Now, now there's video
57:23
Speaker 1: of all this stuff, because Philips, you're skiing straight in,
57:26
Speaker 1: you're skiing right toward the rock and then you got
57:28
Speaker 1: to make that left.
57:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. I remember the first time I skied it too.
57:32
Speaker 1: I was terrified, and of course, you know, skiing the
57:35
Speaker 1: hole in the wall back in the backside of Mammoth As. Listen,
57:38
Speaker 1: what people don't understand about Mammoth is there's very serious
57:42
Speaker 1: skiing at Mammoth. You know, in the seventies they didn't
57:45
Speaker 1: have a lift up Lincoln Peak, but now they have that.
57:49
Speaker 1: But you know, all the stuff you know, off the
57:52
Speaker 1: cornice whatever. I mean, there's just really serious skiing there.
57:56
Speaker 1: And you know, it's got a Southern California culture, so
57:59
Speaker 1: there's more snow orders in Manmit than anywhere else. So
58:04
Speaker 1: I got a lot of skis.
58:06
Speaker 2: That's awesome. You have any atomics, I don't, Man, we
58:10
Speaker 2: got to change that.
58:12
Speaker 1: I was always into French skis, okay, the old days, Rosie.
58:17
Speaker 1: Then I got really into Dina Star. Dina Star turns
58:20
Speaker 1: it a certain way that I love. But listen, we're
58:24
Speaker 1: all connected. So you call you somebody and you're getting
58:27
Speaker 1: them at like maybe twenty five cents of the dollar,
58:30
Speaker 1: at most sixty cents of the dollar, and then you
58:32
Speaker 1: got a pure of skis Yo, these keys are not
58:35
Speaker 1: that great, okay, in that they turn what they don't hold.
58:40
Speaker 2: And then it's because you haven't been on atomics. We
58:43
Speaker 2: got it.
58:43
Speaker 1: But then I actually, two years ago I paid retail
58:47
Speaker 1: for a couple of seas because they let me demo everything,
58:50
Speaker 1: and it was not what I thought. You know, a
58:53
Speaker 1: lot of people like those stokely storm writers. They're silky,
58:56
Speaker 1: they're shitty and in the bumps. You know, the Nordica's
58:59
Speaker 1: the hype of about the Norda because I don't understand whatsoever.
59:02
Speaker 1: They're planks.
59:03
Speaker 2: Okay, they're great. I tend to agree with.
59:05
Speaker 1: And the Blizzards are similar. So I got a bunch
59:10
Speaker 1: of K two's and still have a couple of des Stars.
59:14
Speaker 1: And then Body sent me four pairs of his skis
59:17
Speaker 1: Oh Cool, which are very interesting. Skis the eighty eight
59:23
Speaker 1: not good, and therefore he told me he designed that
59:26
Speaker 1: off of Vlon was the only ski that wasn't an original,
59:29
Speaker 1: and he redid it this year. I don't have a
59:31
Speaker 1: pair at this point in time. Yeah, and you know,
59:34
Speaker 1: if you're in veil, the average with in veil is
59:37
Speaker 1: a ninety something. Okay, this is what people don't understand.
59:41
Speaker 1: You need certain numbers of skis. You need your ninety
59:44
Speaker 1: five to ninety nine, you need your one hundred, one
59:46
Speaker 1: hundred and ten, you need your one hundred, one hundred
59:48
Speaker 1: and fifty, and you need your one hundred and sixty
59:50
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty because you got to have the
59:52
Speaker 1: right tool. You know. People say, oh, yeah, you know,
59:54
Speaker 1: and then they're the instructors. I got no type of
59:56
Speaker 1: instructors over they're scheming on their seventy eights. Why why
1:00:01
Speaker 1: beyond your seventy eighth? So boty skis ski like a
1:00:06
Speaker 1: French ski, which is you know, the one oh four
1:00:10
Speaker 1: is a great ski that just stands above the other ones.
1:00:15
Speaker 1: I have. The ninety eight to one tens are good,
1:00:17
Speaker 1: but the one oh four because normally a one oh
1:00:20
Speaker 1: four is too wide for all day every day, but
1:00:24
Speaker 1: for some reason it's not the other thing about it
1:00:27
Speaker 1: for skis like that because they're not heavy whatever they hold,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: which blows my mind. I mean I was out on
1:00:32
Speaker 1: a pier today.
1:00:34
Speaker 2: So yeah, when I switched from K Twoto Atomic, it
1:00:38
Speaker 2: blew my mind because they had been making the best
1:00:41
Speaker 2: skis in the world for the racers for so long
1:00:43
Speaker 2: and they're still hand crafted in Austria.
1:00:46
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Atomic in the seventies had limited distribution
1:00:51
Speaker 1: and limited sales in America. They had these orange skis
1:00:54
Speaker 1: they set atomic in the front in the back. People
1:00:56
Speaker 1: call me atomic atomics. And then of course in the
1:00:59
Speaker 1: her era, you know, that became about a top. I
1:01:03
Speaker 1: mean the thing about atomic race skis. You know this
1:01:06
Speaker 1: is before your time when they had the dampening systems,
1:01:09
Speaker 1: the vas on the rosies, that was when the first thing.
1:01:13
Speaker 1: But you had the atomic duel deck and now they
1:01:18
Speaker 1: have a double deck. Now they have those little you know,
1:01:22
Speaker 1: like silver things in that and you know it's it's
1:01:27
Speaker 1: in the old days. In the seventies you went to
1:01:28
Speaker 1: a shop, they had everything. Now shops only by certain stuff.
1:01:33
Speaker 1: Now in terms of you know, skiing is a sport
1:01:37
Speaker 1: where everybody boasts. You know, I go to college at Middlebury.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, oh, I don't I'm a great skier.
1:01:43
Speaker 1: You gotta everybody talks. But I have a friend big
1:01:47
Speaker 1: in the live business who got very into Hella skiing,
1:01:51
Speaker 1: and he keeps telling me, oh, at the time I
1:01:54
Speaker 1: had a pair of s seven's, you know, the rosie
1:01:58
Speaker 1: who won seventeens. And now I have a pair of
1:02:01
Speaker 1: the K two one sixteens. He says, oh, you're hell
1:02:06
Speaker 1: is skiing. The standard is the one twenty bench chiller. Yeah,
1:02:09
Speaker 1: whatever you have, it's nowhere near as good as that.
1:02:12
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah blah. I mean he really
1:02:14
Speaker 1: put me down one night we were at shit what
1:02:18
Speaker 1: venue is in that la b l ray. It was
1:02:21
Speaker 1: really kind of funny.
1:02:22
Speaker 2: They'll have to thank him for me. I'm glad he
1:02:24
Speaker 2: likes to right.
1:02:25
Speaker 1: You know, as I say, you're not going to have
1:02:27
Speaker 1: a need for a one twenty most inbounds places. But
1:02:32
Speaker 1: the days that you have the one fifteen, you know,
1:02:35
Speaker 1: one sixteen, the days you have them, you want them.
1:02:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there is that's similar with the one twenty.
1:02:43
Speaker 2: It is. It's it just gets skied out so fast
1:02:46
Speaker 2: on resorts nowadays, is the issue. But if you go
1:02:50
Speaker 2: over to Europe, they still seem to just be so
1:02:53
Speaker 2: widespread and lifts and resorts connected lifts and resorts and
1:02:58
Speaker 2: valleys and it just stays fresh for a bit longer.
1:03:01
Speaker 2: But I still ski the one twenty pretty often actually
1:03:04
Speaker 2: on Mammoth here. But I also know exactly where I'm
1:03:08
Speaker 2: going and where to find all the fresh pockets.
1:03:12
Speaker 1: You know. The good thing is, I mean I have
1:03:14
Speaker 1: the you know, since we're right at the foot of
1:03:16
Speaker 1: the mountain, you can change them because you don't want
1:03:19
Speaker 1: to ski, you know, you're un here. One to fifteens
1:03:21
Speaker 1: are good for a couple of hours and then the
1:03:23
Speaker 1: rest of the days. I know, I want something different. Okay, okay,
1:03:26
Speaker 1: let's get back. Hey. Are you a gear freak?
1:03:32
Speaker 2: A gear freak know in the sense that I don't
1:03:36
Speaker 2: research gear and try to find out every little nuance
1:03:39
Speaker 2: about it, but a gear freak in the sense that
1:03:42
Speaker 2: I'm very intuitive and I know what I want it
1:03:45
Speaker 2: to feel like. So my translation to an engineer and
1:03:49
Speaker 2: to the people building the skis is very productive and
1:03:53
Speaker 2: they appreciate it, and they always are surprised. They'll give
1:03:57
Speaker 2: me like a blind test on different flex patterns things,
1:04:00
Speaker 2: and I can sniff it out really easily and like
1:04:04
Speaker 2: tell them down to down to very minute changes what
1:04:10
Speaker 2: I want to see. And so yes in the sense
1:04:13
Speaker 2: of performance. No, in the sense of I just don't
1:04:17
Speaker 2: have enough time in the day to dive deep on
1:04:19
Speaker 2: the internet to find out what does what and why
1:04:22
Speaker 2: it does what it does and all those things.
1:04:32
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start outside the skis what boots.
1:04:35
Speaker 2: Do you use atomic as well?
1:04:37
Speaker 1: Okay, which model? I use?
1:04:39
Speaker 2: The Hawks one thirty, the X Extended XTD because it's
1:04:44
Speaker 2: it has a walk mode, ski tour a lot, and
1:04:46
Speaker 2: it has the BOA system on the lower lower half
1:04:49
Speaker 2: as well, which I'm a big fan of in the
1:04:51
Speaker 2: last couple of years.
1:04:52
Speaker 1: Why are you a big fan of Boa?
1:04:54
Speaker 2: It's just my feet in general get freezing. I have
1:05:00
Speaker 2: I think what's called raynods. It's like a circulation disease,
1:05:03
Speaker 2: and I can never for two decades now, could never
1:05:10
Speaker 2: use my lower buckles because I have a high instep
1:05:13
Speaker 2: as well in my arch, so that top buckle would
1:05:15
Speaker 2: always just cut off circulation to my foot. But now
1:05:18
Speaker 2: with the Boa system, it really pulls everything evenly and
1:05:21
Speaker 2: wraps the shell around your foot versus applying pressure points
1:05:26
Speaker 2: into locations. So it just makes a ton of sense,
1:05:29
Speaker 2: and it's designed well. It's robust. I snowmobile to access
1:05:35
Speaker 2: terrain a lot, and if or if I kick it
1:05:37
Speaker 2: off on a rock hiking or anything, the BOA systems
1:05:40
Speaker 2: made to detach and just pop back in. So I
1:05:43
Speaker 2: personally haven't had any issues with it, which has been great,
1:05:46
Speaker 2: but I am. I am a fan just for maybe
1:05:51
Speaker 2: getting my boots a little more snug, because, as you know,
1:05:55
Speaker 2: any little minute adjustment you make, it starts with your boots.
1:05:59
Speaker 2: That's what's going to roll your ski over on edge.
1:06:01
Speaker 2: So I like a stiffer boot. I have one thirty
1:06:04
Speaker 2: is the stiffest I can get. I might even go
1:06:06
Speaker 2: stiffer if they offered it, but that's a rare occurrence
1:06:10
Speaker 2: unless you're skiing world.
1:06:11
Speaker 1: Well, I always skied in layings till my feet. I
1:06:14
Speaker 1: almost had to give up skiing, and I skied in
1:06:16
Speaker 1: the Nordicas for a while, and then five years ago
1:06:20
Speaker 1: I went back to the RS one thirty and it
1:06:23
Speaker 1: has a very progressive flex. Nordica is a little hard
1:06:28
Speaker 1: on the initiation. Then you go, we're the laying irrelevant
1:06:32
Speaker 1: of its reputation. I just got a new pair of
1:06:35
Speaker 1: the new ones because I woke up and I said,
1:06:37
Speaker 1: the liners I'm gonna get to the middle season want
1:06:39
Speaker 1: new boots, and they're not gonna be No one's going
1:06:41
Speaker 1: to have them.
1:06:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and liners are important too. I do a foam.
1:06:46
Speaker 2: I like a foam injected molded liner.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: Oh well, who does your foaming?
1:06:51
Speaker 2: The factory that I go over to Austria.
1:06:54
Speaker 1: Okay, wait wait, I'm really interested because there's this uh.
1:06:58
Speaker 1: I mean it's great talking to someone because most people
1:07:00
Speaker 1: then you get really deep things. They don't care, they
1:07:01
Speaker 1: don't know because on Instagram they got this place hun
1:07:05
Speaker 1: Sport in Austria and they show their foaming whatever. And
1:07:09
Speaker 1: now the guy works for leg he's in French. Okay,
1:07:12
Speaker 1: you go to the factory. Hey, what do they do
1:07:16
Speaker 1: for a footbed?
1:07:18
Speaker 2: I actually use a it's not a custom, it's it's
1:07:23
Speaker 2: there's three different models, but I have a sponsor and
1:07:27
Speaker 2: a collaboration with a footbed that's always worked or not always,
1:07:30
Speaker 2: it's worked well for me. I've been trying it for
1:07:32
Speaker 2: the last little bit and it's called remind in Soul.
1:07:36
Speaker 2: So I use that for my footbed.
1:07:38
Speaker 1: Well, before you know, if there are three different models,
1:07:40
Speaker 1: what's the difference.
1:07:41
Speaker 2: Is the medic like the medium model? You just find
1:07:44
Speaker 2: what works best.
1:07:45
Speaker 1: For well, it's high for that okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:47
Speaker 2: Exactly, and so I slip that in. Then I go
1:07:51
Speaker 2: foam foam injected at the atomic factory.
1:07:54
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, I mean you know I have pham boots
1:07:58
Speaker 1: back at the beginning, like Boa in the begin you
1:08:01
Speaker 1: can get a bad foam job.
1:08:03
Speaker 2: Oh you can, And so I use who used to
1:08:06
Speaker 2: do Marcel's? I was told that I think Marcel went
1:08:10
Speaker 2: through forty boots one season when he was in his
1:08:14
Speaker 2: prime racing at Atomic. He's no longer there, but I
1:08:18
Speaker 2: can't remember the name. And I'm so sad. He'll be
1:08:22
Speaker 2: sad if he ever hears this. But he's amazing. He's
1:08:24
Speaker 2: been at Atomic forever and he's done a lot of
1:08:27
Speaker 2: foam liners. Let's just put it that way.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: And how dense is your ful?
1:08:32
Speaker 2: I go as dense as possible. I go with what
1:08:34
Speaker 2: they're given the World Cup skiers.
1:08:36
Speaker 1: And then to what degree is there a breaking period?
1:08:42
Speaker 2: That varies, as you know, depending on how long your
1:08:46
Speaker 2: skin and actually ski touring, so walking uphills breaks in
1:08:50
Speaker 2: your boots pretty fast, which I enjoy because you're you're
1:08:54
Speaker 2: constantly flexing back and forth because you put it in
1:08:57
Speaker 2: walk mode. Now your boot's flexing backwards and forwards. So
1:09:00
Speaker 2: they break in much faster than they used to because
1:09:02
Speaker 2: skiing around the mountain, you're just absorbing, You're hitting bumps
1:09:06
Speaker 2: and absorbing, and they're just doing their little minute adjustments.
1:09:08
Speaker 2: But once you start doing big strides and walking yourself
1:09:11
Speaker 2: up five thousand foot peak or whatever, five thousand feet
1:09:16
Speaker 2: vertical of a bigger twelve thousand foot peak. Really but yeah,
1:09:22
Speaker 2: that really happens fast.
1:09:25
Speaker 1: Oh okay, you know you have the hawks? Do you
1:09:28
Speaker 1: have any red stors for inbounds? Did?
1:09:30
Speaker 2: I went that way? But sadly, I probably skied less
1:09:35
Speaker 2: than you last year, which makes me sad to hear
1:09:37
Speaker 2: myself say that. But I because of this project, because
1:09:41
Speaker 2: of my ambitions, because of my artwork, because of all
1:09:44
Speaker 2: these different things, I don't ski as much as I
1:09:48
Speaker 2: would like to in that and I also have two
1:09:51
Speaker 2: small kids, so a lot of my skiing on the
1:09:53
Speaker 2: mountain is with them, which is amazing, and it's just different.
1:09:57
Speaker 2: So I try to get used to my boots so
1:10:01
Speaker 2: that way, if I get called tomorrow to go on
1:10:04
Speaker 2: a Helli trip in Canada, I'm skiing the same boots
1:10:07
Speaker 2: that I was skiing on the hill. So I've been
1:10:11
Speaker 2: pretty much the last couple of years just sticking to
1:10:13
Speaker 2: one boot a season.
1:10:15
Speaker 1: Okay, And every season you get a new pier. Yeah,
1:10:18
Speaker 1: and at this point you only have one pair, you
1:10:20
Speaker 1: have multiple piers.
1:10:21
Speaker 2: I have multiple I luckily have access right, Okay, but
1:10:28
Speaker 2: bindings bindings also atomic, but that's the one technology that
1:10:33
Speaker 2: Atomic actually companies widely share. Solomon had the Solomon Shift, Yes,
1:10:40
Speaker 2: the shift and for touring, and then that they had
1:10:43
Speaker 2: an sth binding which is now called the strive, which
1:10:47
Speaker 2: I ski of fifteen to sixteen din because I don't
1:10:50
Speaker 2: like to come out, so crank them down.
1:10:54
Speaker 1: I've only been hurt when they came out.
1:10:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you want to stay in there. So yeah,
1:10:59
Speaker 2: that's than the most bomber binding. And I've I skied
1:11:03
Speaker 2: it long before I was on Atomic. They just have
1:11:07
Speaker 2: if it's not broke, don't fix it kind of mentality.
1:11:10
Speaker 1: Well, do you on your back country skis you ski
1:11:13
Speaker 1: on the shift? I do, yeah, And so the shift
1:11:17
Speaker 1: allows you to move the mounting point, move the setter.
1:11:21
Speaker 2: Not necessarily frontward and backwards. It's not on a track system,
1:11:25
Speaker 2: so it's still mounted toe piece, heel piece, but it
1:11:27
Speaker 2: allows you to click the heel down and then put
1:11:29
Speaker 2: it into walk mode. So now your heel releases.
1:11:33
Speaker 1: Oh I guess that body skis And I mean he
1:11:35
Speaker 1: was telling me that you could move them back and forth.
1:11:37
Speaker 1: That's not what I ski on.
1:11:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, there there's one that was called the tracker that
1:11:43
Speaker 2: you can move forward and back. I'm pretty sure. But
1:11:45
Speaker 2: the shift, the shift is mounted directly into the ski,
1:11:49
Speaker 2: so and stays stays put.
1:11:51
Speaker 1: Okay, So mounting point.
1:11:55
Speaker 2: Mounting point this is this is useful. Actually, I should
1:11:58
Speaker 2: do this on a ski podcast. I get that question
1:12:01
Speaker 2: more than any other question. I because I create my
1:12:06
Speaker 2: own skis. I now have a model that is an
1:12:09
Speaker 2: eighty five, a ninety at one hundred, a one ten,
1:12:13
Speaker 2: and a one twenty, and so I try to put
1:12:16
Speaker 2: the factory line. There's there's lines that go above the
1:12:20
Speaker 2: factory line and lines that go behind it, and I
1:12:22
Speaker 2: try to put the factory line at where I personally
1:12:25
Speaker 2: love to skim. And the one twenty we just changed
1:12:29
Speaker 2: the mold. We had carbon stringers in the mold for
1:12:32
Speaker 2: a long time and we just took those out because
1:12:35
Speaker 2: they have a new wood core that they were able
1:12:38
Speaker 2: to accomplish the same flex pattern and actually a little
1:12:42
Speaker 2: stiffer in the tip while again the same I guess
1:12:47
Speaker 2: rebound and everything. The ski performed equally, but it was
1:12:51
Speaker 2: a lesser impact on the environment to just have wood
1:12:54
Speaker 2: in there. And so they built that mold with my
1:12:57
Speaker 2: one ten and my one hundred, so we were able
1:13:00
Speaker 2: to test it on those skis years prior, and now
1:13:02
Speaker 2: they implemented it in the one twenty. But because I
1:13:05
Speaker 2: told you how sensitive I am, the factory line stayed
1:13:08
Speaker 2: where I've always skied it. But now, because the tip
1:13:11
Speaker 2: is just a minute percent stiffer, I now move one
1:13:17
Speaker 2: and a half centimeters behind the factory line. So moving
1:13:20
Speaker 2: forward everything is like years out, sadly, but moving forward
1:13:25
Speaker 2: in I want to say in the twenty six twenty
1:13:28
Speaker 2: seven ski, the factory line will not be correct again.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: But we've only just figured this out in the more
1:13:35
Speaker 2: recent years, so it will take time to implement.
1:13:37
Speaker 1: Okay, nail this down. The ski redone got a stiffer tip. Yeah,
1:13:47
Speaker 1: you're mounting it minus one point five.
1:13:50
Speaker 2: Correct, And I recommend it for general people to even
1:13:54
Speaker 2: go back minus two because I personally spin and flip
1:13:58
Speaker 2: and like my tails to release turns, and I do
1:14:01
Speaker 2: what's called butters where I jump into like a three
1:14:03
Speaker 2: sixty and push my noses into the snow, and so
1:14:07
Speaker 2: swingweight is important to me, but it swingweight is also
1:14:10
Speaker 2: important for anyone skiing powder in the trees, and how
1:14:14
Speaker 2: the where the tip releases and how the tails release,
1:14:17
Speaker 2: so I do recommend staying close to where I ski,
1:14:20
Speaker 2: but a little more tip for people that never jump
1:14:24
Speaker 2: or go backwards or spin is always is always a
1:14:28
Speaker 2: good thing because the more tip you have, the more
1:14:30
Speaker 2: float you have. So I personally like them at minus
1:14:35
Speaker 2: one point five, but I think that in between that
1:14:39
Speaker 2: minus two all the way to minus three range is
1:14:42
Speaker 2: great for the everyday directional skier.
1:14:45
Speaker 1: Okay, but the line that comes on the ski is incorrect.
1:14:49
Speaker 2: Is incorrect. It's still skis great there, but I'm just
1:14:53
Speaker 2: so sensitive and it is the line that comes on
1:14:56
Speaker 2: the ski is exactly where it's been for the last
1:14:58
Speaker 2: however many years, so atomic had no way of knowing
1:15:03
Speaker 2: until I had enough time on them to be like,
1:15:05
Speaker 2: wait a second, this isn't feeling right. Let's try this.
1:15:08
Speaker 2: So I played around with it for quite a while
1:15:10
Speaker 2: until I landed on exactly where I want to go.
1:15:13
Speaker 2: But luckily, more often than not, people mount wherever they
1:15:20
Speaker 2: feel like they should be mounting their skis, So a
1:15:23
Speaker 2: lot of people go all over the place anyways, and well.
1:15:26
Speaker 1: You know, they used to have that mark or binding.
1:15:28
Speaker 1: We could the skitzo, we could move faster. But you know,
1:15:32
Speaker 1: there's so much discussion on this in line, but unless
1:15:35
Speaker 1: you're someone with a lot of skis a lot of stuff,
1:15:38
Speaker 1: people don't have the opportunity to try on all these
1:15:41
Speaker 1: different mounting points totally.
1:15:43
Speaker 2: And what I hope happens someday it would be so
1:15:46
Speaker 2: amazing is that all binding companies get together and decide
1:15:51
Speaker 2: that one universal hole pattern is agreed upon, and then
1:15:57
Speaker 2: skis could come pre drilled with in set inset screws,
1:16:01
Speaker 2: just like snowboards, and all you have to do is
1:16:03
Speaker 2: move your toe piece heel piece. When you travel overseas,
1:16:07
Speaker 2: you could take your binding off and it's easier to
1:16:09
Speaker 2: pack like. There would be so much benefit to everyone
1:16:13
Speaker 2: being in the same hole pattern and not having to
1:16:16
Speaker 2: drill skis because you can. You can. It's contrary to
1:16:19
Speaker 2: what people believe. You can drill skis a lot, especially
1:16:22
Speaker 2: if you're plugging the holes just for water proofing the
1:16:25
Speaker 2: wood core. But you can drill and re drill and
1:16:28
Speaker 2: drill and redrill quite a lot. I've done five six
1:16:33
Speaker 2: different binding mounting points and skis still feel great and
1:16:36
Speaker 2: have the same response and liveliness and stuff. So as
1:16:40
Speaker 2: long as you're plugging plugging holes.
1:16:42
Speaker 1: It's it's fine, let's go back to the beginning. You
1:16:45
Speaker 1: make this deal after seven years, the K two with
1:16:47
Speaker 1: Atomic and what's the first ski.
1:16:52
Speaker 2: The bent Chetler. It was the bent Chetler. It was
1:16:55
Speaker 2: a one to twenty three at that point in time.
1:16:58
Speaker 2: And so I don't know if you would have met
1:17:00
Speaker 2: this gentleman, but he was widely respected and appreciated. His
1:17:04
Speaker 2: name was Rupert and he went by Keighley, and he
1:17:09
Speaker 2: worked for Atomic for sixty years. He just recently passed away.
1:17:13
Speaker 2: But I came on board myself, Darren Rahlves and the
1:17:20
Speaker 2: Eric Gay. He was a ski racer and I want
1:17:25
Speaker 2: to say he had a brother too. It was there
1:17:27
Speaker 2: was a few of us and mostly racers and myself
1:17:32
Speaker 2: and we were testing the very first prototype of my ski,
1:17:36
Speaker 2: this other ski called the Atlas, and kind of figuring
1:17:39
Speaker 2: things out in Alaska and Wolfgang the president of Atomic,
1:17:43
Speaker 2: was there, Keighley was there, a lot of the senior
1:17:46
Speaker 2: leadership was there to try and figure out where we
1:17:49
Speaker 2: were taking the brand. And the skis performed horribly. My
1:17:55
Speaker 2: ski did the very first proto. They were just an
1:17:58
Speaker 2: all gray top sheet, black bass and just the first
1:18:01
Speaker 2: iteration of what I tried to translate to the Austrians,
1:18:06
Speaker 2: and so Keighley and I sat down, marked them all up,
1:18:09
Speaker 2: decided exactly how we wanted them to look and change,
1:18:12
Speaker 2: and he went back. This was we skied Alaska in April.
1:18:15
Speaker 2: He went back had a new prototype for me to
1:18:18
Speaker 2: test in the middle of summer. So I flew over
1:18:20
Speaker 2: to Austria and skied them on a glacier without any
1:18:23
Speaker 2: powder whatsoever, and they performed. Like I said earlier, I
1:18:27
Speaker 2: can very much feel how they'd perform, and they outperformed
1:18:31
Speaker 2: anything I've ever skied in my life. And so we
1:18:34
Speaker 2: committed to it and released them that January of two
1:18:39
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, I want to say, or really really
1:18:42
Speaker 2: early in two thousand and eight, and they just built
1:18:48
Speaker 2: built steam, I guess you could say it just like
1:18:51
Speaker 2: kind of became a cult following to some degree, and
1:18:55
Speaker 2: then it just kept building and building and building, and
1:18:58
Speaker 2: it won. The skis won some awards over the years,
1:19:01
Speaker 2: and just we kept pushing and progressing the mold and
1:19:05
Speaker 2: trying new shapes. And I took a lot of influence
1:19:08
Speaker 2: from the way Rob Machado shaped surfboards and tried some
1:19:11
Speaker 2: different horizon tech technology where there was multidimensional rocker, and
1:19:17
Speaker 2: just because I don't understand hydrodynamics like a surfer does.
1:19:20
Speaker 2: But Rob is one of the world's best surfers. So
1:19:23
Speaker 2: his glide and how he can where he can gain
1:19:27
Speaker 2: speed on a wave and how he rides on top
1:19:31
Speaker 2: of water translates well to frozen water as well. So
1:19:34
Speaker 2: I talked to him all the time about different concepts
1:19:37
Speaker 2: and things.
1:19:37
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start. The original one was a one twenty three.
1:19:41
Speaker 1: Why'd you change the standard to a one twenty.
1:19:44
Speaker 2: Because as we were testing rocker profiles, and then once
1:19:49
Speaker 2: we came up with the horizon tech the multidimensional rocker.
1:19:56
Speaker 2: When you have something that's bent on the edges too,
1:20:00
Speaker 2: you have as much or more surface area than if
1:20:03
Speaker 2: it were to flat, so you're actually getting a similar
1:20:06
Speaker 2: amount of floatation, so you can change the shape, and
1:20:10
Speaker 2: though that's not underfoot where your tip is floating in
1:20:13
Speaker 2: the powder and not diving. We were just testing different
1:20:16
Speaker 2: things there. And then for that same swingweight concept, the
1:20:20
Speaker 2: narrower the ski, the less less reaction time it has
1:20:27
Speaker 2: if you are spinning and doing things you want. If
1:20:30
Speaker 2: you go too wide and too fat, it just it
1:20:33
Speaker 2: just doesn't work. I've tried all different kinds of things,
1:20:36
Speaker 2: so there is there is a very fine balance on
1:20:39
Speaker 2: where you want that waste width to be, and I've
1:20:42
Speaker 2: found one twenty to be just a very sweet spot
1:20:46
Speaker 2: for fresh powder.
1:20:47
Speaker 1: Tell me about Horizon Tech.
1:20:50
Speaker 2: Horizon Tech was exactly that, just to gain more surface
1:20:55
Speaker 2: area and more floatation without changing the width of the
1:20:59
Speaker 2: tip and actually slimming down the ski. Like I just said,
1:21:02
Speaker 2: So we wanted to bring things down but not lose
1:21:06
Speaker 2: performance and flotation. So it was just we beveled edges,
1:21:10
Speaker 2: we added like a whole spoon concept, like just plastered
1:21:16
Speaker 2: it on the ski. We tried a bunch of different
1:21:17
Speaker 2: stuff until we landed on the horizon tech. But how
1:21:21
Speaker 2: it cuts through snow and where if you have an
1:21:25
Speaker 2: edge all the way around, even in variable snow, you're
1:21:28
Speaker 2: still going to get hook a tip from time to time,
1:21:30
Speaker 2: And so how that smears through variable snow was also
1:21:34
Speaker 2: another thing I was trying to to accomplish. And and yeah,
1:21:39
Speaker 2: it just had a number of different a different reasons,
1:21:46
Speaker 2: I guess you could say, of why I wanted it
1:21:48
Speaker 2: to be the way I wanted to.
1:21:49
Speaker 1: Okay, you get a pair of skis from the factory.
1:21:52
Speaker 1: You dull the tips and tails.
1:21:54
Speaker 2: I do not.
1:21:55
Speaker 1: I do not either.
1:21:56
Speaker 2: I don't believe it factory factory. I don't. I don't
1:22:00
Speaker 2: even wax them. I do after a time, but I don't.
1:22:03
Speaker 1: I'm on the exact same page. I never had this
1:22:05
Speaker 1: problem they're talking about. No, Okay, the original skis, what
1:22:09
Speaker 1: was inside of them? There was.
1:22:13
Speaker 2: Now you're testing me because we've gone poplar, We've gone
1:22:16
Speaker 2: oh wait.
1:22:16
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait wait wait, let's forget that, because
1:22:19
Speaker 1: let's just the president. You have the one twenty. How
1:22:22
Speaker 1: do you decide to expand the brand narrower? Uh?
1:22:29
Speaker 2: Sorry to ask that question again. How do I decide
1:22:32
Speaker 2: to expand the brand narrower? Mean?
1:22:34
Speaker 1: I mean you start with the one twenty. How do
1:22:36
Speaker 1: you decide to have small.
1:22:37
Speaker 2: To get more skis? Oh? Okay, that I mean simple.
1:22:41
Speaker 2: It's because you said it on this call. You need
1:22:45
Speaker 2: a quiver of skis. I don't ski a one twenty
1:22:47
Speaker 2: all the time. Nobody in their right mind with Skia
1:22:49
Speaker 2: one twenty all the time. You it's just like surfing,
1:22:53
Speaker 2: or just like anything. There's skis designed for a type
1:22:57
Speaker 2: of skiing, and you've go out in the rain, rain, sleet,
1:23:02
Speaker 2: or snow, you know, and that is going to be
1:23:07
Speaker 2: what ski you decide. So in the park I like
1:23:10
Speaker 2: a narrower ski in coolar season where I'm skiing these
1:23:14
Speaker 2: long sierra coolars, I like around a one hundred waist
1:23:18
Speaker 2: ski and every day soft snow crud skiing, I really
1:23:24
Speaker 2: like skiing a one ten. I find it has a
1:23:26
Speaker 2: perfect balance for me to be able to jump off
1:23:29
Speaker 2: cliffs and do the things and still ride through very
1:23:33
Speaker 2: cut up, chopped, skied out powder. And then a one
1:23:36
Speaker 2: to twenty is fantastic for untouched virgin powder.
1:23:42
Speaker 1: You know.
1:23:43
Speaker 2: So it's uh, it just gives you the.
1:23:45
Speaker 1: Okay, I looked online what you just redid the narrower
1:23:48
Speaker 1: ones last year? Okay? Yeah, So other than waste with
1:23:54
Speaker 1: what is the difference in these skis.
1:23:58
Speaker 2: That you're also testing me because we're two years ahead,
1:24:01
Speaker 2: So I'm always trying to remember really we're yeah, we're
1:24:04
Speaker 2: years ahead of like where we land for commercial skis.
1:24:08
Speaker 2: But it's mold shapes, its wood blends, its materials. There
1:24:14
Speaker 2: is a big initiative to have more environmentally conscious materials.
1:24:20
Speaker 2: There's we're always trying different resins, different like there's poplar
1:24:27
Speaker 2: and there was Karuba wood for a while, which was
1:24:30
Speaker 2: a blend. And there's there's been so many things that
1:24:34
Speaker 2: I get lost. Like I told you, I know the
1:24:37
Speaker 2: feeling and like.
1:24:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I mean that's a couple of things. The
1:24:42
Speaker 1: big breakthrough in the fifties and sixties was the metal
1:24:45
Speaker 1: ski that it was the fiberglass ski. Yeah. Then in
1:24:49
Speaker 1: the late seventies there was the Rosie rock, which brought
1:24:53
Speaker 1: back a metal ski. Okay, forget the foam cor era. Okay. Yeah,
1:24:58
Speaker 1: So now you have people say, I mean the bizards
1:25:02
Speaker 1: they're made with two layers of titanol. Okay, So do
1:25:07
Speaker 1: you feel that just whatever the right pick of wood
1:25:11
Speaker 1: is and some glass resin is enough. You had carbon
1:25:16
Speaker 1: in one ski, you took it out.
1:25:18
Speaker 2: We have carbon. We've put aluminum inserts for the binding
1:25:22
Speaker 2: so it doesn't rip out. We have certain things and
1:25:25
Speaker 2: then the horizon tech is a tech insert so that
1:25:28
Speaker 2: breaks up the wood. But long story short, yes, I
1:25:32
Speaker 2: think everything that you see in skis that moves away
1:25:36
Speaker 2: from wood is a marketing effort to try and make
1:25:41
Speaker 2: the next thing. But we all go back to wood.
1:25:45
Speaker 2: It performs the best. And if you're creating a world
1:25:48
Speaker 2: Cup downhill ski. Yes, you're gonna have a ton of
1:25:51
Speaker 2: metal in there, but for the everyday skier, you do
1:25:53
Speaker 2: not need metal skis. There's no reason to have that
1:25:58
Speaker 2: stiff of a ski opinion. Skiing should be fun and
1:26:02
Speaker 2: not hard work. Like you're trying to do so many
1:26:08
Speaker 2: things with our companies are trying to do so many
1:26:11
Speaker 2: things to make themselves stand out or be different. But
1:26:14
Speaker 2: I think I mean, Atomics turns seventy years old this year.
1:26:18
Speaker 2: They've tried a lot of things, and there's a reason
1:26:21
Speaker 2: where landing back at wood would molds.
1:26:33
Speaker 1: Okay, if you have a non metal ski, what do
1:26:36
Speaker 1: you do about torsion control and holding on hard snow.
1:26:40
Speaker 2: That goes into the layers the fiberglass layers and how
1:26:45
Speaker 2: many they put in because there is more than just
1:26:48
Speaker 2: wood in the ski, but the edge, what the edge
1:26:51
Speaker 2: is made of. There's the sidewalls make a huge different.
1:26:55
Speaker 2: The cap sidewall versus a multi dimensional sidewall that breaks down.
1:27:00
Speaker 2: That is a massive on the torsional side. I mean
1:27:05
Speaker 2: even the horizon tech affects it torsionally. Everything that you
1:27:09
Speaker 2: build into it is going to affect it torsionally. So
1:27:13
Speaker 2: you add layers or remove layers according and the metal,
1:27:17
Speaker 2: in my opinion, is just too aggressive for your everyday skier.
1:27:25
Speaker 2: I mean, you have Darren Ralves still and there's I
1:27:29
Speaker 2: guess I could take that back. It depends if you're
1:27:32
Speaker 2: really railing rumors and trying to pretend you're ski racing.
1:27:38
Speaker 2: It's fun, like there is time and a place for that,
1:27:42
Speaker 2: and so I do. I do take back what I said.
1:27:45
Speaker 2: But generally speaking, if you're ski in the mountain after
1:27:48
Speaker 2: some fresh snow and it's chopped up and you're just
1:27:51
Speaker 2: having a trying to have a good time on a
1:27:53
Speaker 2: pair of skis, You're going to be happiest with a
1:27:57
Speaker 2: woodcrese ski.
1:28:00
Speaker 1: Okay, Generally speaking, your skis are a cycle of two years,
1:28:04
Speaker 1: three years, or just when you come up with a
1:28:06
Speaker 1: new thing.
1:28:07
Speaker 2: I try to keep it to when we come up
1:28:10
Speaker 2: with a new thing. I've I certainly we're not exempt
1:28:14
Speaker 2: of marketing efforts by any stretch of the imagination. But
1:28:18
Speaker 2: luckily for me, because I'm an artist and because there's
1:28:22
Speaker 2: such an authentic tie to what we're creating, there is
1:28:28
Speaker 2: a marketing story always present. Because I'm expressing myself both
1:28:32
Speaker 2: artistically and in the shape of the ski. So we
1:28:35
Speaker 2: try really hard. We constantly we want to progress, and
1:28:38
Speaker 2: we want to so sustainability is a huge way to progress.
1:28:42
Speaker 2: There's so many new materials. There's flax instead of fiberglass.
1:28:47
Speaker 2: There's all these different things that are being tested and tried,
1:28:51
Speaker 2: but and tell they're guaranteed to be at the performance
1:28:57
Speaker 2: that atomic is known for. They're not willing to take
1:28:59
Speaker 2: a you see it happen with I think K two
1:29:02
Speaker 2: had to recall a ton of skis. They went with
1:29:04
Speaker 2: some eco friendly resin or something else, and that every
1:29:08
Speaker 2: ski was just splitting and blowing apart. So it needs
1:29:12
Speaker 2: to be deeply tested. And that's why we're two three
1:29:16
Speaker 2: years out on skis and why I don't know what
1:29:19
Speaker 2: I'm skiing half the time because we're like constantly the
1:29:23
Speaker 2: factory is trying to push the boundaries of ski technology
1:29:27
Speaker 2: and think of what is new, and explore materials and
1:29:31
Speaker 2: do all of those things, but ultimately they won't put
1:29:34
Speaker 2: it out to the world until it's tried and tested.
1:29:38
Speaker 1: As a practical matter, how much are you testing skis?
1:29:45
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I don't have Like a for example,
1:29:51
Speaker 2: talking to Rob, I had this crazy idea to put
1:29:54
Speaker 2: channels in the bottoms of my skis to talking about
1:29:58
Speaker 2: gliding on the surface for a our specific ski and
1:30:01
Speaker 2: having the edges almost wrap. And we tried this concept.
1:30:05
Speaker 2: I had the factory build me something and it almost
1:30:08
Speaker 2: killed me. It was like racetracks, just like staying straight
1:30:11
Speaker 2: in the snow, and they wouldn't turn at all, and
1:30:14
Speaker 2: by like concept totally failed. So if I come up
1:30:17
Speaker 2: with an idea like thinking outside the box, which I
1:30:20
Speaker 2: do quite often, they'll I'll test it if they if
1:30:24
Speaker 2: they have the time, which they generally make the time
1:30:26
Speaker 2: for me because they want to progress. So we'll test
1:30:29
Speaker 2: something and see if it makes a difference, and then
1:30:33
Speaker 2: if we're onto something, then the rest of the team
1:30:35
Speaker 2: starts testing it. Like Darren rahlves is one of the
1:30:38
Speaker 2: best ski testers, and he was a World Cup Downhill
1:30:43
Speaker 2: GS superdude skier that now skis Big Mountain primarily and
1:30:48
Speaker 2: his understanding of skis it's deep too. So it's all
1:30:54
Speaker 2: the atomic team, from the free skiers to the racers. Well,
1:30:58
Speaker 2: I mean, Mikayla's stay in on what she knows and
1:31:01
Speaker 2: she's just winning in racing and doing her thing. But
1:31:04
Speaker 2: the skier, the racers that are not on the hunt
1:31:09
Speaker 2: for the globe, if you will, are testing new skis
1:31:14
Speaker 2: a lot.
1:31:15
Speaker 1: So okay, so you have your skis, You're happy with
1:31:18
Speaker 1: your skis. Does the change come from the fact we're saying, hey,
1:31:22
Speaker 1: we have a new material.
1:31:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, that stems it a lot. They have something for
1:31:28
Speaker 2: me to try. They have something that they've been working
1:31:33
Speaker 2: on or think it will make a big enough impact
1:31:38
Speaker 2: environmentally to try it. So yeah, it does stem from
1:31:41
Speaker 2: that a lot. And then shape and weird ideas come
1:31:44
Speaker 2: from me generally speaking.
1:31:46
Speaker 1: Okay, Atomic has your line which has expanded into all
1:31:52
Speaker 1: those widths, but it also has the Mavericks. I mean,
1:31:55
Speaker 1: what's up with that? That is.
1:32:01
Speaker 2: I going back to what we I mean, they are different.
1:32:03
Speaker 2: There's stiffer, there's they're a bit more chargey than my ski.
1:32:09
Speaker 2: But it's it's there's no getting around it. It's marketing
1:32:14
Speaker 2: as well. It's like, we have something that's working extremely
1:32:17
Speaker 2: well with my ski, but my ski is not made
1:32:19
Speaker 2: for everyone. So streamline it a little bit, make it
1:32:23
Speaker 2: a bit stiffer, make it less tail rocker, take the
1:32:27
Speaker 2: twin tip out of it. Do all of these things
1:32:30
Speaker 2: and use the same construction and the waste widths and
1:32:35
Speaker 2: the tip withs and the side walls and all of that,
1:32:38
Speaker 2: because we know that performs well on my ski, and
1:32:40
Speaker 2: now let's try that in a different mold, in a
1:32:43
Speaker 2: different shape. And so the Maverick and the Backland and
1:32:47
Speaker 2: my ski all have similarities for sure, but they are
1:32:51
Speaker 2: different enough. That goes back to what you're saying of
1:32:54
Speaker 2: that quiver, because you personally might not I mean, I
1:33:00
Speaker 2: would love for you to try my skis because I
1:33:01
Speaker 2: think you would be pleasantly surprised, But you personally might
1:33:04
Speaker 2: not need tail rocker, or you might not care for
1:33:09
Speaker 2: the same swing weight that I care for, which is
1:33:11
Speaker 2: totally fine. I ski differently than you ski, and that's
1:33:15
Speaker 2: why there should be a wide array of skis is
1:33:18
Speaker 2: because people do ski differently. We're all at different levels,
1:33:21
Speaker 2: we're all at different abilities and all that kind of stuff.
1:33:25
Speaker 2: So I do think there's kind of a ski atomic
1:33:28
Speaker 2: wants to make a ski for everyone essentially.
1:33:31
Speaker 1: Okay, but we could say, generally speaking, you like a
1:33:34
Speaker 1: softer ski.
1:33:36
Speaker 2: That's that's a loose term, yes, And no, I don't
1:33:40
Speaker 2: like too soft of a ski. And and but I mean,
1:33:45
Speaker 2: if you are so, let me take it back. If
1:33:47
Speaker 2: you're comparing me to other ski brands. Yes, I like
1:33:49
Speaker 2: a softer ski.
1:33:50
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the original DTA Star Pro rock
1:33:53
Speaker 1: Yeah Provider was just, you know, really stiff.
1:33:56
Speaker 2: Stiff and straight. And when I came to Atomic, the
1:33:58
Speaker 2: turn radius was forty this it was so it was
1:34:01
Speaker 2: like writing a piece of just like dense board, and
1:34:05
Speaker 2: my turn radius is nineteen meter now it has rocker
1:34:08
Speaker 2: and all these things. So yes, I if you're comparing
1:34:12
Speaker 2: me within within some like line skis, there's some that
1:34:18
Speaker 2: are extremely soft that are too soft for me. But
1:34:21
Speaker 2: in the grand scheme of things, I do like a
1:34:23
Speaker 2: softer ski.
1:34:24
Speaker 1: How many pairs of these skis do you sell?
1:34:28
Speaker 2: I'm not really supposed to know those numbers, but what
1:34:32
Speaker 2: I do know is that it's the number the bent
1:34:36
Speaker 2: line and is the number one ski sold globally. My
1:34:43
Speaker 2: skis and particularly I think the hundred waste width, so
1:34:48
Speaker 2: I think I'm allowed to say that. But it does,
1:34:51
Speaker 2: it does very well.
1:34:52
Speaker 1: Okay, people know to what degree are you marketing the
1:34:57
Speaker 1: ski to both reach new markets and reach people that
1:35:02
Speaker 1: might be skiing on something.
1:35:03
Speaker 2: Different that falls a lot on Atomic And they would
1:35:09
Speaker 2: have those answers much better than me. I'm my job
1:35:13
Speaker 2: is tasked with. They give me a creative director role,
1:35:19
Speaker 2: but there very much is a creative director at Atomic
1:35:22
Speaker 2: that sits in an office and deals with all the
1:35:24
Speaker 2: video creative in the photos. And I don't have to
1:35:28
Speaker 2: sit in an office or be in a meeting weekly.
1:35:30
Speaker 2: But my art direction of where I take my skis
1:35:34
Speaker 2: influences the creative for the brand because the skis are successful.
1:35:38
Speaker 2: So the art that I put on my skis is
1:35:41
Speaker 2: then going to translate to T shirts and hats and
1:35:44
Speaker 2: ski poles and bindings and all of these different things
1:35:47
Speaker 2: and colors will then tie back to my skis, and
1:35:51
Speaker 2: then they'll build their creative direction for the Mavericks and
1:35:54
Speaker 2: the Backlands and the race skis, and everything will start
1:35:59
Speaker 2: to stem off of some of those ideas that I'm presenting.
1:36:04
Speaker 2: And then of course they have their own ideas and
1:36:06
Speaker 2: their own concepts and things and race too, But it
1:36:10
Speaker 2: starts with that. And then I am pretty detached from
1:36:16
Speaker 2: the daily marketing efforts. That's like the ad buys and
1:36:19
Speaker 2: the social and the website. All of that I have
1:36:24
Speaker 2: no idea. I just I create.
1:36:27
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say you broke all your relationships with all
1:36:31
Speaker 1: your sponsors on Atomic. Can you live on the money
1:36:34
Speaker 1: you make from Atomic? I could yes, Okay, yeah, switch
1:36:40
Speaker 1: gears completely. What about avalanches?
1:36:44
Speaker 2: Oh boy, they're very real and they're very scary and
1:36:49
Speaker 2: it's important to respect them as much as you can.
1:36:53
Speaker 2: And Arctics makes one of the best avalanche airbags in
1:37:00
Speaker 2: the industry at the world, I guess you could say,
1:37:04
Speaker 2: And that is hugely beneficial in something new in the
1:37:09
Speaker 2: recent years of technology. They've designed an extremely lightweight, battery
1:37:14
Speaker 2: powered air bag, so if you get in an avalanche,
1:37:16
Speaker 2: you can pull it. And it's the Brazilian nut theory.
1:37:20
Speaker 2: Anything bigger is going to shake, shake to the surface,
1:37:23
Speaker 2: so it's just making your mass much bigger. And so
1:37:28
Speaker 2: that saved a lot of lives. Avalanche beacons save a
1:37:32
Speaker 2: lot of lives. But you need to know how to
1:37:33
Speaker 2: use them and practice and take avalanche courses and learn
1:37:37
Speaker 2: how to use your probe and learn how to dig
1:37:39
Speaker 2: someone out because when it shit hits the fan, you
1:37:44
Speaker 2: need to stay calm. You need to check everyone's beacon.
1:37:46
Speaker 2: There's protocol that you really need to follow. So if
1:37:49
Speaker 2: you just buy a beacon and the avvy stuff and
1:37:52
Speaker 2: never practice with it and don't know how to use it.
1:37:55
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily going to save your life. So that's uh,
1:38:00
Speaker 2: that's the first step. And then reading avalanche terrain is
1:38:03
Speaker 2: an art in itself, and you learn that in AVIY courses.
1:38:07
Speaker 2: You learn that from being in the mountains. You learn
1:38:09
Speaker 2: that from watching whind loading off the peaks and snow
1:38:13
Speaker 2: falling and just understanding layers and depths and snow packs.
1:38:18
Speaker 2: There's a maritime snowpack, which is more moisture in a
1:38:22
Speaker 2: coastal snowpack, which is what we have in Mammoth because
1:38:24
Speaker 2: we're the first big mountain range off the coast. And
1:38:27
Speaker 2: then there's inner Mountain which is more like the Utah snowpack,
1:38:31
Speaker 2: which tends to avalanche a bit more but have a
1:38:34
Speaker 2: little more moisture. Then there's the Colorado which is a
1:38:36
Speaker 2: continental snowpack, which is the beautiful ice crystals that you
1:38:40
Speaker 2: see when you walk outside and it hasn't snowed for weeks,
1:38:44
Speaker 2: but it still looks all crystally. And then when snow
1:38:47
Speaker 2: falls on those crystals, it never gets warm enough or
1:38:50
Speaker 2: heated by the sun, and there's not enough moisture in
1:38:53
Speaker 2: the snow to crush those crystals. So crystals on crystals
1:38:56
Speaker 2: is a very unstable slope, whereas when in California in
1:39:01
Speaker 2: the sun and coastal snow packs, it snows so much
1:39:04
Speaker 2: feed upon feet it crushes those bad layers and can
1:39:08
Speaker 2: strengthen it over time. Essentially, so the deeper, the deeper
1:39:13
Speaker 2: east you go, than the more dangerous it gets.
1:39:17
Speaker 1: Basically, though, have you had close calls?
1:39:21
Speaker 2: I yes, I have. I've triggered quite a few. I've
1:39:28
Speaker 2: not necessarily been buried. Was I skid a pillow line,
1:39:33
Speaker 2: which is pillows of snow stacked on top of each other,
1:39:37
Speaker 2: and it was late in March, so it was heating up.
1:39:40
Speaker 2: I was in Canada, and it collapsed. The whole thing
1:39:42
Speaker 2: collapsed and kind of steam rolled me and trapped me
1:39:45
Speaker 2: under the snow quickly, and my friend got to me,
1:39:48
Speaker 2: but I wasn't like I could still breathe, and I
1:39:52
Speaker 2: was on the surface. And so that that is the
1:39:56
Speaker 2: closest I've been to being stuck in the snow. But then, yes,
1:40:00
Speaker 2: I've I've had I've had friends get buried, I've had
1:40:04
Speaker 2: friends die, I've had lots of I've been around a
1:40:08
Speaker 2: lot of avalanches. And my wife, my wife is a
1:40:11
Speaker 2: personal border She's triggered some too, and all the things.
1:40:14
Speaker 1: So to what degree does pure pressure involve in the
1:40:18
Speaker 1: decision to go or not go?
1:40:23
Speaker 2: Peer pressure not so much. It's it's ego, I would say,
1:40:29
Speaker 2: of like thinking that you know you could, you're safe
1:40:34
Speaker 2: because of X.
1:40:35
Speaker 1: Y and Z.
1:40:35
Speaker 2: You talk yourself into stupid decisions and I am guilty
1:40:38
Speaker 2: of it too, So peer pressure no. But it's beautiful.
1:40:43
Speaker 2: It just snowed. There's two feet of snow. Oh, we'll
1:40:46
Speaker 2: go over here in the trees because trees are anchors
1:40:49
Speaker 2: and this will do this, and you just you talk
1:40:51
Speaker 2: yourself into situations that you probably shouldn't at times. But
1:40:55
Speaker 2: I try really hard to remove the ego when I can.
1:40:59
Speaker 1: What a greedy consider herself a good reader of the snow.
1:41:06
Speaker 2: Same as the research. I think I could take more
1:41:09
Speaker 2: ABVY courses. There's AVI two's, there's AV threes to understand
1:41:12
Speaker 2: the science of the snow and everything on a granular level,
1:41:16
Speaker 2: but I do. I do not go that deep. I
1:41:19
Speaker 2: understand intuition and reading the mountains and convex rolls and
1:41:26
Speaker 2: windloading and snowpack and that like the true markers of
1:41:30
Speaker 2: what's going to trigger and then understanding every little like
1:41:34
Speaker 2: putting snow under a microscope. I've I've not gone that far,
1:41:38
Speaker 2: but people certainly do.
1:41:47
Speaker 1: So tell me about the film you made with your wife.
1:41:50
Speaker 2: Oh boy, well, we okay, this is gonna be a
1:41:58
Speaker 2: long story. She is pro snowboarder. She is an only child.
1:42:05
Speaker 2: Her father passed away when she was fourteen from cancer,
1:42:08
Speaker 2: which was our bond very early on. Was raised by
1:42:11
Speaker 2: a single mother. Her mother then got cancer right at
1:42:15
Speaker 2: the height of her career, and that was in twenty sixteen.
1:42:20
Speaker 2: I want to say, I was in the middle of
1:42:22
Speaker 2: making a pretty large project and went through the journey
1:42:28
Speaker 2: of losing her mother, and then she we had the
1:42:35
Speaker 2: very real conversation the only grandparent left was my mother,
1:42:38
Speaker 2: and so we started trying to have children. Four months later,
1:42:42
Speaker 2: after her mom passed, we got pregnant with our first child.
1:42:46
Speaker 2: She was approaching forty. I mean, she just turned forty,
1:42:50
Speaker 2: so at that point in time, what was it. Anyways,
1:42:53
Speaker 2: she was mid thirties and she wanted to stay a
1:42:57
Speaker 2: pro snowboarder. Most women at that age, once they become pregnant,
1:43:01
Speaker 2: walked away from snowboarding. There wasn't really maternity clauses and
1:43:06
Speaker 2: contracts and all of those things, so she approached Donna
1:43:09
Speaker 2: Carpenter at Burton and basically proposed supporting her as a
1:43:17
Speaker 2: as a mother, and so they they chartered New Territory
1:43:21
Speaker 2: together added verbage in her contract that was widely used
1:43:26
Speaker 2: at that time. Nike had come out with a campaign
1:43:29
Speaker 2: to Dream Big, and a couple of their runners, Alicia Montano,
1:43:33
Speaker 2: went against Nike with a dream Maternity campaign because Nike
1:43:38
Speaker 2: was cutting their runners when they would get pregnant and
1:43:41
Speaker 2: treating it like an injury clause. And so Donna men
1:43:45
Speaker 2: Burton went against Nike. They got Kimmy, my wife, Kimmy
1:43:49
Speaker 2: and Donna got an article and I think New York
1:43:52
Speaker 2: Times are in some other media making her verbiage in
1:43:57
Speaker 2: her contract available for any female athlete which supported through maternity.
1:44:02
Speaker 2: So that was a big deal. It was awesome. We
1:44:05
Speaker 2: had our child. Once we had our child, we were
1:44:09
Speaker 2: and so talking this. We were going to document this
1:44:12
Speaker 2: year of being pregnant and then having the baby and
1:44:14
Speaker 2: make a little pretty surface level film. And so my
1:44:19
Speaker 2: good friend Tyler Hamlet, who's made my dead films to
1:44:23
Speaker 2: him and I have worked together for twenty years, and
1:44:25
Speaker 2: he and I started just filming together and we got pregnant,
1:44:37
Speaker 2: had had CoA, our firstborn, and then she didn't know
1:44:41
Speaker 2: it at the time, but it triggered some past trauma,
1:44:45
Speaker 2: kind of had I guess postpartum depression a bit. And
1:44:49
Speaker 2: all of this was being unveiled on camera. And then
1:44:52
Speaker 2: fast forward, I make the movie with the Dead. We
1:44:55
Speaker 2: talked about fire on the Mountain. I'm very busy as
1:44:58
Speaker 2: a husband and a father and we're just navigating having
1:45:02
Speaker 2: a lot of conflict at times. All of this is
1:45:05
Speaker 2: being captured on film, and then our son gets deathly ill.
1:45:09
Speaker 2: His kidneys fail. He had to be life lighted put
1:45:12
Speaker 2: in a hospital. And that was right before COVID. That
1:45:17
Speaker 2: was its own journey brought us back together. And during COVID,
1:45:21
Speaker 2: we yeah, like everyone just spent a lot of time together.
1:45:26
Speaker 2: It was amazing. We rekindled with her and I have
1:45:29
Speaker 2: been together since we were children. We've been together since
1:45:32
Speaker 2: I met her when I was sixteen turning seventeen, so
1:45:35
Speaker 2: a long time. And we had our second child. Then
1:45:39
Speaker 2: as she's breastfeeding our second child, she finds a lump
1:45:43
Speaker 2: and has a very severe stage three breast cancer. And
1:45:47
Speaker 2: so we go on the whole cancer journey and she's
1:45:50
Speaker 2: fighting for her life and we just keep documenting this
1:45:56
Speaker 2: whole thing, and so long story long, it's a very exposing, raw,
1:46:01
Speaker 2: beautiful film of her life story, and it has a
1:46:04
Speaker 2: ton of depth and layers, and it's not something we
1:46:07
Speaker 2: ever intended set out to make. It's very strange that
1:46:10
Speaker 2: we have as much documented as we do. But because
1:46:14
Speaker 2: of the circumstances of her mom and then pregnancy and
1:46:18
Speaker 2: what we were aiming for at the beginning, we just
1:46:20
Speaker 2: saw the saw the reason to keep filming because these
1:46:25
Speaker 2: things just kept happening and coming up. And so it's
1:46:28
Speaker 2: called Butterfly and a Blizzard. It's the world premiere will
1:46:32
Speaker 2: be at the Big Sky Film Festival in February, and
1:46:36
Speaker 2: then it'll be on streaming platforms early March, I believe.
1:46:39
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's just it's it's it's sit on the
1:46:45
Speaker 2: couch and watch. It's like a It's a very emotional
1:46:48
Speaker 2: and and exposing, raw documentary of seven years or even
1:46:54
Speaker 2: more of our relationship in life. So it's pretty it's
1:46:58
Speaker 2: pretty wild. Did you did you end up watching the
1:47:00
Speaker 2: cut that I sent you.
1:47:02
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I've been crazy. I haven't watched the
1:47:04
Speaker 1: complete cut.
1:47:05
Speaker 2: Okay, well, it's a. It's a heavy one, but I
1:47:09
Speaker 2: know there's a lot. There's a lot to it.
1:47:11
Speaker 1: Personally, I prefer heavy. I like the real issues. Let
1:47:16
Speaker 1: me ask, Yeah, So, what were all the projects you're
1:47:19
Speaker 1: working on presently?
1:47:21
Speaker 2: So I which just came out today, Actually The Dead
1:47:26
Speaker 2: the Dead just announced their sixtieth anniversary logo. I was
1:47:31
Speaker 2: tasked with creating the sixtieth logo, which was a complete
1:47:35
Speaker 2: honor and very humbling and so on. All the licensed
1:47:38
Speaker 2: products will be the art that I came up with
1:47:42
Speaker 2: for that, so that's amazing. And then in conjunction with that,
1:47:47
Speaker 2: I mentioned the sphere with Mickey, but we were working
1:47:50
Speaker 2: on another film which is this big abstract art piece.
1:47:54
Speaker 2: And the film itself will come out in September of
1:47:59
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, so we're halfway through a little more
1:48:02
Speaker 2: than halfway through of filming. And it's going to have
1:48:05
Speaker 2: skiing and snowboarding, a surfing and mountain biking, rock climbing,
1:48:10
Speaker 2: free diving like ocean free diving. It'll have plant life, mycology,
1:48:15
Speaker 2: it will have animal life, it will be very inspired
1:48:22
Speaker 2: by the natural world and dive deep into red light.
1:48:27
Speaker 2: It'll dive deep into my cilium. It'll dive deep into
1:48:29
Speaker 2: all of these things visually and conceptually, less beating you
1:48:34
Speaker 2: over the head with like a storyline per se, and
1:48:38
Speaker 2: the film is the centerpiece. And then off of that
1:48:40
Speaker 2: film has Tentacles upon Tentacles. On February fourth, we'll be
1:48:45
Speaker 2: releasing I'm starting a YouTube channel, which is hilarious that
1:48:48
Speaker 2: it's taken me this long to start one, but with
1:48:51
Speaker 2: all the videos I've done for twenty years. But I'm
1:48:55
Speaker 2: going to put a YouTube channel and release weekly episodes
1:48:58
Speaker 2: starting February fourth that are a bit of a behind
1:49:03
Speaker 2: the scenes look at the a creation of this whole
1:49:05
Speaker 2: art project and introducing certain characters and people like Jay
1:49:11
Speaker 2: Blakesburg came on one of the photoshoots. Mickey will be
1:49:14
Speaker 2: a part of it. There will be all of these
1:49:16
Speaker 2: different moments in time that have been very fun to capture,
1:49:20
Speaker 2: and then we'll release the film in September. Then there
1:49:24
Speaker 2: will be during that time, there will be an experiential
1:49:27
Speaker 2: art exhibit that I'm hoping to accomplish, and that will
1:49:32
Speaker 2: be in Los Angeles, and I'm looking at big, you know,
1:49:36
Speaker 2: ten thousand square foot warehouse type buildings to build out
1:49:40
Speaker 2: a full art exhibition. Essentially, the first room will have
1:49:46
Speaker 2: a very museum behind the scenes feel of things we've invented,
1:49:49
Speaker 2: like the lighting suits with arctics and the skis. I
1:49:53
Speaker 2: tried some UV reactive powder and surfboards. We did LEDs
1:49:57
Speaker 2: and so that'll give you a feel. Second room will
1:50:00
Speaker 2: have more art and then it'll just dive deeper and
1:50:02
Speaker 2: deeper and be a bit more immersive, and that will
1:50:08
Speaker 2: that will hopefully come to fruition end of September, and
1:50:11
Speaker 2: then following that will do a bigger doc series, or
1:50:16
Speaker 2: at least that's our plan as of now, is kind
1:50:18
Speaker 2: of a four to six part dock series that dives
1:50:21
Speaker 2: deeper into some of the stories we're telling because we
1:50:23
Speaker 2: have a I'm producing directing it, but I have a
1:50:28
Speaker 2: DP on the on the art vision side, and then
1:50:32
Speaker 2: I have a DP on a a DP and a
1:50:35
Speaker 2: co director on the main movie side, and a DP
1:50:37
Speaker 2: and a co director on the documentary side, so we
1:50:40
Speaker 2: can capture as much as possible. Because that was one
1:50:44
Speaker 2: thing I mentioned. We went back to Bill Walton to
1:50:46
Speaker 2: film some of the making of We weren't doing it
1:50:49
Speaker 2: in real time because I didn't know at that point
1:50:51
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen what I was creating, whereas now I
1:50:55
Speaker 2: have a bit more of a roadmap of how I
1:50:57
Speaker 2: want to see this all come together. And then if
1:51:00
Speaker 2: that exhibition works, I would like to see it go global.
1:51:05
Speaker 2: I maybe because Atomic and Atomic and Arctics have such
1:51:10
Speaker 2: a big presence globally, I have some ideas with them,
1:51:13
Speaker 2: particularly Arctics. There's really cool opportunities. They have so many
1:51:18
Speaker 2: retail spaces in some of these big buildings on a
1:51:21
Speaker 2: global scale. So I want to do some art installations
1:51:24
Speaker 2: and build outs and experiential stuff. And then my two
1:51:29
Speaker 2: true dream, which maybe this where we'll ski together, is
1:51:31
Speaker 2: to collaborate with Altara and Mammoth and bring my lighting
1:51:35
Speaker 2: team in because this whole film is based at night,
1:51:40
Speaker 2: and bring my lighting team in, build a very large
1:51:45
Speaker 2: movie set if you will, off the lighting on the
1:51:47
Speaker 2: mountain and have everyday consumers be able to come and
1:51:51
Speaker 2: ski under the lights. And then have a band play,
1:51:55
Speaker 2: ideally a Dead cover band or most ideally if Bernie's
1:51:58
Speaker 2: listening to this, I'll come to him to try and
1:52:00
Speaker 2: hire Dead and Code to come play. It would be
1:52:04
Speaker 2: It would be the ultimate dream, obviously. And then I yeah,
1:52:11
Speaker 2: I would like to have live music, have the film
1:52:13
Speaker 2: play have have people skiing under the lights and and
1:52:18
Speaker 2: create this Dead on the Mountain concept that I'm going
1:52:22
Speaker 2: to be running running by our old pal Bernie and
1:52:25
Speaker 2: marking them to see if they're into it. But there's
1:52:29
Speaker 2: there's layers upon layers. I guess that's what I'm trying
1:52:31
Speaker 2: to say.
1:52:32
Speaker 1: Ok Okay, you know there's so many live shows that
1:52:35
Speaker 1: have been released. But in terms of the commercial albums,
1:52:38
Speaker 1: what are your two favorite Dead albums albums?
1:52:42
Speaker 2: That's a I am. I can't say I have a favorite.
1:52:50
Speaker 2: I don't even have a favorite song. I'm like, I
1:52:53
Speaker 2: think that's the beautiful thing about the Dead. I'm discovering
1:52:56
Speaker 2: a new version all the time of some live song
1:53:00
Speaker 2: from here, but yeah, I mean Cornell's and I can't. Okay,
1:53:06
Speaker 2: there's there's some incredible ones. But luckily David Lemieux is
1:53:11
Speaker 2: helping me pick the music for these things, so he's
1:53:13
Speaker 2: sending me tracks that I've never even heard where I'm like,
1:53:16
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this is incredible. So it's it's an
1:53:19
Speaker 2: endless vault, if you.
1:53:20
Speaker 1: Will, Okay, tell me about your involvement with the Eagles
1:53:24
Speaker 1: in the sphere.
1:53:25
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I hope there's involvement and maybe we could
1:53:30
Speaker 2: do this off the record until we know for sure,
1:53:32
Speaker 2: but it came my way. We're still working it out.
1:53:36
Speaker 2: I very well might have. I had some texts before
1:53:38
Speaker 2: our before our call, and I'll have some after. But
1:53:42
Speaker 2: there's there's hope for them to update their their current residency,
1:53:50
Speaker 2: and particularly I've been tapped on the shoulder to help
1:53:54
Speaker 2: with Rocky Mountain Way and potentially some creative ideas that
1:53:59
Speaker 2: I sent them for decks to review, and from my understanding,
1:54:04
Speaker 2: Irving and Joe and Don like them. So if all
1:54:09
Speaker 2: goes well, it's going to happen. But at this point
1:54:12
Speaker 2: nothing is official, so I'm staying hopeful. But it is
1:54:17
Speaker 2: like very much happening in real time as we speak.
1:54:20
Speaker 1: So, Okay, it's a very interesting time in skiing. You know,
1:54:25
Speaker 1: skiing is a mature sport. It's not like they're building
1:54:29
Speaker 1: new ski areas in America, et cetera, et cetera. There's
1:54:31
Speaker 1: been consolidation and manufacturers. I grew up during the ski boom.
1:54:36
Speaker 1: Everybody talked about skiing, people went seeing. Skiing has never
1:54:40
Speaker 1: been inexpensive, but it was not seen as an upper
1:54:43
Speaker 1: class sport. Okay, well, this is like ticket fees. People
1:54:49
Speaker 1: are bitching about the price of skiing. Yes, the walk
1:54:53
Speaker 1: up price at a Veil Resource Mega Play is going
1:54:56
Speaker 1: to be two hundred and ninety seven dollars at Christmas. Yeah,
1:54:59
Speaker 1: you can and advertise that all day long. But for
1:55:02
Speaker 1: someone who's a dedicated skier, skiing has never been cheaper
1:55:06
Speaker 1: because of the Icon Pass and the Epic Pass. How
1:55:11
Speaker 1: can we grow the number of skiers?
1:55:15
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I agree with you. There's there's
1:55:20
Speaker 2: a devil in the details, if you will, or there's
1:55:25
Speaker 2: there's evil, but there's also beauty in it all. Tara
1:55:28
Speaker 2: and Icon specifically is a lot of the leadership at
1:55:33
Speaker 2: all Tara has come from Mammoth and they are care
1:55:37
Speaker 2: they care about the community, they care about skiing, and
1:55:40
Speaker 2: they want to introduce skiers. And so from a if
1:55:44
Speaker 2: I put my business hat on, the Icon Pass makes
1:55:47
Speaker 2: so much sense because you're getting your capital up front
1:55:49
Speaker 2: and you're guaranteeing that you can update your chairlifts and
1:55:54
Speaker 2: build new lodges and do all of the amenities and
1:55:56
Speaker 2: all the things that they need to do to keep
1:55:59
Speaker 2: these things operation. Whereas if you rely on ticket sales
1:56:03
Speaker 2: and it's a bad season, or it's a this, or
1:56:05
Speaker 2: it's a that. Like I completely understand it, and it's
1:56:08
Speaker 2: just a matter of more skiers is fantastic and what
1:56:15
Speaker 2: we want to share, you and me being extremely passionate skiers.
1:56:19
Speaker 2: That's the whole reason I've built my life around around
1:56:21
Speaker 2: the mountains. It's just it's really hard to know, like
1:56:26
Speaker 2: once the lift lines get so long, how how many
1:56:32
Speaker 2: more skiers do we really want out there? But I
1:56:35
Speaker 2: think there's technology that exists, like Mammoth, for instance, replace
1:56:38
Speaker 2: their two main lifts with six seaters that are faster
1:56:42
Speaker 2: than the old four quads, So it's going to get
1:56:44
Speaker 2: people up and dispersed much quicker, which is fantastic. And
1:56:48
Speaker 2: then also everything we're doing and at arctics and atomics
1:56:53
Speaker 2: in the back country like the Eastern Sierra is endless.
1:56:57
Speaker 2: You could ski a new mountain. I could ski a
1:57:00
Speaker 2: new mountain every day for the rest of my life,
1:57:02
Speaker 2: or a new run on a new mountain if I'm
1:57:05
Speaker 2: if you're willing to put in the time and the effort.
1:57:07
Speaker 2: So backcountry skiing is how I personally. If people go
1:57:12
Speaker 2: to the resort to get their runs in and be
1:57:16
Speaker 2: less frantic of the powder and take your avalanche courses
1:57:19
Speaker 2: and learn how to use your avy gear and go
1:57:22
Speaker 2: for a walk in the mountains and see how beautiful
1:57:26
Speaker 2: nature is. Because like, that's all we really want to
1:57:28
Speaker 2: do is get people outside. I would way rather have
1:57:32
Speaker 2: more passes sold and more skiers than more video games
1:57:36
Speaker 2: and more people sitting inside on a computer doing who
1:57:41
Speaker 2: knows what it's like. Get yourself outside and embrace this
1:57:47
Speaker 2: beautiful world that we live in.
1:57:51
Speaker 1: How into skiing are you at this point?
1:57:55
Speaker 2: I'm extremely into it. It's just it looks differently for
1:58:01
Speaker 2: the reasons I shared. I'm more busy than I've ever
1:58:05
Speaker 2: been in my life, and these opportunities that are coming
1:58:08
Speaker 2: my way, whether it's this stuff with the dead or
1:58:12
Speaker 2: the creation of the artwork, is super inspiring to me.
1:58:19
Speaker 2: So I'm willing to put skiing aside because I've skied
1:58:24
Speaker 2: my entire life. I haven't created movies and created art
1:58:28
Speaker 2: my entire life, per se. So it's kind of just
1:58:33
Speaker 2: trying to find balance where I'm never going. I'm never
1:58:36
Speaker 2: going to find balance between my family and my kids
1:58:38
Speaker 2: and everything I explained about my wife and all the
1:58:42
Speaker 2: trials and tribulations we go through, plus my busy ambitions
1:58:47
Speaker 2: as an artist and I'm filmmaker, plus my skiing, plus
1:58:51
Speaker 2: my rock climbing, Like, there just is not enough time
1:58:53
Speaker 2: in the day. So I'm into it. I just don't
1:58:57
Speaker 2: ski enough, I know.
1:58:59
Speaker 1: Let me put it this. If I tell you for
1:59:00
Speaker 1: the next six years you can only ski ten times
1:59:04
Speaker 1: a year, how upset would you be about that?
1:59:07
Speaker 2: Extremely? I ski wave more than ten times a year,
1:59:10
Speaker 2: and I need to go tour and walk in the mountains.
1:59:13
Speaker 2: If you told me I could only ski a resort
1:59:16
Speaker 2: ten times, but I had as much access as I
1:59:19
Speaker 2: want to walking in the mountains, I would be more
1:59:22
Speaker 2: okay with it. I still love resort skiing, but I
1:59:26
Speaker 2: really enjoy walking being in the back country. It's my
1:59:29
Speaker 2: happy place.
1:59:33
Speaker 1: Well, we've covered a lot of ground. I could talk
1:59:35
Speaker 1: about this. I'm really into it. You know. The problem is,
1:59:38
Speaker 1: you know, there are very few people you're talking about
1:59:41
Speaker 1: swing weight. It's like, you know, Soloman's came out like
1:59:45
Speaker 1: a pair of these solomon you know, the one thirties.
1:59:48
Speaker 1: They were too light, couldn't get forward. You know, there's
1:59:51
Speaker 1: the light, there's the heavy boot. You know, there's swingweight.
1:59:54
Speaker 1: Never mind mounting it all. The problem is not to
1:59:57
Speaker 1: get too quezy that I've gotten crazy, were the point
2:00:00
Speaker 1: where it interferes with your raw enjoyment. But when it's wrong,
2:00:06
Speaker 1: it's so wrong. When you're out on a pair of
2:00:08
Speaker 1: skis and it's not working, it's like it's possible.
2:00:13
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, if you get if you get your
2:00:15
Speaker 2: hands or if you want hands on a pair of
2:00:18
Speaker 2: one hundreds, you just let me know. I feel like
2:00:20
Speaker 2: that would be a great, great starting place for you,
2:00:23
Speaker 2: and I would love to see you. I wish we
2:00:26
Speaker 2: need to go skiing with Bernie too. He's on my leg.
2:00:28
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Wait wait, wait, let me make it very clear.
2:00:32
Speaker 1: Definitely want the pair of one hundreds.
2:00:35
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, well, maybe why don't I take that back?
2:00:38
Speaker 2: How about we do the Grateful Dead skis you asked
2:00:42
Speaker 2: about that'll be coming out, will be a limited release.
2:00:45
Speaker 2: They're beautiful, they'll be celebrating the sixtieth in this project
2:00:50
Speaker 2: and they'll be on the one ten. So why don't
2:00:52
Speaker 2: we try to get you a pair of something extra special.
2:00:56
Speaker 1: It all sounds good. There we go. It all sounds good, good, Chris, Okay,
2:01:02
Speaker 1: I think we've come to the end of the feeling
2:01:04
Speaker 1: we've known. You've got to wait to hear from Irving
2:01:07
Speaker 1: and all those people. I'll let you text up a
2:01:09
Speaker 1: storm in any event. Thanks for taking the time to
2:01:12
Speaker 1: speak to my audience.
2:01:14
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I really appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
2:01:17
Speaker 1: Out, you bet. Until next time, This is Bob Leftsticks