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