Shorts: Powsurfing, the de-evolution of snowboarding.

Speaker 1: 0:50

We're here to talk about Powsurf and you guys are both featured in the next issue in the magazine that's coming out, I guess in a couple days. It went to print today. But I thought it would be fun for the two people that are kind of in a way, spearheading kind of the local innovation of this sport or lifestyle, to get to know you guys a little bit more. I mean, we could have all gone powboarding if you would have gotten up early enough on the day of the Jerry Lopez, but it was just Travis and I. So really we could talk about how much fun we had together, but you wouldn't understand because you weren't there. I know.

Speaker 1: 1:29

I missed out. You did miss out too, it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Yeah, yeah, it looked good, it was okay. All you need is, I don't know four inches, four to six inches of snow. You think Probably six, six. Yeah, all right, part of getting to know you guys was, hopefully, other people getting to know you from friends of yours. So you put me in touch with your buddy, derek, and I talked to him today and I just thought it would be fun for people to hear about this kind of time of life from him, because you guys are college roommates, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:04

So you and I go back a decent amount of time. We actually met in college, at U of O in 2010, and I was living in a house with a few guys and he was a random roommate. They came in and lived with us and out of the four guys that lived in the house, ian and I became the closest. He was actually grooms-in-my-wedding a couple of years ago. So, yeah, just grew a pretty close bond. No, that's a great question. Yeah, psychology.

Speaker 2: 2:32

But I was pretty much in awe of just the way his mind worked with CAD and just that engineering mind that I really don't have. So he was in product design, as I was kind of doing something completely different with liberal arts stuff, and he would come home with, I mean, what seemed to me as really creative inventions of what he was creating in product design and it just like innovative things that help him with his snowboarding stuff and shaping and things like that. I just wasn't even aware of the product design degree, so it was pretty unique seeing that come in when most of the people that I was connected with were studying business or psych, like me, or other things like that. So he just definitely had a different thing that he was doing, which is cool to see. I live in Portland and we definitely stayed in touch and hung out a ton, but I'm not always privy to what he's doing in Bend. But I know he's working with the cubicle guys and shaping and I thought it was really cool that he was still focusing in on that. Has a day job but also doing passion projects and connecting with the community of surfers and snowboarders and now power surfers too. So I think that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 3:40

But yeah, he's always had that kind of creative mind but still wants to collaborate with people and push the limit and not just say I need to sit back and make money the more traditional way. So differentiated himself that way and takes time to do things outside of the realm that he has made a career in. So I think that's really cool. But I mean, just as far as his personality, he's the guy that I've always looked up to that just pushes the athletic limits too.

Speaker 2: 4:11

So he could probably get into orthopedic same ways either with how many injuries he's had, because he's the guy that's hucking double backflips off the cliff into the water. I filmed him a bunch of times with snowboarding. He's always been maybe the most talented snowboarder and skater. That's kind of been in my orbit. So it's always fun to see him do things that I'm just a little bit too scared to do, especially now that I'm in my mid-30s. But he's still the one doing backflips and pulling threes and stuff like that too. So he just keeps pushing it and isn't satisfied with the normal things, and I've always respected about him.

Speaker 1: 4:46

I don't think mid-30s is at all number one.

Speaker 3: 4:49

I keep telling people I'm in my prime, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:53

I think there might be some truth to that. I feel like the 30s were kind of where, at least when my mind, caught up with like you, kind of mentally developed to the point where you can at least I felt like I could do more sustained, challenging things than I could when I was younger.

Speaker 3: 5:14

I think technically men peak in their 30s.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Yeah Well you and I are in the downward slope Trav.

Speaker 5: 5:22

I peaked at 17.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 5:24

I've been on the downward slope for a long time, travis.

Speaker 1: 5:27

You've been on the podcast before. I think a lot of people know about you and your history and, rather than having you talk about yourself, I got in touch with Mike McDaniel, who's now a friend of both of ours. You introduced me to, and he owns a startup brand called Mile 22, which is focused around prone paddling gear and it's named after the Lake Tahoe paddle. He did, I think, like probably a decade ago, at least. That's 22 miles and he's a cool guy, but you met him when you were a little kid, correct.

Speaker 3: 6:04

Yeah.

Speaker 6: 6:06

So any skate shop since the beginning of time, you got these groms that hang out right.

Speaker 6: 6:12

You got the local groms, the kids who live in the neighborhood and they hang out there all day, all summer long, because it's a skate shop, right, it's the most interesting thing. And then, yeah, the other really changed, who don't live in town, but maybe they live up in the foothills or some little town nearby and for them it's a big deal because maybe they live in a little town with a thousand or three thousand people and there's nothing going on and it's boring as hell. Going to the big city with the skate shop is a big deal. We have these kids who, would you know their parents, literally like they'd come to town and do their grocery shopping and gas up their vehicles and run all their errands and stuff, drop the boys at the skate shop in the morning and we wouldn't see mom come back to fetch them until the afternoon. And it's not that. Travis was one of those guys, but he lived in Sonora, which is a foothill town, you know, an hour or so away from Stockton, and so his dad had come to town and Travis had come by the skate shop and get some skate there. Basically, that's how in that Travis is is. He was a grom hanging out at the shop where I was working, and you know he's a skater, but we sold snowboards and we rented snowboards too and at some point he rented a snowboard from us, like him, and his dad came in and they're like you know, travis wants the snowboard. We rented him the snowboards like a Burton Elite 140 or something like that.

Speaker 6: 7:31

Back then I was at Ghost Gate for a few years and then got pulled away to do this thing at Bear Valley. Well, sonora, the town where Travis grew up, is down the hill from Bear Valley, so that was going to be his home mountain when he was snowboarding. So then I started seeing him up at Bear Valley and I'm doing this snowboard park thing and of course, right away you get these, you know, rippers who are like they're kind of figuring the park out and ruling at it, and you start to see who's who's really good and who's just goofing around. And Travis was one of those kids who was like, oh wow, he's really good, he's going to be, he's going to be ripping, so, and then that was like two seasons and then I end up at Avalanche, initially in a sales position but eventually in marketing, and, like I said, they made me the team manager, and so at some point you know, every season there was a discussion that was like, ok, well, there's this much more money in the budget, we could probably bring on a couple more riders. We should get a regional rider out in Utah, let's get another California kid, that kind of, that kind of talk right. And at that point I knew Travis pretty well and knew he was riding really solid and I'm like, hey, I know this kid, travis, your model, let's put him on the Avalanche team. And so we talked to him and the next thing, you know, travis is getting flow from Avalanche.

Speaker 6: 8:49

You know, I can't remember if those guys were getting paychecks back then. If they were getting paychecks, they were small but but they have photo incentives. You get a photo in the magazine, you get some money and they were getting free gear. You know we'd send them boards, bindings, and we didn't do big with outerwear, but like we had gloves and beanies and stuff that they wanted. So they got their package every year and that was the team.

Speaker 6: 9:12

You know, one thing I noticed about him, and part of it was just the time and place, but at least in California, and I think other places too, riders started to kind of modify their boards, like definitely cutting the noses and the tails down in the early 90s, moving into the mid 90s, basically like those B series years that we talked about, like we would send the team guys B series boards, like here's the new boards for next year. Go out and get some photos and start riding and show us what you got. And Travis and there was another tent on the team up in Oregon named Jesse Johnson those guys like took Jigsaw to brand new boards. They're just like, oh, this is way too much nose, let's cut this nose off. And so that you know, that whole gypsy thing was in full effect and they wanted to.

Speaker 6: 10:03

Their goal was to reduce swing weight and so, like they were cutting the noses off their boards and it initially it's kind of like hey, man, that's a extensive board, what are you doing? But then you realize, oh, these guys are kind of like leading the progression. So let's see what you got and tell us why. And and Chris Yander is kind of realized, hey, we should bring these guys here, like there was, you know, every year to be like, hey, everybody come to the, come to the HQ and tell us what you're doing and why. And Jesse had come down from Oregon and Travis would be there. And so, yeah, they were basically reshaping the boards that we made and that had an effect, because I don't know if you recall this personally, but in this season, after the D-Series boards came out, we had this series called the Road Trip, and those things had practically no nose.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Those things were horrible. Then California up to then.

Speaker 6: 10:58

So he's been there forever. I guess I didn't. You know, just like everybody from back in those days, you always touch for a while and then you circle back and at some point I realized or had learned, oh, travis is in surfing, oh, that's cool. And then you know, like you said, I don't know how many years ago he's been doing it, but it's like oh, he's making boards, that's rad, and they've got a standing wave, and then that's super cool. That makes perfect sense to me that he's the guy building the boards for that. Like I get that. That makes sense.

Speaker 1: 11:30

It's funny how, like I listened to that story by Mike and it's like the smallest things kind of shape the trajectory of your life, like just going into that skate shop and like developing that relationship with him and then getting into snowboarding, and then I mean that was arguably a massive like pivot point in your life. It seems like you know, I mean a lot of what you did, kind of at least bringing you to Bend and snowboarding and, you know, getting into the board sport. I mean maybe skateboarding was the ultimate driver of it all, but it's rad yeah.

Speaker 5: 12:05

Correct on all those points right, like I don't know if I would have ended up in Bend if it wasn't for that. You know, and it really started from skateboarding hanging on the skate shop, yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Do you remember that skate shop?

Speaker 5: 12:18

Oh yeah, go skate in Stockton. Right, and Mike was correct. I was a foothill kid and we had zero options to get any sort of skateboard anything right, so we had to go down to the valley. My dad lived in Stockton where Ghostgate was so going. There was like going to the candy store. Yeah, I would try to absorb it all and just like fantasize about buying all of it. Right, but get your hands on a little bit and take it back up.

Speaker 3: 12:46

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 12:46

Yeah, and you know I mean that's why I started snowboarding, because once I saw it I was like well, I know my limitations on a skateboard and there's a lot of limitations, right, like there wasn't at the time. There was no skate parks, there weren't even ramps in my foothill town, so we were pretty much limited to riding really rough asphalt everywhere.

Speaker 5: 13:14

but you know, had the magazines and just dreamt of being able to access it or stuff. But it seemed like unattainable and it pretty much was for the most part. But once I saw snowboarding I kind of got it. I was like, oh, I think if I got on the snowboard and it was attached, someday I could do an air like Chris Miller, like that was my North Star, I guess, or whatever, like I can remember it. Still like, oh, I want to do a frontside air like Chris Miller and I think I think I could do it with a snowboard. I'll never be able to do it, you know, you know at Upland, but I'm a snowboard, I think I could.

Speaker 1: 13:52

Yeah, man, I mean you and a lot of other kids that wanted to emulate their favorite skater. You know snowboarding, especially kids that grew up where you know seasonal for sure. So this whole episode's designed to kind of supplement an article and a feature that's coming out in the next bin magazine, like we talked about. But I didn't think that you could really kind of do this sport right without talking about some of the different people who have influenced it. And I got in touch with Eric Tralson who runs the FNRAD snowboard podcast up in Vancouver, who I'm a big fan of and he has created. He's been podcasting for a long time, I think probably like eight or nine years, and he started a show around snowboarding way before the bomb hole and, you know, kind of started with his generation, which is kind of like, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. But as you know he's interviewed. Have you guys ever listened to his podcast?

Speaker 3: 14:55

FNRAD snowboard podcast. No, but isn't it? Isn't he teaming up with Stony Buds? Oh, he might be, I don't know. I think he's, are they?

Speaker 1: 15:05

Yeah, are they? Yeah, possibly. I don't know about it, but he has some phenomenal old interviews with different old writers.

Speaker 1: 15:15

you know, if you have heard some of those you know, if you like, if that's your era or even if it's not, because really there's so much history in the sport. But I wanted to get in touch with him because I felt like he was a good representation of kind of Canadian snowboarding, both past and present. And one of the guys that really seems to have contributed to kind of riding boards without bindings with it was this guy, greg Todds, that lived up in interior BC, I think, near Revelstoke, and so I got in touch with Eric and he kind of he shared the story. So settle in, because this is fun.

Speaker 7: 16:28

So I first heard about no boarding before pal surfing, and I think now that pal surfing it has, you know, is the lexicon and you forget. You know these kinds of things like weight boarding used to be called snurfing, and which is or scurfing, sorry, after snurfing. Right, snowboarding was snurfing, weight boarding was scurfing, and then you get a better name. And the pal surf boards actually were never no boards. No boards had the strap, and that made them very unique.

Speaker 7: 17:04

My first hearing about Greg Todds was around the no board pad. So the I actually got one. I don't remember where I got it from, but it was this sticky pad that was like a giant stomp pad with exaggerated bumps on it that went over just a regular board and it had a strap over it that you could like a bungee strap that you could hold the board to your feet with, but then you could also let go of the strap and it could just be flopping around. You know what I mean? I didn't really know the people that he was related with, like the group that he was with, but it turns out it was. It was the trout lake crew, and when I I mean when I started a snowboard podcast, they didn't want you to even mention trout lake, like they wanted to keep it a secret spot, kind of like surfing, but now they're cool with it being said on the podcast.

Speaker 7: 18:05

I got that. Go ahead to say it. Um, geez, trout lake, what a special place. It's where the very first uh cat boarding operation in the world was was started great more than cat boarding. And the guy picked it for the snowfall and the and the fall line and so if you could imagine a group of rag tag um snowboarders who came from all over the place. This community grew around Greg really proselytizing about you can ride a snowboard without bindings. You can do this, this is doable, and it was infectious People would ride them and so, tragically, greg passed away no boarding actually, and I believe Kale Stevens was there.

Speaker 7: 19:01

I talked with someone else who was there. There were a couple of people big name proset were there when it happened and so obviously in any fatality in the back country there's a big, it's a big deal, and so I think since before snowboarding backcountry skiers when someone would pass away, they would build a memorial backcountry lodge to these people, and there's several of them around BC and I was honored to learn that heritage. The biggest thing that surprised me when I was doing a snowboard podcast at the beginning was the amount of loss that there is out there, because these boards are inherently in avalanche terrain and avalanche terrain is dangerous and difficult to predict.

Speaker 1: 20:02

So when Greg passed.

Speaker 7: 20:04

The Greg Todd's memorial was the equivalent of the backcountry cabin and I've seen some footage from several of them and Trevor Andrew was becoming trouble. Andrew the DJ and the musician, and he played at least one probably several of the Greg Todd's memorials and the people that showed up were just A-listers. So Trent Leick would turn into this huge, incredible party that people would go snowboarding in Greg's memory and over the years the amount of snowboarding seemed to grow and it even attracted the founders of shark pal surfers and Jeremy Jensen. He's one of those guys that even in the beginning I think there was a little beef between him and Al Clark, because Al Clark was like I don't give a shit what pal surfer people think it's snowboarding and it'll always be snowboarding. And I think Jeremy was the first to speak up.

Speaker 7: 21:23

Maybe having a strap is like no boarding and having no strap but still having the leashes is pal surfing and they're different things but they're probably a common place. Yeah, that beef was settled. Jensen's very smart and well articulated. On a practical level, I think I don't see the no boards anymore. You know what I mean. I don't see the no board pads as the no board name. I'm not 100% sure who's doing it, where, just like anything, there's pioneers that show you that it's possible. Going all the way back to Dmitri Milovich, he showed everyone that snowboarding and paddle was possible Like there was a pre-Dimitri and a post-Dimitri, like he was the first one to film proper snowboard turns down a mountain. But also he pal surfed Like he rode his boards without bindings before the bindings were really anything.

Speaker 1: 22:35

It's cool history, yeah, super cool. Have you ever seen footage of those GT memorial races? It's like, it's kind of like have you seen it before? So I don't think it's gone on for a while, but yeah, I think Jake Price has done it. Yeah, I think he's done. Well, he has, I've seen it.

Speaker 5: 22:56

Like yeah, that's been a while since I've seen those. That's killer, that you got that interview. Good on you.

Speaker 1: 23:01

Adam. Yeah, cool man. I just think thanks for seeing that, Trav. I think that I always like knowing the history of stuff and I think when people get into it that it adds a layer of kind of coolness to like pow surfing, if you kind of realize that, like you know, I mean, dude, those winter stickboards, that that guy Demetri Milovich, I think, from all the winter stickboards I mean, have you seen photos of them?

Speaker 5: 23:29

They look like modern day pow surfing. Here's the. Yeah, it's so strange, right Like.

Speaker 1: 23:36

It's like nothing's really new.

Speaker 5: 23:38

Well, yeah, it's de-evolution, right? Like we're like putting a bunch of effort into trying to figure this out, but it's already been done. Yeah, you just have to go in reverse or more Reverse yeah. And it's really appealing to me and I think a lot of people not because, oh, it's like you're gonna reinvent and have the most technically like badass, newest equipment. It's more like getting back to the roots of it or, yeah, de-evolved.

Speaker 5: 24:14

Yeah, just simplifying it, simplifying it right and the challenge of it and I don't think the appeal is you have to be an old fart like me to like really know that or seen that when you're a kid, yeah, but it just sort of makes sense Like, oh well, it's like kind of liberating to have less technical stuff and just kind of rely on your own skills a little bit.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Yeah, I mean it's always been unique that you strapped to the board, right, I mean that's. There's not another board sport, really, unless it's wakeboarding, which I was never that into. You know where you're in bindings, you know. So it is kind of more of an extension of yourself than like really riding something where you have the freedom to kind of move on it and it forces you to make like good turns.

Speaker 3: 25:05

Like you can't just hack a turn like you would with bindings.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Oh, when you're on a power circle, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:12

So it slows things down a little bit, but makes everything. I guess more you appreciate your turns, more as you're going down.

Speaker 1: 25:23

I have a hundred percent agree, man.

Speaker 3: 25:25

I remember seeing a no board video. I was the first time I ever saw any of that and it may have been that event. It was big like wide open pillow gluey kind of line.

Speaker 1: 25:37

Looks like a clear cut or something from like an old logging.

Speaker 3: 25:40

And there's like 20 people just going ham, it's like a downhill madness. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:47

And just carnage and people in doing. But yeah, it doesn't surprise me that Jake won that thing, you know.

Speaker 5: 25:55

So getting back to like. I don't think the appeal also is riding like this inferior stuff so you can be like you know some prehistoric man. Right, it's no boarding or on the snow, but also just being jaded with Going to the mountain for so many years yeah seeing it get more crowded parking waiting in line coughing up a bunch of money right so doing the opposite and hiking, and hiking isn't easy around here.

Speaker 1: 26:53

Right.

Speaker 5: 26:53

It's not like Tahoe where you have really good challenging terrain. That's a short hike. You got to. You got to go for a while. You probably have to have a snowmobile and you have to have a lot of back country awareness obviously too. But if you're powder surfing you need good conditions. But you can access stuff that's challenging on a powder surfboard really easily and very close right. Scones on the cone it's so popular, right? Yeah, you and me. Yeah, that was fun. Maybe get scones on other scones on the cone.

Speaker 1: 27:35

When I thought of people in our community that I associate with with power surfing that aren't professional snowboarders, I thought of Maddie. What's Maddie's last name?

Speaker 5: 27:49

Gatto.

Speaker 3: 27:50

Is it?

Speaker 1: 27:50

Gatto.

Speaker 5: 27:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:53

So he power surfs a lot, you know.

Speaker 3: 27:55

Maddie.

Speaker 1: 27:55

No, yeah, I bet you do.

Speaker 5: 27:57

I may have met him. You've probably seen him at the shop.

Speaker 1: 27:59

Yeah, so I thought getting his opinion is like a community member would be insightful.

Speaker 4: 28:08

Yeah, the power surfing thing has been. I kind of got into it through those Almond Eye plates that were part of that whole no board BC crew. They created those things to put on your split boards so that you could ride without bindings and that was really cool. But you're still riding a regular snowboard. That has its challenges when you're trying to ride without bindings. Definitely a flat board surface is not as easy as a good asthma. Three dimensional you know depth mate for the project kind of board.

Speaker 8: 28:40

Yeah, no doubt man.

Speaker 4: 28:42

That was a cool learning curve in and of itself, just kind of seeing how that progressed. And then all of a sudden, yeah, I liked Voli and the asthma coming out and just being so much, arguably better than everything else. That was like, yeah, that's the way for sure. So once I found that idea I'm willing to ride some more boards, but I really do like that concept in the way that it rides for sure. Yeah, last year was kind of a breakthrough year. It was kind of, you know, one of the best years and over a decade, for me for sure.

Speaker 4: 29:13

And I've been going up and riding like the asthma on the cone before the years prior to last year, asthma on the cone. Before maybe I might take it on like red or something one lap if it was really good and then put it away. But last year I had probably half a dozen, eight, 10 days maybe of riding the asthma like straight up, you know, border to border. I went out over the east side a couple of times and brought it all the way back to Skyliner. I started at Pine and the only thing I didn't do was drop back side. Last year, yeah, I took mine out to.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Cloud Chaser last year on a really good day and just a lot of that low angle stuff. I mean the traverse back kind of stuck, but man, the turns out there on that day were worth it.

Speaker 4: 30:01

Hey, that's organic stuff flat, you gotta skate anyway. Yeah, no, I'm not even out, out there on it.

Speaker 7: 30:06

Yeah, we gotta go.

Speaker 4: 30:06

You know that kind of flat stuff is fun because it's the perfect stuff where, if you get to a spot, instead of worrying about unclipping and going, you getting back into your gear and everything, you just kind of like pick the thing up and push your way over the little hump and set it down below you and keep going and it's just, yeah, it's a little more adventurous.

Speaker 4: 30:23

I also just got those drift like snowshoe approach skis late last year and I had tried them last year and and I found a pair and those things carbon fiber approach in the skin track and then they pretty much disappear back in your pack and you can ride whatever you want. You can snowboard with them, you can, you know, but you don't need a splitboard, you don't need. You can ride whatever you want. And Super nice, like just kind of going out for a hike with that thing and not having the expectation I've got to go find an exciting shoot, I've got to go and like, go get rad. It's like I'm gonna go and just hike up to three quarters of way up Tumlo and giggle my way all the way back to the car, not put myself in any real avalanche danger, keep out of the zones that could kill me, like, and have a good time on a storm day. It's such a good tool to have you know, it really is.

Speaker 4: 31:18

It just makes it so much more accessible and fun and safe.

Speaker 4: 31:21

Yeah and back country and a lot of the time that I want to go and do stuff and it's like you're right, go in, drive, hiking all the way up there for two turns in, tumble a bowl and risking it sliding and then spending all the time to hike out Of there. It's really only so many times you want to do that, like it's on the good days, on the heavy days. You know there's only so much you want to do and and this just makes all those trips fun, guaranteed fun, yeah there are a lot of options now and in terms of like what you can climb with.

Speaker 1: 31:50

You know I use those mountain approach skis for a long time but they're heavy. But I see there's more and more brands that are starting to make like this hybrid, almost Snowshoes, like ski with a permanent, a fixed skin. You know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3: 32:05

I haven't used those. I've seen them. Yeah, I like the vert.

Speaker 1: 32:08

Yeah, well, how tell people what those are?

Speaker 3: 32:11

because they know they're a light, minimal snowshoe. They're, I think, like 125 bucks and you almost don't notice that you have them on your feet when you're hiking through deep snow and keeps you on top. Super good for putting in a boot pack up something steep.

Speaker 1: 32:32

Probably a little bit slower, but you can go straight up something that's, you know, steep, steep since we're talking about like backcountry skiing and side country skiing and snow, people need to go educate themselves about snow science and we're walking around in the mountains in the winter time and learn how to make a fire.

Speaker 1: 32:55

And you know I talked to Jonas that runs Three sisters backcountry ski and they they run those avi classes out there and everything. And he still to this day thinks that it's obviously you need to be educated on, like snow safety. But a lot of people get themselves in trouble because they don't know how to like basic, like how to navigate in the mountains or yeah, or like terrain traps or wind loading or, but also just like basic, like how to build a fire, how to like know and how to communicate, yeah, and if your cell phone is gonna work you know I mean things can go like I mean, if you go out on a nice blue bird day and it starts storming, like all of a sudden things get hectic and you don't, you get turned around, you don't know where you came from, like that's a, that's a big concern.

Speaker 3: 33:54

That happens to a lot of people all the time.

Speaker 1: 33:57

Yeah, the last person I was able to get in touch with was Jeremy Jensen, who we kind of talked about a little earlier, but I think Jeremy's probably arguably been one of the most influential like Americans. It's done like building power surfers, but also he's created so much content with power surfers that, like when I bought I bought a board of his in 2011 and I still have it and it rides amazing. I always liked it because I'm a bigger guy and his early boards had some weight behind them and I always thought, when you weren't writing bindings, having something to push against rather than too light, seemed to perform better for me. You know what I mean. But, yeah, he, he's just, he's done a lot like he.

Speaker 1: 34:46

When you Google power surfing, your his websites, what you'll find and he has, you know, his, his product line has evolved over the years and he's it's been pure passion. Man, I don't, you know, I don't think he's gotten rich. Yeah, doing this. I mean, he only recently quit doing his other job and is just doing Grassroots now and he's been doing it for like Since 2007. Yeah, so it took a while to get to where he could supplement and I don't even know if it like, with all the competition now His, his sites, one of the best to get verse like they're hard to find.

Speaker 3: 35:22

Oh, is that right, and that's probably one of the places to get him.

Speaker 5: 35:25

Yeah, and he's been doing a true like commercial way. Right, there's a lot of people that do it, you know like backyard builders that do it, and they do it really well. Yeah, but he's had product available, I feel. So, yeah, much respect on that.

Speaker 1: 35:39

Yeah, no doubt he's a he hustles man, but he loves it and you can hear it here. But he started making split surfers. Yeah, I think he might be on one of the only people. Yeah, yeah, and he, he has a binding that he's designed that kind of folds up, and I don't know that. To me this just seems like the natural progression of of where this is going compared to, or when you take into consideration how you get up the mountain right, and then also like the evolution of kind of splitboard design and Technology or I guess probably more design than technology, but you know engineering and all that. Like think about a pair of splitboard bindings now compared to 10 years ago. So it's only going to get more innovative. Yeah, but Jeremy's got a cool sound bite on on Split surfing is what he calls it.

Speaker 8: 36:32

Yeah, so our binding will fit any boot, any type of boot, any size boot, and they weigh a little, a little bit over a pound, I think. They're like 670 grams maybe, off the top of my head. They fold up to about the size of the paperback book so they can easily fit in any pack, even some pockets. But you know, anybody who's splitting around is carrying a backpack for their, their skins and their Water, and in this case, your foldable binding. So, yeah, I produce those. There's some people that would try to. You know, powser upon a snowboard and you end up, you know, once you try to put a full sized pair of bindings in your backpack, you realize what in the world am I doing? You should just be on my board writing because you know that they won't fit.

Speaker 8: 37:22

Or just one, one piece of the puzzle that that make these boards pretty amazing and it's yeah, it just opens up even more terrain, having a split version.

Speaker 8: 37:32

So you're not using, you know, carrying the weight of approach skis or you know, we we also deal in Burt's, which are like a snowshoe, that's it's made for steep ascent short and steep ascent and those can be very useful too.

Speaker 8: 37:47

But the split surface is really special and it can really get you deep into some good terrain in some really big waves. But yeah, it's been like the passion driving that the whole time that you know it's so fun to do. And then it's it's so fun to share with people too and and to see, you know, the looks on their faces and listening to the laughter and the Stoke that comes out of you know people's first time and or people's 100th time. You know, like every day we go out, it's just, it's amazing the feelings we get. So it's been super cool to share that with people and that's kind of what's helped keep it going. So I mean I love split boarding, but it's like it's gotta be, there's gotta be some airs, you know, or some gnar. I mean you get so much, so much more bang for your buck Riding a pouncer for like for every step you take. Like the turns, feel so much better.

Speaker 8: 38:40

There's so much more satisfying, like there's so much you've got so much more, like so much more of a connection with with the element in the mountain. You know you can feel every bump and every lump and you can feel that the different consistencies of snow and it's yeah, it's so much more rewarding. Even just a handful of turns is like so much more rewarding than On a snowboard. You know where the snowboard is like, basically an extension of your body on a pouncer for your You're actually riding a board. You know it's not an extension of you, it's not connected to you. So it's like everything is just it's so much more involved. It's so much more involved and it in turn, so much more rewarding. So, yeah, going back a snowboarding, it's like man, I don't want to hike for those like I can go take turns at a resort, you know, and there's just turns, yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:31

I mean granted there is a grad.

Speaker 8: 39:32

when you get to the really cool piece of terrain and you throw down Awesome, turn on your snowboard, that is yeah, that is all time, don't get me wrong. But when I'm, when I'm making the effort to summit A peak or get way back into the backcountry, like almost every time, I'm doing it because I'm going For good snow, you know, or I'm in a good line, but nine times out of 10, like I've made the call to go out there because I know the snow's gonna be good, and so I, nine times out of 10. I want to get a pouncer, for you know, it's just so much more rewarding for me and just helps so much better.

Speaker 1: 40:07

It is funny the roll bindings play. It changes a lot, man. All right boys, um, thanks for the energy tonight. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 40:17

No problem, thanks dudes, all right, thanks, all right.