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Occupation Wild is a job board for the outdoor, adventure, and travel industry. They also have a podcast with some incredible guests who share their stories and their own tips, tricks, and perspectives on how they’ve navigated the outdoor industry.
I had the wonderful opportunity of joining hosts Courtney Condy and Nick Watts as a guest on the pod for an interview about my journey to, and through, the outdoor industry. We talked about my background as a kid from Massachusetts who struggled with mental health and the pressures associated with fulfilling the expectations of others. I shared how my journey as a summer camp counselor and snowboard/ ski instructor in high school would eventually lead me to a career in the mountains of Wyoming. We also got to discuss my experience with learning and understanding how to manage mental health and the role that the outdoors plays in that process.
Growth is a natural process over time. People age, time passes, experiences come and go. The difference between growth and development? Intention. Growth is inevitable, development is optional. 10 Barrel Brewing is relatively new to the snowboard scene, but their history lends itself well to the developmental pivot model. 10 Barrel’s snowboard career seems to have adopted the less is more progression model much like its athlete team. Hold My Beer… profiles Eric Jackson and Curtis Ciszek, but also hosts notable snowboard names like Bryan Iguchi, Mark Carter, The Manboys, and more.
There is just something about riding with a crew that amplifies the enjoyment factor of snowboarding. With the evolution of social media, marketing budgets and strategy changed. Teams were chiseled down or dismantled altogether so that brands could reallocate their funds to a specific athlete’s travel budget or project. The sport of snowboarding became individual again. That said, crews are starting to make a comeback. Well, kinda sorta. But no one has captured the essence of friends shredding together quite like The Manboys.
Curious about life in Jackson, WY? What goes on in the ski/ snowboard scene? How to evade a moose on a ski slope? Any interest in hearing how my public speaking career came to be or what the process of creating The Expedition Journal looked like? Well, thanks to Ryan Dunn of YOPRO and The Destination: Different Podcast, you can listen to an interview where we got to chat about those things and more.
Antti Autti was born to be a snowboarder. The 35 year old Finnish rider is probably more comfortable sliding sideways down a mountain than walking along a sidewalk. He started snowboarding at age ten in Rovaniemi, Finland at Ounasvaara ski resort. It didn’t take long after that for Autti to surge to the forefront of snowboarding’s competition scene. That is, until he decided to pivot from competitive snowboarding in pursuit of filming his own projects where he prioritized creative control.
In the last 10 years brands and athletes have had to experiment with their exposure equation in an effort to hack the newly evolving social media landscape. Red Bull has notably been ahead of the curve in this competition for attention. In a time when ski and snowboard media was limited to an annual spotlight display on the big screen via full length film productions, the energy drink company turned athlete manufacturer pioneered the webisode content model with projects like Tracking Eero (2010), Brothers On The Run (2012), and Keep Your Tips Up (2015). Michelle Parker’s new season of Originate features the next step in ski media progression: a male, female, ski, and snowboard crossover in a web series hosted by an athlete’s brand and not a production company.
Most snowboarders and skiers would probably tell you that the reason they love their sport is for the access it provides to flow. If you haven’t heard of flow state, hopefully you’ve at least experienced it. Highlighting the simplicity of snowboarding and the correlation between flow and snow, people were psyched on SHE for its relatability; even if you can’t maneuver quite like Arthur Longo. Although Chapter 3 features more spins, more flips, and more amplitude, it still maintains the essence of the series with relatability and style. SO. MUCH. STYLE. The spins are not overdone whatsoever; in fact, the floated, slow-ro spinning adds the perfect amount of flair to crescendo the project in the right way. This 4 minute edit has more groove than most full films.
Have you ever wondered what a day in the life of a professional snowboarder looks like? Well, thanks to Ståle Sandbech and Spencer Whiting, you can experience just that. The duo mesh so well together that the candid moments of their friendship give personality to their snowboard/ lifestyle vlog series StaleLIFE, setting it apart from the “action only” clips featured throughout most of the industry’s content distribution channels. Set to Greta Van Fleet’s “Always There“, Stale flows and jumps beyond Spenny’s recognizably repurposed b-roll black bars, shares good times with friends, travels the world, and gets some time away from the competition courses and terrain parks that we’re accustomed to seeing him in. This 5 minute season edit could be a standout video part in any snowboard brand’s annual film.
Snowboarding, skiing, and skateboarding are undeniably intertwined. While Jesse Burtner popularized skate infused, one footed, and sometimes bindingless snowboarding, Scott Stevens took it to a new, very possibly unreachable, level. The collage/ mashup editing format of Suzy Greenberg 270 The Movie featured some of the industry’s finest riders and didn’t follow the typical ski/board movie equation. Given that the movie was a compilation of clips from Scott and friends, it also portrayed the lifestyle element of their escapades together.
There seems to be a direct correlation between sliding on snow and creating art. A lot of snow sport pros also dabble (or excel) in the world of artistic expression. In fact, there are too many adventure sport athletes who relish artistic creation outside of their sport for it to be an anomaly. That much is rather obvious, and Eric Pollard‘s film “Drawn From Here” addresses that relationship in the opening couple of minutes alone.
The Expedition Journal 