The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 21.2
NOTHING MATTERS EXCEPT EVERYTHING: Blake Paul's Wingspan
Words: Alex Yoder 2023-10-24 09:22:57
Be here now, they say. Ram Dass’ mantra has become one of those cliché yet fundamentally true idioms we all strive to understand. Many doors are available for us to access the present. It’s found by some through rhythmic breath or reciting a mantra, playing music or dancing to it. For snowboarders, it’s often found by inserting ourselves into a concert of natural phenomena wherein gravity pulls us down a mountain, and our adrenalized focus on steering the ship mutes the monkey mind. In most cases, there’s a ramping up, an easing into that state so gentle that time seems irrelevant once you’re there. Conversely, the moment you hear that someone you love has died is one of the few life experiences that thrusts you into the present with such velocity that you crumble, pining to be anywhere but now.
In 30 years, Blake Paul has experienced more extreme elation and devastation than most do in a lifetime. A life-threatening childhood head injury, befriending his heroes, tragic loss, finding genuine purpose in his passions, dark depression and realizing his dreams. He’s mature enough to understand the buoyancy of his emotions and wise enough to appreciate them.
It’s August 15th. I flew to Salt Lake City to join Blake on his annual road trip to southern California, his truck packed with surf and skate gear. To him, this trip signifies the start of a new year. In the Golden State, Blake surfs most mornings, skates at least once daily, and stays busy tying up any loose ends from last winter’s projects while piecing together plans for the upcoming season. We’ve known each other for more than half of our lives, yet we still have so much to chat about that our 14-hour drive through Nevada in a heat wave flies by.
Blake’s annual pilgrimage west is inspired by his childhood fantasy of skateboarding at perfect parks and famed street spots from the videos he’d studied diligently growing up. Blake put in so many hours at our local skatepark in Jackson, WY, that one of its best features—a little step-up—is known as “Blake’s Bump.”
Surfing has also been in his life just as long as snowboarding. His grandparents lived on the Jersey Shore, and family visits were a summer staple. Blake’s comfort in all board riding disciplines may explain how his snowboarding is so calculated and consistent. “His riding is like listening to a song you love that you’ve heard a million times,” Bryan Fox says, comparing Blake to the band whose t-shirt he’s proudly worn since his teens, “it won’t really surprise you, but it’s so good that it never gets old. The Ramones played the same three chords for 20 years—and they were amazing.”
BLAKE PUT IN SO MANY HOURS AT OUR LOCAL SKATEPARK IN JACKSON, WY, THAT ONE OF ITS BEST FEATURES—A LITTLE STEP-UP—IS KNOWN AS “BLAKE’S BUMP.”
Growing up in Jackson, I became close with Blake’s family. His sister Emily and I were on the same snowboard team, and their parents were such avid supporters of the local snowboarding community that many of us felt like they were our parents, too. I harbored moderate jealousy that they were a snowboarding household while I shared a roof with four skiers, leaving me the sideways man out. The Pauls—Marilyn, Rick, Emily, Eric, and Blake—are all snowboarders. Rick, a forestry major turned carpenter, and Marilynn, a school and mental health counselor, were encouraged by Eric, their oldest (10 years Blake’s senior), to get Blake a snowboard for Christmas when he was four. They lived in Vermont, at the time. This was a few years before they moved to the Tetons, which Rick discovered during a work trip. Blake first rode the 108-centimeter Burton Chopper with blue-and-green-swirl monkey graphics on a thin layer of heavy snow caked to a grassy knoll in their Bradford backyard following a gentle push from Eric.
My appreciation for Rick and Marilyn as parents was only partially due to them being snowboarders. As individuals, they are motivated, generous and curious. Their passion for spending time in nature has always guided them. Whether skipping school and work on a powder day or taking the kids on adventures around the world, they consistently prioritized sharing experiences outdoors as a family. Rick has spent more time exploring Wyoming’s mountain ranges than almost anyone I know. His calm, kind demeanor and bone-dry comedic timing must be partly due to his tally of days and nights spent in the backcountry. If you know Blake and have ever wondered where he gets his harmless and witty sense of humor, I’d chalk it up to Rick’s influence plus a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the sitcom Seinfeld.
Now retired, the Pauls spend summers driving around the western US in their 2007 Toyota Sienna, the rear seats replaced by a simple bed, towing a big, red raft, floating sections of their favorite rivers and inviting nearby friends to join them whenever possible. I was lucky to hop in for an afternoon float on the Snake River this summer. After asking me about everything that’s going on in my life, Marilyn casually shared her distant vacation plans: “We’re taking the kids to Fiji in 2025.” I couldn’t help but laugh. She famously plans family vacations at least two years in advance, even today, with her kids all 30-plus-years-old. Her adorably genius strategy, deliberately claiming future calendar space for the sake of togetherness, clearly communicates her character and begins to explain how it helped shape Blake’s.
BLAKE MADE HIS BED COMPULSIVELY, FLOSSED TWICE DAILY, CLEANED HIS GRIP TAPE AFTER SKATING AND ORGANIZED HIS CLOSET FROM LIGHTEST TO DARKEST. HE WAS EVERY MOTHER’S DREAM.
Blake’s snowboarding capability and style today, often described as effortless, are the product of pure devotion built upon countless hours of effort. He hesitates to call himself a perfectionist, although he’s bashfully aware that the shoe fits. Teenage Blake was a complete anomaly. Typical male adolescence comes with a messy bedroom, questionable hygiene and a general disdain for things that require effort and are not fun. Blake made his bed compulsively, flossed twice daily, cleaned his grip tape after skating and organized his closet from lightest to darkest. He was every mother’s dream.
Blake watched every snowboard video that came out each fall. Nobody in Jackson watched Think Thank. Blake did. He turned me onto Catfish Chronicles, Keep The Change and dimensions of snowboarding which were so far from our local scene that I could barely comprehend them. It all had value to him, and the parts he liked the most played on repeat for the remainder of the season. Blake feels like this devotion to snowboarding chose him more than he chose it. “I chose to accept it wholeheartedly,” he says. “Now, I can’t imagine life without it. When I’m snowboarding, it feels like I’m meant to be there, not in a skill sense, but just the depth of feeling and learning it’s given and still gives me.”
Every little ski town has an even smaller snowboard scene, and ours was low-key until one of the best to do it squarely put Jackson on the global map. Many of Travis Rice’s heroics went down in a few zones we repeatedly heard about growing up. They all required a snowmobile and the proper wayfinding knowledge to avoid getting lost in the maze of whoops, high marks and shit-hooks left by our throttle-happy friends. Most of these zones were discovered by Bryan Iguchi. Guch’s gracious impression on every generation of up-and-coming snowboarders in the valley cannot be overstated. He has nurtured some of the most prominent talents in our little corner of the universe and continues to humbly break trail for Jackson’s youth today, having first ridden the Tetons around the same year Blake was born.
One of Blake’s first days on his own sled was with Guch leading the way out to a zone made famous in 2008’s “That’s It That’s All.” I happened to be there along with Guch and Adam Dowell. We set out to traverse a series of challenging side-hills and full-throttle hill climbs to get to what Guch called “The Holy Grail.” Everything was going well until one hard chunk on the uphill side of the track knocked Blake off his line and separated him from his sled, which carried on down toward the ravine straight at two trees. “The whole thing happened so fast, and I thought it was a goner,” Blake remembers. He couldn’t do anything but watch. I figured that was all I could do, too. Guch had another idea. He was way ahead of us but reacted when Blake got bucked. He pulled a quick U-turn and bee-lined for Blake’s sled, which had miraculously shot straight between the two trees and was en route to the creek below. Guch pulled a move you’d only expect to see in a Clint Eastwood film. He gassed his sled downhill to catch up to Blake’s. Pulling alongside it like a runaway stallion, Guch intentionally stuffed the nose of his sled into the slope to park it and leaped to Blake’s, landed his ass square on the seat and his hands on the bars, ripped it around, flew back uphill, and parked it right next to then 18-year-old Blake where he stood, his jaw at his feet. Grateful as he was for the rescue, the theatrical display of the skillset he would need to get back into these zones suddenly became crystal clear to Blake. He was more than up to the challenge.
In July 2011, I answered a phone call from my sister. She was checking on me after the death of my close friend, riding and filming partner for the last couple of winters—the most impossibly charismatic individual I have ever encountered, Aaron Robinson. She didn’t know that I didn’t know. “Holy shit—WHAT?!—There’s no way—they just got to Chile a couple of days ago—what about Blake?”
Barely three months prior, in the spring of 2011, Aaron, Sam Tuor and I were squatting in Jackson filming for Aaron’s video project, which would become 2012’s “Manifest.” We’d been stalking storms across the looker’s left side of the Lower 48 since December, jumping off whatever and sleeping wherever. It was April, but as far as the weather was concerned, we were still in deep winter. After a full day blocking up a cheese wedge, we were driving down the pass when Aaron asked, “What’s up with your boy Blake Paul?” Riding shotgun, having just licked the edge of a rolling paper, he was inquiring about the then 17-year-old who I had previously mentioned as “like my little brother.”
I first met Aaron Robinson (or A-Rob as he was known) in a muddy parking lot about 19 miles outside of Valdez, AK, in 2009. He had driven his 1989 Chevy Blazer towing a brand new 2008 Ski-Doo Rev 800 from his hometown of Whitefish, MT. He was 22 and on his first trip to Alaska. A road-stripe-yellow bumper sticker on the top of the Blazer’s rear window frame read in black text, “CLEAR THE ROAD, I’M SIXTEEN!”
Aaron was living in a wall tent. His gear was scattered around the floor near a wood stove not much bigger than a can of beans, which seemed to be having a hard enough time heating the tent, let alone drying wet gloves strewn below it. It symbolized his trademark cavalier optimism that seemed to get him into or out of whatever situation he wanted. When we met, he was tripping that I was from Jackson: “Damn, Jackson Hole for real? Travis Rice, baby! Is that dude crazy, or what? He’s so sick! KING of the backcountry.” After I stopped laughing, I felt a magnetism I had never felt outside of a romantic context. A moment in his presence felt like standing up on a wave for the first time—an experience so unique that you instinctually adjust the puzzle pieces of your existence to create more opportunities to feel it.
That April day, Aaron suggested we invite Blake to hit our jump the next day: “The kid rips! He’s so steezy…”
“He doesn’t have a sled,” I volleyed back, knowing how much better at jumping Blake was than me and feeling a bit of brotherly rivalry. I thought his lack of transport would be a deal-breaker.
Aaron didn’t see it that way: “I’ll double him out. Let’s get some dope Blake Paul clips in the movie!”
I acquiesced and later thanked Aaron for the lesson in humility and kindness. This was part of hanging with Aaron. His way. His Tao. His energy was so pure and present that it sometimes felt absurd until you understood that every behavior is a choice, and the bright side is always on the menu.
Aaron and Blake took to each other right away. They couldn’t have been more opposite operators. Blake ensured he always had his gear clean, dry and organized, plus backups, just in case, for a day in the mountains. Aaron made sure he had four to six joints pre-rolled and packed safely in the waterproof case he wore around his neck, plus two lighters in case one got wet or lost. He figured everything else would work out. It generally did. After that first day out, Aaron accidentally bestowed a nickname on Blake: “If T. Rice is the king of the backcountry, Blake must be the prince.” Blake joined the crew for the rest of the season.
Aaron had been exploring parts of the western Andes for the previous three summers to keep his endless winter dream alive. Aaron planned to head down there early that July, scout some zones, and get everything dialed in so when the rest of us made the trip down later that summer we’d be set to make an epic segment. Blake, with an open schedule and having never been to Chile, joined Aaron for the early part of the trip. Upon arriving in South America, he remembers Aaron getting straight to work. It was only their second day snowboarding near El Colorado in Chile when Aaron, stoked as always, dropped in and joyfully surfed a little spine with his one-of-a-kind off-script style. Just as he rode out of Blake’s view, he took a tumble. They were riding with a few locals who, once getting down to Aaron, began to yell for help. Blake raced down to the scene. He saw what no person should see, at his age or any. Our friend, whose presence encouraged everyone around him to live every moment as if it were their last, proved his point in the worst way possible.
People come into and out of our lives to shape our character and inform our perspective. This is a sentiment I tend to lean on when I’m perplexed by life and love. “Why” is the outcast among the more concrete monosyllabic questions starting with the letter W. It seems to evade even the most scholarly of us, often being relegated to the hallows of vague sentiments like “life is crazy.” I will never understand why Aaron left this world on that day in Chile in 2011. But I know now, more clearly than before his departure, that he completely changed how I see the world. Most people who knew him will tell you the same thing. Blake included.
Aaron’s impact on Blake marks a distinct turning point in his life. “Seventeen is an age where you absorb much more from your peers than your parents,” says Mikey Leblanc. He finds a unique quality in Blake that may be traced subtly to Aaron’s influence. “His actions speak,” Mikey continues. “These crews he rolls with rarely have a strong and obvious leader, and Blake assumes that role naturally. Not because he wants to be in charge, but because he is so clearly aware of his goals, the goals of the rest of the crew, and he sees the bigger picture.”
I joke with Mikey that Blake will go on to be a Hollywood director, citing his natural ability to articulate and manifest his vision. “Yeah, what’s impressive is that his vision considers everyone involved,” Mikey says. “He knows what’s best for the crew and works to ensure everyone succeeds. His style is a metaphor for his character. Whether that’s landing every trick he tries or showing up for his friends, he’s consistent.”
Just outside of Barstow, CA, in 109-degree heat, I ask Blake to tell me about a few trips throughout his career that stand out to him. “Chamonix with Arthur [Longo] was for sure a crazy one,” he says, citing a discrepancy in tolerance for exposure between himself and the Frenchman. “He had some step-down he wanted to show me that ended up not really working, but he still got a cover on it somehow. The hike up to it was so gnarly, icy rocks with sugary snow, and we were basically free-soloing up the side of this cliff. He’s just cruising up, no fear of heights, and I’m kinda trippin’.”
I’m amused, but it’s not the kind of story I’m after. “What about one that felt like a turning point for you?” I ask.
“I ended up on a trip with Bryan Fox, Jake Welch and Austin Smith–that was a crazy one for me,” Blake replies. “I grew up idolizing those guys and watching their parts, and now I’m on a trip with them. Bryan did a double cork for the first time. Jake got his ender, Austin was being rogue as hell but always pulling it, and I was just there.”
He laughs, but the story has a more profound point: if you commit yourself long enough, you will eventually become friends with your heroes.
Another standout was an impromptu trip to New Zealand in 2016 planned with filmmaker Jon Stark barely a week before arriving in Queenstown. Blake was an unlikely addition to a crew best known for filming in the streets. Blake remembers the young Quebecois Dillon Ojo most notably from that trip: “By the end, we’d declared [Ojo] the MVP, not because he got the most shots, but because he brought this vibe, this passion for life. He subliminally informed us that what we were doing was more significant than snowboarding. He reminded me of A-Rob in that sense.”
Ojo got an iconic shot for the 2016 video, “Lords of the Chicken 8,” board-sliding a down-bar relic previously featured in high-profile films like Shawn White’s “The White Album” at the then-defunct Snow Park.
“It was so sketchy; we had to bust open the gate to get into the place, and there was barely any snow up there,” Blake says. He looks at street snowboarding as a different sport from backcountry riding: “It’s more like skateboarding, and in my riding, I’ve always tried to emulate the process of the guys that do it proper, like Cole [Navin] and Ojo… It was obvious that Ojo saw things differently. He had more going on, he brought his DJ setup everywhere, and his whole aura was infectious. Everyone wanted to be like him.”
Tragically, Ojo passed away in a freak accident in June 2018, almost seven years after we lost A-Rob. Having known Ojo briefly and felt his positive affect, that “life is crazy” feeling started to creep in again as Blake regaled. If we’re lucky, we idolize our friends. We celebrate what makes them unique and how they find their footing in this world. When a close friend and hero punches their ticket far sooner than seems fair—in Blake’s case, losing two close friends by the time he was 25—the impact of such untimely loss makes you stretch your emotional capacity and question parallels of consciousness far beyond your years. The person you were the day before you lost a friend remains a memory. Their character imprints itself onto yours, carrying forward the pieces of them you miss the most. It’s the greatest gift, which you’d do anything to return, if you could.
“We can be our own worst enemy,” Blake says, encapsulating his ongoing emotional process of experiencing tragic losses. Aaron’s head trauma reminded Blake of his near-death blow to the head at just seven years old, a baseball accident that resulted in life flights to two hospitals and more than 10 emergency surgeries: “I don’t remember much other than being covered in blood and saying bye to my parents as the helicopter took off. I was terrified that I wouldn’t see them again. Losing Aaron and then Dillon a few years later brought all that trauma to the surface, and it took time to learn how to process it. One minute life is perfect, the next it’s a nightmare.”
It has taken Blake many years and various verbal and nonverbal therapies to sort out his own healing. “It’s hard to accept responsibility for your trauma when you feel stuck in it,” he says. “I was so young that it was much easier to keep doing all the things that gave me these highs, like snowboarding, traveling nonstop, and living my childhood dream. But with those high highs, there’s always equally low lows, and at some point, it became clear that I had to take responsibility for my healing process.”
He realized he needed to zoom out and find an objective understanding of the factors contributing to his state of mind: “I had to acknowledge that all of this mental stuff I was struggling with was a result of chemical reactions in my brain and that I can see it for what it is, and whether I manifest negativity or positivity is my choice. Situations and facts are concrete. Emotions, thoughts, and feelings are a reaction to them. You have to choose what you give your energy to. It’s like nothing really matters, except everything matters.”
IN A WORLD BOMBARDED BY CREATIVELY CONSTRAINED AND QUICKLY REPLICABLE TRENDS, PEOPLE WHO EXHIBIT SOPHISTICATION IN THEIR ART FORM, LIKE BLAKE, CONTRIBUTE MORE TO THE WORLD THAN THEY REALIZE.
This past season, snowboard fans witnessed justice in real-time during the final of the Natural Selection Tour stop in Revelstoke, BC. The inevitable match-up of Jackson’s two finest homegrown talents went as many predicted: Blake did the run we all wish we could do as smoothly as him—twice with few flaws. He made the objectively scary and difficult terrain look like a fun run. Travis went full God mode, won, and delivered an internet-breaking clip. Blake’s second-place result was fair, but the true victory was the long-overdue appreciation by the judge’s panel for what Blake’s riding represents. There’s a reason Blake is many pro-snowboarder’s favorite snowboarder. At heart, he’s the ultimate fan of the sport. He’s invested countless hours watching all genres of all disciplines of snow, skate and surf videos, all of which inform his creative expression.
A veritable journeyman, his Rolodex is as eclectic as it gets. One week, he’s lapping Brighton with “The Mikes” (Rav, Bogs, Leblanc); the next, he’s in a raft with Rice, Mark McMorris and Mark Landvik, hiking pillow lines from a riverbank. The cast of characters around him might be doing crazier tricks, but Blake’s clips still stand out. “What’s so unique about him is he never forces it,” Mike Bogs hits us with the brass tacks. That’s in large part what makes Blake an era-defining rider. Like the true professional he is, he exhibits restraint in his riding, as he does in all areas of his life. He chooses to do things well or not at all. His actions communicate his conscientious approach to an activity that historically celebrates stunts over artistry.
“I literally just got home from a trip to Europe. I hadn’t even unpacked my board bag, and he asked if I wanted to hop in the car and come to Jackson,” Bogs shares, explaining how Blake has opened doors for him, unconsciously continuing his contribution to the karmic cycle that played a significant role in his journey. Bogs says it was one of those moments where you intuitively know to say yes. “Before I know it, I’m in Jackson for the first time, my first real backcountry experience, and Blake was doubling me out to this zone with Guch, who told us that the first time he had hit that jump was in ’97.”
Blake considers Bogs one of his dearest friends, describing him as “a grounding presence in the crew.” Still, Bogs wasn’t sure why Blake invited him to Jackson, but the fact that he did provided more than an extraordinary experience. “What I appreciate most about our friendship is that he gives without expectations,” Bogs continues. “That’s how he shows up in our community. He has this comfort with himself, this way of knowing what will work and what won’t, that makes you feel more at ease.”
In a world bombarded by creatively constrained and quickly replicable trends, people who exhibit sophistication in their art form, like Blake, contribute more to the world than they realize. As a friend, he reminds me to take the things that matter seriously and find humor in the ones that don’t. As a snowboarder, we’re lucky to have him in our community. I’ve already started to notice his influence on the incoming class of pro snowboarders, who I’m sure have played Blake’s video parts on repeat throughout the years. He has drawn inspiration from the ones who’ve pulled him under their wings and others he’s admired as they flew by. He has had to learn to lean into the hard times, knowing there are lessons in every experience, good or bad.
Ultimately, Blake sees each aspect of his journey as an opportunity to curate and realize his dream life, knowing that every trip, friendship, project and iPhone edit he puts out will only happen once, so he’s going to do everything he can to make it as great as he pictures it in his mind. Because life is crazy, how we do it matters, and all we have is now.
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