The Snowboarder's Journal • The Snowboarder's Journal 22.1 • STEFI LUXTON AND THE SIMPLE LIFE

“Stefi Luxton at Brighton Resort’s lodge, prepped and ready to charge an epic day in Utah pow. Stefi is such a kind-hearted person. She rips at snowboarding and is a staple in the community.” Photo: Chris Wellhausen

There are are people who live just to live, and then there are people who live for something. People who live for what they love because they can’t imagine any other way. That’s Stefi Luxton.

Stefi’s passion and tenacity have made her the ultimate snowboarder’s snowboarder. It has kept her true to her path, dancing through life and structuring her world around the things she loves most. Hailing from a small town in New Zealand, Stefi has become a Kiwi legend, a vetted Mammoth local, an Olympian and the proud owner of the sickest back seven Japan there is (in my opinion). Stefi is a true freeride snowboarder who exudes style and ease at every turn. Introduced to snowboarding in her mid-teens, Stefi has found her way through slopestyle competitions, government sponsorships, traveling the world, and, most importantly, her friends.

After a hiatus from professional riding through her mid-20s, during which she pursued time on snow relentlessly, she found herself back in the mix filming and freeriding, cultivating widespread respect for her easy style. Her ability to handle every kind of terrain is a true testament to how talented Stefi is. And I am not just talking about physically turning on a board.

Recently, she has returned to competing in the freeride space, taking a podium spot at Robin Van Gyn’s Research & Development event in March, filming, generally showing up, standing out and riding strong at a handful of events. She’s also taken a leadership role in filming, encouraging other riders to comfortably grow in that space alongside her.

Yet behind that easy-going façade is a highly driven individual—a fitness coach, a surfer, an avid traveler who is constantly in motion. She’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in sport and exercise, and growing her ability to help others find good health through her personal training business.

Ultimately, Stefi is a nice person. The type of person who makes people want to be a nicer version of themselves. We all know the saying “nice guys (or girls) finish last.” But this is surely not the case when it comes to Stefi Luxton.

Over the past two decades, snowboarding has changed drastically. Yet Stefi has managed to effortlessly reshape her life and her career to continuously remain not just relevant but loved and sought after. Stefi can class up any space and make decisions that authentically align with her values. Where others have moved on from snowboarding for one reason or another, she’s always found a way to make it work. Even if it was the hard way. For Stefi, this is the only option.

Thank you, Stefi, for being the light that always stays lit when we, as snowboarders, start to lose it.

I’m from Wanaka, which is one of the main mountain towns in New Zealand. I was surrounded by the mountains and Lake Wanaka at my doorstep. Growing up, the population was probably around 5,000 people; these days it’s maybe 20,000. It’s crazy to go back and see all the new developments.

I am in Mammoth but travel a lot. I usually spend three months in New Zealand each year.

I started skateboarding and snowboarding at the exact same time. I have two brothers, they skateboarded and snowboarded before me and helped me get into it. We had a big group of friends that would go up on the mountain each weekend. Before snowboarding, I skied but would always ask to switch with friends so I could snowboard. When I was 14, I bought a snowboard and boots from the recycling center and that was that.

I didn’t think about a future in it, I just really enjoyed it. When I was 16, I joined this thing called Switch Academy—you could get Fridays off school [to ride]. My friend Leah joined it as well and we were surrounded by good, young snowboarders who showed me the way.

My younger brother [Digby] was more into skateboarding, but we would ride from time to time. He’s a pro skater now. I didn’t go with my older brother Harry too much. I had my own crew.

Your family is very loving and kind and fun. How do your parents feel now that their children are living the lives that they wanted?

My parents are the biggest chillers ever. Helen and Stephen, they are both more artistic than sports-oriented people. When they were younger, they would ski, but they weren’t that into going up the mountain when we grew older. That helped shape my independence—I would always have to find rides because we never had a 4WD car.

We never had much money growing up, but my parents supported us to follow our passions in any way they could. For example, moving to America when I was 17, they were like, “Ok, we’re not gonna stop her.” So, I saved up to get myself over there. Which is pretty crazy thinking about it—looking at a 17-year-old these days, I’m like, “They’re such babies, I can’t believe I moved to America by myself at 17.”

In just a few years, you went from weekend warrior to full-blown competitor. You became a national team rider for New Zealand and competed in the Sochi Olympic Games [in 2014]. Can you tell me a little about that experience?

When I was coming up, Slopestyle wasn’t in the Olympics yet, but it was talked about. The New Zealand team had eyes on the kids that were into it. New Zealand is so tiny it’s easy to find those kids, especially on the female side. I was doing the national contests and getting results from time to time.

Yeah, I loved it. I didn’t have to travel very far to get to the snow in Wanaka. One of the first competitions I ever did, the South Island Championships, we had to travel to Mt. Hutt, and that was my first experience of leaving town to compete.

It was probably my first time coming to America. My parents were very fair people when it came to my brothers and I—they bought my older brother a car worth $2,000 when he turned 16. When I turned 16, I didn’t want a car, I wanted a ticket to America. This lady called Rachel Newton took a bunch of kids over, we went to Colorado and Tahoe. It was an eye-opening experience. I couldn’t believe you didn’t have to drive up switchback dirt roads to the resort, the parks were huge, and it was my first time ever seeing the big resorts and that much snow. There were way more kids my age riding.

Nope. Not much has changed. It’s just still snowboarding and carless, living the simple life.

When I got back to New Zealand I was still in high school, but I got a job at a café, then a skate shop, trying to save as much money as I could to go back the following year. All I wanted to do was snowboard. As the winter was approaching, I decided to quit school halfway through the year so I could work and snowboard more before the US winter.

Snowboarding was an obsession by then. When I like something, I absolutely love it. And I will stick to it and the smaller things getting in the way will be cut right out.

I went back to America for three months at age 17. I had a house set up for the first five weeks but nothing beyond. I ended up moving in with an Australian family that I met on the hill. That was how I would do it every season from then on, pretty loose and homeless, but it somehow always worked out.

I was doing back-to-back winters. I would spend winters in Colorado and then back to New Zealand for the southern hemisphere winter.

The barrier to entry for snowboarding can be quite hard, especially for people living in different countries. A lot of success in snowboarding runs through being marketed in the United States. How did you make it work?

Coming from New Zealand, our winters are short, and the brands are distribution companies, so it is tricky to get any support. I rode for Oakley and Ride. They helped with gear, but not financially. Financial support was purely through the New Zealand team and grants from the government. The NZ team would choose a “pinnacle event” each year and you had to place in the top 16 to get a grant. Your position determined how much money you would make—10th through 16th would get maybe $20,000, fifth through 10th would get something like $40,000, and first through fifth you would make even more. I would always go for 16th place because that was enough money for me to get back to the States. At the Olympics I got 15th. Right on the bubble. That was my main goal. I was thrilled because that meant I could snowboard another year. That was my only goal ever: to be able to keep snowboarding.

The season after the Olympics, Possum [Torr] and I—I traveled with Possum my whole entire competitive life, and she’s my best friend—both got dropped from the New Zealand team at the same time. Luckily, I had that grant, so I had a little bit of income coming in and was working in New Zealand. I still wanted to be a snowboarder but was feeling a little lost.

We flew over to America together on Halloween [2014] with no place to live. We had been bouncing around ideas and ended up deciding on Mammoth because we’d been there in the spring, and spring in Mammoth is epic.

It was weird and scary but relieving. I was over it, honestly. I was never on the podium; I was always somewhere in the middle. There were a lot of ups and downs, a lot of travel, a lot of injuries. It was something I thought I really liked, but I didn’t actually like it that much, and I didn’t really realize that until after I stopped.

And then you moved to America full time. How did you make this possible? Can you explain the green card process a bit?

When Possum and I flew in I got red-flagged at the border. I was traveling on an extended visitor visa but had overstayed the previous year. They didn’t send me home, but I had to sort out my athlete visa in six months to come back the following year. We found a house to rent on Craigslist in Mammoth. Luckily, my friend Becky was a lawyer and helped finagle the athlete visa. You need to have sponsors to get an athlete visa with proof of contracts and income. Tanner at Ride helped me out—he made a contract that looked like I was sponsored legit.

Meanwhile, I had applied for the green card lottery a few years back. The green card lottery is a crazy process—they pick around 50,000 winners each year from a pool of at least 10 million applicants. In the spring I found out that I made it to the third stage where I have to fly back to New Zealand, do my medical assessment and biometrics, and get an interview in June. Basically, if you make it to the interview process you have won the green card.

I flew back to NZ, did the interview, and once I got that green card, I immediately flew back to the US. I knew I didn’t want to spend another winter in NZ. I’d just started hanging out with [boyfriend] Scott [Blum], and we went on a massive summer road trip—to Mount Hood, the Oregon coast, and up to Washington [state]. Hood was a refreshing new experience. I met so many amazing people and started learning about the filming side of snowboarding through Scott and Harrison [Gordon]. After Hood, I went back to Mammoth and got a job doing room service at the Westin.

People that order room service know that I’m coming, so I didn’t see anything too crazy, but there were a couple of sketchy naked people.

He came up to me and started to speak in an attempted Kiwi accent and giving me facts about New Zealand. I didn’t actually know who the guy was until the host told me. So, no he didn’t ask me on a date.

Sounds like a poor flirt to me. Back on track here. Were there ever any feelings of, what am I doing with my life?

Yeah, for a moment. I still competed a few more times after being dropped by the national team, and that reinforced that I was done with it. But I’ve always looked at life optimistically. The timing of the green card thankfully put me in a position where I could work and still go snowboarding every single day. I felt lucky. It felt like a second chance. I lived and worked in Mammoth for three years, then one day I got a call from Bobby Meeks, asking if I was interested in riding for DC.

If you don’t mind, how old were you at that point? Was this your first major paying brand sponsor? Did this spark a new fire within you?

I was 27. I had a minor contract before with Ride, but Bobby was the first to offer me a contract that could help support me through a winter. I had given up a little bit on the professional snowboard career. I was still riding every day but more for myself. That phone call was really exciting and unexpected. It allowed me to start traveling again to snowboard, and to work a little less in the winter. I am thankful for those years in Mammoth. That’s when I really learned to snowboard properly, outside of the park.

As long as I have known you, you’ve always done things that align with who you are and what you love to do—taking things as they come and go with the pure desire to be able to continue doing whatever those things may be. Do you feel like being laid back and chill has helped or hindered your career?

It is a mix of both. Maybe I haven’t put myself out there as much as I should. Maybe a bit of imposter syndrome mixed with being way too chill has hindered me a bit.

You’ve been riding a lot more backcountry. In fact, after your anti-competition hiatus, you’ve competed in both Natural Selection and RnD. How do you feel returning to a different type of competition setting?

I had done Natural Selection once before as an alternate, but it went by quickly and I didn’t get to process it. It was very last minute and then all of a sudden it was over because I didn’t make it past the first round. I didn’t think I would be that into competing until I did RnD. I went into it forgetting about how I had spent years competing in slopestyle and had done Natural Selection. It kind of fired me up. I took it somewhat seriously—picked a line to ride the day before, then stuck to that line. It was fun to figure it out and be strategic. We filmed a few days before the contest so we could feel out the snow conditions. I don’t think I would care to compete in the backcountry if it wasn’t for RnD, but now I’m pretty down and I would like a rebate at Natural Selection if the opportunity pops up.

Very cool, Stef. I love to see the fire back in ya. So, you’re competing, kind of, you’re filming, and you’re also in school now?

Yes. I’m getting my bachelor’s degree in sport and exercise, and it has been a long, long process, but I’m ticking away. I take one class in the winter, then in the summer I take more. Sometimes it’s hard getting home from the mountain or being on a trip and having to do school, but it also helps me sit down and use my brain, which is important to me.

You’re also doing exercise coaching and you live in a van sometimes that’s not really your car, because you don’t have one. We’re at the beach right now—you are busy.

I’m fascinated by your ability to laugh at things that might stress other people out. Does anything actually piss you off?

Honestly, not much actually pisses me off. I almost got my life savings stolen from me last week.

I went to buy a car, believe it or not, from a dealership. I wired them money for my down payment. The wire transfer takes 24 hours, so I couldn’t pick the car up until the next day. That night I decided that the car was a bad deal. It didn’t have a warranty, so I backed out of it. They wrote me a check to reimburse my down payment. Three days later the check was declined. I thought I got scammed from the dealership and they were going to steal my money. It took another week to get this money back. But to be honest, during the whole process, it didn’t really even piss me off. I was like, “At least I have my health.”

I try not to sweat small things. As snowboarders, most of us live a pretty privileged life. A roof over our head, food, health—most of the time. I like to zoom out a bit. It makes me realize how lucky we all are—the world is a crazy place. So, small things that may piss someone off, I never stress over them.

Although, one thing does irk me a bit: when people don’t directly ask you something. If you want something, just ask me directly.

You’ve been snowboarding for a long time. What motivates you—not only in snowboarding, but in life?

I’m 32 and I started at 14, so going on 17 years. I’m motivated by freedom, travel and the outdoors. Exercise, doing the things I love each day. Eating healthy, experiencing cultures, helping people achieve exercise goals, and using my brain to constantly learn.

I filmed more than ever. I went to Japan with Katie Kennedy and Darrah Reid-McLean and filmed with them for two-and-a-half weeks. Then I met up with Scott and the Sims guys and filmed with them. After, we went on this massive road trip, catching the ferry from Hokkaido to Honshu then drove through Japan. We went to a bunch of snowboard shops and got to meet a ton of people. I ended the trip surfing for a week—basically had the best time of my life. Apart from that I filmed in Salt Lake and ended up doing a bunch of events in the spring. I’m excited to have a little cut this year.

The best part is experiencing powder, for sure. And the worst part is, hard to say, maybe sleeping on the floor for four weeks—every place we stayed was the tatami mats.

Other than the sleeping arrangements, did you find it difficult to travel to a foreign country?

I had never traveled to a country with a foreign language by myself before, so I went to Sapporo for three days and walked around the city. I figured out the public transport, how to communicate with people without speaking the language. It set me up for a successful trip over there.

Going to Japan with the crew was my first film trip being in more of a leadership role where people were relying on me to get them from A to B, get shots and enjoy their experience. It was slightly stressful in the beginning, trying to find good spots with good snow. I did run at least 20 red lights total and almost drove away with the petrol thing in my car, but in the end it all worked out pretty smoothly. I was the tour guide for Katie, Darrah, [filmer] Derek Molinski and Nick Elliott, and [photographer] Taylor Boyd and Hana Beaman met up with us as well.

I didn’t see my family for four years during COVID. Finally, once all the restrictions eased, [Scott and I] decided to move to New Zealand into a van and travel around for three months. We have done that for the past two years. One day we want to end up there, so traveling around like this is the best way to feel out a place to live one day.

Living in New Zealand in a van is an experience I would highly recommend. They have freedom camping there, which, if you have the certified sticker on the back of your van meaning you have clean water and gray water and a toilet, then you can stay in these free camping spots. It’s pretty loose—we don’t have any of those things in our van and we still stay in the freedom camping spots, no questions asked.

We follow the swell, wind and weather, looking at the forecast and deciding where to go based on Mother Nature. We get to see the country spontaneously, meet people and experience day-to-day unplanned. I’ve also been doing school, so we spend many hours in public libraries. Sometimes we end up staying in one place for a week, and others for just a morning. It’s a fun way to live.

Well, Stefi, it seems like you have done a ton, learned a lot and have seen the world through your beautiful lens. Would you say you have achieved current homeostasis?

Absolutely. I’m so grateful for the opportunities that I have had so far. Life is good.

The way you follow your passions and make them work for you is so cool. Do you have any advice for how to achieve this?

The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 22.1

STEFI LUXTON AND THE SIMPLE LIFE

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