The Snowboarder's Journal - frequency 17.4
THE MINDNICH PARADOX
Words: Ben Shanks Kindlon 2020-01-23 19:37:02
Yin and Yang, a concept that originated with Chinese intellectuals more than 3,500 years ago, is a relational theory that speaks to the leveling nature of opposing forces. Operating under the power of cosmic duality, yin-yang elements come in pairs—fire and water, sun and moon, so on and so forth. Despite antagonistic differences these energies not only coincide, but they also harmonize. In some cases, they may even rely on each other for balance.
Hans and Nils Mindnich are brothers. They’re 26 and 24 years old, respectively, but are sometimes mistaken for twins. The two grew their snowboarding in unison, from the early days of podiuming contests together across Vermont to earning sponsorships from the same companies for years, all the way to simultaneously going pro for Salomon Snowboards in 2018. However, when you get to know the Mindnichs, you learn that in many ways they’re polar opposites, and their differences can create conflict. Growing pains that came when their paths diverged—both personally and professionally—led to contention at times. But more recently, the brothers have come to appreciate that they’ve both got plenty to learn from each other.
Hans and Nils were 7 and 5 years old when their parents moved them and their younger sister, Wynter, from Red Bank, NJ to Stowe, VT. In contrast to what one might assume about a family living close to Stowe Mountain Resort, the Mindnichs were not wealthy. Their dad, Carl, had been running a successful fiberglass company in New Jersey, but revamping it in Vermont didn’t take. Carl worked various jobs while their mom, Alison, took a retail position in the gift shop at the resort, which earned the boys their tickets to ride. “The lift tickets provided a daycare of sorts,” Nils says. “Hans and I would go into work with her on the weekends and just ride all day.”
Around that time Burton was developing a new line of children’s boards, and renowned designer John “JG” Gerndt, who happened to be Carl’s roommate in college, gave boards to the brothers. Within a few seasons they were competing regularly in regional and USASA events, and by elementary school they’d become standouts in junior events on the East Coast. “Racing, slopestyle, halfpipe and rail jams,” Hans says. “From a very young age I was competing a lot.”
By the time they were 10 and 12 years old, they were contracted riders for Burton, and joined the Red Bull team soon after.
“We always loved riding and being together, but we didn’t want to be perceived as a package,” Hans says. “We wanted to be seen as two different people, and two different snowboarders. One time we were at a Burton Junior Jam and our friends asked someone on the lift who they thought was going to win. The kid said, ‘I think Hansnils is going to win’—he actually thought we were one person. That speaks a lot to how we were being presented.”
The endorsements created an interesting dynamic at home. “At 12 years old, I remember having snowboard money go toward paying a phone bill, and other things like that,” Nils says. “When I was 14, I started making more money than my parents did. They always did their best to never have us stress about those things, but looking back on it, I feel like we were living in this house of cards that could collapse at any moment.”
Hans believes their frugal upbringing instilled a strong work ethic in the siblings. “I know my mom is still in debt and a lot of that came from taking us to competitions every weekend,” he says. “So trying to help out with all that is the least we can do. I think that’s part of the reason why both of us were nose-to-the-grindstone from a pretty early age—like, all right snowboarding is pretty good, but we also knew it wasn’t the most stable ground that we were on.”
By their early teens the brothers transitioned from USASA to Grand Prix events and the US Open, even traveling across the Atlantic. “The first time we went to the European Open, I had to lie on Nils’ behalf,” Hans says. “He was 13 or 14 and technically should’ve had a chaperone, and I wasn’t old enough to be eligible. But we went anyway and had to work out this bus schedule, and Nils was a key player in figuring that out. Our mom tried breaking it all down for us before we went, but looking back it was actually pretty heavy for full-fledged under-agers.”
In 2009, Hans and Nils moved to Utah to attend the Park City Snowboard Academy and further their riding careers. Neither enjoyed the academy, prompting Hans to return to Vermont and Nils to enroll at a different school in Park City. To make matters worse, in 2012 Burton and Red Bull terminated their contracts.
Upon his return to Vermont, Hans got his high school diploma and took an entry-level position picking up shingles with Dolan Builders. He quickly rose through the ranks. “I worked with Dolan Builders seasonally for six years,” Hans says. “I liked that it was fast-paced and I learned a lot really quickly. After a few years I was an 18 year old telling 45 year olds what to do on the ground. It was a lot of weight on my shoulders, but that pressure started to sit with me in a nice way. I would go out west during the winter to snowboard and around May I’d drive back to Vermont, work till late October, then gear up and go back out west.”
True to form, Hans made the most of those winters. Soon after being let go by his sponsors, he showed up to Snowboarder Magazine’s The Launch at Bear Mountain, CA and landed his first cover shot, followed by another from Superpark. He was picked up by Salomon in 2013 and began filming for the Snowboarder movies, winning the magazine’s Rookie of the Year award in 2015 after his part in SFD. He followed it with a stellar performance in the highly acclaimed Reckless Abandon in 2016. Riding alongside Bode Merrill and other top-level pros, Hans demonstrated tremendous skill in the streets and backcountry, which earned him an invite to film with Absinthe where he’s held his own for the past three seasons. In addition, during the 2019 season Hans won the switch race at the 33rd annual Mt. Baker Legendary Banked Slalom (LBS).
Despite the list of accolades, outside of snowboarding Hans is a humble, laid-back dude. He’s quick to roll a spliff and slow to answer his phone, but he’s astute and hard-working when necessary. Hans is an undercover deep-thinker, clever in conversation, decent at math and knows more about carpentry, framing and roofing than many. At just 26 years old, he’s at the top of his snowboard game while concurrently building a successful construction career.
Nils took a different path. He lived with Griffin Siebert and his family for two years during high school and became friends with filmer Jeremy “Jerm” Thornberg and the Lick The Cat crew, then started filming for their popular webisodes. He used a college fund to stay afloat, but was broke upon graduation. “I thought I was going to have to move back east to live with my family, but a friend lined Hans and I up with a stunt-double gig for this Disney movie, Cloud Nine, that gave me enough money to stay out west, buy a little car and make it through the winter,” he says.
Nils continued filming with Lick The Cat and starred in their first full-length video, 2013’s Project LTC. He earned a sponsorship with Salomon that same year, and later joined the ranks of The North Face and Giro. Like his brother, Nils managed to land himself on a couple Snowboarder covers, and produced exceptional backcountry footage for various videos including SFD (2015), Insight (2016), Giro’s Into the White (2017), and Lick The Cat’s Video of the Year (2018). In addition to demonstrating his top-tier abilities on kickers, big mountain lines and beyond, Nils won Transworld Snowboarding’s 2017 Standout Performance of the Year, for taking home the coveted gold duct tape at the 31st LBS. He placed first in the switch race that year, too.
Outside of snowboarding, Nils enrolled in community college before transferring to the University of Utah where he is currently pursuing a mechanical engineering degree. Although he can seem like a silly, carefree character, he has a meticulous mind that is well-suited to academia. He’s organized, accountable and displays more calculated tendencies than his older brother.
As a kid, Hans says their mom nicknamed Nils “Mother Hen” because of his habit of constantly checking on everybody—a trait he sometimes still exhibits, especially with those he’s most comfortable. He’s the type to make itineraries and stick to them, and he admits he can be overbearing at times. This was especially true in his relationship with Hans. Nils found himself getting annoyed with Hans’ more relaxed nature, and after succeeding side-by-side together for as long as he could remember, Nils was skeptical of Hans’ decision to forego a college degree.
“I am very critical of myself, and since Hans is the closest person to me, I would project that onto him,” Nils says. “We’re very close with each other emotionally, and since we’re brothers I would always expect things from him that I would expect of myself. I never really communicated it, but I was probably being way too critical of who he was, and I think he felt it.”
Nils was right. “With me not going to college and Nils going to college, I definitely started to judge myself a lot,” Hans says. “I was double-guessing everything I did, and at one point holding myself to the same standard that Nils would. But after a while I was just like, ‘You know what? We’re two different people.’
“I’ve got my faults and it’s good that I’ve acknowledged them, but I don’t think I need to perceive it that way. There’s a perception in America of having to go to college, but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary. In the end I probably won’t make as much money, but I don’t regret my decisions at all. I was always much more content working hands-on in the dirt.”
Through time and maturation, Nils shifted his perspective. He grew to not only accept, but also appreciate Hans’ personal choices and the way he carries himself. “Everyone projects themselves onto other people, and you hold the people closest to you to the highest standard,” Nils says. “But there’s a difference between understanding someone is different from you and in practice actually coexisting with that person that’s different from you. For a while I couldn’t accept that. I wanted Hans to go to school like I was going to school. I didn’t really make the connection that Hans and I are two very different people, and the way that Hans is and how he approaches his life is totally fine. He’s a passionate, caring, driven person, and on top of all that, a professional athlete with an absurd skill set to add wealth to his life outside of snowboarding. I love the shit out of him and I’m super-proud of everything he’s done.
“We’re like yin and yang. From the outside looking in, it might seem like we’re super-similar, but our approach to filming, and who we are as people, is super-different. Hans runs a more spontaneous program and has a naturally, creatively flowing process. I’m super-militant in my approach to most things in life, and I think that can be good, but it also turns into a fault at times. I think there are places where Hans can tighten up his program, but there are also places where I can learn to loosen up a bit.”
Hans concurs. “I’ve thought about us in that way since a young age,” he says. “Nils and I are very yin and yang. We’re super-similar, but also polar opposites. Sometimes it’s hard to see eye-to-eye being such different people, but that’s not too huge on the grand scale. From our earliest memories we were always there side-by-side, and then we kind of did our own thing—I was dealing with some stuff in my life, he was dealing with some stuff in his—but that’s just how life goes sometimes. We’re brothers, and as bitter or gray as our communication may be at times, there’s no one in this world that I’m closer to. And in the past few years, I feel like we’ve been growing even closer.”
Lately, the Mindnichs have been hitting the sweet spot in their careers and their brotherhood. They’ve come to recognize the beauty in their contrasting natures. They’ve learned to appreciate that not only accepting, but also adapting, certain traits from each other’s styles will improve their lives. It’ll benefit their boarding, too. “Sometimes when I get too in my head, I can start to overthink how fast I’m going into a jump,” Nils says. “And maybe Hans is under-thinking how fast he’s going into that jump. You know what I mean? There’s always a balance there to figure out.”
Photo Caption: “Nils taking a break while hiking to a lonesome cabin on the flanks of Vasilitsa mountain, Greece. Trash talk and jokes were flying around—it was just us on this mountain, but it felt more like a college field trip than a backcountry mission.” Photo: Jérôme Tanon
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THE MINDNICH PARADOX
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