The Snowboarder's Journal • frequency 14.1 • Up Top

Forrest Shearer, Alex Yoder, Marie France-Roy and Nathaniel Murphy. Tordrillo Mountains, AK. Photo: Jay Beyer

“Sustained high pressure and cold temperatures are a rarity in the Pacific Northwest, but the last few days of 2015 provided just that. In order to take full advantage of the conditions, Frankie Devlin, Kael Martin and I spent a night up high at a favorite backcountry camping spot off the Mt. Baker Highway. Here, Kael rolls out of a sunset slash and into the shadows before skinning up to our home for the evening in Washington State’s North Cascades.” Photo: Colin Wiseman

Mark Rainery, frontside 720 in the Eaglecrest Ski Area backcountry near Juneau, AK. After a long build and a couple of hits, he and photographer Jeremy Lavender rode out in the dark.

Mark Pinter is the head designer/operator/digger at the Snowmass, CO terrain park. He can easily boost double-overhead airs, but his on-the-lip and over-vert approach in the halfpipe shows there’s still room for on-snow evolution just below the huck-o-meter.

The crew had been eyeing this rock wall throughout a week-long trip to eastern BC’s Meadow Lodge with Teton Gravity Research. On the last day, Lucas Debari stepped up and stomped it under flat light—a great way to end a week of splitboarding just east of Rogers Pass.

Forrest Shearer, Alex Yoder, Marie France-Roy and Nathaniel Murphy climb before dawn hoping to catch first light while camped out in Alaska’s Tordrillo Mountains. Clouds moved in before they got to the top, but after a three-hour wait, the skies cleared and they were able to ride spines.

“Japanese avalanche barriers have been ridden and shot to death, but they’re still a blast to ride in deep snow. Sadly, it’s becoming harder and harder to hit them nowadays. There are no parking spots near most of them and tourists often park on the road to unload dozens of riders. With big trucks passing by on icy, winding roads, it’s quite dangerous to have people walking around. For this air on Hokkaido, we hid behind a snowbank to avoid road patrol. One member of our crew had to drive the car around during the whole session because even in the middle of nowhere, you can easily get big fines.” Valerian Ducourtil, frontside 360.

“Spring arrived in Nagano, Japan in mid-March, but we managed to scrape up enough snow to hit this rainbow ledge next to a baseball stadium. Our session was quickly interrupted by the Immigration Service and local police who were wondering why the hell we wanted to snowboard on such a thing. After a bit of tension and passport and visa controls, we shook hands, laughing about sumo and taking selfies with the officials.” Cees Willie, tail press up, 180, fakie 50-50 down.

Alex Yoder finds a playful approach in the usually less-than-playful Tordrillo Mountains, AK.

The Holga, a $30 plastic point-and-shoot camera that uses mediumformat film, is a cult classic that was recently discontinued—the tooling was destroyed and thrown away, meaning it will never be resurrected. Get one while you can. Liam Gallagher’s Holga visions from Washington state in the winter of 2015-16, clockwise from top left: heavy machinery for heavy snowfall at Mt. Baker, North Cascades measuring stick, Tim and Hannah Eddy at Alpental, North Cascades winter scene, Scotty Wittlake’s home on wheels at Alpental, Mt. Baker tree stacks.

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