“What a blast taking photos at the 2015 Dew Tour in Breckenridge, CO—angles galore, endless amounts of insane snowboarding while chilling with friends and colleagues, catching up as another fun season begins. This is snowboarding.” Photo: Dean “Blotto” Gray Words Colin Wiseman “I wanted to go for a hike, but this rain…” Mark McMorris is referring to the Vancouver, BC drizzle. It tends to rain there in the spring. It’s a stark contrast to his current home in Encinitas, CA. Mark’s Canadian, but he grew up in the Saskatchewan prairies. It’s a thousand miles and a few mountain ranges east of the Pacific Northwest rainforest. Mark’s in Vancouver rehabilitating a broken femur, which he suf-fered during the Air + Style contest in downtown Los Angeles in late February. He’s at the gym for three hours per day, then spends af-ternoons hiking the north shore or rolling around downtown on his skateboard, in between flights here and there for the kind of obliga-tions that come with mainstream celebrity status. At only 22 years old, Mark’s become used to the spotlight. Mul-tiple X Games victories helped him get there, along with Travis Rice-endorsed appearances in Brain Farm’s The Art of Flight and at Baldface Lodge for Red Bull’s Super and Ultra Natural contests. But the Olym-pic bronze medal in 2014 was what really did it. That led to an MTV reality show, McMorris & McMorris , focused on him and older brother Craig, a ripping snowboarder and erstwhile TV personality himself. Now Mark’s got a signature console game about to drop, and, as evi-denced by the fans who stopped him for a picture in the coffee shop downstairs 20 minutes ago, face recognition on the street. It’s a tricky act to balance. Mark has nonendemic brand obliga-tions, an entourage of coaches and trainers, a full-time manager, a spot on the Canadian national sports program—how does he retain his sense of self? Some kind of authenticity? He probably has a lot of people telling him what to do, how to behave, how to ride. But when we sit down at a hidden restaurant in Mark’s temporary home at the Hotel Georgia, he doesn’t have a prepared script. He’s open and honest about his fears, his aspirations, coping with injury, and finding a path in snowboarding when he comes from a place where hockey players outnumber snowboarders 1000-to-1. He’s insightful about the reality of snowboarding’s perception in the mainstream and existence on the fringe; aware of his role in getting people into the mountains; conscientious when it comes to interpreting snowboarding for the masses as a national sporting hero. We begin making small talk and he tells me about how stoked he is just to cruise on his skateboard, about a recent day catching waves off a Jet Ski in front of Camp Pendleton with pro surfer Josh Kerr, about his plan for a full return to snow by the time this article hits print. The conversation turns to his recent injury. 072 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 14.1: Page 72
