“The summit chair at Mt. Bachelor, OR had just opened, and we were some of the first to get on. A big storm had just passed, so we were happy to see blue sky and find wind-deposited powder all over the mountain. Tim laid a turn just under the mountain’s volcanic summit, then we lapped the summit lift all day.” Photo: Colton Andrew Jacobs You got on K2 at that point, too? I didn’t have a board sponsor for a couple years, and then when I was 19 or 20, I got on K2. And I’ve been with those dudes for 10 years now. [ Ed: He went pro for K2 in 2014. ] Can you talk about hanging out at Mt. Hood and how that influenced your approach? I did four years as a coach, and then for two years Hannah and I opened a little food truck called Pizza Party, so I was there six years total. I got hurt a lot between age 18 and 22. That’s when I was working at High Cascade, mostly. So, my winters were short, but then I had all summer to shred, and Hood was where I snowboarded a lot. The vibe at Mt. Hood is sweet. It’s good times boardin’. Tons of slush, transition. And I got to meet a lot of really awesome people there, including my wife. Tell me about that. It was our first year at High Cascade. She was a counselor; I was a coach. It wasn’t until the very end of the summer that we talked for the first time. We got to spend the last week of camp together, hanging out a lot. And then it was just, “Ok cool, camp’s over, you’re going to college.” But we kept in contact, and I felt like I needed to pursue it. I flew to Boulder to visit her, which was a pretty rare situa-tion. Then it wasn’t just a summer romance. From that point on, we would visit as much as possible. Any other relationship I had always failed because I want to snowboard all the time. But Hannah totally got it. [She] would be like, “No, don’t come visit me, go on that trip. Because I would go on that trip; that sounds sweet. And I want to go snowboard anyway.” She understood that snowboarding was this totally different thing. When did you guys get married? June of 2015. We had been dating for eight years. We knew we were gonna get married—that was obvious—but then Hannah’s parents were coming out to visit, and her sister was coming out to the West Coast for a wedding, and my mom and brother lived in Reno at the time. We were like, “Everyone’s gonna be here in two weeks—let’s get married on that Sunday.” So we called everyone and we were like, “Guys, we’re getting married next week when you are all here.” And they were just like, “OK, cool, let’s do this.” It took about 10 minutes of planning. We hiked up Donner Peak, our favorite spot, did the ceremony, then went back to the cabin with all our local friends. We didn’t want it to be a big old extravaganza where people have to change their lives to come out to our wedding. We had a huge barbecue and skated and camped. Our immediate family was there. Simple. A few hundred bucks later, we had a wedding. Would you say that’s exemplary of how you operate? It was a case study in the Eddys operation for sure: minimal plan-ning, minimal resources and maximum efficiency. 076 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 15.2: Page 76
