Backside 180 during Red Bull Recharged in May at Mammoth Mountain, CA. Recharged is a team-based content creation event schemed up by Ben and Mark McMorris and designed to let style shine through. Photo: Aaron Blatt Where are you from? I was born in Idaho. My parents moved us to Bend, OR when it was still small. It gets busy now, but it’s still a little mountain town. The river runs right through it, you can ride bikes, skate, fish—it’s the perfect place. Tell us about your family. Brandon Ferguson is pops, Jennifer Ferguson is mama bear. Pops is a dentist and mom works at the office. They’ve had my back my whole life. Pops hustled for his position in this world and he taught me how to work hard. He wants his boys to keep their bite and do the same. Mom taught me how to love [laughs]. Take us through the journey of snowboarding with your younger brothers Gabe and Zach. I was 8 when Gabe started snowboarding. He was just 4 years old and picked it up quick. He was two feet tall doing stalefishes off natural features at [Mount] Bachelor. There was a powder day when the snow was up to his waist. He tied his own boots, did a toeside turn and flew right out of his setup. He was walking around in deep snow in his socks—”Where’s your board Gabe?” He’s a full-on man now, and he killed it this year. Big Z’s out in Montana right now digging ditches, making money for school. He rode with us as kids but he didn’t want to compete anymore, started going to school regularly, wasn’t skipping classes to ride like me and Gabe. Now he’s going to college, playing rugby. He shreds hard still—big into straight-lining. He’s the heavyweight champion of snowboarding—the dude is built. How old were you when you started riding? Six. The first couple years it was just me and my dad cruising. The third year I started doing Mt. Bachelor Mighty Mites, then I got into this program called MBSEF [Mount Bachelor Sports Education Fund]. I’d ride with JD Dennis, Ben Watts, Garrett Warnick, and the Warbington brothers [Max and Gus]. I started getting more serious about snowboarding then. I was 8 years old when I got into my first contest, and I kept do-ing the USASA. You’d get your two contest runs mad early and then you were ripping the resort. Those were some of the best laps, riding with that massive squad, waiting to see how the contest results came in once the lifts shut down. You started riding powder with them? We weren’t good at anything. I’d always get stuck. You were always trying to go as fast as you could, keep up and not get left behind. It sucked if you had to take a piss—I would hold it so long. It was so bad, I pissed my boots once. My parents were wondering if a cat snuck into the garage and pissed in them. You didn’t ’fess up? I wasn’t about to admit it. But that’s how crazy it was. A lot of those guys went on to make a life in snowboarding and the few that didn’t fully could have. We had a heavy squad. They pushed me toward everything that’s happened now. There’s a lot of flow at Bachelor—how much did that contribute to your riding? It’s not the steepest and most aggressive mountain, it’s more playful. You learn how to hold speed and use your edges to get around. We also had a baller park back in the day and everyone was pushing each other. Pat Malendowski would cut the pipe sometimes and it got so good. You found some traction in the contest world early? Ben Watts was killing it and he would win USASA nationals, so that was always a goal within our crew. I didn’t make nationals my first year, but when I was nine I won slopestyle and got second in the halfpipe for my division. That summer I got signed to the Burton Smalls team and met Chaka [then Burton Team Manager Michael Gardzina], and [photographer] Adam Moran, and the rest of the Smalls kids like Hans and Nils Mindnich and Kyle Mack. Chaka was pretty hard-core. He never seemed hyped; he wouldn’t say anything until you did something really sick. He’d say, “Yeah Ben, cool,” and that was the Chaka nod. I got into the Rev Tours, and the Launches from there. That’s when I started riding with [coach] James Jackson. He’d take us up to Bachelor and we’d ride pow. We weren’t just in the park learning tricks; we were learning how to ride our snowboards. I started riding for his shop [the late Side Effect Board Shop] around the same time I was getting flowed from Burton. 040 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.2: Page 40
