TEMPLE, BARRETT, AND THE BEST AD CAMPAIGN THAT NEVER RAN Our team riders and crew end up being like a big family. In the case of champion snowboarders Barrett Christy and Temple Cummins, they actually got married and became the Cummins family. Barrett won big airs and slopestyle and X Games medals, and Temple is a free-style-minded freerider who honed his Mt. Baker Legendary Banked Slalom skills gunning for gold duct tape against the world’s best. When Barrett moved out here from Colorado, she applied her shred skills, talent and drive to the LBS as well. Our entire company becomes race-obsessed for a couple months of the year, fine-tuning boards and obsessing over possible race-winning design concepts and advantages. The conditions vary every year and it’s difficult to win, even if you are the best rider on that day. In 2001, we had the LBS miracle of Gnu team riders Temple and Bar-rett both winning the Men’s and Women’s pro divisions. On top of building our own boards, we do all our own ad creative work. We don’t usually get too strategic about ads in the traditional sense. Instead we run things that make us happy, are fun and hope-fully stop the page and make people think. We had an ad due shortly after Temple and Barrett won that featured a nice shot of them with their duct tape trophies. I can’t remember who exactly said it — our ad brainstorms were random and often included Olson, me, our de-signer Steven Cobb and whoever else happened to stroll in — but the concept of “the world’s fastest fuckers” came up as the slogan to celebrate Barrett and Temple’s tremendous wins. I really, really want-ed to run it but, out of respect for them and ourselves, it never got done. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that still haunts me to this day. Were you finding time to ride? We were weekend warriors. Snoqualmie was the first resort to open to snowboards in Washington state. Soon after, Baker allowed snowboard-ing and they were open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A year later they went full time. We would build boards all week, then bring ’em to riders and go test and ride. We had passes at Snoqualmie so sometimes we would sneak away midweek, especially if it was rainy or slushy—we loved riding in the slush and rain. On the weekends, we would generally go up to Baker. We were good friends with the Howats [who own and operate Mt. Baker Ski Area] and Amy rode for us. Gwyn was our age, and she became our team manager. She was the Gnu team manager for multiple years and a photographer. Amy was our first world champ. We sponsored a lot of the Baker crew: Carter Turk, Dan Donnelly, Mike Ranquet, [Eric] Jenco. Sometimes the mountain would let us stay up there for the weekend and we’d ride opening till closing, riding powder, hiking, getting our fix. Year one Lib Tech production squad, 1989. From left to right: Pete, Randy Coplan, Mike Olson, Chris Saari, Paul Ferrel. Photo: Chris Brunkhart PETE SAARI 077
The Snowboarder's Journal The Snowboarder's Journal 20.4: Page 77
