After the final stop of the Dew Tour and my short stop back home in Vancouver I took off for Smithers, BC to spend a week at Skeena Heli. Northern B.C. is an interesting place. All the towns are extremely remote and tiny and the people are really nice and a bit out of touch. Even though I was born in a town just like it and spent time up there as a kid, it’s always a culture shock after traveling constantly for so long and spending nearly all of my down time in a city like Vancouver. Our crew consisted of myself, Mikey Rencz, Marie France Roy, photographer Scott Serfas and filmer Darcy Wittenberg. We were greeted by the lodge manager Jean, a former rodeo champion and long time resident of Smithers. He was extremely friendly and reminded me a bit of my late grandfather. Jean drove us the two hours out of Smithers and through the thick forest to where the Skeena Lodge is located. It’s in the sticks, big time. There is nothing within 20kms of it, just river, forest and mountains. As you can imagine, it’s quiet, which is a rare sound for someone like me. The lodge is amazing, it’s made entirely of local wood and is full of dead animals, everything from owls to moose to foxes to polar bears. You name it, the owner had it stuffed and put on the wall. Kind of creepy, but you get used to it after a while. Up there, there isn’t PETA or vegans. People hunt, farm, fish and they love it. After a snack and some shit talk everyone went to bed, excited for the next day.

Our first day was full of sunshine and powder and some really sick riding by Mikey and Marie-France. The next three days followed a similar pattern, minus the sun and the addition of a lot more ceasers and beers on Mikey, Scott and Darcy’s part. Every day we were woke up with a hot cup of tea and spent our mornings eating fresh cinnamon buns and gourmet breakfasts. Every single meal was different and absolutely delicious. We had everything from steak to halibut to ox tail soup and baked alaskas. I looked forward to eating almost as much as I did going riding every day.

It was a big change of pace for me, but a much needed one. I forget sometimes what true snowboarding is and riding powder in one of the most amazing places in the world is definitely true snowboarding. It’s actually why I do it and I’m really stoked to have spent the week having my ass handed to me again and again. Thanks to RedBull for footing the bill and sending us on an amazing trip and thanks to Scott and Darcy for shooting and to Marie and Mikey for riding with someone who sucks as bad as I do. It’ll hopefully be a story for Snowboard Canada so all you Canucks can check it out next year sometime. I’m sure you’ll remember.

Olympic blog coming soon.

Talk soon,

S.

Ogden, UT to Breckenridge, CO to Aspen, CO to Mount Snow, VT to Vancouver, BC to Smithers BC. Dew Tour to training in Breck to X Games to Dew Tour to one glorious day at home to a Skeena Heli trip with Redbull. As you can see I’ve had an insane couple of weeks. Sorry for the lag in blog posts, my life has been hectic and extremely tiring to say the least. X Games was long, a ton of practice time that was really needed for the course. It was technical and close together like X always is. They really want us to be a video game and as much as I wish my body was a controller, it isn’t, so tackling that course is always tough. The rails were many and super close together and the jumps were big. I was feeling good on the course and by the time qualifiers finally rolled around on Saturday ( we arrived in Aspen on Monday) I thought I was ready to go. The last two years I’ve gone from a Bronze medal to a Silver medal so this year I put a lot of pressure on myself to take the progression to the next level. I really, really wanted to win. I think more than I ever have so when the morning practice before qualifiers wasn’t going quite as I had planned I began to panic. For the first time in a long time, I lost my cool during a competition and as much as I tried to come back from it and just trust myself, I couldn’t. I let my head get the best of me and didn’t make finals for the first time at X Games. It was an extremely disappointing day for me, but from the mouth of Epictetus, “It’s not events, but our opinions about them, which cause us suffering.” I feel like I learned something that day and even though I didn’t walk away with a gold medal a lesson was learned. There’s always next year right?

The next day I dragged my butt up to the course and cheered on my girl Janna. Google her, she won her first US Open at 13, has 4 X Games golds and is my favorite female snowboarder. She landed the first cab 9 ever in female competition and took home the bronze (I think she should have gotten silver). It was a great day for female riding and I’m so stoked on how the girls rode, I was bummed to not be up there with them, but it was sort of fun to be on the other side of things.

After X Games I went straight to Vermont for the final stop of the Dew Tour. That state is way too cold, I’m so happy to not be there anymore. It was a quick trip, we arrived on Tuesday, practiced Wednesday on the barely finished course and the girls did qualifiers on Thursday. I won the previous stop so I didn’t have to compete until finals (so stoked!) on Friday. I fell on one of my stock tricks in my first run and sent my hard run for my final run. It wasn’t as clean as I had hoped so I ended up in third place and third overall. That night I partied with friends at this weird Vermont Inn called the Matterhorn because the Dew Tour party wouldn’t let athletes in, go figure. Peter won for the drunkest person of the night and I think I took second. Jack shots aren’t anyone’s friend.

I took the earliest flight ever out of VT on Sunday so I could get home in time for my older sister’s 3 year cake (that’s a drug addict’s clean birthday). It was amazing to finally be able to share that day with her as the past two years I’ve been on the road. NA is a really unique and amazing thing. It was cool to go to a meeting with her and see the varying degrees of struggle people are going through and to see people talk so openly about themselves. My whole family was there and I’m so proud of her. She’s one of the most inspiring people in my life and I’m really happy to call her my sister. I also got to spend that evening and all of today with my man. It had been six weeks so it was super nice to be home for a day and to sleep in my own bed. I’m now on my way to Smithers to go to Skeena Heli with Redbull. PUMPED!

This is the longest blog post ever, I wonder if anyone will actually read the whole thing…

Talk soon,

S.