Now you're gonna take beatings. It's written in our DNA, you know. You're gonna go down. You get up, it's that simple.

I was picking up surfing, which I also fell in love with. Then I was like, man, to combine the two [free ride and surfing ] would be perfect.

You know, I wouldn't even call snowboarding a sport, you know for me it's just a way of life

It was just on a whole other level, getting to experience and ride that terrain. We spent a fair amount of time in the Hakuba Valley.

We started out making a film [ The Fourth Phase] about the incredible snow we get at home in Wyoming, the journey soon macroed out into this epic 16,000 mile trip around the North Pacific, taking us to locations in Japan, Alaska, the Kamchatka Peninsula in far-eastern Russia, and back to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Ultimately it's a snowboarding film [Fourth Phase], of course, so the main thing that we wanted to celebrate was how awesome snowboarding is! Secondly, we wanted to celebrate the environment that we all shape our lives around. So the film documents myself and other like-minded individuals attempting to follow the hydrological cycles that shape the worlds we've committed our lives to.

What you ride and how you choose to ride is such a dynamic part of what this contest [ Ultra Natural] is built for.