We were taking the long route through Bozeman, from BC to Salt Lake. I suggested it because I didn’t want to get back too quickly. Gabe was ahead of me by about two hours. Dude drives fast. Guess he really wanted to get there. I knew what that meant: the start of the end. The end of my favorite winter in years. I gave up and pulled over. I wanted to hold on—to think. So I changed routes and went south on a two-lane highway and stopped in Salmon, Idaho. I found an empty bar seat in town and ordered a Coors and a burger. With cigarette smoke hovering, I reflected on the past four months, my mind wandering toward friendship, through the gratitude I felt to be a part of it all, and finally to the question of why I shot so many damn rolls of film this winter.
As snowboarders, we are die-hard documenters. Subscribers to a no photo, didn’t happen mentality, as if we’re all disbelievers without visual information hoarding. No evolution of technology has stopped this process of show and tell. Snowboarding and its documentation have been in a dance since the mid '70s, propelling a culture and adding to our archive with each step. This process has progressed us, personally and collectively. Vain as it is, nothing improves style more than seeing yourself with the absence of it. While writing has an ability to add lore, written history doesn’t always cut it. Watching Ingemar's massive method or Louif's backside 270 to fakie, now that moves the needle. You believe it.
Yet unlike film, photography can bend the truth. It invites the viewer to interact by filling in the gaps not shown and creating a narrative. It lets you imagine. The hope is that these visual and written moments in this book entwine themselves into a viewer’s thoughts, continuing to convey what snowboarding is, while reinforcing the reason to continue recording it.
The photos I take each year, the videos on my phone, thoughts in my notebook, are all keepsakes that remind me why it’s so important to find the things you love most—and do them often. Memories are malleable and realities fluctuate, but having a visual or written cue can transport you right back, exactly as it was. I finished my burger months ago. I drove home. The trip ended. But I smile when I write this, and the photos on these pages pull me deeply into those same feelings again.
Reason enough to hold on.
— Ian Boll
