The following article was originally printed in the November 2024 Issue of Slush. To access the full article click here.
If you could trade lives with one pro snowboarder for a week, who would it be and why?
Somebody like Rene Rinnekangas would be pretty crazy to experience what it’s like to go through the air like that.
Do you think street snowboarding has a place in the Olympics?
No matter how hard the Olympics will try, I don’t think they will be able to destroy the freedom of snowboarding. They could probably put something together and get Slopestyle riders to huck flips onto rails, but there will always be a group of snowboarders who are driven to explore snowboarding in their own way and innovate through creativity. No point system will ever do that justice.
Most underrated European country for snowboarding?
I want to say Estonia, even though we don’t have any mountains or get much snow. But up-and-coming riders like Marko Malsub prove that Estonia can be really great if you put in the work. He always finds the sickest spots.
Who is the one person you have snowboarded more days with than anyone else?
Tim Shiphorst, my boyfriend, filmer, mental advisor, and best friend on and off the mountain.
You're working on a two-year project—do you ever worry about staying relevant and in the public eye during the off year?
For sure. It’s definitely stressful knowing my sponsors are hoping for content, but having most of that content locked up until the video comes out. But on the other hand, with the kind of videos I want to make, I definitely would rather give myself as much time as possible. That being said, even though we spent two years making this video, I spent most of my winter this year going on shoots with my sponsors and attending events rather than shooting for the video. Having already filmed an entire winter gave me enough time to do that.
So many videos drop every year that, as a community, we can afford to spread some videos out. I think it would be interesting if there was more variation in how long people spend on certain projects. I also wish there would be more videos of just a short trip that would drop throughout the winter. In my opinion, not everything has to be released in the fall.
In a two-year project, what's more challenging: knowing your clips won't be seen for a year or worrying that fashion trends will change in the meantime?
I think the biggest fear for me is if I find a new spot that I’m really excited about and film it in the first year of the two-year project, having to hope that no one else finds it and releases it the year before me. I mainly film in Finland, and there are so many local crews filming here plus all the foreign crews coming here every year. If you find something new, you really want to be the first one. There aren’t that many cities in Finland, so finding unique spots is getting harder every year, and I do not like to film spots that have already been ridden. Seeing the same spots again and again in videos bores me, to be honest.
Do you think the influence of social media has changed the way riders approach their video parts, or is it still the same creative process?
I don’t know how other people do it. I think social media has given an extra platform for people to create content for, but for the people who really want to focus on their video part, I think social media is mostly an afterthought. It’s really difficult to balance both.
One thing that might have changed is really practicing a new trick on the hill for your video part. I think these days, everything that happens on the hill gets filmed and dumped on social media, which maybe makes it less surprising to see these tricks in a video part a year later.
In your Bombhole interview, you mentioned adding bushes and aesthetic elements to a spot, which is pretty uncommon to the American jibber. Where did that approach come from?
Haha, I think that got taken out of context a little bit. It’s more of a crew thing. I think the thing with the bushes started when we would have to remove bushes or bigger branches but didn’t want to make it too obvious to people walking by. So Kas would plant them into the snow a couple of meters out of the way so there wasn’t a pile of bio-trash lying in the snow. I’d rather not give people extra reasons to be upset about us being there trying to snowboard.
Besides that, our whole crew definitely cares a lot about what spots look like. I’m not that interested in a wooden down rail in a random forest. Any surrounding buildings make everything look so much better. The more downtown something looks, the better. Also, stuff like a thin strip of snow as an in-run just doesn’t look as good as when there’s snow all over the place. Or when you’re scraping your board over concrete in every outrun in the video, it just starts looking really slow.
Where is your name used in a crossword puzzle? And can you reiterate that fun fact for anyone who is not familiar?
You know how newspapers and magazines have crossword puzzles in them, or you can buy a crossword puzzle “book” from a newsstand? Somehow my name has made it into their system, and, for example, a question like “a last name of a snowboarder” comes up often in those crossword puzzles in Estonia. I’m a popular answer amongst my grandmother’s friends, haha.
If Ben & Jerry's were to create an ice cream flavor inspired by you, what would it be called?
Non-Dairy Kitten Mitten Cookie Crumble
What’s the best Estonian word that doesn’t have a direct English translation?
It is definitely "viitsima." It’s a verb that means you don’t have the energy or just don’t feel like
doing something. It’s a very easy answer to everything you don’t want to do.
If you could only take one tool to a street spot, what would you choose?
I mean, without a shovel, you don’t get really far. A lot of people underestimate the importance of proper shovels and try to save some money on them. But street snowboarding is probably 80% shoveling, and having the wrong tools for the job can really destroy your body.
But a shovel is a boring answer, so let’s also mention a torque wrench set—perfect for removing stoppers, opening fences, removing gates.
With the growing emphasis on promoting women's inclusion in snowboarding, do you think there are times when this effort feels more like a marketing strategy than a genuine push for progress?
Not sure about marketing strategy, but sometimes it definitely feels more motivated out of a fear of being canceled rather than sincere support. It’s kind of exhausting to hear, “We’ve been wanting to do something with women.” Thanks, I guess, but that kind of just makes you sound like you don’t care about the potential of the individual, but only care about how people perceive your brand. So in that sense, I think you can label it under marketing. In my opinion, that falls under a similar category as greenwashing. I think (hopefully) people will always be able to spot sincere efforts to promote inclusion, though.
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