Travis Rice has been pushing the envelope of what's possible in snowboarding for over 20 years. He has won prestigious awards for his riding, and completely recreated what it means to host a winter sports competition. Travis has also built new businesses like Sendy and changed the way action sports films are made.
Travis Rice has been pushing the envelope of what's possible in snowboarding for over 20 years. He has won prestigious awards for his riding, and completely recreated what it means to host a winter sports competition. Travis has also built new businesses like Sendy and changed the way action sports films are made.
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Travis Rice:
I had some tiny wins in the sense of I had an idea, I tried it, it worked out, and so I tried it again and I tried it again. You got to be like, "No, no, no. Come on, it's going to work. Come on. We could do this," without actually knowing how you're going to do it or pull it off.
Shelby Stanger:
For more than 20 years, Travis Rice has been pushing the envelope of what's possible in snowboarding. The Red Bull athlete has won prestigious awards for his riding, and created a new winter sports competition. Travis has also built new businesses like Sendy and changed the way action sports films are made. His specialty is pushing the limits on challenging terrain and in the industry at large. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-Op Studios production brought to you by Capital One. Travis Rice loves exploring new snowboarding lines that seem impossible. He speeds down mountains while launching off of boulders and steep cliffs. This passion led him to create the snowboarding competition, Natural Selection, which emphasizes the artistry of the sport paired with technical riding. For Travis Snowboarding is about testing his limits and expressing himself creatively. Travis Rice, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. Excited to have you on.
Travis Rice:
Yeah, good morning. First chat of the morning. This is a splendid way to start the day.
Shelby Stanger:
I think for the people who don't know you and people are curious, how did you get into snowboarding? You could have been probably a pro skater, probably pro motorcycle rider, pro skier. I'm guessing you grew up in Jackson, right?
Travis Rice:
I grew up in Jackson. I love playing in the mountains. I skied from when I was a little kid. My dad worked on the mountain. He was a ski patroller, and Jackson's winters are brutal. And so you got to stay active and you got to play. And lucky for us, that was the greatest natural resource we had in the winter, was to go out and go play in the snow. For me, I didn't start snowboarding until I was 12, and by that time I felt like I could do anything on skis. I was 10-year-old, 11-year-old. I'd even watch pro skiers and it was just like, "How do we go and try to ride that type of stuff? I feel like I can land off any cliff I jump off." Confident little kid. But it was boring unless it was a great powder day.
I mean frankly, right? Making turns down the mountain didn't really do anything for me. And I remember the first time I tried to snowboard, and I struggled, but it was t he first time I did a turn on the edge. That was such a challenging thing to do, and started riding and a few years into it was still chasing that arc. Because to do a good turn on a snowboard... You can get it within, I don't know, third day, fourth day. You can start to feel what that feels like. But I'm 30 years in and I'm still chasing that feeling of on a single rail, trying to hold a beautiful arc, and your entry into it, how deep you go with it, and your exit out of it into the next one. And that has stayed a consistent theme that still gets me out of bed in the morning and I'm still excited to do it. It's a beautiful arc.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get into film?
Travis Rice:
Yeah, I was lucky enough, I had a awesome teacher and what a cool elective. Jacksonville High School. Actually, Jacksonville Middle School, it started, there was film class, right? You could go in and take a class on TV and filmmaking. And you had shoulder mount beta cameras. You go shoot things, put together interviews, do silly news stories on things. It was always my favorite class. Being able to try to walk a fine line of put on a serious morning, because there was news every morning, student news, and being able to walk the fine line of slipping through a story that was just serious enough where we wouldn't get in trouble, but that was funny enough where you could make everyone in the school laugh. And then moving on to being able to travel with filmmakers in snowboarding. And I took it upon myself to apprentice, to ask questions.
I'm in proximity to these amazing filmmakers and photographers. It's not a leap to ask someone some questions. And I think that's something that a lot of people work close to or in proximity to these masters, people who have mastered whatever skill or craft it is through their life, and have all this amazing information on how something works and probably want to share it, want to teach it, but you got to ask. You got to coax it. And so I was always like, "Hey, how do you do that? How do you change film? What's the exposure?" And so I asked a hundred questions and then I started doing it, and then you learn it.
Shelby Stanger:
At age 18, Travis started making his way as a full-time competitive athlete. Eventually he started moving away from the traditional competition circuit. He made a living as a sponsored athlete, shooting films in the back country and designing cutting edge snowboards with the brand Lib Tech. In 2008, Travis saw a way to push the industry in a different direction and turn a new wild idea into reality. With that, Natural Selection was born.
So you were a competition snowboarder, not until age 18, which seems like old for competition snowboarding. But there was something about traditional snowboard competition that was just not doing it for you. It led you to create your own Red Bull Supernatural, then the Natural Selection. I'm guessing it's just that you don't like all these rules and you wanted more canvas, is what I'm guessing. I don't know, but what did you not like that led your energy to be like, "Screw it, I'm going to start my own thing."
Travis Rice:
Yeah. No, it's interesting actually the process for me was a little bit different, because I was a fan of competition snowboarding, and yeah, I enjoyed it. It's hard. To stand in the start gate and drop in like, "Okay, you've got three seconds. Okay, your turn, go." There's something that you don't get that from anything else in life, or at least for me. And I really enjoyed everything from just the physicality and the mental challenge to the, everyone gets together, we have a competition, and then we party. And sometimes you win cash, sometimes you win cars. But I also really liked the back country stuff, as did most of the people I competed with. And so we made movies, we rode in the back country, and then we competed. And that was the rhythm of things. And I don't think it was so much out of any bitterness of not appreciating or liking where we were.
I think it was just out of like, "Okay, this is getting a little repetitive. Could this be more interesting?" And this is where the snowboarding culture, and skiing for that matter, it's been progressing in this direction for 50 years. Racing led to half pipes, and then half pipes led to parks and jumps, which then allowed the snowboarders to do bigger and better tricks. And there's still a ton of progression left, and I'm a fan. I watched half pipe and slope style events, but it's gotten so technical, so technical where to thrive, you have to train like a gymnast now. And that structured dedication, there's nothing wrong with it, it's beautiful in its own right, it's just not really why a lot of people love to go snowboarding.
And so this natural selection thing, this was hundreds of conversations with an entire industry, the brands, the most influential riders, the creatives. And what came out of that was this natural selection event, where you take a lifetime of experience a rider has accrued and apply it to big mountain, natural terrain, natural snow conditions, which, natural snow conditions are always changing, and creating these grand venues that are so massive with so much creative opportunity, and being able to have riders come and compete, where a competition run is potentially ending a video part. And that's where the bar is in the adventure sports space. The best of the best usually happens in a video and is filmed. And it's limitless where it can go because we're dealing with natural topography, natural oddities, and how riders interact with them.
Shelby Stanger:
And it's judged on style as much as-
Travis Rice:
It's judged on a number of things. It's judged on style, it's judged on the difficulty that a rider chooses to take with their line, the creativity, the technicality, the fluidity. And the beauty of this event is it really is not so much about domination. The riders that end up standing on the podium at the end of the day are the riders who have harmonized with the natural conditions in that face, the best that day. Because it really is. These venues are huge and they're very complicated.
Shelby Stanger:
Natural Selection takes place on mountains around the world, sometimes miles away from civilization where there is no cell phone service. It's a beast to pull off logistically. Still, Travis has managed to broadcast the competition internationally, and it's become a mainstay in the snowboarding industry. Natural Selection has been embraced as a way for athletes to continue to showcase their craft, skill and love for the sport.
When we come back, Travis talks about the line he recently discovered, the Velvet Castle, and the most profound experiences he's had on a board.
More than 20 years into his career, Travis Rice is still innovating in the sport of snowboarding. Most recently Travis was scouting out a place to propose to his now fiance, and he happened upon a brand new line in British Columbia.
Two weeks after he noticed the peak, he and his buddy flew back to ride it. The line was extremely tall and steep. It included a 3,700-foot vertical drop, which was the equivalent of about three Empire State buildings. Travis took a video on his GoPro as he descended. And you can see him jumping over these snowy white masses that look soft, but are actually large boulders and trees. In the world of snow sports, when you're the first to ride a line, you also get to name it. Travis named the route Velvet Castle, which are the middle and last names of his fiance, but the name also perfectly describes the ride. The snow was like velvet, and getting to the mountain was like breaching the walls of a fortress. I just want to talk about your most recent Instagram post in December. It was this crazy line, the Velvet Castle. Looks impossible, but you're like, "No, it's possible," and you do it. Tell me about this line, how you found it and what it did and what's going on in your head when you do it.
Travis Rice:
This face, the Velvet Castle, within it, you have some pretty steep slopes, that if there was an avalanche or if you were to get in a slough, which I think people call sloughs avalanches, but when you make turns on a steep slope, when it's powder, you create a lot of moving and running snow. That moving and running snow can absolutely grab you and pull you down. So we look at the snow profile to see if it's stable. We do warmup runs to go and jump on similar aspect slopes to see if we can get any movement. You need to know how the snow reacts.
Sometimes it can be powder and it makes it very difficult to see. You have to be careful how you turn. Sometimes you'll have a little bit of sun crust or something, so the snow conditions can change a lot. Anyways, we run through this whole procedure of green lights, because any red light, it's like, "Okay, this isn't happening." And so we ran through probably 10 green lights that morning, that we got out to ride it, and it was like, "All right, I guess everything has come together. We can go give it a shot."
Shelby Stanger:
What's going through your head as you're riding down this giant run that's sketchy? You turn a little too far, you are over these death cliffs, but beautiful and unique at the same time.
Travis Rice:
Well, this was a unique face because a lot of times we shoot and film small pieces of terrain. The thing with this is it was almost 4,000 feet with hundreds and hundreds of different pillow combinations, and trying to ride the whole thing without screwing up. And so the goal that we set out with was trying to grease a top to bottom line through these hundreds of different obstacles, majority of which it's too complicated to plan out. You have a general idea. I had an idea where I was going and what I was doing, but there's so much that a lot of it you have to make up on the fly. And I think for myself, that was it. That was one of those days where it was like, "Yeah." It was one of the best days I've ever had in the mountains.
Shelby Stanger:
For lines like Velvet Castle, Travis does a lot of specific preparation, like watching for the perfect weather window and getting equipment to these remote locations. He also taps into his decades of experience to dial in his mindset. He meditates and does mindfulness exercises. And on top of that, Travis is pretty interested in philosophy. Recently he did a five-hour interview on a snowboarding podcast where he went deep into the meaning of life. His answers were dynamic and introspective.
It's clear that you've just thought a lot about life. Where does that come from?
Travis Rice:
Yeah, it's interesting. I think inevitably we're a product of our environments and the people we choose to spend our time with, and also of our kind of creative choosing and our curiosity. I think I've always been very curious, especially towards, I would say, the limitations of knowledge that came from, I think, what I got at school. And I think that curiosity just led me on a bit of a, I don't know, alternative quest for truth. I'm a very proof-based individual, or at least I was growing up.
And so for me, it was a, "Okay, let me see it or let me experience it for it to be reality for me." And I had several experiences that shattered that norm, in the sense of near death experience and experiencing something, I would say, called time dilation, or a change of the speed that you experience reality at. And once for me, it was an absolute that what I experienced or information that I received was irrefutable, I think that led me in a bit of a path of like, "Okay, well maybe I don't know shit. There's a lot more to learn."
Shelby Stanger:
Are you able to give us an example of when you were proven wrong by an experience, and you learned something from it, and your worldview was shattered?
Travis Rice:
Yeah, I think a couple experiences. Frankly, riding, there was a time I was with a buddy of mine. We were filming these tricks off this natural feature down into this bowl, and I went down and I hit this, call it a cliff, and I did this trick, and in the air all of a sudden time slowed down and I had a full realization that I was going to land on a rock, and perfect snow, no way of knowing that there was a rock there. And so I was able to contort my body and I landed in an extremely strange way around a jagged rock. That I would have destroyed myself on. And that was an interesting time where it was like, "Where did that information come from?"
I think another time up in Alaska, early on, I got in an avalanche and ended up tumbling down the mountain. I was okay, but through that experience, I had a full time dilation experience where things were going so slow that had time to ponder, ponder life, and inevitably react in several specific ways that probably saved my life. So for me, something like that took place, and it's the classic, "Well, if this is bending my reality in a certain way, well then what else does that mean? What are the implications of that?" It's a can of worms that it opens up.
Shelby Stanger:
I do think that there's something that happens when people have these high adrenaline experiences. The mind expands in new ways and opens to new possibilities. For some of us, going after those opportunities feels scary. We ask ourselves, "What if we fail? What if that project doesn't turn out the way we thought?" But Travis takes pride in falling and getting back up and trying again. That tenacity helps him fall through on all of his wild ideas. How do you take these wild, wild ideas, come up with them and then make them a reality? Because you have had some of the wildest ideas in the industry, but you have seen them through, it seems like you're very good at when someone says it's impossible, you're like, "Nah, it's possible."
Travis Rice:
I think, like a lot of people growing up, I had a lot of weird and wild ideas like so many kids do, and I don't know, for some reason I wasn't stifled like so many kids are. I didn't have to relinquish a curiosity. And through snowboarding and a few other of my outlets, I had some tiny wins, in the sense of I had an idea, I tried it worked out, and so I tried it again, and I tried it again. And somehow, I like to laugh at it that I'm just bullshitting my way into the position that I have, because it's like, "Oh, no, no, no, let's try this. Oh, for sure this is the way to do it."
Shelby Stanger:
But that's part of it. It's fake it until you make it. Sometimes you don't know until you make it.
Travis Rice:
Yeah, you got to be the, "No, no, no. Come on. It's going to work. Come on. We can do this," without actually knowing how you're going to do it or pull it off. And I think I had a series of those, which built my confidence and further instilled the, "No, no, no. This is a thing. See. It can work." And here I am, I guess, today. And yeah, we've done some really big projects that took a lot of resources and a lot of individuals on an amazing ride.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, maybe it's that you're okay failing a little bit, and you just get back up from failure a little bit easier.
Travis Rice:
Oh yeah. I fail on the constant. That's also what I love about snowboarding is that you're not expected to land every time. I crash a lot. That's my...
Shelby Stanger:
I read that. Yeah. It's your superpower, I read.
Travis Rice:
Exactly. It really is.
Shelby Stanger:
So how, how did you learn how to crash and get back up so well?
Travis Rice:
You got to learn to tumble. You got to learn to fall. I'm definitely someone that operates inertia, for better or for worse. If I'm going to go move over to that place, I'm going to accelerate my inertia and then stop over there. And sometimes I'll stub my toe or I'll bump into something and it doesn't work out. But if you're not falling, then you're not trying.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to learn more about Travis Rice and all of his projects, I highly recommend checking out his Instagram @travisrice, that's T-R-A-V-I-S R-I-C-E. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Motala and Joe Crosby. As always, we love when you follow the show. Take the time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.