Ryan Hudson's journey from #streets2peaks is an inspiring, and unlikely story. Growing up in poverty with little access to outdoor adventure sports, Ryan never imagined he’d be snowboarding in big-time competitions and exploring the mountains of Alaska.
Growing up in poverty with little access to outdoor adventure sports, Ryan Hudson never imagined he’d be snowboarding in big-time competitions and exploring the mountains of Alaska. Today, he’s taken expeditions with renowned athletes, starred in an adventure film, and he’s sponsored by brands like the North Face and Sierra Nevada. Ryan’s journey from "#streets2peaks" is an inspiring, and unlikely story.
Connect with Ryan:
Resources:
Episode sponsors:
Ryan Hudson:
For me, I made a lot of sacrifices in order to be here. I saw this as my ticket, not a big ticket, but this is it. This was my calling, this is what I'm meant to do. I've never felt more connected, more passionate, and I've never felt more whole about anything in my life other than being on my snowboard and sharing that experience with others.
Shelby Stanger:
Growing up on the streets of San Diego, Ryan Hudson never imagined he'd be snowboarding in big time competitions and exploring the mountains of Alaska. Today, Ryan's taken expeditions with renowned athletes, starred in an adventure film, and he's sponsored by brands like The North Face and Sierra Nevada. Ryan's journey to the slopes is an inspiring and unlikely story.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-Op Studio's production. This episode of Wild Ideas is one I have a personal history with. In 2004, I got involved with the organization Outdoor Outreach. They work with underprivileged youth in San Diego, exposing them to outdoor sports and adventures. When I first started working with the organization, they had a partnership with the Toussaint Teen Center, a shelter for homeless and at-risk young adults. During an outdoor outreach trip in the early 2000s is actually when I met Ryan Hudson. At the time, he was just a young teen.
All right, Ryan Hudson, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Ryan Hudson:
Thank you so much for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
I've known you since you were a teen.
Ryan Hudson:
Man, many years, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
You don't age, dude, you don't age.
Ryan Hudson:
Thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
It's amazing. You just get wiser.
Ryan Hudson:
Oh, thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
I thought we'd just start with you telling us how you found snowboarding.
Ryan Hudson:
Oh, man. I guess the cliche answer is snowboarding found me, I didn't really find it. I grew up in a very rough household as a kid, we were born and raised into poverty. Most of my childhood, I wasn't exposed to really much things outdoors. I struggled as a kid growing up, trying to find my place in the world, and I didn't really find that until I was about 14 years old. I moved into a group home for teenagers called the Toussaint Teen Center. It was a shelter for homeless, runaway and at-risk youth. At the time I was living with my mother and my brother. I had just finished my freshman year of high school and we had just moved back to San Diego. I remember we were just staying with my mom's, a friend of hers, I believe it was a friend from church or something like that, and we were just staying in their basement living room.
One of my oldest brothers, Marcus, he had already been in the program prior. I remember just talking to him on the phone one day and he just mentioned the idea of that program. We talked about what it had done for him and some possibilities of what it could do for me. I talked to my mom and she gave me the okay.
Shelby Stanger:
The Tucson Teen Center was a live-in high school and a shelter. It also offered elective programs, like computer science, art and music. One day, the founder of Outdoor Outreach, a guy named Chris Rutgers, put up posters advertising a snowboarding adventure to Big Bear, a few hours outside of San Diego. The posters caught Ryan's attention. He'd done some skateboarding as a preteen and he liked it, but he had no idea that snowboarding would open a completely different world to him.
Ryan Hudson:
I knew that this snowboarding trip was going to be special, but I didn't know how special. I knew it would be something fun that I can do. It would maybe look weird to see this little Black kid doing it, because I didn't see anyone else like me doing it. But man, whole process of waking up in the morning, getting all the gear together and the long two-and-a-half, three-hour drive, for me, that whole experience was what I wasn't expecting. I fell in love with the process, the process of going on an adventure, leaving your home and hitting the road for hours. For the first time in my life I was seeing cattle and farmland and all these places that I see on TV and in magazines and I know exists in the world, but physically being there and passing them and seeing them from a car window is a different experience. I think it's all just been building up ever since that moment. That high that I've been on, I don't think it's subsided even today.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, the first time you went snowboarding, you told me, "I wasn't that great, but it felt so fun and was so joyful that I was like, 'I'm going to keep coming back and doing this.'"
Ryan Hudson:
Yes, yeah. That first experience, I think what hooked me was that feeling I got from the adrenaline of being on snow, the challenge of trying to master that craft and then looking around me. For my first experience snowboarding, I was with a lot of my peers, a lot of the kids that I was in the program with were there with me. For the first time on this trip, every kid that we were with all got along, every kid was glowing with excitement and joy and just happy to be there. For me, I think I immediately got addicted to that feeling of camaraderie and community and togetherness, as well as that feeling of accomplishment and that challenge of wanting to get better at something and then watching my friends and peers do it also and struggle, but then having a couple of them get it and be like, "Oh man, you got that toe slide down. That's so sick. I'm working on it too, let's go back up and do it."
After that first trip without Outdoor Outreach up to Big Bear, my whole life changed. My demeanor changed, my attitude changed towards everything around me. I started making friends with kids who I wasn't friends with before I started listening to music I didn't listen to before, I really just unlocked my curiosity and dove headfirst into it. Obviously, that was a choice, in which I wanted to see what was out there and I wanted to keep doing things like that.
Shelby Stanger:
The summer after his first snowboarding experience, Ryan was looking for a job. Outdoor Outreach founder, Chris Rutgers was visiting the Toussaint Center one day and one of the staff suggested that he hire Ryan. Soon enough, Ryan was working for Outdoor Outreach as a counselor, guiding other young people on trips like the snowboarding excursion that changed his own life. Fast forward a few years, Ryan graduates from high school and from the Toussaint Teen Center.
Ryan Hudson:
Once you graduate from the shelter, they have a studio apartment floor in which some of the graduates can live and rent. That's where I ended up landing for about a year or two after graduating. Then I just believe I was making bad choices. I wasn't saving money, was really still stuck in that high of I want to skateboard, I want to be creative, I want to write, I want to do all these creative things, I don't want to work a real job. Even though I had a couple of real jobs, I just wasn't saving money, I was spending it all on that stuff. And then-
Shelby Stanger:
But you were 18, 19 years old, so that's kind of hard to do at that age.
Ryan Hudson:
Yeah, hard to force a kid who's never been responsible to be responsible for the first time in his life. Because of the choices I was making, they kicked me out of the graduate dorm. Once I left there, I got slapped with reality again, where I ended up sleeping on a friend's couch for a good part of the summer. That's where everything started to spiral again for me, I started to really fall into the trap of being poor and homeless and struggling, I wasn't really in touch with my family then.
The only person I could really go to at the time was my mentor, who was the director of Outreach Outreach, Chris Rutgers. I went to him and just explained my situation, because a couple of weeks had gone by and he had saw that I was just a completely different person. I was showing up to work super late, I wasn't as happy on trips, I just wasn't performing right, and he could tell something was up. I eventually spilled the beans to him and just told him that I hit rock bottom, don't know what to do with myself, I don't know where to go, don't have much help or family.
He had the golden idea of coming out to Utah. He's like, "Hey, when I was 18, I graduated and moved out to Utah. I worked and washed dishes for a ski pass and I got to ski a lot. It gave me time to really figure out what I wanted to do with myself." That's what led him to start Outdoor Outreach. He offered to do that for me and said, "I still have some connections up at the lodge. I'll call, see if I can get you a job. I'll buy your plane ticket, give you some cash and send you on your way." I think it had only been a couple of weeks maybe or a couple of months I had gone by till I was on a plane out to Utah.
Shelby Stanger:
So you lived in Alta, Utah. Actually, I think of Alta as the skiing town, but Snowbird is also right next door to Alta Mountain, which is one of the best snowboarding resorts in the world. At a lodge in Alta, you were able to wash dishes, get a ski pass, and you got a lot of time on the mountains.
Ryan Hudson:
That first year was insane. I was just straight into the mountains. I had a really pretty tight schedule of just wake up, snowboard, come to work, wash dishes till about 11:00 or midnight, go to sleep, wake up, snowboard, come back, wash dishes, and just repeat that for six months straight.
Shelby Stanger:
And you got really good.
Ryan Hudson:
Really good, at least I like to say that I was. I was able to follow a lot of really amazing athletes. I owe a lot of what I know and who I am today to Snowbird and that community up there. There's just so many amazing human beings of all walks of life that are amazing talents on snowboards, on skis and in the bar. They're just really fun and amazing people to be around. As a kid who came from no community with a lot of culture to a very weird culture with a strong community, but it for me was I had never been to college, so it was my college dorm experience, where you're sharing bunks in a room with three, four other people. Everyone's all pent up every time it snows, people are going crazy. There's parties every night and it's a great time.
But for me, at the time, I didn't drink or smoke, I wasn't into party culture, anything like that. My head was in the books basically, I really wanted to focus on why I was out there. I came to Utah to find myself, to find a place for myself in this world, to snowboard, potentially get good or whatever. I don't know what I'm getting out of this experience, I just want to be better when I leave here whatever that is. That led me to riding about 132 days my first season.
Shelby Stanger:
132 days of snowboarding your first season, that's incredible, wow.
Ryan Hudson:
That's all I wanted to do. Following around a lot of those athletes led me to learn a lot of tricks really fast. I don't know, I fell in love and just want to keep doing it.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you eventually become a sponsored snowboarder, someone who could make at least a partial living from snowboarding?
Ryan Hudson:
I started out competing. My first season in Salt Lake City or out in Utah, I got to watch this big mountain competition where a lot of the biggest names in big mountain snowboarding came out to Snowbird and I got to spectate. It lit this fire under me, where I knew even more I wanted to be a part of this community. The big mountain competition circuit is just one of the best energies you can be around. I felt like some of the best snowboarders in the world were looking at me and cheering me on and wanting me to do good and wanting me to be at their level.
At the end of my first season, I went home in the summer, went back to San Diego, back to work with Outdoor Outreach. That whole summer, that's all I talked about, was I want to go back to Utah, I want to compete, I want to go back to Utah, I want to compete. Over the summer, Chris Rutgers had got me in touch with a couple of sponsors and a couple of those brands had already been supporting Outdoor Outreach. Through his just wizardry and his magic of communication, he was able to just get me help basically. That was basically how it started. I think from those early days, a couple of my sponsors I still have today and are still strong supporters today. I am grateful for it, I wouldn't be here without him.
Shelby Stanger:
Ryan has come a long way from his youth in San Diego and he's always been transparent about everything he's been through. Recently, Ryan even created an awareness campaign with the #streets2peaks. The goal is to help young people recognize that there's a big natural world out there just waiting to be explored.
When we come back, Ryan talks about making it work as a professional athlete. He also tells us about the time he climbed Denali with iconic mountaineer Conrad Anker and author John Krakauer.
Ryan Hudson is a snowboarder with a pretty wild story. He grew up in poverty, but by taking chances and working hard, Ryan has become a professional athlete. In 2010, he won The North Face's Young Gun Award for up and coming snowboarders. Recently, Ryan co-starred in a Teton Gravity Research film called Mountain Revelations. The film followed three different pro snowboarders on a 10-day mission in Alaska's Chugach mountain range. But it wasn't Ryan's first Alaskan rodeo. Eight years before the film, Ryan took another once in a lifetime trip.
I want to talk about this. You've gone on some pretty epic trips and you've put yourself in a position to be able to say yes at times when you really wanted to, and that does take sacrifice. If you were working a full time job or you were in college at the time, you wouldn't have been able to say yes. But you went on this trip with John Krakauer, who's a famous outdoor writer that I love a lot of his books, Conrad Anker was on that trip. Can you talk to me about that and what that was like and maybe highlights from that trip and what you learned from John?
Ryan Hudson:
Yeah, unreal. This was January 2013 and I remember we're here in Salt Lake at the Outdoor Retailer Show. At the time I was working with The North Face as an outdoor ambassador for them, and so I was hanging around the booth. I had crossed paths with a few of these guys, like Alex Honnold and Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin. I just remember one time, I met Conrad once and we're just hanging out at the booth, it's happy hour, so I've got a beer in hand and everyone's hanging out. He's like, "Hey, Ryan, great to see you." Out of nowhere, he's like, "I'm putting this trip together with a couple of buddies and you should come." I'm like, "Sure, yeah, I'll come on a cool little trip somewhere." I'm not suspecting anything crazy. I'm thinking we're going in the back country somewhere. I'm like, "Yeah, totally." He's like, "All right, cool. We'll send you information eventually." I come home to an email from Conrad, and in the email is a permit climb Denali. The whole team was there, I think there was 14 people in total.
Shelby Stanger:
Just some power players in the outdoor industry.
Ryan Hudson:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, got it. Snowboarders, climbers, big mountain men.
Ryan Hudson:
Just this super massive heavy crew of very amazing athletes who have all been in this environment before, and then there's me at the bottom of that list, just rookie. You can imagine just the fear, or the nerves really, of going on a trip like this with some of the biggest names in outdoors. That, to me, was huge.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get over your fear and what happened on that trip?
Ryan Hudson:
We go out in June, I think we're a couple of weeks into the hike. We're on these long slogs, they're like six, eight, 10 hour days where we're hiking or we're caching food, things like that. Throughout the trip, I'm terrified and screaming nonstop inside at the top of my lungs every step we take on this mountain, but I'm trying to keep my cool and keep my demeanor and keep up with the group. I've been here before, I've been here before, try and fit in a little bit. Meanwhile, I'm just panicking on the inside.
I grew up in sports, like football, basketball, and the way we hype each other up is it just get loud, start huffing and puffing and little, "Come on guys, we got this." I would start to do that and John would look at me and he'd be like, "Hudson, you know you can die today, right?" That would just flat line my whole energy, but it turned into this very humbling thing, where I needed to hear that because I was getting a little too much in my head. John and I started to build this relationship on this trip where I would get a little too excited because I needed to do that, or at least I thought I needed to do that for myself to be ready, but then John would snap me out of it and bring me back down to earth and tell me, "Hey, Hudson, let's take today one step at a time. Let's get home alive, that's all that matters."
Shelby Stanger:
That's really interesting. You guys get up this mountain, you're with John Krakauer, you get almost to the top of Denali and something happens.
Ryan Hudson:
Yeah, John and I, on this day we're pushing for summit. During this hike, we've been cooking the whole way up. We leave the group, we just have a really strong pace. John and I are getting to know each other, we're telling each other stories of just growing up and things like that on our hike and just losing track of time and somehow we end up 20, 30 minutes ahead of our group. Yeah, we get up to what's called Summit Ridge, right at the start of Summit Ridge, it's probably about 300 or some odd feet from the summit.
We have this super cool moment, John and I, right at Summit Ridge, we're chilling, waiting for the rest of the group. We're just having this fully out of body experience with each other, just living in the moment. I pull all my gear off and I'm looking around, I can see the horizon of the Earth and 360 degree views of just nature. I look at John and I'm like, "Dude, John, I didn't know who you were before this trip started and I'm just so grateful that I got to know you now. It just means so much more to me now." He looks at me and he is like, "You know what, Hudson? That means so much, thank you. I'm so grateful to be here with you and have this experience."
Out of nowhere, just out of the corner of his eye, John looks out on the horizon and he's like, "Oh, that's great and all, but Hudson, we need to get the hell out of here now." I'm like, "What do you mean? We're having this good moment, why you got to stop that?" He's like, "No, we need to go now. Grab your shit, get your gear together. Let's go, let's go." I'm like, "What?" In my shock, I'm stepping back and looking out around me and I see everything changed, the sky, full 180 from blue sky, light fluffy clouds to just straight wall of black.
In a matter of a minute, we went from having this solid positive moment to running down the hill from our lives, because in that 30, 45 seconds, the sky went from blue and clear to storming and windy and lightning. It was the biggest lightning storm I think they had on record that year. We just so happened to be on the top of the mountain at that time.
Shelby Stanger:
Even with the harrowing journey down Denali, the trip refreshed Ryan's connection with the mountains. It reminded him of why he fell in love with snowboarding in the first place, and obviously he met some pretty legendary people. By all accounts, Ryan has had a successful career in the industry, but regardless of all of his accomplishments, this lifestyle has been challenging.
Can you make a living as a snowboarder, Ryan, or is it something that you do and then you also do something else?
Ryan Hudson:
That's a touchy topic, because you can and you can't. It's a yes and no answer and I think it's very relative. I hate that that's the answer I give. I can speak for myself and my personal experiences, and personally, no, I can't make a living just doing this. There are opportunities that present themselves throughout the year in which I can shoot some content, things like that to help build some income, but man, I think the issue is you need your own agent to help manage your relationships with your brands.
For myself, I feel like I've maybe been given the short end on that just because I don't have those resources and didn't have them growing up and I don't don't know how to obtain them. I don't have representation and it's difficult. It's really hard for a struggling athlete who can't make it work for themselves. A lot of times, a lot of athletes in this industry can afford to go on big trips every year, they can afford to go to South America, or even the simplest things like car insurance and getting a trip across the country to just go and camp for a week or something like that.
Shelby Stanger:
Health insurance, there's a lot.
Ryan Hudson:
That's just one of the things that I have to deal with. I can really only speak from my personal experience. For me, I think November 7th will be year 14 in total, or 15. In that 14, 15 years I've been here in Utah, snowboarding has been the priority for me. I made a lot of sacrifices in order to be here. I saw this as my ticket, not a big ticket, but this is it. This is my calling, this is what I'm meant to do, this is what I'm supposed to do.
The winters are good, I can find a balance, but I've been working in restaurants probably off and on this whole 15 years. I have part-time serving job, helping a buddy clean carpets all this summer, a couple of sponsors that were paying me monthly this year, so there's a couple of months I've been able to lay low, but I sell my gear in the summer to help with bills every now and then. I don't know, you get by with the best of your abilities. For me, this is all I've had and all I have, so I've made the necessary sacrifices. You've got to make the sacrifices if you want to be great.
Shelby Stanger:
It sounds like snowboarding really has been, in some ways, your glue. That's the thread that you do everything with.
Ryan Hudson:
Yeah, and I get that I'm here through very unorthodox means. Open a book to most of the stories of athletes in this industry, everyone's like, "Oh, two years old, my parents took me skiing," which is what makes this whole industry super complicated, is there's no structure to this, there's no structure for being an athlete. If you want to get into the NBA, there's a path you've got to follow. You want to go to the NFL, there's a path you have to follow. If you want to be a professional snowboarder or skier or mountain biker or skateboarder, there's no written path for people to follow. It's just opportunity and luck and hard work.
Shelby Stanger:
There's no one way to find success in adventure sports, and that can be both a blessing and a curse. It means someone like Ryan Hudson can start with zero experience and rise to their full potential. Luckily, Ryan had some connections, mentorship and support from Outdoor Outreach. That's why Ryan is launching the Streets2Peaks movement. It's in the early stages, but Ryan's goal is to get young people living in poverty out on the mountains for a chance to ski, to snowboard, and to find themselves in the powder.
Ryan Hudson:
Streets2Peaks was a hashtag I created to document and tell my story. Initially, I just wanted it to be a place where myself or someone like me can stumble upon and go share our experiences in the outdoors. The idea of coming from where you are and ending up somewhere better, whether that's from the bottom to the top, left to right, doesn't matter. Wherever you are, you can make progress in your life, you can move forward, you can achieve goals, you can be successful and get to where you want to go. The idea of coming from where I came from to being on the top of mountains that I've been on, to make the friends and have the mentors and father figures, mother figures, who have influenced and left lasting positive impressions on me, it's all Streets2Peaks.
Shelby Stanger:
Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been awesome to watch you grow into the amazing and reflective person, leader, and athlete that you are today.
If you want to learn more about Ryan Hudson, you can follow him on Instagram @rhudsonsb, that's R-H-U-D-S-O-N-S-B. Also, be sure to check out his hashtag, Streets2Peaks. That's S-T-R-E-E-T-S, the number 2, P-E-A-K-S on Instagram. You can also find out more about outdoor outreach and outdooroutreach.org. Wild Ideas Worth Living as part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, and written and edited by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Chelsea Davis and our associate producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby.
As always, we appreciate when you follow this show, rate and review the show wherever you listen, and remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.