photo credit: Perly @perly74
Can you give us a quick bit of background about yourself?
I was born in Salzburg Austria, but moved to Mayrhofen, a small mountain town, when I was three because of my dad’s work. Both of my parents had a great passion for the mountains and embraced the lifestyle here - hiking the peaks in summer and skiing in the winter. Skateboards showed up around here in like ’88 and my friends and I were straight hooked. We then heard about snowboarding and thought that was the way to be able to also skate during winter. As it is for many of us, skateboarding changed everything - the vibe, our crew, the way we started looking at life. From that point on we had a mission with snowboarding as well as all those mountains that made so much sense. Surfing came into play a little bit later when I was about 17. My friends and I took our first road-trip down to Hossegor, France, got humbled, and fell in love with the ocean. We got back home and the way we looked at mountains changed again. It amplified another aspect of snowboarding as kind of surfing a mountain. Of looking down the line and having the eye for nature’s features. I think that’s what I find fulfilling now, the different ways you can enjoy a mountain and do whatever you want. To me, different boards can help to change it up and I do have a great respect for our culture and craftsmanship.
Can you sum up what the Hillside Project is - and how you got started with it?
At Salomon, the whole team was involved in testing boards from a young age. They ran programs on the glacier here where we got to talk about the whole lineup and what we liked. That was pretty sick to understand what they change and what effect that has. It sharpens your senses trying to feel things. Then, Henri Rancon built a Powder Snowskate and this thing was so much fun. That binding-less experience was so rad and a good change to the regular twin tip mind we had going into filming for parts. I started building skateboard decks for that powskate in my garage. Just wider ones, put channels on them and so on and that led to doing Äsmo powsurfers and eventually to building snowboards. Salomon measured those protos and we understood that we were not too far off the production boards. That kind of sparked the idea of Hillside which is to include that creative process into building boards. David Pitchi, Henri Rancon, and Babtiste Chaussign where key drivers in building the quiver, which started with the relaunch of the Sickstick. Salomon gave me a lot of freedom in that framework for those board concepts. For me, now it’s just listening to riders, learning, and trying to make the best possible board for them.
Can you talk a little about what it’s like to work with different athletes? Are they all looking for different things or are there some commonalities in their requests?
Hillside is there to build the second board in their quiver, in a way. Maybe that’s not totally right because we all end up riding these all the time, but with this more open, made-for-powder mindset, we’re in a more fun framework. What they all have in common is that they are extremely talented. It’s challenging for sure to decipher each message as well as I can to what they are looking for and also to try to explain what their possibilities are. It’s a learning process for both sides. Take Louif, such a talented rider with such a natural flow. One of his things he was looking for was a quick reacting board under his feet, like when he is initiating a turn, kind of like a skateboard with soft trucks. We spaced out on the sidecut a lot and came up with a pretty unique Quadralizer setup for him.
Can you talk about how your testing and feedback process works?
I ride every proto that leaves the workshop and then they get sent to the Salomon HQ in Annecy where Riton measures them on various machines. Then, it gets forwarded to the riders and in an ideal world they have a few months during winter to test the different ones and find a good solution. We basically talk back and forth and each proto influences the next. Overall, the Hillside quiver has a certain DNA and each board has a familiar feel to it.
Can you tell us about how CAD comes into play in your process?
It’s pretty much all on CAD. Every part of the board gets drawn up there and we do it with our CNC machine.
What’s your favorite part of the shaping process?
One cool thing is when the board is cut, the sidewalls are done, you take off the final protection layer and can fully look at it. On CAD everything is flat and generic and it’s hard to imagine the stick in real life. That final moment after, say a week of work, is where the truth comes out. You can see if you messed up or if the breadcrumb trail you were following has some spice to it.
Is there a favorite board you’ve designed? Can you tell us about what makes it stand out?
That’s a hard one. The Äsmo collab was sick because I could build a board for myself and that made me understand a lot about what I want. Nils Mindnich also won his freeride world title on that board, so that was definitely a rad moment for me too. Just that he picked it and trusted in it, it is way more rewarding when you do a board for someone else and they like it. I am on Louifs Board a lot and feel like I gel with it, so in the current moment I’d pick that.
Can you talk about any interesting boards you’re working on currently?
Another one would be the Fish which just launched. I love those kinds of shapes to switch it up, but it was so rad that many others liked that deck too. Max Buri picked it last season and rode so well on it. It was really rad to watch live.
Do you have a philosophy around your approach to shaping?
I am a snowboard fan and, for me, shaping was something I always wanted to do to keep dreaming about snowboarding when there is no snow. Äsmo opened up my mind to a different approach to the mountain but also, I love the history of our culture. I’d say hydrodynamic planing hulls, the work of Richard Kenvin, was a big influence in the sense of digging up concepts from the past that were ahead of their time.
Can you tell us about how your own experiences on the board influence your work?
It’s a combination of doing Äsmos and snowboards which is a rad balance. I think to have that complete freedom with Äsmos has a good influence on what boards I do for the Hillside project.
Where do you see your work headed in the future?
I’m in it for the experience, so not sure. I’m just trying to learn and have fun with it.