A Mountain Life: On the Road with Burton

Danny Davis in New Zealand. No caption really necessary for this one. Photo: Adam Moran

In the summer of 2005 we had a catalog shoot going on in Valle Nevado Chile and the resort was hit by one of the biggest storms they ve ever gotten. It snowed for days and when the sun finally came out the lifts were buried and it was going to take them a day or so to dig them out. With sun and new snow we decided to turn the resort into our own park and shoot on the hills beside the hotel. Trevor Andrew was always down to get shots and here he is with a cab 5 after a snowmobile tow in through the parking lot. Photo: Adam Moran

We landed in Oslo, drove through the night in rain storm, and woke up the next day in Stranda at about 1 in the afternoon. We decided to go check out the resort for a few runs and warm up for our upcoming heli trip. At the very last moment I decided to bring my camera since they told us the lift was shutting down soon. We ended up shooting this handplant on our one run down, then it started raining again and never stopped. The heli trip got cancelled and had I not brought my camera up on this run I would’ve come home from Norway with zero photos. Instead I got one. Photo: Adam Moran

Jake Blauvelt grew up in VT riding icy pipes and still has those tricks on lock. Only thing is now he does them in the backcountry on natural hits. Mctwist at last light in Pemberton BC. Photo: Adam Moran

Harrison Gordon with a boardslide, drop to transfer in on a snowy Minnesota night. It was snowing so much this night that by the time we left the spot there was a new 5 inches on the ground after just one session. When we woke up in the morning the first news was that it snowed so much during the night the roof of the Metronome stadium collapsed. It turned out to the be the start of the biggest single snowfall Minneapolis had ever received. Photo: Adam Moran

Christian Haller with a stalefish at last light in Snowpark New Zealand. We used to shoot at snowpark every summer and it would turn into an on snow studio for us at times. No matter how many times we went back, we still walked with good shots. It's sad to see it gone these days. Photo: Adam Moran

DCP chasing Josh Dirksen down a chute in Valdez, Alaska. Friends are the best on powder days — that old saying is bullshit. Photo: Adam Moran

Kamchatka Russia was one of those trips of a lifetime. It seemed sketchy from the moment I tried to get a visa and ticket, till when I landed in Moscow the day the subways were bombed, then even more so when we would get dropped off on peaks of windslabbed snow running out to the ocean by a flying school bus left over from the cold war. Im glad I did it though, it was definitely an experience. Photo: Adam Moran

Nicolas Mueller has the ability to make everything from an insane line in Haines AK look good, to a simple Ollie in the Tahoe backcountry. This was taken in January 2011, the last time Tahoe had good enough snow to film in the backcountry. Scary. Photo: Adam Moran

Heikki Sorsa with a large tree ride to drop. Getting good snow in Hokkaido Japan isn’t usually the issue, but having sun and snow is rare. We got really lucky this trip and were able to get shots like this. Photo: Adam Moran

My friends at home thing a lot of my travel is glamorous and to nice mountain towns like Aspen. They rarely get to see the reality of shitty dirty motel rooms that get turned into drying racks each night. Jeremy Jones takes a minute to facetime with the kids in Stewart BC while everything he owns dries out after a long day sledding. Photo: Adam Moran

John Jackson is a beast in the backcountry. There was times shooting with him where he would point things out and I didn’t want to say anything, but I definitely thought it was crazy. This wasn’t one of those times, but it was one of the times where the light was perfect and he knew exactly where to go to get a great shot. Photo: Adam Moran

This is Jussi Oksanen on our first trip ever to Alaska in 2007. We all came to Valdez with no clue of how big those mountains really were and scared the shit out ourselves every day. It was one of those dream trips though where we had snow, sun, decent snowpack, and all walked away safe with shots and a whole new respect for everything that has ever been done in Alaska. Photo: Adam Moran

Mikey Rencz has been riding a snowmobile longer than most people have been snowboarding. He started filming in the backcountry with one when he was 16 years old so it feels like riding a bike to him. This was the first time he decided to hit a snowboard jump on one though and he scared the shit out of us. It took him 3 tries to land and each failed attempt he would ditch the sled 30 feet up and come crashing down. The best part was after he stuck it he looked down and realized he was riding Jussi s sled. 2 days later Jussi’s suspension broke going down the trail. Photo: Adam Moran

I was staying with Kazu this day and had to wake him up to tell him that a huge Tsunami had just hit the coast of Japan and it looked really bad on the news. He got up and called his family to make sure everyone was okay then went on to win his second US Open in a row. I had taken a shot of him the year before after his final run so went to the bottom to get it for a second year in a row. His last run turned out to be a victory lap and he took off his helmet, blew a kiss in the air for Japan, and rode straight down the middle of the pipe. For some riders this could be seen as cocky, but on this day it was anything but. It was Kazu’s salute to Japan. Photo: Adam Moran

Kelly Clark has one of the best frontside airs in snowboarding. Not just for women, but for everyone. She is also one of the most victorious competitors in any sport in history, something that most people don’t realize. Ive been shooting with Kelly for over 10 years now and its been a pleasure to see her continue to kill it and push womens snowboarding to new heights. Photo: Adam Moran

This is Kevin Pearce at Breckenridge in January 2008. Kevin had just started to really hit his stride and was starting to win things so Burton wanted to get him an ad right away. They called us to shoot something but the weather was horrible, the pipe not great, and we only had a few days till deadline. We decided to try for a slash at night and light it really well. In the end Burton passed on all the shots for the ad and went another direction, but another one from this evening ended up on the cover of PDN, and a few other snowboard magazines the next year. It has become my most published shot ever to date. I've never put this shot out before, but saw it again and really liked it how it had an old school skate feel to it, and I can still remember hearing his board graze past my head with probably two inches to spare. Photo: Adam Moran

Kimmy Fasani in her element by a cabin in the backcountry. Kimmy has come a long way from riding parks to keeping up with men on her snowmobile and continues to push what women do in the backcountry. Photo: Adam Moran

Mark McMorris being watched closely by a Chinese military officer during the practice session for the Air and Style Beijing. Snowboarding in stadiums is always sort of strange, but add military all over the place, and the fact that you are in Beijing, its just got awkward. Photo: Adam Moran

Marko Grilc during a sunrise session at Cardrona New Zealand. The day before we started this shoot we realized that we were on the wrong side of the valley to get sunset shots. Marko proposed we do sunrise and with some planning with the resort, we were back the next morning at 5 am ready to shoot the jump. It was the first time we did it and that morning produced some of the best park jump shots Ive ever taken, including a TWS cover of Peetu. Photo: Adam Moran

Mark Sollors is one of the few pro riders out there these days that can ride the backcountry as well as he can urban stuff. And in some situations like this he chooses to do backcountry sized airs in the streets. This was our last day in Oslo after 10 days shooting and nailed this before his afternoon flight home. He ended up with a Snowboarder cover and Method Mag cover from this shot. Photo: Adam Moran

The Whistler backcountry is Mikey Rencz’s backyard. The last bunch of years he has shown me all that place has to offer and shoot on, and we keep finding new spots since every year the snow fills in differently. Photo: Adam Moran

I shot with Mikkel Bang on his first trip to the United States when he was just 13 years old with huge buck teeth. He is just as funny now as he was back then, but his teeth are fixed, he’s taller than me, and he rides a 170 like it’s a park board while destroying everything he rides. Photo: Adam Moran

There is an old shot of Marc Morrisett ollieng through the trees in Whistler and I think every photographer has tried in some way to copy that shot. Its one of those photos you look at and wish it was you doing it. This is probably my closest interpretation of that photo, except I don’t know if Id ever cross court a pillow gap like Nicolas Mueller, here at Stevens Pass Washington. Photo: Adam Moran

Sani Alibabic dropping into sold ice wind crust in the crater of a volcano in Kamchatka Russia. We were dropped off on the top of the crater and able to ride right down to the smoking bubbling lava at the very bottom. That’s an experience I don’t know if ill ever get to repeat. Photo: Adam Moran

Shaun White messing around with his first Outside Mag cover the fall after he won his first gold medal in Italy. I remember traveling with him a lot during this time where he went from being famous in snowboarding, to super famous world wide and unable to walk through an airport without covering himself up. Fame can be a blessing and a curse and I witnessed a lot of that. Photo: Adam Moran

Everyone saw all the shots of Shaun learning double corks in a private halfpipe at Silverton Mountain. Those days at that pipe were the fast forward button on snowboard progression. David Benedek had done doubles years before but not many riders felt the need to try to catch up. Once the Olympics madness started and Shaun put these tricks into his runs, the rest of the guys were catching up as fast as they could. What NBC didn’t snow from Silverton were the pow runs Shaun got when the pipe would fill in with snow. If you look in the background of this shot you can see the halfpipe and a snowcat digging it out after the storm. Photo: Adam Moran

Terje stretching out before heading up to the Mt Baker Legendary Banked Slalom. These calm moments before contests or shoots are sometimes my favorite images from the whole time. Photo: Adam Moran

The Nissan X Trail in Tokyo was one of the coolest contests in snowboarding and it’s a shame it no longer exists. Every year the best guys in the world would come and ride in the Tokyo dome and 40,000 screaming fans would go insane. Terje was a god at this event since he had won it so many times. I think they might have even introduced him as the God of snowboarding that year before his runs, and he hated that. Photo: Adam Moran

Zak Hale enjoying a cold one after shooting on the hill at Mt Hood. Nothing in this shot was staged, I just happened to be walking by and this was the scene. If I ever tried to recreate it, it wouldn’t look the same. Snowboarders can fuck up a rental condo real fast on a shoot. Photo: Adam Moran