From the Archives: Winter ‘98

The Jump on the Side of the Road

We were probably seventeen, which meant we had just enough freedom to disappear into the mountains and just enough bad judgment to think almost anything was a good idea.

A buddy and I were roaming around the ski areas of Colorado, chasing snow without much of a plan. Somewhere along the way, we pulled off to the side of the road, looked at a snow-covered hill, and decided this was the spot for a snowboard jump.

So we built one.

There was no park crew, no perfectly shaped takeoff, no groomed, measured landing. Just two teenagers, a couple of snowboards, and whatever we could pile together with our hands. We packed the snow down, shaped the lip, stepped back, and decided it looked good enough.

Then we started sending it.

The only camera we had was a Kodak disposable. No screen. No instant playback. No burst mode. You got one click, wound the little wheel forward, and hoped you caught something worth keeping.

That uncertainty was part of it.

You couldn’t check the shot and try again because somebody’s hand was blurry or the rider wasn’t perfectly centered in the frame. We had no idea whether we had captured the exact moment someone left the lip or whether we had taken a beautifully exposed photograph of an empty patch of Colorado sky. And there were plenty of both.

We wouldn’t know until much later, when the film was developed.

There was something good, something authentic about that.

At seventeen, we weren’t documenting an adventure because we thought anyone else would care. We weren’t making content. There was no audience waiting for it. We were simply out there because being in the mountains, building something stupid on the side of the road, and seeing how far we could launch ourselves off it seemed like the best possible way to spend a day.

The photographs were almost beside the point.

But decades later, the imperfect ones might mean more than the perfect ones ever could.

They remind me of a time when adventure didn’t need much preparation. Sometimes all you needed was snow, a friend, a disposable camera, and a hill that looked like it might work.

Yours in Exploration,

Brian Facemire, Founder