Earlier this summer Mike Ranquet stopped by the office. What I thought was going to be a quick interview turned into a two-hour talk about the early days at Mt. Baker, George Dobis and the Mt. Baker Snowboard Shop, Alaska, and how he thinks high backs are holding snowboarding back.

I’m still transcribing our conversation. It’ll be one to read. Keep an eye out for the full-legth interview sometime soon. In the meantime I thought I’d break off a little nugget about Ranquet’s last-minute trip up to AK last spring to film with Absinthe.

How?d you end up going to AK?
Justin (Hostynek) called me and said it was going to be clear for two days and apparently they had an empty seat. So I rode Baker that day, flew up that night and was in a heli at nine in the morning. Then flew two days and flew back out and was back at Baker riding Monday morning.

Any scary falls?
Yeah I took a beating for sure. Like falls with more than one way to die.
(Then Ranquet pulls up a photo on his computer..)

Yeah you can see the rocks I tumbled through right there. It was that section and I just lawn darted. It was really fucking scary, ?cause it?s probably like 30 feet of exposed rock. I just came out of a turn and my I couldn?t see anything from the plume. I was going as fast as I could and then all I could see was knee-high jagged rocks. It wasn?t just some little rocks, but all these massive rocks pointing up. I thought I was gonna die. I did like two or three head over heals and after that I was just waiting to feel the pain. My goggles were fucking gouged and filled with snow. That was the gnarliest part. But all I had was a bruised leg. Somehow I got out of it in one piece. It was so fucking unbelievable. It was good and humbling, that?s for sure.