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Friends on a Powder Day | Weston’s Inclusive Approach is Changing Snowboarding for the Better

In pursuit of a more welcoming and diverse snowboard community, Weston supports the efforts of over 175 ambassadors who share their vision for building community, spreading backcountry safety, and fostering inclusivity

Before Leo Tsuo took the helm of Weston, the Colorado-based, community-driven snowboard brand, he was a b-boy. “B-boy,” he explains, has a different connotation than “breakdancer”—the former is committed to the craft of breaking and culture of hip-hop, the latter is in it for sport.

“Purists have long since argued that snowboarding isn’t a sport at all, but rather something less tangible, more sacrosanct—a physical art form, an unconventional religion, a way of life. Introducing judging constricts creativity and reduces artists to athletes”

“Breaking is supposed to be this fully creative thing—being in touch with the music, vibing out with the people around you,” he explains. “B-boys and b-girls know the culture.” They jam at clubs, hang with DJs and MCs, immerse themselves in hip-hop. “The breakdancers,” he says, “just show up to compete.”

In the wake of the Beijing Olympics, where dizzying spins caused headaches and judging gaffes made headlines, the distinction between b-boy and breakdancer feels especially relevant to our world, reminiscent of a common debate in snowboarding. Purists have long since argued that snowboarding isn’t a sport at all, but rather something less tangible, more sacrosanct—a physical art form, an unconventional religion, a way of life. Introducing judging constricts creativity and reduces artists to athletes.

Tsuo’s b-boy philosophies, for one, carry over to his thoughts on snowboarding. While he marvels at the athletic prowess of Olympians and the progressive nature of competitive snowboarding in general, he’s more drawn to the nonconformist discipline of freeriding. “That open bowl that you just rode after a three-foot storm with a few of your homies that ditched work,” waxes Tsuo. “That’s the soul of snowboarding. Nobody is ever going to judge or define that.”

But in 2016, when Tsuo took the reins at Weston, a brand dedicated to that soulful side of snowboarding, he realized that even freeriding wasn’t free from judgment. Anyone who didn’t fit the stereotypical mould—upper-middle-class, straight, white, male—faced severe barriers to entry. The elements of b-boy culture he cherished most—the inclusivity and welcoming community—were desperately lacking.

Leo Tsuo in Jonespass. Photo: @jacobjmceachern.

“When you’d go to any open breaking practice, there was a common practice, a ritual, if you will, that you would go around the whole room and say, ‘what’s up’ to everybody. And it’s frickin’ annoying when the practice is big. You’re running around the room and giving everybody pounds,” he laughs. “But I think that served a very important role. Even if somebody is brand-spanking new, or a parent that’s just watching their kid, you would go by and say, ‘What’s up?’ And when you left, you would go say, ‘take care’ or ‘peace’ or whatever. And from an inclusivity standpoint, to me, that’s the most important thing.”

“For Tsuo, a proud Asian American, welcoming hesitant newcomers and underrepresented groups into the backcountry—and snowboarding in general—is at the core of Weston’s mission”

Snowboarding, on the other hand, has historically greeted newcomers with cold shoulders instead of pounds. Sure, we’ll smile as newbies swipe plastic on new gear, but then we’ll chuckle as they learn how to use it–maybe snap a photo, send it to Jerry of the Day. And that smile disappears as soon as fresh faces ask for tips or, heaven forbid, follow a boot pack to a powder stash.

For Tsuo, a proud Asian American, welcoming hesitant newcomers and underrepresented groups into the backcountry—and snowboarding in general—is at the core of Weston’s mission. “People will always say, ‘You got to earn your respect’ or, ‘You got to pay your dues’ or whatever. But that’s a completely different mentality than making somebody feel welcome and that they belong. And sometimes, it requires the existing people in that community just to reach out and give somebody a pound. And then you’ve instantly broken down that barrier.”

Leo Tsuo enjoying the backcountry turns. Photo: @koz_.

In pursuit of a more welcoming and diverse snowboard community, Weston doesn’t subscribe to the typical snowboard marketing model—there’s no traditional team of marquee pros who promote the brand in contests and video parts. Instead, Weston supports the efforts of over 175 ambassadors who share Tsuo’s vision for building community, spreading backcountry safety, and fostering inclusivity.

Caitlin Yong and Backcountry Together

Caitlin Yong, one such Denver-based ambassador, initially reached out to Weston for support with a meetup entitled “Split Down to Funky Town” at the end of last season. “I was trying to create an event that would let beginners try a backcountry setup for free at Loveland Ski Area,” she says. “A lot of people haven’t tried it because the gear’s very expensive—a thousand dollars or more—or people are like, ‘Oh, you need an AIARE course!’”

“We could be who we are—who we truly are—which is amazing”

Instead, she wanted people from all walks of life to get a feel for splitboarding in a safe, in-bounds setting on free demo gear, and Weston was game from the jump. “They were so welcoming, and they just grabbed onto the idea. They were like, ‘Yes, we want to help you with your mission!’ So they sent us some demos, and we got six people to try splitboarding for the very first time.”

“That first day out last season was magical. Everyone was meshing so well together, and they were so grateful. And I even made brownies and dumplings tailgating after we did a two-hour uphill together,” laughs Yong. “We could be who we are—who we truly are—which is amazing. I wouldn’t get some passive-aggressive comments about my dumplings, like, ‘Oh, that’s very exotic!’ It was nice to feel at home, that it’s normal to be me. And that meetup just fueled everything else.”

Caitlin Yong, Backcountry Together. Photo: @tongkatt.

Following the success of Split Down to Funky Town, Yong founded Backcountry Together, an organization that seeks to break down barriers to backcountry skiing for BIPOC skiers and splitboarders.

These barriers, according to Yong, can be obvious—the high cost of gear and avalanche education, lack of public transportation to the mountains, let alone backcountry trailheads, etc. But they’re also deeply embedded into backcountry culture, too. If you’ve ever been part of a backcountry group on Facebook, you’ve seen the elitism and gatekeeping firsthand: whenever beginners post looking to get into the backcountry, they get chopped to bits by experts wielding their Avy One certs like battleaxes. Respectfully recommending newcomers engage in safe practices, learn to use gear in-bounds, hire guides, and take avalanche safety courses is one thing—cutting them down is another.

Backcountry Together. Photo: @tongkatt.

Longtime backcountry users can also get possessive of public lands and powder, as if years of patronage to a certain mountain range gives way to ownership. Some see powder as a scarce resource, one they’re entitled to, and believe secret stashes are meant to be hoarded instead of shared, rivaling surfers in terms of hostility. Tsuo’s response to such arguments is pure gold: “Just go hike 50 feet further—you’ve already hiked 1,500 feet to get here. You can’t go another 50 feet over there? You hear people say, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s tracks in this place. Somebody knows about our stash!’ It’s like, ‘Dude, there’s a guidebook!’”

“Respectfully recommending newcomers engage in safe practices, learn to use gear in-bounds, hire guides, and take avalanche safety courses is one thing—cutting them down is another”

Should BIPOC skiers and riders hurdle these initial cold shoulders and barriers to entry, sign up for avalanche classes, and funnel energy into backcountry pursuits, the battle is far from over. “I was the only BIPOC in my Avy 1 and most of my backcountry tours my first year,” Yong recounts. “A lot of the times I didn’t feel a part of the group, I didn’t feel seen or heard at all.”

“I felt like I was outcasted and not welcome,” Yong says, recalling a painful memory–being left out of photos on a hut trip. “My first year, I thought it wasn’t for me. I wanted to give it up. But I love touring and I love how meditative it is, so it kept pushing me forward.”

“After the first year, it made me really want to provide a community where people didn’t need to feel the way I did,” she says. “A backcountry community with other individuals that looked like me, or individuals that look like my friend group in the city—because in the mountains, it’s a little different than the city. That’s what really made me want to create Backcountry Together—to fill in and make a community that I wanted to be a part of.”

Backcountry Together. Photo: @tongkatt.

As Yong wraps up Backcountry Together’s first full winter, it’s clear there’s a demand for her vision. The organization will host a total of 11 events this season, and “our community has been growing,” says Yong. “A lot of people have been volunteering to help out because they see the beauty of our community.”

“A backcountry community with other individuals that looked like me, or individuals that look like my friend group in the city—because in the mountains, it’s a little different than the city”

An informal meet-up at Winter Park was a highlight of the year for Yong, she says. “We had hot pot and Korean barbeque tailgating, and it was just normal—everyone’s like ‘I’ll bring this’ and ‘I’ll bring that!’”

“Some people went uphilling that day, and we did resort, too, and it was a nice fusion of both to introduce resort riders to the concept of Backcountry Together,” says Yong. “It was a great community event.”

That sense of community proliferates beyond the events themselves—touring partnerships blossom, and participants even link up to take avalanche safety courses together, so they don’t have to go through the same feelings of discomfort Yong did in her first year.

“We even got a group of four people taking an AIARE Avy 1 course together. I think it’s amazing to have a safe space and have other BIPOCs take an AIARE course together, especially at Bluebird—pretty excited about what we’ve done this year already.”

Backcountry Together. Photo: @tongkatt.

Vernan Kee and Wood For Life

In addition to supporting an ever-expanding team of ambassadors, consistent through Tsuo’s tenure at Weston has been an ethos of giving back. For years, Weston has donated a significant portion of proceeds from certain boards to causes near and dear to the snowboard community. For instance, proceeds from this year’s Eclipse collaboration with artist Brooklyn Bell funds AIARE avalanche education scholarships. For every Backwoods sold—a perennial favorite of Whitelines testers—Weston and topsheet artist John Fellows plant 10 trees.

“For years, Weston has donated a significant portion of proceeds from certain boards to causes near and dear to the snowboard community”

Next year, to celebrate a decade of board design, Weston is debuting its “Mission Series,” which continues the tradition of giving back by collaborating with artists on graphics that support outdoor-oriented non-profits. The launch is punctuated by a collaboration with Diné Navajo graphic virtuoso Vernan Kee, whose iconic artwork will be featured on the popular Ridgeline and Ridgeline split.

Loading first Delivery, Wood for Life. Photo: US Forest Service.

The collaboration is buzz-worthy for a few reasons. Firstly, because Kee himself, an ex-vanlifer who settled down on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico to give back to his community, is easy to love.

“Me and my partner, we decided to invest into a van and built it out. We only had two dogs at that time,” says Kee. “And we were travelling all over the reservation, visiting all these sites that we used to go to as kids and just spending time on our own land, exploring. But with that, we started seeing all this stuff going on: poverty, trash being dumped everywhere, meth, and alcohol. So we tried to help out and volunteered as much as we could. But the thing that really got us really volunteering was dog rescue.”

“These strays out here, every day these dogs are being dumped, there are dogs that are starving, there are dogs in the mountains,” he says. “Long story short, I have nine dogs now.” And the van? It’s been converted to a dog rescue mobile.

Vernan Kee with the Weston Ridgeline Slplitboard. Photo: @yazziestudio.

When Kee’s not on the trails or rescuing dogs on the reservation, he’s a graphic designer for Native Outdoors, a for-profit collective of Indigenous designers, athletes, business owners, and storytellers. He got connected to Weston through his work for Native Outdoors and social media, he says, and was excited about the Colorado snowboard brand’s artist initiatives, which would allow him to funnel proceeds from his board designs to a cause of his choice. “We talked a lot. It was a year-long process just to get that design like on the board,” he remembers.

Kee brings a unique perspective to snowboard graphics, because, well, he’s not a snowboarder, or even a skier. Rather, he’s a runner, with a deep connection to the natural world that comes through in his artwork. The design for the Ridgeline graphic, he says, is “a red-tailed hawk with Native inspiration behind it.”

“As the leadership and team at Weston has evolved, so too, has our ability to examine how we amplify the diverse voices in our backcountry community, through partnerships and genuinely reciprocal relationships, rather than culturally appropriative graphics”

“When I saw skiers coming down the mountain, I saw a bird, flying down the mountain, and out here in the southwest, the birds I see are red-tailed hawk. The way it moves down to catch the prey is just like a skier going down the mountains, zigzagging through the trees at amazing speeds.”

In the end, Kee chose to support the Wood for Life Tribal Fuelwood Initiative, a collaboration between the National Forest Foundation, tribal governments, and partners like Weston. Wood For Life gathers and dispenses firewood through the reservation, supplying warmth to get Indigenous families through winter. In partnership with Kee, Weston has already committed $10,000 to jumpstart the program into southern Colorado.

Staff Hut Trip. Photo: Carly Finke.

“I didn’t even know that the National Forest had that program where they came out here and delivered wood already,” says Kee. “Because I do that, too. I chop wood for elders and try to get them ready for winter as much as they can. But there are so many elders out here, so it’s definitely a tough job.”

“This collaboration, though, goes about inclusivity in the right way: Weston hired a Native designer, gave him free rein, and let him dictate where proceeds would go”

We’d be remiss not to mention that Weston’s topsheets that referenced Indigenous cultures fell short in the past, and the brand is the first to admit it. “As a Colorado brand, born in the Rockies, there is an inherent and genuine appreciation for the Indigenous cultures here, but Weston’s past attempts at expressing that were very badly executed,” says marketing director Sean Eno. “As the leadership and team at Weston has evolved, so too, has our ability to examine how we amplify the diverse voices in our backcountry community, through partnerships and genuinely reciprocal relationships, rather than culturally appropriative graphics.”

This collaboration, though, goes about inclusivity in the right way: Weston hired a Native designer, gave him free rein, and let him dictate where proceeds would go. It’s a road map that Weston—and, hopefully, its competitors—can continue to follow.

Staff Hut Trip. Photo: Carly Finke.

But perhaps most exciting about the collaboration? That the Ridgeline will serve as Kee’s introduction to snowboarding. “I’ll be getting one of those [boards] hopefully soon and I’ll be trying to learn,” laughs Kee, who looks forward to future snowboard trips to the mountains.

When asked about the barriers to entry in snowboarding, and why it’s so important we bridge those gaps, Kee’s answer hints at how a shared love for the outdoors can help people from diverse backgrounds connect on a human level. “Everybody should be involved equally and able to enjoy it as much as the next person,” he says. “I would love for people to come out here and go do some running and feel the same way I feel when I’m running. That’s why I’m going into this: because I want to feel the way they feel about going down a mountain.”

Staff Hut Trip. Photo: Carly Finke.

The First Step? A Fist Bump

Snowboarding has been historically homogenous, rife with cliques and barriers to entry that make it difficult for underrepresented groups to find their footing. Led by Tsuo and propelled by changemakers like Yong and Kee, Weston’s leading the charge for inclusivity in snowboarding. In the process, the brand’s drummed up a cult-like following and become the second biggest splitboard outfitter in the world–clearly, a community-oriented, soulful approach resonates with snowboarders, from first-timers to grizzled vets.

“Everybody should be involved equally and able to enjoy it as much as the next person”

Tsuo, never one to shy away from speaking his mind, is tired of seeing empty efforts from fellow snowboard brands. While there have undoubtedly been increased conversations around inclusivity in the snowboarding industry, he says, it feels like snowboard brand marketing departments are putting signs out front that say “Everybody’s welcome here,” but when you walk inside, “it’s the same old, same old.”

Weston Ridgeline Slplitboard. Photo: Carly Finke.

“What I would rather do is take down the sign and just train everybody to make sure that you give people a pound when they walk in through that door,” he says. After all, it’s the people who make powder days special, and actions speak louder than words.

As for the rest of us? Members of the snowboard community who want to be a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem? Dani Reyes-Acosta, a Weston ambassador from Southwestern Colorado, offers a simple piece of actionable advice: “Just keep asking new friends to go ride.”

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