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The Conquistadors of Chaos | 30 Years of Whitelines Magazine

Three decades of debauchery, Whitelines Magazine celebrates hitting the big 3-0.

“Idiots try to put a mirror up to the burgeoning 1990s snowboard scene, but accidentally turn it on themselves instead. Blinded by the glare of their own stupidity, they head out on the kind of travel adventures where someone has to climb into a board bag that’s strapped to the roof rack because they’ve forgotten their passport.” – Chris Moran

When I asked former editor and cover star Chris Moran to write a blurb to pitch the inevitable Whitelines biopic to producers, this is what he came back with. If there was ever a more succinct way to describe the Whitelines Snowboarding Magazine journey over the last 30 years, I’m yet to hear it. Back in 1995, when snowboarding had crawled out of the primordial ooze and was slowly evolving into the energy-drink-fuelled, Olympic-partaking, quad-corking, multi-million dollar behemoth it is today, Jim Peskett and Tudor ‘Chod’ Thomas, both formerly of Snowboard World Magazine, decided to start what can only be referred to as a debaucherously British snowboarding fanzine. With Machiavellian savoir-faire, over the course of the next three decades, they, and the subsequent staffers, took Whitelines from a tiny office in Oxfordshire to a global media powerhouse.

“Who knew what others thought of what we did? I mean, face-to-face feedback was always good, and as long as we annoyed our publisher Jim, we just thought things were going well!”

The Early Days

The 90s were rife with snowboard mags; everyone and their mother was trying to get a slice of the action, so how did Whitelines manage to stand out in these early days of oversaturation? As Chris says, “I think the fact that we had no budget, no real understanding of how to make a magazine, and no idea of things like spelling, storytelling or basic decency. Those concepts definitely worked really well in our favour. We launched kinda pre-email, so the first two seasons were “written’ with us calling in to the office and having Milly – the company secretary- type the articles out as we read them from scraps of paper and often over a pre-paid phone card from a public phone box in god-knows-where. It’s why spelling errors like “Tignes” would often appear in print as “teens”. But it allowed us to actually be at the heart of the snowboard scene. Plus, there was no way for readers to complain. Pre-social media, we were all just screaming at the moon. Who knew what others thought of what we did? I mean, face-to-face feedback was always good, and as long as we annoyed our publisher Jim, we just thought things were going well!”

Amongst the grand tapestry of snowboard media, Whitelines was a clear example that the simple things were the most effective. It’s always made its living showcasing cool people doing cool shit strapped onto planks of wood and letting gravity do the heavy lifting. Snowboarding is decidedly unserious, and Whitelines has always striven to embody that. A star was born, not a celestial one, but a beer-chugging, weed-smoking, authority-flaunting one wrapped between gloss paper with a spine that read ‘Dwarf Throwing Monthly’.

“We were always stoked when Chod, who was the designer-in-chief – well, WL was basically his baby – he’d come out with a face spine title. So one month we’d be “Working With Endangered Animals Weekly” and so on. My favourite was “Neck Brace Monthly: The Skyscraper Issue”, I guess an imaginary magazine that’d printed a special for people who couldn’t look up at skyscrapers.”

Chaos Reigns Supreme

Like the naughty kids at school, from day one, Whitelines has always had a seat at the back of the bus, flicking spitwads at nerds and living up to a well- earned reputation as a conquistador of chaos. Statute of limitations notwithstanding, I’m sure there are stories to be told from these early days that’d make Led Zep blush.

“I remember staying in a hotel in Austria that was filled with taxidermy. First night, everyone was in the bar. Around midnight, I stole the accordion from the wall behind the bar, and I hid it in a random bedroom. When the people staying in that room went to bed, they decided to have a tug of war with it, which obviously woke up the hotel. It was at that moment that the hotel owner also realised that her precious stuffed animals had pretty much all been messed with too. I remember there was a large stuffed marmot on a plinth on the way up the stairs. It was Russ Ward who had taken this marmot and fully shaved it, but left a mad Lemmy-style goatee on it.”

“Things like “send your entries to “the crack in the arse cheeks of Jim Peskett, 1 Stert Street, Abingdon” etc…”

“We had one lady write in to tell us that she’d found a copy in her son’s room, and she was banning him from ever reading it again. So we gifted him a free subscription for life and awarded her letter of the month. I think the most complaints came from the actual post office in the UK because we’d always have a contest or competition in the mag with some stupid address as part of the entry. Things like “send your entries to “the crack in the arse cheeks of Jim Peskett, 1 Stert Street, Abingdon” etc… and Jim (he was the owner of the publishing company) who was pretty much always the butt of the jokes, would literally plead with us not to do that shit anymore because the postal service had threatened him with being blacklisted from receiving post, and his argument was that it would shut the publishing business down.”

The Digital Revolution

As always, time and tide wait for no man. Or magazine. By the mid-2010s, it was clear that the print age was waning, and the shelves of once-proud stockists of snowboard magazines stood as empty as the Old Trafford Home end in the 88th minute. But, as United fans leaving a game early often realise to their dismay, it ain’t over till it’s over. There’s always ‘Fergie Time’ and a last-minute banger to be scored out of nowhere.

Yes, the appetite for media consumption had shifted, and convenience and instant gratification became a priority. But this ease of access actually allowed the industry to grow massively; people didn’t have to wait months to get their snowboarding fix- it was a 24-hour buffet where sliding sideways was the order of the day. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’m not comparing old school mags to steak tartare and current digital offerings to Big Macs… But, as they say, there’s a time and a place for everything. Sometimes you want a slap-up 14-course meal with accompanying tasting wines, or a 150-page, premium quality coffee table-style magazine with paper so luxurious you caress it like a lover. Other times, you want a cacophony of 10-second phone clips uploaded straight into your eyeballs and to shove a greasy kebab into your gob on the night bus home. It’s all good things in moderation, eh?

Print editions of Whitelines officially ceased in 2015, with WL120 being the last to grace shelves. Announced online (of course), the editor at the time, Ed Blomfield’s statement was a candid look at the viability of print media in the modern age. “Factory Media’s proposal to sacrifice print frees up the editorial staff to channel all that passion and energy into their websites, including this one. As a team, we’re obviously gutted to see the end of a paper publication into which we poured heart and soul over two decades. But with the good ship WL celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, we’re also excited to see where – with a renewed focus and a healthy budget – we can take it next. Expect a slicker website delivering more unique video, more gear reviews, more how-tos, more travel… more of all the things you enjoy. In 2015, original, high-quality content is the order of the day. Ultimately, however, it’s just about staying true to that original goal of stoking out the readers; if you guys are here online, then that’s where we need to be.”

As the print run ended, Whitelines went full hog into the digital revolution, pivoting to modernity with a grace usually reserved for willowy ballet dancers, not middle-aged snowboarders. With staff members no longer being pulled in multiple directions, it allowed the online platforms to flourish. Whitelines was already known for its in-depth gear guides, and the Whitelines 100 served as a touchstone for the season’s must-have product, but this freeing up of time and resources gave the website and social media profiles a new lease of life and the title was no longer seen as a UK offering and became a true worldwide favourite.

“Like the cockroach that refuses to die, the chewing gum stuck to the sole of snowboarding’s gaffa-taped boot, Whitelines cannot be killed”

The Comeback Kid

Media is a notoriously capricious mistress; mags can come and go with the rise of the price of paper, or a tightening of a budgetary belt can leave a publication dead in the water overnight. Whitelines has been read its last rites more than once, but like the cockroach that refuses to die, the chewing gum stuck to the sole of snowboarding’s gaffa-taped boot, Whitelines cannot be killed. Maybe it’s fate circumventing reality, but more likely, it’s the fact that Whitelines has always had people at the helm who truly care about snowboarding and are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the mag’s heart beating. Even if that includes experimental emergency surgery with no anaesthesia during a power cut. Mostly light-hearted, occasionally funny, but always passionate, the Whitelines journey hasn’t always been straightforward. It’s certainly not had the biggest budget; the term ‘shoestring and a dream’ comes to mind when thinking of Whitelines, especially in the early days.

“No one had any money, least of all our publisher, but we begged, borrowed and stole enough to get all 120-odd editions out! And we eBayed pretty much every bit of product that anyone ever sent in. Honestly, it kept us all afloat. Sketchy as fuck, eh?”

30 Years Later

After a four-year hiatus, Whitelines returned to the shelves with a deep dive into snowboarding culture in 2019. This second print run was short and sweet, with The Whitelines Annual format providing three magazines, with over 600 pages of exclusive interviews, blockbuster photographs and written content from the very best in the game.

In the wake of this brief second foray into print with Ed Blomfield back at the helm, as of 2026, Whitelines is once again a purely digital entity. Our focus is on curating and cultivating a crack team of proper snowboarders across three continents to put all the latest innovations through their paces to create premium gear reviews, getting down to the nitty-gritty with a huge range of people in the industry to lift the curtain with in-depth interviews, having eyes on day-to-day goings on to provide relevant culture hits and providing boots-on-the-ground event coverage that showcases the beating heart of the sport.

The sheer reach of digital versus print cannot be denied. This season 2 million people visited our website, we have over 750,000 social media followers, and you’ll find us appearing all over your AI snippets, too. It’s easy to see why 20,000 copies of a print magazine are a hard sell in comparison. But quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive, and despite churning out heaps more content and having an exponentially bigger reach than we did back in the day, we still stick to the tried and true tenet of Whitelines that every piece has to be engaging, informative or amusing- and ideally all three at once. That’s not to say we don’t wax poetic about the joys of print, run the numbers and scrawl hasty business models on the back of napkins every time we’re three pints deep, Goonies never say die, right?

Aside from that, we can confirm we have received no mail addressed to the crack in the arse cheeks of anyone. Yet.

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