words and photos by Mike Yoshida
These days shooting with Think Thank are few and far between due to Snowboarder mag obligations, life obligations and contracted work, there’s just fewer and fewer moments when the stars align for us. So when Jesse called me to join Chris Larson and him on a quick strike Snoqualmie mission, you know I was in. There was chatter about a new feature that Jesse had found, and that he was going to save some photogenic tricks to be done on it. Classic Burtner, always looking out for the photogs… my man, haha… So the next day I show up at the “gnar bucket” as it was coined, and it sure was one photogenic obstacle! Jesse started the session getting into some classic one footers, and moved on to one footed double tail, which I had never seen him do before. Once Jesse was certain he nailed the shot, Larson went to work on the bucket. Chris always seems to take his trick selection to the utmost extreme, in that he tries the hardest and craziest stuff all the time. You wouldn’t know by his mellow demeanor that he was brewing up absolute insanity behind those eyes! So when asked what trick he was going to try, Chris mentioned wanting to do a backflip hand drag of sorts on the bucket. I asked if he had ever tried that trick before, and he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, which meant “no”. So the first couple goes were flat out sketchy. I think he may have clipped his nose mid flip, ten feet off the ground, but he still managed to get the board around and land somewhat on his feet. This trick was all about getting the perfect speed. If he went too fast he would overshoot the landing and go sailing, and if he went too slow he would clip his nose. Granted this was the type of high impact feature that you really did not want to do over and over, Larson had a good 10 tries before he nailed this trick, which made it in the movie! Side note: The next day Larson does another never been done trick (for him) with a backside wallride mctwist out on a water tower.
Everyones half Norwegian half Kiwi jokester, Freddy Perry is the subject of this photo, which never saw the light of day. On this day we had hiked up to an area up at Baker that was about 30 minutes from the upper parking lot. In classic Baker style the snow was wet and heavy, but it had dumped a couple feet of fresh, so it was really fun. Max Warbington, Larson and Sam Hulburt were hitting a mini shred double line, when I saw Burtner duck into the woods with his Tuffy shovel. About 40 minutes went by, and these guys were just about done with their film sesh, when Burtner yells to come down to his tree zone when we were done. Once I arrived on the scene I found that Jesse had channeled his inner Bubbles (Japanese snow bowl sensei) and crafted a mini bowl out of the soft wet snow. That type of snow was really perfect for sculpting and building, so the crew united and helped to finish this masterpiece. The finished product was a sketchy in run into a tombstone style qp that would lead into a bowl, and finished with a hand dug tunnel to mini step down. Only Think Thank could conceptualize and execute something so fun and ridiculous, and put it in the movie.
This shot is from the same feature that Freddy was doing the frontside air. Here’s Max Warbington, one of the sickest up and coming riders (FYI if you don’t know, now you know) hitting the exit tunnel of the Burtner bowl. After the tunnel there was a mini step down. During the whole session it was dumping super wet heavy flakes, nearly blizzard conditions. As it started to get dark, I knew I had the shots I wanted, so I headed back to Bellingham. Later that night Jesse hit me up and told me that they ended up riding another hour and a half, until dark. These guys are animals!
Mitch Richmond is not part of the Right Turn Left Turn crew, but I’m certain this shot is not going to get used in the mag. If for some reason it ends up running, I have to apologize to Huggs and Bridges for leaking it. Butt fuck it. *but fuuucckk it! This is the closest thing to a Japanese style concrete bank we have in Washington. Mitch back 180’d into it, and I think the day before, he winched up it and did a crippler off the wall. Be on the lookout for shots from this spot in both Right Turn Left Turn and the Think Thank Almanac. Moseltof Laing.
photos: Alex Mertz | words: Jesse Burtner, Max Warbington and Pika
This Beresford method was a little side country side project on one of the thousands of little poppers at Laax. Picking what to do is way more stressful than trying something. Time management is always a factor, what should we do that will be the most fun / rad / productive / most people will get to ride? Figure it out quick or the day will be lost to indecision. Sometimes, most of the time, you just gotta start snowboarding and see where it goes. That’s a Beresford specialty. The minimal set up mill about shred sesh. We’ll be building something to launch on to something and Chris will just start dinking donuts off to the side and the next thing you know he’s doing some new trick or some rad line, whatever it is it usually amounts to the coolest thing of the day. He makes it look all too easy as well, I’m sure you all have that friend in the crew who makes everything look easy, we have a few of them, Beresford being the number one offender. He can just kind of do everything but he can only be bothered maybe once a season to actually do the doing of it.
This one kind of got away from us. It was almost so sick. Best zone we were in, but we couldn’t quite put it together. Larson almost did an insane back 180 on this hip/table top jump. The problem was, the hip landing turned out to be a rock. Max and I both got core shots, Max’s totaled his board. So it was a bit dicey. It also worked as a table top but there was a valley in the run-in that just g’ed you out. Not like “ganster” but like “Maverick” g-force. So we couldn’t quite get the speed. Regardless it’s always fun to try. Fun to be flying at a jump, especially after so much jibbing and mini shredding, just the feeling of flying as fast as you can manage at a kicker is a nice change. I got to do one of those double tail grab tweaks, I always saw Gigi and Müller do them but it was actually Jed Anderson who made me really want to do it. Man it’s fun. East to west tail grab. We used to call indys poked across your body East Indys and ones poked out away from your body West Indys. I digress.
Max is a powder pig. We all were. We were just getting turns everywhere the first few days. Total tourists, just in-bounds powder hounds. I couldn’t even keep the crew pinned down to jump off anything, which turns out was a good thing because we got our best stuff of the season, including the best shot of the video which turned in to the ender of Beresford chasing Larson through the pow where Larson blasts out of his own spray. That shit right there, that’s that shit.This photo is Max just pigging out, barely past rope line. Getting ready to hit the club that doubled as our hotel. A thousand person rave a floor below, Freddy in the middle, just dominating the vibe.
I was 5 months pregnant while filming on this trip, and while it was my last time up on the slopes until Ollie's arrival, Mertz captured this moment as Ollie's first turn! The biggest reason why this was getting hard was actually because I could hardly reach down over my belly to strap on my binders. I'd have to use a shovel to tri-pod me so that I could reach down awkwardly while holding my breath and straining my zippers. Another unexpected use for our ever so handy REMCO shovels! (words by Pika)
This photo, our box cover, is from Laax, Switzerland. We saw this rocky banked turn to hip from the chair lift, the chair lift designed by Porsche that turns you to the left so you get the best possible view of the breathtaking vistas. Sessioning a wind berm, although a little weird, has been something we do time to time. But this one was better than most. It had a rock out crop at the top, a hip at the bottom and it was good for just jumping over too. We shinkansened the crap out of it and got this photo along with a bunch of other good ones at various stages of this melee. It was a funny day because we kind of just kerplunked down in this zone and termite-ed it up. Termite-ing is a Think Thank specialty. We just dig, tunnel and bore out an entire zone until it looks like it was ravaged by freestyle termites. But then it snows and wipes it all clean. When you are termite-ing you get a chance to look a little deeper than the obvious hit, jump or whatever. It’s almost like “necessity is the mother of invention” except for us it’s “boredom is the mother of creativity".
Max tickling the rock. This thing was a bit intimidating as far as bank turns go. The rock was there for sure and the hip on the other side has more or less just a rock. There were a couple of core shots that day and I got a swell-bo. Max is this solid ripper, the likes of which don’t come around very often; tricks, style, creativity, epic attitude. Really if he’s snowboarding or around snowboarding he’s stoked. Sometimes I act like that’s the case but really I’m thinking “Get me out of here.” Or “Please god let me land this so I don’t have to do it again,” or some other less than 100% mental state. But Max is young, dumb (he’s actually not dumb) and full of…..fun. He’s always down and looks like he’s got at least a decade to go before he’s jaded.
This beach was our first spot in Finland, we found it randomly just driving around. There was a butter box to rock thing going on and a couple micro micro shred options as well. One funny thing about this spot was that I had actually seen the rail in some kid’s edit when I was trolling the internet for Finnish spots. Which, by the way, is entirely unnecessary, Finland in and of itself is one big spot. There are so many rails everywhere. But in our case it was rails rails everywhere and not a drop of snow. Well, a drop, enough to tease you. But this spot, Max did the back and forth bungee thing, has anyone ever done that? It was hilarious. Funnier still was a nice Finnish woman stopping by and feeling bad for us because of the lack of snow. She called her cousin, who makes snowboard videos and asking him where we should go. He said that he just got from Japan, which was sick, and sorry to say you guys are pretty f’ed right now. I think he maybe films for Oakley or something but it was really sweet, they wanted us to like our filming time in Finland. Later that day we went to an old wooden water tower that looked like a space ship and jumped over some rocks and dog shit, it was freakin’ funny. This whole thing was comedy. Our apartment was sick though, right in downtown Helsinki and it had it’s own steam room and soaking tub.
Beresford was carving an ice rink and Max and I were going fence to rock while Larson set up this gap. The run in sucked so bad. Just scraping snow to get the speed, pretty much riding over rock and moss the whole time. Larson handled this like a boss, of course. When hasn’t he? We had managed to find this little cove of opportunity by getting lost in some suburb of Helsinki. Seriously wherever you go there’s stuff to do, especially when you have Beresford and Max with you; guys that can create with nothing but a board and a bit of snow. Thankful for our whole crew, we could have melted down more than the snow, but instead we shredded.
Finding yourself in a skate park is never ideal, but always fun. We didn’t fight it in Finland. There was enough snow here and the ramps made for some natural speed. Larson was ripping this set up, usually it’s just Beresford that makes it look fun, but this time Larson was getting after it. This is also the spot where we were playing with those logs and where there was a sick dirt clod. Really? Really.
words by Max Warbington:
That day was crazy for me. That was our first day filming in Finland, spirits were high and the crew was hungry and healthy (you can see by the Freddy hospital photo that the "healthy" part did not last long). Haha, poor poor Freddy. Anyway at this point I had never met Mertz, Freddy or Larson until like the day before and I had never filmed with Beresford.
Right away Beresford and I spotted that wall and start banging off stupid ideas and from that moment on I knew filming with him was going to rule. Burtner, Larson & Fred were walking around the school and doing god knows what while me and Beres started putting work in our weird little line idea. We didn't get far before we wandered up to see what was going on with the rest of the crew. Turned out Larson had set up this crazy gnarly super quick ollie to close-in down rail and he was like just strapping into hit it. He nailed a nosepress after some sketchy slams, I was VERY impressed haha.
Then we set up a spot for Fred to do this insane pop-over to skinny alleyway to backslide duck-under a waste high metal bar. He handled it no problem in like 4 tries and the trick he did was a fucking boardslide to FAKIE! it was insane.
Anyway I was instantly so impressed with both Freddy and Lark Dog, both those dudes are bad ass mo fos.
After those dudes got clipped we all went down a put in work on the berm to wall to fence and it turned out being super super fun, got a sick photo and got my legs under me for the rest of the Euro trip. This was also the day we sessioned hockey goal and Beresford slide one then tail-slapped a shovel and Mertz caught it mid beer chug. All and all pretty epic intro to Finland and to the RTLT crew.
That day was crazy for me. That was our first day filming in Finland, spirits were high and the crew was hungry and healthy (you can see by the Freddy hospital photo that the "healthy" part did not last long). Haha, poor poor Freddy. Anyway at this point I had never met Mertz, Freddy or Larson until like the day before and I had never filmed with Beresford.
Right away Beresford and I spotted that wall and start banging off stupid ideas and from that moment on I knew filming with him was going to rule. Burtner, Larson & Fred were walking around the school and doing god knows what while me and Beres started putting work in our weird little line idea. We didn't get far before we wandered up to see what was going on with the rest of the crew. Turned out Larson had set up this crazy gnarly super quick ollie to close-in down rail and he was like just strapping into hit it. He nailed a nosepress after some sketchy slams, I was VERY impressed haha.
Then we set up a spot for Fred to do this insane pop-over to skinny alleyway to backslide duck-under a waste high metal bar. He handled it no problem in like 4 tries and the trick he did was a fucking boardslide to FAKIE! it was insane.
Anyway I was instantly so impressed with both Freddy and Lark Dog, both those dudes are bad ass mo fos.
After those dudes got clipped we all went down a put in work on the berm to wall to fence and it turned out being super super fun, got a sick photo and got my legs under me for the rest of the Euro trip. This was also the day we sessioned hockey goal and Beresford slide one then tail-slapped a shovel and Mertz caught it mid beer chug. All and all pretty epic intro to Finland and to the RTLT crew.
words by Jesse Burtner:
We were in Finland to meet up with Freddy Perry, who’s from Norway, but there was no snow in Norway and there was some in Finland so we decided to meet him there instead. Turns out there was hardly any snow in Finland, maybe six inches when we landed and less and less by the day, but these things have a way of happening. You’re sitting in Seattle and just looking at web cams and talking to people that are all giving you a different idea of what it’s like and what it’s going to do. At some point you have to pull the trigger, plane tickets, a place to stay, rental car and then you just cross your fingers and hope it’s good. When we were flying into Helsinki I was just craning my neck and drilling my eyeballs into the ground trying to decipher the conditions in clouds and dull light. I saw white on the roof tops and I knew we would be OK, because of the crew we would make something of it, but man, it was slim pickings. Would anyone else have stayed for the whole trip? Rode everyday? Filmed everyday? I don’t know, doesn’t matter, we did and we got weird footage, different stuff. I loved it. I don’t want to do that again necessarily, but I loved it. Our crew put on brave faces, usually glowing from their cell phones, but brave none the less and set forth to new levels of low expectations. Mini shred barely begins to describe it. Ok, now I’ve set sort of a gloomy stage and Finland in February is pretty gloomy, but it was really fun. We didn’t give a rats what we snowboarded on and we snowboarded everyday. We rode a ton, just sessioned things, whatever it was we would scrape enough snow together to use whatever hill there was to ride. This picture is in the Shinkansen series Mertz has been shooting for over a year now. This one was so fun, bank turn to wall ride to fence ride, natural speed. Beresford and Max were both wearing Baker Banked Slalom sweatshirts so we dubbed them the Baker Boys, they were pretty fast too, couple a Terjes. Max getting up on to this ledge was pretty crazy, speed was dicey (even for the Baker Boys), but the kid's got it. Mertz nailed this one, everyone is in their zone and I’m getting my Egyptian on. Anyways, if you’re ever bored at a session or at a spot or on the hill, build a bank turn. Bank turn to rail, bank turn to drop, bank turn to booter, really spices things up!
We were in Finland to meet up with Freddy Perry, who’s from Norway, but there was no snow in Norway and there was some in Finland so we decided to meet him there instead. Turns out there was hardly any snow in Finland, maybe six inches when we landed and less and less by the day, but these things have a way of happening. You’re sitting in Seattle and just looking at web cams and talking to people that are all giving you a different idea of what it’s like and what it’s going to do. At some point you have to pull the trigger, plane tickets, a place to stay, rental car and then you just cross your fingers and hope it’s good. When we were flying into Helsinki I was just craning my neck and drilling my eyeballs into the ground trying to decipher the conditions in clouds and dull light. I saw white on the roof tops and I knew we would be OK, because of the crew we would make something of it, but man, it was slim pickings. Would anyone else have stayed for the whole trip? Rode everyday? Filmed everyday? I don’t know, doesn’t matter, we did and we got weird footage, different stuff. I loved it. I don’t want to do that again necessarily, but I loved it. Our crew put on brave faces, usually glowing from their cell phones, but brave none the less and set forth to new levels of low expectations. Mini shred barely begins to describe it. Ok, now I’ve set sort of a gloomy stage and Finland in February is pretty gloomy, but it was really fun. We didn’t give a rats what we snowboarded on and we snowboarded everyday. We rode a ton, just sessioned things, whatever it was we would scrape enough snow together to use whatever hill there was to ride. This picture is in the Shinkansen series Mertz has been shooting for over a year now. This one was so fun, bank turn to wall ride to fence ride, natural speed. Beresford and Max were both wearing Baker Banked Slalom sweatshirts so we dubbed them the Baker Boys, they were pretty fast too, couple a Terjes. Max getting up on to this ledge was pretty crazy, speed was dicey (even for the Baker Boys), but the kid's got it. Mertz nailed this one, everyone is in their zone and I’m getting my Egyptian on. Anyways, if you’re ever bored at a session or at a spot or on the hill, build a bank turn. Bank turn to rail, bank turn to drop, bank turn to booter, really spices things up!
The same day we were doing the Shinkansens Freddy Perry was ripping this little hockey goal. Snowboarding is the most fun when it just happens. There was a hill and there was this goal and Freddy rode it. You can see Pika in the background about to toss her shovel up. Pika’s the best on trips, she’s always loving it, dorking around trying to do things that are “cute” like get a shovel or cone in the mix, still living that Patchwork Patterns dream, aren’t we all… After some actual hockey, Freddy and Beresford rode these things on their snowboards while Larson did a tight space nose press on an actual rail with stairs (imagine that!). Then Freddy did his board slide to back slide duck thing at the end of the day. Full hack, sick sesh!
What can you say about this? Max going all in on some Finish pride. It was during the Winter Olympics, I think Finland kicked our asses at hockey or something, people were stoked. Maybe it was cross country skiing, can’t remember. These colors don’t run!
Our next day in Lahti didn’t go so well or swell. It ended with Perry back in the hospital after a heinous slam to the stomach. We were stuck in the hospital probably like an hour and half from Helsinki until 1 am or so. It was brutal for all us Americans because of the jet lag. Everyone was passed out in the waiting room, they kept having to come and wake us up and make everyone sit up because we were scumming up the joint, making it look like a homeless shelter. Freddy always makes everything funny though, even when he’s hurt or bummed he finds humor in it or at least makes it so we can laugh. Freddy got released with no serious internal injuries, just some serious pain that would linger for a while, a month at least. The drive back to Helsinki that night was harrowing, everyone passed out, including Freddy, I was literally peeling my eyelids back with one hand to stay awake. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Getting older sucks, you start the year off wondering if it’s all gonna stay together for you. This was my first spot of the year, I had firstspot jitters compounded by the fact that I had a very freshly rehabbed 90% torn Rotator Cuff. Luckily I was in Alaska with my friends, the no-pressure posse, they were down to let me ease into it; make the landing wide and soft. Hupp, Geno, Brewster, Gus, Larson, Pika and Mertz were the crew. It was Christmas time in Alaska, the best time of the year when there’s good snow like this, we film in between family obligations, holiday parties and feasts. Sometimes we just have big sessions at Gus’ house or Bowman or my house. Hupp, Brewster, Gus and Geno were all filming for Magic Hour Moves, Hupp’s upcoming (in the next couple years, he’s on that Brainfarm schedule) video filmed in glorious VX. So it was funny hearing him say “Hold on, I gotta end search!” and “Fuck, the camera glitched!” We just crewed up at South and jumped off this thing and then did this rad half pipe that Pika and I had dug out. Larson got that banger wally backflip and there was an amazing sunset, and we filmed till it was dark because Geno was there, and you have to have “Geno hour”. This particular photo was a half cab fast plant. I went to back 3 fast plant it but I was tripping on my shoulder and all the huck and flop of that trick, so I opted for the half cab. It’s always weird getting your tail up above the ledge without the binding in, that’s the hard part, after I figured that out this was pretty quick, maybe six tries. First trick in the bag, although I cut this out of my part for a while, then I put it back in. Too many fast plants this year, but that’s just what was happening and this season was all about doing whatever happened, no forcing it, just get to the spot and ride. This was our best full on crew day of that trip, after this we started losing the battle to Christmas and warmer less shoveling oriented activities.
Some power line people came to the house I grew up in a couple of years ago and cleared a bunch of trees out of the way of the wires. This is in the mountains above Anchorage, pretty much in the Chugach State Park, it’s where I first snowboarded and where I learned most of what I know how to do trick-wise as well. After they cut the trees my parents immediately informed me, this was big news. We had never had any actual speed for anything in our driveway until now, the trees were too thick to use the hill. Now it was on. This was the best session of the year for me. It was like, five sessions really. One with Gus and Este, a couple with just my brother Garrett and one with the whole crew including most of my nuclear family and nephews. This hip was just perfect. You bombed the hill with Coho (my parent's dog) on your heels, blasted the hip while Edison (Garrett's oldest) yelled up at you and crossed the driveway avoiding Jasper (his little brother) or Sebastian (Marcus Burtner's son) to hit a little QP and maybe get a handplant. Denali was popping for most of the days as well, you can see some Denali shots in the vid, those are from the driveway, that’s why there are power lines in them and, subsequently, power lines is why we now have speed for the annual Christmas hip. I’m getting stoked just writing this! I tried to get my dad to let me rearrange a wood pile by the tree this fall so that the hip would have an even better landing but he wasn’t having it, that’s OK though because the plow guy can push up a landing in a few minutes. Larson was ripping this thing, so has Hupp. Gus aired in to the trees twice in a row trying an alley oop bs 3, classic. I got my whole family out away from puzzles, toys and totties so we could get this method family portrait with Mertz. Super cheesy, but whatever, this is one of the best photos of me snowboarding ever, it’s got so much of what I love in it and all that really matters. Anyways, Christmas hip 2014, who’s in?!?
photos by Alex Mertz | words by Jesse Burtner and Max Warbington