The Backyard Project

The Backyard Project

Photos courtesty of Justin Lamoureux and Kyle Wolochatiuk

Most of us are lucky to even have a backyard, let alone a bit of grass or a nice tree to hang out under. But what would you do if your backyard was literally filled with dozens of incredible big-mountain lines just begging to be shredded? For former Olympic (limp-dick?!) halfpipe rider Justin Lamoureux that exact question has been bugging him for years. You see, in addition to being Canada's best-ever Olympic halppipe finisher (7th in 2010) and an FIS World Tour champion (also in 2010), his true passion has always been the exploration of uncharted territory, be that never-before-surfed breaks in Alaska or never-before-ridden lines just in front of his house in Squamish, BC - halfway between Vancouver and Whistler.

Hailing from the land of Poutine and Smoked Meat (Quebec for our international readers), Justin began snowboarding in 1988 and has never looked back. He moved out west to Banff in 1994 and hooked himself up with a now legendary crew of OG Canadian shreds who not only taught him the ropes but really opened his eyes up to the potential of the mountains. Five or so years later he found himself in the Whistler/Squamish area and has been living here ever since. He's defintely best known for his halfpipe skills, something that can be both a blessing and a curse, but as I learned while putting together this peice, there is way more to him than that. 

Tossed in the ocean at a week old, multiple first descents in AK and Banff National Park, a mechanical engineer... This is one interesting dude. Hey may never have gained acceptance into the "cool guy" world of pro snowboarders but after getting to know him a bit better I get the distinct impression that he could not care less. 

The Backyard Project is as ambitious as it gets, and I really hope he pulls this off. But either way, you gotta give a dude credit for not being afraid to try something new and outside the box and most importantly, follow a dream even if the outcome is uncertain. 

Make sure to check out the teaser at the bottom of the interview!
 

You're a pipe-jock, everyone knows that! How long have you been into backcountry shredding?

Yup total pipe jock... I grew up riding in the eastern townships in Quebec. I rode at Mt Orford and Jay peak. there was no park or pipes. Just trees and moguls. Jay has probably some of the best tree riding on the planet and 30 feet of snow a year.. I basically just lived in the trees.

I started riding western backcountry right when i moved to Banff. Jonaven Moore is literally the first guy I met on my first day at Lake Louise. Through Jon I met Greg Todds, Bannock, and the rest of the crew. We also had a sick posse that was living in Banff at the time. We rode everything.  When there was pow or it was stable we got after it. If it wasn't, we rode park or pipe. We were hiking the slackcountry and riding lines up in the Icefields Parkway and around Banff National Park all the time. winter camping trips to Rogers Pass. It was a great time in my life for sure. learned so much in the sketchy Rockies snowpack and from all those boys.

My sponsors 'back in the day' couldn't afford to pay for movie parts so aside from a few years filming with Treetop I figured the way for me to get exposure was to do well in contests. When I was home I was generally always freeriding. It just worked out that pipe came fairly naturally to me and I was lucky enough to be able to do well at contests. Also compared to slope or big airs comps (or even boardercross when i raced that) you know (for the most part) what you're gonna get when you go to a pipe comp. I was never really good at rails so when a slope comp was mostly rails, i did poorly. When it was mostly jumps, I usually did well. With pipe, other than over-vert or under-vert you know it's generally going to be a standard pipe. So I focused my budget on going to pipe comps. And from a young age I wanted to go to the Olympics so when faced between pipe or wearing spandex and butt wiggling in ski boots (aka snowboard GS)...

You've been designing backcountry gear for a while now as well. What aspects of that attract you?

With my engineering background i definitely like designing stuff. My first product was probably a backcountry pack i made with 686. We worked on 3-4 different years worth i think. I got to help with a lot of their clothes in the early days as well which was really cool.
Up until recently I was the design engineer at K2 Snowboards and was in charge of pretty much everything on all the boards. Design, R&D, production, etc. My first big rebuild was the Ultra Split which will be in stores this fall. But I guess I did change a lot of their boards and board technology while I was there. Also got to help with the backcountry tools they make and their new qwicker splitboard system. I was a good resource for the other engineers who were working on those products.
I love designing stuff. Such a cool feeling to be able to have an idea, design it, build it, and finally ride it. I kind of miss it right now, but it's winter and there's snow on the ground so really not too worried about it. haha

Where did the idea for The Backyard Project come from?

I'd always heard that Squamish didn't have any good riding. Then I moved down here 8 years ago and was always curious about the mountains when i walked out of my house. I mean the mountains are huge down here and there's way more snow than in Whistler. But nobody seemed to know anything about them. So I started poking around and finding some sick stuff. Little lines i saw from my house actually turned into huge lines and were insane. The more I found the more I poked around.
A few years ago, I started thinking it would be cool to ride all the mountains I could see from my house. Not just the few good looking ones, but all of them. So I went out behind my house and took some photos, started counting and found out there's about 30 different peaks that can be seen.  I actually started filming intro teasers several years ago (for the concept, title, everything) to pitch to my old clothing sponsor.

After filming a bit of stuff I felt the time wasn't right to go after it so i shelved the idea. Then last summer i told the idea to Garry Pendygrasse and he was so pumped on it. He was super keen to be the filmer and help out. Then the idea was pitched to Arc'teryx and they were super pumped on it. So suddenly I was making a webisode series. 

The Squamish/Whistler area is essentially ground-zero for sled-assisted shredding. What attracts you to self-propelled exploration?

Well the stuff north of Squamish is ground zero for sled assisted shredding. The things you see while in Squamish, for the most part, are not sled accessible. Which is really cool, cause there's nobody there. Nobody is riding my lines and they're pretty much virgin as far the the snow industry is concerned. So everyday is a new day with new lines.
After living here and sledding for over a decade, we've seen everything and pretty much ridden everything in the typical sled areas. Still super fun and challenging zones, but it's definitely lacking the mystique of 'what's around that corner?'. When you drop into a mountain face completely blind and having never seen it, it's an entirely different ball game.
If you're stuck to your sled it's actually very limiting to where you're going to ride. if you're willing to split, hike and climb, it opens up a lot of new areas. So I unchained myself from the machine and started looking elsewhere. and it's awesome. Nothing beats finding a zone, riding down a new line for the first time and having no idea what to expect. Best thing ever.
There's no guide book for the stuff we're riding, and I know very few people that have been to any of these lines. So it's pure exploration right out from my house.

After decades of being told that in order to ride truly big lines we must head to Alaska, it seems to be getting to be more accepted that there are equally gnarly peaks and faces right here in our, excuse the reference, backyard. What do you think has lead to that and what are your thoughts on it?

That's actually part of my focus with 'The Backyard Project'. We've been conditioned by society to think that only the exotic is worthwhile. Whatever is in front of our faces or close by is deemed unworthy. The action sports industry is no different. No matter where you are, or what sport you're doing, we're basically told by the industry that there's something better. and it's far away. Even in Whistler, arguably one of the best places in the world to snowboard, people constantly plan to head to Europe and Alaska cause obviously it's better there.

In general it seem that people are heading farther and farther to find new lines and missing what is literally right in their faces everyday. There's lines that are visible from my bedroom that are so ridiculously gnarly I don't even know what to think of them!

AK is awesome, but it's also quite similar to the mountains here. Coastal snowpack and coastal mountains. So there does seem to be a select group of people that are willing to look around here and are finding insane lines.

Hopefully people are getting out and exploring those lines they see all the time and have never done. Anything covered in snow is ridable and worth being explored for possibilities. And that concept doesn't apply to just western mountains. There's tons of lines out east that people haven't touched yet cause it's 'just a hill'. You won't know until you go.

Did the project go according to plan or was it more challenging than you expected? how so?

Way more challenging than i thought. Garry got diagnosed with cancer in the fall and had to drop out of filming obviously. That alone almost stopped the project dead. But Garry wanted to see the project and got me back into it. So I'm on my second filmer since then, had to learn about cameras and learn way more about editing. time management has been a key issue all winter, especially with having a new born son in the house. Organizing riders is like herding cats.
Mountain-wise it's mostly gone as expected. some are easy and some are insanely hard.
In general it's by far the hardest thing I've tried to do in snowboarding. weather, time, avalanche conditions, crazy long missions..

 

Let's get a funny story from the season

Well it wasn't super funny at the time..
A lot of the lines require rather specific conditons to make them doable by foot. We'd been waiting for a while for conditions to line up to get up this mountain. Picked up Kyle (filmer) early in the morning and started our trek up the logging roads in the truck. We're about an hour from town where we park and start getting ready. We're getting our gear ready and Kyle suddenly says 'justin, i've forgotten something rather important'
"camera?"
no
"water?"
no
"food?"
no
"well you have your splitboard.."
yeah, but no skins.
"ohh"

Kyle's a bit of a boot pack machine so he volunteered to bootpack for the day. I knew right away that morning that we wouldn't get anywhere but I was kinda choked that we may have blown our one chance for this mountain, so i let him go for it in hopes that it would work. It was slightly, annoyingly, breakable crust. I went for 30 minutes and had to wait for 30 minutes. basically it took us nearly 3 hours to get, what we now know, a little over an hour's worth of distance. We had to go up one side of the mountain, down the other then traverse all the way back around the bottom of it. and we basically had only gotten to the bottom of going up! While it wasn't planned at the time, trying to keep going just seems like punishment when i look back at it.
so, if anyone EVER says they can hike as fast as you can skin. laugh at them because there's no way in hell that will happen. thankfully the conditions lined up again and we were able to pick that one off the list, and I can laugh at this now.
Skins are definitely an important thing for a day of touring. There's now an extra set of skins in my truck, just in case!

 

The Backyard Project Teaser:

 

Find out more about Justin at justinlamoureux.com 

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