Travis Rice has been one of the world’s greatest snowboarders for a long, long time. He’s in his early 40s now, so he’s not as spry as he once was, but the years of constantly pushing himself have kept him in peak shape.
He was on Snowboarder magazine‘s list of the 20 most influential snowboarders of the last 20 years, part of a lineup that included Jeremy Jones, Tom Burt, Shaun White, Craig Kelly, and more.
Born in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he grew up close to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. Before he was a snowboarder, he was a skier, and according to lore he wasn’t all that interested in snowboarding when it began to make its way onto the mountains in a more mainstream way.
In 2001, a fresh-faced, sponsor-less Rice entered Snowboarder magazine’s Superpark event and turned the snowboarding world’s heads when he stomped a backside rodeo off a 117-foot gap jump.
Since then, of course, he’s become the Travis Rice we know today. The Travis Rice who has continually led the snowboarding world to places untouched. He coordinated with Red Bull to create Supernatural, a backcountry freestyle competition held at Baldface Lodge in British Columbia, Canada, his precursor to the Natural Selection Tour. And he’s been involved in a million films that became a benchmark of sorts for the snowboarding films of today, like That’s It That’s All and The Art of Flight.
In his latest edit, A Good Winter, “Rice threads the needle through a handful of sessions when conditions come into alignment. In his 23rd season, Travis takes on the breathtaking 3,700′ vertical drop of the Velvet Castle in British Columbia, the wild backcountry of Valdez, and the familiar terrain of his home turf in Wyoming. Years of experience and intuitive riding are the attributes associated with an ‘Old Dog, Empty Head’ mentality.'”
