Why All Your Friends Stopped Snowboarding But You Can't
Hiking Alone
I went to Daniel Ojo Park this morning. Despite the beaming blue sky and mild temperatures, I had the place to myself. It was beautiful.
Ojo Park brings a sliver of the mountain to the city. Tucked behind Montreal's iconic Olympic Stadium, this urban snowboard park opened in 2022 with an important mission – increasing accessibility to snowboarding for underprivileged kids.
There's a choice of eight features through three hits. The craftsmanship of the rails is on par with any triple-A resort in the world. The spacing is perfect, and so is the speed. It’s a two-minute walk from a major metro station, ten minutes east of downtown Montreal, and five minutes from a major hospital.
But I don’t want to be here.
Places like this are what snowboarding needs. I would have given a lung for a place like Ojo Park as a kid. Yet here it was – ribbon freshly cut, in my own backyard, and I don't even want to be here. I'm only here because all my friends bailed on going to the mountain this weekend.
So up the hill, I hike.
There’s no rope tow or carpet. Every hit is earned step by step. That’s fine. I’ll put in the work. But I’m old, rusty, and grumpy – so I need to warm up first. I begin my hike, and as I arrive at the top of the park, I feel my heart rate getting to where it should be. I do a few twists and stretch my neck while absorbing the view of the grandiose and senescent Montreal Tower and Olympic Stadium. It’s a monumental piece of architecture that has cost the city billions and is slowly falling apart.
I take a couple of first attempts at some stock tricks. I’ve found my speed for the flat-down rail. Now, I’m ready to notch up the technicality. I’ve got a trick in mind that I haven’t landed since I was in my early 20s, nearly a decade and a half ago. Some other park rats start to show up. My bindings are older than most of them.
The thought enters again – I'd rather not be here.
I'd rather be with my friends; hollering tree calls through the glades, arguing over which run to hit next, lapping the park, or talking trash on the chair. It's never felt harder to fill a four-person chair.
Lately, I lob a hopeful text into the group chat. Sometimes I’ll get a soft excuse back, but mostly my proposals go unanswered. I'm left to fend for myself, like the addict I am. I drive two hours each way just to ride the singles line. I hammer park laps alone and hit drops in the woods no one will hear.
The emptiness of my environment roars in the background, its only interruption being the irrelevant conversations of strangers on the chair. I choose to put my headphones in and set them to noise-cancelling. I search for the perfect playlist to forget about how much better this would be if everyone was here. These choices are compelled upon me by the absence of my friends.
I'd rather not be making them.
Rat Park:Park Rat
When I started snowboarding, it was intoxicating. A private universe with costumes and masks where a new identity could be embodied when I lowered my goggles. The quarterbacks, NHL hopefuls, and girls that found them interesting at my school didn't even know it existed. I didn’t do it for them, anyway. I folded my sword in a dark room, far from the barn and gridiron. I folded it because I had to. How could I not?
In the 1970s, a seemingly breakthrough study connecting addiction and environment came out of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Its author suggested that the cramped and lonely cages typically housing rodents used for addiction study could, themselves, lead to higher drug intake. To test this, the scientists created what became known as "Rat Park" – an environment with complex mazes, digging material, nests, water, food, exercise wheels, and a generous amount of space.
Early results seemed to support the author's hypothesis. The citizens of Rat Park dug tunnels, built nests, used the exercise wheel, and self-administered less morphine-water than their imprisoned counterparts. The conclusion seemed to imply we could protect against the risks of addiction by improving one’s environment. Except…
The rats just got addicted to something else. One group, especially, neglected all other forms of entertainment in favor of the exercise wheel. They ran on the tops and sides of the wheel, did stalls with their tails to change direction, and suddenly stopped running on the wheel in order to be carried upside down with its momentum. They left large parts of the maze unexplored. When given access to a wheel, some mice will run until their tails deform, or until they die.
Even more worrisome is the group who, when asked, “morphine or exercise wheel?” answered enthusiastically, “Yes!” and chose both. The brain pathways stimulated by running wheels are the same that drive compulsive drug use. What’s the only thing a rat could want after a busy day on the wheel in Rat Park? Morphine, apparently. #relatable.
Growing up as a park rat, I found my peers. The large and ambitious group I started snowboarding with slowly dwindled. Eventually, my crew was self-selected by those who were at the mountain every weekend. We rode from first chair to last. We hiked and hit rails until our bases were rusty. We rode until our tails deformed.
The Secret Club
Others occasionally stumbled into our universe through a school field trip or an off-handed invitation to meet up since they'd be there for a weekend of novelty. My compulsions were validated in those moments. Whatever social credit I surrendered by opting out of team sports, I could redeem with interest when the maze rats came by to visit the exercise wheel.
But that’s what they were doing – visiting. They didn't stay long. No matter how much they liked it at the moment, few stuck it out in poor weather, or their friends didn't feel like going. They all wanted the tail, but none wanted to get on the wheel.
But being impressive in this hidden world was tantamount to being “good” at smoking pot or having a competitive K/D in Call of Duty. Nobody gives a damn. The visitors think it’s cool when they step into your world for brief moments for a night of getting high or playing Warzone – but they were never going to stay. All the work it took to be impressive in that moment will go unacknowledged. They’ll forget it tomorrow. That’s fine. We didn’t mind putting in the work. We weren’t doing it for them.
I’m starting to stick my half-cab onto the flat-down rail at Ojo Park. Three in a row to bolts means I can notch it up again. Despite being unhappy about how I ended up here, I’m happy in this moment. Other park rats are throwing their tricks, local photographers are showing up, and the vibes are getting high. Persisting through language barriers, we talk about the speed needed for each feature and what tricks we’re trying. Celebrations need no translation.
When I made my first pilgrimage to live out west, it was easy to spot the fellow east coasters. They were the ones hiking rails in t-shirts, braving temperatures locals wouldn’t ride in, and had an unwavering commitment to “getting out there.”
They shared my irrational passion. We uprooted our lives in an attempt to get a more potent experience of the thing we loved. In the summer, we’d bring truckloads of snow from the mountain to town and hijack Zamboni snow outside hockey rinks for impromptu rail jams. In the winter, we skipped class to ride, returned beer bottles for gas money, and gleefully spat in the face of the flawed adage, “No friends on a powder day.”
We travelled as an inseparable pack. We slept on couches and leaky air mattresses. We followed each other around with camcorders. We knew more about each other than we probably ought to have. Any spare dollar was spent on gas to get to the mountain. Rail jam winnings went to intoxicants. We never wanted to leave.
The Fracture
The energy is reaching a fever pitch in Ojo Park. I’m within striking distance of landing my trick on the flat-down rail. Two local park rats are filming each other doing hand drags across the knuckle of the jump, and the photographers are finding their best angles. I half-cab onto the flat, rotate backside over the kink to boardslide, and come off a bit early.
I can taste it.
The other park rats watch on their hike back up. They share in my anticipation and frustration, as I do theirs. I undo my buckles, pick my board up, and head back up for another try. More speed. You got this.
I drop in switch, resist the urge to speed check, and line myself up. As I’m rotating over the kink, I feel locked in. I got this. I hear the onlookers cheer in approval. They know it too. I feel the rail drop from under my feet. I bring my hips to fakie, feel my board hit the snow, and ride away. A dozen attempts later, I can’t help but let out a loud "Fuck yeah!" I unstrap, pick up my board, and head back to the top.
I get a nod of approval from the park rat who's filming his buddy’s rodeo hand drag over the knuckle. He’s still waiting for him to land it. Walking up a little further, I see his friend drop in and sweep around to the left side of the jump. I turn downhill to get a better view; he’s probably going to land this one.
As I look for the hand drag over my right shoulder, a skier drops in over my left – heading for the jump straight on. The two collide mid-air. The skier was attempting a 360, and landed ski-to-forearm on the snowboarder attempting the hand drag. The wails of agony from behind the landing tell me something is broken.
Everything stopped. I run to see if everyone’s okay. The snowboarder is hunched over his limp arm, groaning. After a few minutes, his buddy helped him over to a bench, where he sat, nauseous, waiting for the ambulance. "Maybe I’ll head back to the car," I think. "Actually, no, one more. I want to gap the flat this time."
Later, I check on the injured snowboarder before I walk to my car. He’s in a lot of pain, and the adrenaline has worn off. The ambulance can't find where they are.
I text in the group chat, "I just watched a mid-air collision at Ojo Park, one dude broke his arm." I get a quick response from John. I grew up riding with John. We got “Live to Ride - Ride to Live” tattoos on our eighteenth birthdays, and moved out west together. Now, he’s a snowboard coach in Whistler and rides over a hundred days per year. If we still lived on the same coast, I’d never be on the chair alone.
He sent this:
“Basically tore my hand off my forearm. Ligaments and all. Out for six to eight weeks.”
Pathologically Voluntary
Of my riding crew, I have the longest list of excuses to “grow up” and stop taking the risks I do. The traditional laments of “all my friends grew up, got jobs, wives, and kids” don’t apply here. I am the first one in my crew to have many of those things – yet I remain irrationally attached to snowboarding. I spend thousands of dollars a year on trips, passes, and gear. I’ve torn ACLs, dislocated shoulders, broken bones, and knocked myself out well beyond an age that’s socially acceptable. But I’ll ride until I can’t anymore.
As I’m walking back to my car from Ojo Park, I’m still feeling the lingering energy of seeing two major injuries, one in-person and the other on video. Crossing a street, as I head toward my car at the Biodome, I turn back and look over my left shoulder at the monstrously impressive Montreal Tower.
The Olympic Stadium and Montreal Tower were originally supposed to cost $134 million and be finished by 1972, in time for the 1976 Summer Olympics. Instead, it was finished in 1987 and racked up a total cost of $1.61 billion. It’s also getting increasingly expensive to maintain in its old age. Pieces of the tower have fallen onto the field underneath, support beams holding concrete walkways have snapped, and portions of the roof have caved in.
Despite all that, it remains the crown jewel of Olympic Park and a staple in the Montreal skyline. Tourists from around the world gawk at the impressive 45-degree angle of the tower and its sophisticated cable support system. Its storied construction and steadily increasing maintenance costs are worth it to the City of Montreal – as long as tourists continue to visit.
A few days later, John and I talked on the phone, and I got an update on his condition, sort of. “I just need to figure out what I need to change in my approach for that trick,” he said. John couldn’t get the trick out of his head. He was trying to make too many adjustments at once, he told me. It was a tactical error. John couldn’t wait to hop back on the wheel.
Since that last time at Ojo Park, I haven’t been back. That’s not to say I won’t be. It’s an incredible place that the soul of snowboarding needs. But I need self-control and moderation. I can’t trust myself to stop when I probably should.
It’s only a matter of time, though. When my luck runs out and I draw the short straw, I just hope I’ll have someone to help me to the bench.