INTERVIEW: ERIC JACKSON
Eric Jackson has been in it for a minute. The first time I ever met him, he was barely a teenager, rolling around Government Camp, Oregon, with the Grenade crew. Without dating myself too much, let’s just say that was a long time ago. And Eric is still a pro snowboarder—reason being that he has incredible ability and uncanny air awareness. As a youngster lapping Mammoth’s Main Park, he made heads turn, but as a grown-ass man who took those skills to the backcountry, he’s cemented his legacy in snowboarding’s culture as one of the best to ever do it in that discipline.
I recently caught up with Eric, fresh off an elk hunt in Texas, and we chatted about his passion for hunting, acquiring a new sponsor and how he unwinds from yet another hectic winter of professional snowboarding.
—T. Bird
T. Bird: You just got back from a big trip, eh?
Eric Jackson: Dude, I just got back from a trip to Texas. We were in the Sonoran Desert, man, which was kind of cool because I haven’t spent a ton of time in Texas and have spent a lot of time in the Sonoran backcountry of California. Recently, in the past four or five years, I’ve gotten really into hunting, and specifically archery hunting, and I got invited on a trip down to Texas to go hunt for axis deer.
Looking at hunting, you spend your winters in the backcountry and your summers in the backcountry. Are there any parallels you find between the two?
Oh, for sure. There are tons of parallels to it. I think one of the main reasons why I’m so drawn to hunting is because it’s another excuse to get into the mountains at a different time of year. I remember hunting in Colorado last fall and being like, “I would never come here if it wasn’t for hunting.”
I would imagine too that in very different ways so much of it has to be about a heightened perception of the things that are around you.
Yeah. I would say more so in hunting, every little thing matters. In the winter, when you’re traveling in the backcountry, you’ve really got to listen to your surroundings and what the mountain’s doing. Is it getting warmer? Is the wind blowing from this direction? There’s a lot of similarities in there, for sure.
Well, I want to switch gears real quick and congratulate you on jumping on Nidecker boots recently.
Oh yeah, dude. This will be year two on Nidecker. I’m really stoked to be a part of the Nidecker family. I mean, those guys have been in snowboarding for a very long time, and they love snowboarding, and that’s what it really comes down to.
And you played a big role in the Kita boot coming to market. It seems to me like boots would be one of the harder things to manufacture and test and design.
I mean, everybody’s feet are different, and so I think that it definitely takes a lot of work to have a line that is going to work for the majority of people. But yeah, the Kita boot is incredible. It’s so good.
Personally for you and your riding style—and maybe this is reflected in the boot itself—what is Eric Jackson looking for in a snowboard boot?
Typically I go as stiff as possible in everything. My board’s stiff, my bindings are stiff, my boots are stiff. And I think that as I get older, I’m starting to realize that maybe you don’t need it to be as stiff as possible.
The Kita boot is definitely a stiffer boot, but I feel like it breaks in very nicely. There are certain boots that you have to ride for a week just in total pain before you’re actually feeling good. And I feel like the Kita comes out of the box a little stiff, but it breaks in relatively quickly. And the support stays for a long time, which is what you’re looking for in a boot.
Another thing is that I’ve got knees and other things that hurt, and one thing I really like about the Kita is it has a lower forward-lean profile, and it just feels like it suits my riding style and my body where it’s at right now. Yeah, man, it’s a really nice boot.
What’d you get into this winter?
Man, it was an interesting winter. I had some really good days at home at Mount Baker, early season. It took a while for it to get going, but once it got going, it was really good. And then we had a two-week stretch of just insanity, just storm after storm. And then it went clear for five days and went Arctic outflow and was actually some of the coldest temperatures I’ve ever been in up in Washington. And then it snowed again after that, but then the rain came and it washed all away.
After that, I got to do a Japan trip with Shin Biyajima and the Nidecker crew. It was really cool to just follow him around. He’s got so much cool terrain out there, and we had a really good trip. Unfortunately, not long after that, he got in an avalanche and got pretty banged up, but thankfully he’s on the mend now. And he’s really strong, man—he’s going to come back stronger and hopefully be riding in no time.
Looking forward to summertime, how do you spend your off-season and wind down from all the craziness of winter?
I basically got home from snowboarding and the season was winding down, so my wife and I and our dog drove up to northern British Columbia and did this awesome fishing trip. My wife caught some awesome fish. And that’s always nice when you’re gone a lot, to spend some time with the family. We were up there for about 10 days.
I’m just shooting my bow a lot too. One thing that’s really cool about hunting and tying that into snowboarding is you have to be really strong to do both. In the summertime, I was always active, but I wasn’t really focusing on getting strong in the gym. But now I have this goal of elk hunting in the fall, and so I’m hitting the gym all summer long and getting super strong. And then you go on a hunt in the fall, and that is really physical, so you get super strong. And then, after the hunt, you’ve got to just keep up for a couple months in the gym, and then snowboard season’s right around the corner, and then you’re ready to snowboard. And you snowboard all year, and you stay strong. And then the cycle continues, man. It’s like this new balance in my life that’s so cool. And I feel like they really complement each other.
