Published in the latest personalities issue of Snowboard Mag (coming soon to shelves near you)!

From getting her filming start with a group of skiers to hitting her first street rail at Red Bull’s Heavy Metal, we checked in with Never Summer’s rising star while she sat in her van, waiting to surf a river wave. 

Mark Clavin: Where are you? 

Iris Pham: I just got to Boise. There’s a river-surfing wave here that I’ve been watching [on] the webcam, and I’ve been wanting to come. Finally I made it, and my dad joined, so we are just trying it out. 

Where are you from?

I’m from Bozeman, Montana. I grew up riding at Bridger Bowl, and then in high school I started riding at Big Sky Resort. The park was a little bit better there. But it would mostly just be my dad and [me] on the weekends. I skied ’til I was 9. We would hike the ridge, and he’d find little cliffs and cool terrain for me to ride down and find a nice spot to, like, post up and film it, and we’d make, like, fun little videos on Facebook. That’s kind of just how I started, and then it turned into snowboarding through skating.

When did the street component click for you? 

I had always chased…skier boys around Bridger Bowl and started just trying to get better at the park at first. I didn’t really realize it was, like, leading into this street aspect yet, but yeah, [I] tried to get better and made Instagram edits.

And then I guess it really happened when I got invited to the first Red Bull Heavy Metal. I hit that, the cascade rail in Duluth [Minnesota], and that was, like, my first street rail. I just met everybody for the first time and was like, “Wow, this is a real thing.” And then the ski crew formed Entourage and started filming street and backcountry. I was the only girl and the only snowboarder. But they put me on…I’m super grateful for those boys.

Heavy Metal was your first introduction to street snowboarding?

Maybe before then I had probably seen some of Jill’s [Perkins] videos and the Uninvited. I guess my dad also kind of, like, knew of [the] Too Hard [crew], so he showed me [those videos]. I would, like, watch some of JibGurl [Danyale Patterson] growing up, but there wasn’t too many, like, street-video influences—more so, like, Instagram.

That’s probably more and more common with younger riders that instead of watching a ton of full parts and full movies, there’s people that can kind of recall Instagram clips now.

It’s easier. Much less attention span.

Pretty wild for your dad that you started filming together for Facebook edits and now you are a sponsored pro. 

Yeah, it’s definitely crazy. It’s a dream come true. It’s not something I ever really thought would happen.

Did all the sponsors start coming after that Heavy Metal year?

It started when I saw Sam Klein and Emily O’Connor’s van in the parking lot up at Hood in the summer. My dad had given me a Never Summer Infinity, which I loved riding. We’d get, like, old demo boards off of eBay, and so I just always rode that board. I’d post on Instagram and would tag Never Summer, but they’d never really do anything about it. So, seeing their van at Hood, I found them and just started hiking a rail with them. They helped me get to Trollhaugen and made an edit that kind of blew up. That’s probably why I got the invite to Heavy Metal, and then it kind of just kept going from there. I’ve just been going to a lot of the events ever since and becoming part of the scene. 

And you get to all of these events in the van you live in? 

Yeah, I bought it last December after I won the Dogfight event. It was the biggest purchase I’ve ever made, and it had a salvage title, and I’ve been just living out of it all winter. I’ve mostly been in Salt Lake City but took it to Nelson, British Columbia, twice, Flagstaff, Arizona, Mammoth… It’s really nice to have all of my stuff with me.

What were you working on this year? 

Desiree Melancon’s project. Ted Borland is filming with Egan Wint and Sierra [Forchheimer].…Grace Warner joined us a little bit. Seb Picard joined us in Japan. We went to Helsinki [Finland]. I had never traveled across the ocean before, so that was really exciting. It was new to be filming with that crew in a foreign country. At first I was nervous—we were kind of hitting big spots, and I just wasn’t too familiar with the crew—but eventually it opened up. Egan and I became really good friends. Ted believed in me maybe even more than I believed in myself and really helped with teaching me more about setting up spots and where to cover. 

Bittersweet, right?

Yeah. That’s more of a question for Desiree, but I think there’s gonna be some sort of, like, theatrical aspect to it. 

And how was Japan? 

It was pretty surreal. My dad always talked about how it would be the sickest place to go, and then all of a sudden I was there. I loved the experience—taking your shoes off [indoors] and all the new food, like raw horse and cuttlefish. Plus, just hitting bigger stuff than I ever had. 

How do you get the confidence to step up to a new big spot and hit it? 

I just have to take deep breaths. I’m definitely really scared. I just go dink my board on the rail real quick and then I know I can fully commit. Sam taught me to breathe at this rhythm and hold your breath. At some point, it kind of makes you feel kind of high. I don’t know—it’s important to just be calm.

Do you think you have been snowboarding more or less since you have gotten sponsored and have a lot of travel and opportunity? 

I think I’ve been snowboarding differently. I was always riding the park, always progressing myself, where this year I’m going on a lot of trips. And you have a lot of travel days at the airport or driving or whatever, which takes a couple of days off. And then scoping spots takes a day. And then the other homies have to get clips, which takes a day. So yeah, sometimes I do feel like I’m snowboarding less. Not in a bad way, but I do feel sometimes [that] I wish I was snowboarding, like, the park a little more. I’m excited to go to Hood and practice tricks again. When you go to the streets, you kind of do tricks that you can always do, and at the events, you do your tricks that you have on lock.

How is it coming up with Egan and the new guard of snowboarders? 

I didn’t grow up riding with any snowboarders or girls, so at first it kind of felt intimidating. We were just competing against each other all the time. I was showing up where I’m supposed to be going against these girls…but eventually we started to become friendly. Egan and I last year just got thrown into a house together and got a room together with Sierra. We all just, like, smoked weed and hung out, and we have all become close. We’ve figured out a really cool relationship that we have now where we push each other.

Where do you want to see your career go in, like, five years? Still in a van? 

I wanna keep filming street. I definitely wanna get more into the backcountry. I will have a bigger van by then. And I don’t know, I’m just gonna kinda keep taking all the opportunities that are popping up. It’s crazy how this has all happened.