The new face of backcountry freestyle snowboarding on his new board sponsor, the Natural Selection Tour, freeriding in the Olympics and much more.

T. Bird: Where in the world are you right now?

Blake Paul: I’m just at home in Utah.

Are you heading to SoCal for the summer at all, or are you sticking around Utah?

Yeah, I’m headed there. I probably will go late July and then stay there until end of November-ish. Maybe going to go to Oregon, too. 

When are you going to Oregon?

I think on the seventh or something like that.

There are a couple of things I want to chat with you about. Of course, we talked about it on the podcast, but the big snowboard news this year is your involvement with RIDE. That was a huge change for you, and I just want to quickly chat about your motivations and thought process throughout that whole period.

Yeah, for sure. I think basically I had just been with all my sponsors that I’m still with for a long time, and I have been snowboarding and filming for over 10 years. I kind of just had the opportunity to try something different, and a lot of the people on the team are my friends. I also had a cool opportunity with them to start creating a pro model from scratch, and a new binding as well. And to work with J Stone—Justin Clark—one of the designers for Elevate [Outdoor Collective]. We were getting batches of boards, testing 40 to 50 snowboards with all kinds of different technologies, and we put that all together to create a board that was just super enticing. Not that I wasn’t already doing that, but I got to do it from scratch.

Totally. That’s huge.

I think just overall it was a great opportunity in a lot of ways. And it was something new, and it just put some new energy behind my motivation to continue to do stuff. It’s cool to have something that’s new come to the table. 

Do you have any details on the new snowboard or anything you can leak?

Yeah, totally. I’ve been basically testing a mixture of camber and reverse camber. Reverse camber has been my go-to for the way that I like to ride. So I’m working on adding a little bit more camber overall and making it stiffer and making the lightest, most playful and responsive board that I can. And so that comes with the mixture of camber and reverse camber. It’s got a classic powder shape meant to be set back and ridden over your back foot. There’s a sweet spot to it that you can kind of turn and check speed and all that quickly with your back foot without having to sideslip or anything. It’s more meant to be ridden like a surfboard or something like that. 

One thing that feels different about the RIDE boards is their sidewalls. I feel like the material that they use in the sidewalls is way more shock absorbent. But we’re trying to create a board that’s fun, playful and responsive, so that anyone can ride it. 

To you, what is the main difference between competing in something like the Natural Selection Tour and just going out filming? What do you see as the biggest mentality change between the two of them?

Going out filming, it’s just a lot more on your terms and a lot more of the day-to-day that I’m used to, in a sense, where you usually get to scope the features a lot more and maybe even hit the feature a couple of times before you get a clip. You’re generally riding with all your friends, and it just feels more of like what I used to do as a kid—getting excited, going out filming. It also takes a lot more work in the sense that you have to find a spot, get there and build the jump. And so I think overall it’s a lot more work to get equipped, whereas in the Natural Selection you just kind of show up and the course is right there waiting for you, pristine. And so I always try to look at it as it’s just a blessing to even be able to ride down the course. 

Studying is the most important thing you can do for the contest, whereas you’re not really studying while filming anymore. You’re just setting it up when you get there and checking it out. This is trying to figure out the scale and the features and all that. It’s just a way different ballgame.

Well, recently freeriding was named an official FIS discipline, and what that looks like with Freeride World Tour or NST, who the hell knows. But if freeride snowboarding ever became an Olympic sport, would that ever appeal to you to try to qualify?

I mean, it just depends on if it’s run in cool venues by the right people that are involved in snowboarding. It’s kind of similar to what the Natural Selection Tour is now. If there was an opportunity, then why not? But also I feel like the main part of snowboarding that I’m focused on is filming in the backcountry. That’s why I started snowboarding and what I really love about it. So I think there’s an opportunity to get out of that box, but also I don’t want to compromise what I want to do—continuing to film and make movies and stuff.

Totally. I know winter just ended, but any talks about future film projects or anything that you’re going to be working on coming up?

We have a full project with The North Face with Spencer Schubert, Kennedi Deck, Austin Smith, Cole Navin, Jake Blauvelt, Mike Bogs and Mikey LeBlanc that we’re working on editing and putting out this fall, so that’s kind of the main focus for now. And then next year they’re kind of talking about continuing that, so maybe hire some filmers that I want to work with. And yeah, down the line it would be cool at some point to do a real solo project, but I don’t have that date set. 

Lastly, after a crazy winter of filming, tons of travel, a little bit of NST sprinkled in there, what do the next couple of months hold in store for Blake Paul to just kind of wind down and unplug a little bit?

I guess I’m chilling in Utah, just hanging out. I was fortunate to go to the wave pool in Texas, which was sweet, but I’ll be hanging between Utah and California. I usually live in Oceanside for four or five months and just surf and skate down there. Honestly, not a lot. Going to go to Mount Hood for a week—classic summer trip. We’re talking about trying to go to New Zealand, but I don’t know if that’ll happen for sure. I don’t know—just see what comes up, I guess.