A man of so many trades, we might deem him the Most Interesting Man in Snowboarding. A quick chat with the diehard Vermonter and Rome team rider. (And if you want to watch Rome’s latest movie, Particle, click here!)

Mark Clavin: What are you up to?

Ralph Kucharek: I just finished up work for the day. I’ve been doing some teak refinishing.

How did you get into that? 
My close friend’s dad has a pretty big boat, and I just spent all summer inside of it, sanding and refinishing it. You have to sand and stain three times with teak. It took the whole summer. 

That has to be a good lesson in patience. 
Yeah, finish and just restart the whole process. The wood is still just immaculate, though. Now I just do furniture and decks for people around the lake. Teak is just super dense and has a lot of oil in it, so it’s really good at wicking water.

Do they ever make snowboards out of teak?
I don’t know if they would. It is pretty expensive. That would honestly be kind of sick, though—a teak pow surfer. It’s super lightweight and durable, and you could probably oil it instead of wax.

There has to be teak topsheets, right? 
I don’t know. I see cutting boards. There’s actually this board I’ve always wanted to make: a board with a cutting board on the topsheet, inlaid, and then you just call it the Charcuterie Board. 

It would be big in Europe. Any other off-the-wall potential pro models for you?
Actually, here’s the other one that I’ve pitched: Put a ruler on a powder board, and then people can measure powder. 

That would hurt a lot of claims for “the deepest day ever.” 
Just like fishing. Everyone claims it was “this big,” and then when you put a tape on it, that fish was not that big. 

What’s your big-fish snowboarding story?
Phil Hansen and I riding around one day at Mount Baker. This was a while ago. I’m watching him go and just he’s spinning off everything and dropping shit and slashing. Then, at the bottom, there was a huge hit, but what we didn’t see is the hole behind it. Phil just sends it, I follow, and I missed him by 2 inches. We both fell in this giant pond hole and disappeared. It was one of those [times when] you think you will be fine, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh no.”

That’s kind of terrifying. You became fish in a bucket. Will snowboarding be around in 50 years?
Yes, but I think probably different in the way you and I think of snowboarding. I wonder what the climate is going to do. We have projections, but there’s also these extremes with weather. There’s going to be more extremes and snowmaking. Might be very short, or different months. I see the cost of it going up. I wonder how many companies will be in the business. And then with the cost, too, you know, it’s like, who can access snowboarding? 

Can you think of any other ways to sustain the level of community as winters potentially get shorter and shorter?
Yeah, I think keeping it accessible, and that’s financially and with gear and hopefully mountains. I think it’s up to brands a lot in how we wanna do this whole thing, especially with social media now and how people can be way more connected. And then events, it could come back to events, but maybe there’s just stuff more open for, like, just your average rider. I’ve seen some shops doing some cool events recently where, you know, they just open it up to everyone. 

You studied community international development, and concentrated in sustainability, but I always just tell people you are a scientist. 
I have a Bachelor of Science, but it’s more of a human science.

I always thought you studied hard science, since you’re so into weather patterns around Burlington.
I took a class and my teacher was actually our snowboard-team coach. Just simple things about where to go and how to read it all. I just kind of was fascinated by that because it obviously pertained to snowboarding. And then between snowboarding and fishing, too, now it’s like I’ve just become kind of a weather guy. I like to look at it and try to align all the factors.

In your hobbyist study, what is the most important factor that you’ve found for a good East Coast snow day or your dream day on Mount Mansfield?
So I’m gonna give away my secret? What I look for is upslope. Maybe you get a pretty sexy snowstorm coming in. Everyone’s predicting a foot, maybe 2 feet, and that’s cool the day of, but then what upslope is, it’s all the moisture that’s around that basically gets stuck on the mountain. At the end of the storm—where, like, things are really getting milked out—looking at the upslope might show you more is going to come that night or through the next day. Those little increments add up, and those are the perfect days, because no one’s around. I’m sure a weather person will be like, “He butchered the hell out of this.” But it’s when the clouds and snow keep wrapping back around on a mountain.

I appreciate you sharing your secret.
And the other secret, frankly, is just go drop some ropes. Do it at your own risk, but drop the ropes. It’s not illegal here.

Coming from a guy that jumps off cliffs and doesn’t know what is on the other side at Mount Baker. Benefits of living on the lake in Burlington? 
The benefit is the summer. 

No benefits for the winter? 
The winter is beautiful, but what no one told me is we face north, and in the winter, north wind is pretty much the dominant wind, so every morning when I walk out to my car, it’s extra cold.

What about the benefit of having [photographer] Nathanael Asaro around? You two always capture some insane stuff on the East Coast. 
Nathanael’s a really close friend. We usually just go snowboard, and when the moment happens, he just happens to have a camera. I remember listening to Arthur Longo talk about him, and Olivier Gittler, same deal. They seem to go out and just say, “Well, looks good over there.” In Vermont, it’s so fleeting. You don’t know if what you see is gonna be possible tomorrow, so we both have the mentality of “go do it now.”

Splitboarding versus snowshoes versus the lift?
I’m gonna go lift, then snowshoes, and if I really have to, as a last resort, I will splitboard. Haven’t done heli, but we do guide with the helis for fishing. 

You guide with the helicopter?
Yeah, when I guide in Alaska for fishing, we will take a helicopter, but I’ve never snowboarded out of a heli.

So you’ve heli’ed in Alaska, but never for snowboarding?
Yeah. [Laughs.] I had probably, like, close to 20 days in a helicopter guiding last year, which is insane.

You might be the only person I know besides Stan Leveille to go in a heli in Alaska and not snowboard.
I guess I could afford to do it. It’s just a lot of money. I’ve been getting lucky, though, and have been paid to be in it.

Would you rather have a perfect day fishing or a perfect day snowboarding?
That’s a good question. Probably snowboarding. And you can probably string together more good days snowboarding than more good days fishing in a row.