Spencer O Brien, Arc'teryx

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The Canadian snowboarding powerhouse chats about returning to competitive snowboarding, testing her limits in Alaska and relocating in the off-season.

Tahoe, CA. p: Aaron Schwartz

T. Bird: Hey, Spencer, how are you?

Spencer O’Brien: I’m good! I actually just moved. I am now living in Ucluelet [British Columbia] with 90% of the rest of Canadian snowboarders. [Laughs.]

p: Perly

You got into some shit in AK this winter, it looks like.

Oh yeah, I definitely was very scared a lot. I felt like I bit off a little bit more than I could chew at points. It was a last-minute strike mission with Mary [Rand] and Hana [Beaman], and it was just a really good crew and super rad to be up there with those girls. It’s cool that me and Mary have similar experience up there, but then Hana has quite a bit more experience than us, and it was a really good dynamic and super cool to see the mountains through both those girls’ eyes and just be super scared together.

It seems like such a well-balanced trip, because you have the wisdom and the experience of Hana Beaman, who has been to AK so many times. And you have Mary, who’s got similar experience as you. 

Yeah, it was cool. We had a really great dynamic, and I had a lot of fun learning and being in the mountains with those girls. And Hana is just such a legend. She’s so funny. I wish we had mics on for the entire time we were up there, because everyone was insane.

Tahoe. p: Aaron Schwartz

I do feel like the term “legend” is thrown around so loosely, but when I’m thinking of someone like Hana Beaman or Leanne Pelosi, you’re like, “No, those are actual fucking legends, straight up.”

Yeah. With Hana, I looked up to her when I was a kid, when she was first coming out and riding X Games. I think the first medal she got was a bronze, and I was like, “Who’s that girl?” I’ve looked up to her my entire life, basically. So to get a chance to go up there with her and ride with her was really, really special.

Whistler,BC. p: Tyler Ravelle

I’m thinking back on our shared experience in BC this winter at Red Mountain with NST for Duels. Obviously the snow wasn’t incredible, but we made the most of it, and I had a lot of fun. I wanted to quickly talk about your decision to dabble back in competitive snowboarding.

Yeah, that’s been a really interesting process for me because when I stopped competing, it was more of a hard stop than I expected it to be. And when I first got approached to do NST, I was super excited about it. It was this part of snowboarding that I had kind of left behind, but it has also built my career and it’s so much a part of me. I think I had really let go of a big part of myself that had that competitive fire and drive, and it’s been really interesting to try to tap back into that in a new and different way. So it’s been a really interesting journey with NST. I definitely haven’t had a lot of success yet, but it’s been really cool to take the two different sides of snowboarding and try to let go of a lot of the old habits and old mindsets that I have from competitive riding and revamp them into this new thing and try to have that part of me evolve. It’s been pretty interesting, and a lot more challenging than I think I expected it to be.

Japan. p: Aaron Schwartz

Well, I don’t want to speak for you, but, just from the outside, Arc’teryx seems like a brand that fully and wholly supports you in what you do. So if you said yes, they’d be cool with it. If you said no, they’d be cool with it, and then you probably would’ve made some sort of awesome film in lieu of competing. Is that kind of accurate? 

Yeah, it has been really cool. And it’s funny because the last handful of years that I was competing, I was talking with Arc’teryx, and I really wanted to be a part of the brand. And it wasn’t until I fully made the switch 100% that they were like, “OK, let’s do it.” So it’s interesting because our relationship started when I was no longer competing. But they’re super supportive. They’re big supporters of the tour. But it’s great because for us, as riders, they’re not like, “Oh, because we sponsor this, you guys have to do it.” It’s totally still up to us and what we want to do that winter and what we want to do with our snowboarding. So it’s really nice to not have that pressure from the outside being like, “Oh, you should do this” or “You should do that.” It’s just really whatever we want to be putting out into the world. It’s pretty special.

Any other memorable trips from this winter?

I took a break from doing any major projects this winter, but I went to Tahoe with Korua to work on another one of their films. And then I did a couple trips here and there around NST and the Arc’teryx Academies.

Were you a teacher?

Yeah. I did both of them. I did St. Anton and Whistler.

Very cool. What classes were you teaching?

I did a couple of intro to splitboarding classes, and I think I did an intermediate splitboard one. And then I also did a freestyle one, so we did half a day riding park, and the premise of it was to utilize the park to enhance your backcountry riding.

Tahoe, CA p: Aaron Schwartz

It would’ve been such a boss move if you wore your X Games medals for that class.

It would’ve been very jangly. That would’ve been funny.

You’ve accomplished so much in our culture, from feature films about you to medals to filming full video parts. Are there things you haven’t done that you would like to do that are goals for you moving forward?

I think that there’s definitely a lot of spots and jumps that I want to hit, especially in and around Whistler. I think expanding my knowledge and my time in Alaska is a big goal of mine. There’s so much to learn there, and it’s just such a different part of snowboarding that I’m so in love with. You could spend a lifetime up there and there’d still be things to ride and things to learn.

When you’re riding in a competitive setting—slopestyle, big air, rail jams, whatever it may be—you have this competitive edge that you have to tap into to be elite. But when you go up to AK, you’re working as a team. You’re not competing against anybody; you’re working together. So how do you compartmentalize that? 

Well, at the end of the day, it’s like you have your skill set, you have your tricks and you’re going to interpret that slopestyle course in whatever way that’s best for you. And I’ve kind of taken that mindset into the backcountry, too. It’s like, “What do I want to do on that backcountry jump? How do I want to ride that line?” It’s just this constant competition with yourself and trying to achieve the way that you want to express yourself. And I feel like that’s pretty universal throughout snowboarding. 

Pemberton, BC. p: Tyler Ravelle