29-year-old Salomon rider Stine Tønnessen talks rail jams vs. filming, coming up in Scandinavia, her latest project with the Sensesse crew, and more for her first interview with Snowboard Mag.

Are you home now? Are you still on a trip?
Yeah, I’m still up in Riksgränsen. I’m here with the Herschel crew. 

What are you shooting?
We’re just shooting a travel piece. We took the train up here and have just been filming some stuff on the hill.

How long have you been with them?
Since December.

I know they made a big splash earlier this year, they kinda brought on a lot of big names?
Yeah, I’m here with all of that big-name list (Cooper Whittier, Jed Anderson, Emma Crosby, Noah Peterson, Savannah Shinske, Cannon Cummins and more), so it’s pretty cool to be in the mix.

I think you were the first snowboarder when I Googled their name, your LinkedIn pops up first.
Really? That’s so funny. I haven’t been to LinkedIn in a few years. I should probably update it if that’s the case.

It’s probably the most professional thing I’ve ever encountered when Googling a rider. How long have you been riding?
Almost 10 years. Started in 2015.

Where are you from?
I’m from Norway. The southwest coast of Norway.

So what would be your home hill then?
Nothing. I wasn’t snowboarding growing up. I was skiing, but we went far away to ski, just like winter vacation stuff. It is kind of random how I started snowboarding, actually. I don’t know if you want to hear about it.

Absolutely, get into it.
Well, in Norway, we have a school after high school. It’s kind of like a gap-year school. I didn’t have a plan when I graduated. I hadn’t applied for college and I kind of just wanted to get out of my hometown. But I had a summer job and one of my coworkers had gone to one of these gap year schools and she really recommended it. So I looked up leftover spots and applied for a few, got into two. And I chose the school where I could have a bedroom for myself because I went to boarding school and was over having a roommate. So I kinda ended up in the mountains randomly because of that and then shortly switched into the snowboarding, skiing class because I made so many friends there.

Did you ever end up going to university?
Yeah, I have a bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology.  After that I was just working and snowboarding.

So do you have a job on the side or are you going all in on the snowboarding career since school?
I have always had a job since I was 21 but this is the first year I’m only doing snowboarding, which is really sick.

How long have you been on Salomon?
I got my first boards from them two years ago and then got my first contract with them in the fall. I feel very lucky to have that. I got boards from Dinosaur Will Die for a bit, that was like my first boards. 

How did you come across Salomon and get sponsored by them?
It was because of Emma Crosby. I went on a trip to Romania with them for Dorothy a couple or two years ago and yeah Emma was encouraging me to reach out to them and I’m sure she put in a good word.

You’ve obviously found some success. Do you have any tips for kids trying to become a full-time snowboarder nowadays?
Ooh, I think just snowboard as much as you can and like go out and film each other. Like when I wanted to get into filming, I was pretty frustrated because it was so hard to go out and film with crews in Oslo. And now in retrospect, I understand because so much goes behind just going out to a spot, it’s a lot of planning and you don’t wanna have too many people in a way. So I don’t know, I just asked the guys a bunch of times and I didn’t really get hit up. So we just started doing it ourselves. I guess that’s the best thing, just go and film with your friends and go to North America and get to know people.

And then what about the Sensesse crew you are a part of, where did the name come from?
Well Maria Hilde like she came up with the word. It’s a mix of the words sensitive and finesse… and they’re just merged together.

Okay, so it’s not a Norwegian word haha.
Nope! That’s the words behind it because we’re sensitive and we wanna finesse it, I guess.

And the new project, “My Strange Addiction”, is like the sixth or seventh project out of that crew?
Yeah, that was from this winter, one trip in January and one trip in March. But I think that is the number. I went to Bear Mountain for a few weeks the winter they filmed the first one but I wasn’t in that one. It started pretty small. I remember when we made the Instagram account and we had maybe 40 followers or something and Maria was just confident it would grow over time. So it’s definitely been growing and yeah, like getting recognition in the snowboard world, I would say. 

Is it hard getting recognition out in Europe compared to the US, obviously you travel between the two?
Yeah, I would say so. It’s definitely harder because so much of the industry is over in North America. There’s for sure something in Europe, but Scandinavia is pretty, I don’t know, far away from Central Europe in that sense, pretty disconnected. So it was not before Maria and I went over to North America in the spring three years ago and started getting to know people and get contacts in a way that people started to notice. And a couple of North American women wanted to to be a part of the video the next year so it just grew from there.

Do you have any highlights from filming this year?
Honestly, it was a pretty tough winter for me between getting sick on trips and like a little injury. But in January, we went on a trip with the whole Fruit Fly crew. So just hanging out with that whole crew and getting to know those guys. Getting new friends was really cool.

Do you guys have plans to make another video coming up?
Yes, we’re talking about it, so I’m sure it will happen. Yeah.

Hot topic, I guess… thoughts on Rail jams versus filming? Has the crew out there been keeping up with the drama online?
Yeah, yeah, we have a little bit. We watched the group chat where they talked a little bit about it. I mean, from my perspective, I value filming more and hope that the brands that support me value that more just because that benefits me but I’m sure there’s room for both.

Have you competed in rail jams in your career?
I’ve been to all of the Uninvited events.

And would you say that’s a pretty good channel for people to get recognized?
I would say it’s definitely a good platform to get recognition. I don’t think I have. I’ve been laying pretty low and just hanging out on my board, but I think that’s it’s room for every woman at that event. So just being there and having fun is what I focus on.

I would imagine most people there who are not sponsored in snowboarding treat it as their chance to kind of get recognition so they can go film.
Yeah, I think there is different ways of doing it, too. I think you can just go out and try, like set up a spot. Doesn’t need to be big or anything. Just get it filmed and put it out on Instagram or send it out. You don’t need to like be the best at the Uninvited to get noticed but it’s definitely a good way of getting out there. 

Alright! That’s it. Thank you! Have a good rest of your trip!
Thank you!