PHOTO:
4/14/2026 // Low Maintenance
Film // Canon Eos 650 // 15mm Fish, 35mm-70mm
There are just about a million things that I could write about Low Maintenance, I could tell you what it was like to be up there, the tricks that went down, the zones we looked at, the snow quality, the food, the helicopter ride in and out of the lodge, the list goes on. Although all of those are storys worth sharing, and I may touch on them a bit, that isn’t the focus of what I want to write about here. Instead, I want to focus on the community, passion, people, and experience of being in a space where all of those things come together to form an incredible amalgomation of teaching, learning, sharing, and growth.
To do the whole thing justice, I should probably start by sharing how I got there. Mind you, this story starts long before we actually get to Baldface so I’ll keep it somewhat breif. I grew up in the Midwest mainily snowboarding at, what i’m pretty sure is the smallest hill in the nation, Four Lakes. It was a dreamland to me growing up, ropetow, steel, the ocassinal jump, but most importantly $18 lift tickets and $200 season passes. My good friend and I would go on most fridays during the week throughout middle school up until about highschool, at which point his focuses shifted and making it to the hill was no longer a priority. Though the crew ended up shifting during highschool, we boarded together long enough for me to pick up my first camera and start dabbling in the world of photography. It was at four lakes and my good frinds back yard that my first snowboarding photos were taken.
Years later I found myself out in Walla Walla, going to school and snowboarding up at Bluewood. Around my sophmore year, I met another friend, who taught me to splitboard and showed me the beauty that lies within such a simple turn. Prior to moving out west my definition of a pow day was about 4 inches of fresh and a midwest “Black”, not much to write home about. That changed once we got up to spout springs. Now the terrain wasn’t that much steeper, but the snow was something I hadnt experienced before, light, fluffy, and bottomless. It was here that I really began to cement my passion for turning a board, venturing to find new zones, and a desire to experiencel places far beyond.Little to my knowledge, those places weren’t all to far in the future for me.
My Senior year I was figuring out what to do for my art thesis, and stumbled upon the idea of documenting 3 trips/locations and putting them into converastion with each other via screen printing. You can see and read more about that project here. The short of it was i wanted to document the 3 locations that all were a part of the snowboarder that I was becoming. I had gotten my first Job shooting photographs at Bluewood, I had fallen in love with turning at Spout springs, and I had always dreamed of riding the fabled Mt.Baker. Those became the missions, so my senior year, I grabbed friends and started checking the spots off the list. When the time came to go to baker, I was enthralled. Pulling up to the heather meadows lot was a trip, driving under the road gap, seeing home run, and the coutless other spots that had been engrained into my head since the time I was in middle school. After wrapping that trip, putting my thesis together, and getting ready for graduation, I found my self with a week where I had nothing going on.
Back to Baker it was. I had started keeping tabs of what was going on up there since I had gotten to college and low and behold, this event called Brainbowl was going to coinside with the break I had. I wasnt going to beable to stick around for the actual event as it conflicted with graduation, but I decided that if I wanted to keep shooting photos and get deeper into documenting and sharing snowboarding this was going to be the first big step. Packed my car and showed up for day one of the dig. The week ended up being incredible, meeting so many new homies, getting to ride what we built, living the lot life, and taking in everything that was brainbowl. It was what I consider my first real introduction to shooting, and I wish I could have stayed for the second week of the build.
Once home I had this itch and it wasnt going away, I decided to stick around bluewood accepting a marketing gig up there and doing my best to put myself in postitions to shoot snowboarding. Over the course of the next 2-3 years, I went back to brainbowl 2 more times, was able to attened photo camp at Mt.Hood, Linked up with the Spiral Crew, the 7B crew, went to Japan twice and met countless homies in between, this journey of shooting snowboarding was starting to be something and I loved evey second of it.
This bring us to the start of how I got to Baldface. Towowrds the end of this season I saw a scholarship opportunity called the “Nice Piece Scholarship”, it was created to give a young photographer or videographer support to coninue their career in documenting snowsports and to carry on the legacy of Alex Pashley who passed away the year prior in an avalanche with two others up in BC. It was a somewhat legnthy application process, but I felt like it was going to be worth throwing in an application, and honestly once I got into filling out the applicaiton I really enjoyed answering the questions. It allowed me to process the why’s of what I was trying to do, and really strengthened my desire to keep pushing this idea of trying to make a living documenting snowboarding through photography. I wont share my all my answers or the but I will share one of them, the one behind it all: What would attending Low Maintainance Mean to You?
“Attending Low Maintenance would mean a lot to me, mainly because of the people. Being around a group that genuinely cares about mentorship and helping each other progress is something I don’t take lightly. I’ve always tried to put myself in spaces like that, and it’s rare to find one that’s this intentional about it. On a personal level, Baldface has always been a huge source of inspiration. Growing up in the Midwest, riding rope tows at Four Lakes—50 feet of vert, hiking rails, just making the most of what we had—I was watching edits and photos coming out of Baldface that felt pretty unreal. The terrain, the riders, the way everything looked… it shaped how I saw snowboarding from a place that couldn’t have been more different. Because of that, the idea of showing up there now with a camera in hand feels like a full circle moment. It’s the kind of thing that would make 14-year-old me pretty fired up, and honestly just really proud. At the same time, I’d be going into it with a lot of appreciation - for the opportunity, and for what Baldface represents within snowboarding. More than just being there, I’d want to contribute to it. Baldface has such a strong lineage of photographers, filmers, and riders who have created meaningful work, and to even be a small part of that would mean a lot to me. I also think I’d bring my own perspective into it. Coming from a place where you have to get creative with what you’ve got, I’m always drawn to the in-between moments - the energy around what’s happening, the details that don’t always make the highlight reel. Being able to approach terrain like Baldface through that lens is something that really excites me. At the end of the day, it would be a chance to grow - be around good people, learn a ton, and be part of something bigger than myself.“