On the Cover: Leon Gütl; shot by Theo Acworth.

Inside the mag: Jamie Anderson, travel stories from Oslo, Greenland and the US by Theo Acworth, Mat Crepel and Colin Wiseman, Mark Sollors, Telma Särkipaju, Leon Gütl, Silvano Zeiter and Willem Jones, a unique Engadin Gallery by Filip Zuan, and much, much more.

I’d imagine that all of us had a pretty similar experience for our first day on the hill. We started out sideslipping and practising the falling leaf, whilst working our way up to and trying to link turns, desperately trying to avoid breaking our wrists and bruising our butts. It was pretty frustrating, but we stuck with it and, after what seemed forever, eventually it started to click and then we were off. All of a sudden, the world presented itself in a whole new way and we had lots of new stuff to spend our money on each winter. Before you know what hit you, it’s 2024 and you are still here reading a magazine about snowboarding. Now that’s dedication.

After those nervous first turns turned into a pastime, we all branched off to do our own thing. There are no rules in snowboarding, and I think that’s what keeps people hooked for a lifetime. You can lap the park, trying to emulate what you saw in the latest release, or charge down that chute now that the avalanche warning level has subsided. Some people don’t even use a lift and walk all the way up the mountain to get their enjoyment. Hell, you can even set up some plastic poles on an icy slope and carve around them if you want – the world is your oyster.

It’s almost a natural evolution that a once self-declared park rat, who stays home when the park is snowed in, will one day trade his twin tip for a directional powder board and never hit another kinked rail again. When there’s a shortage of powder, we can charge the pistes, hunting for sidehits, or, if we don’t want to leave the ground anymore, simply working on carving is enough to consume an entire winter. Seriously, how good is the fact that all of this is called snowboarding, but the act of snowboarding is all so different? If someone is into playing football or tennis or go-karting, there is only one thing they do on repeat. Snowboarding can be anything and everything you want it to be. So, whether you are a soul surfer riding in Chamonix, carving corduroy in Zell am See, or even jibbing a box in your backyard in England, I hope you have a good time doing it.

Enjoy Pleasure 153,

Tom