BLOOD LEINES: The Erik and Bjorn Interview

Since their introduction to snowboarding roughly 15 years ago, Erik and Bjorn Leines have been riding together, pushing each other and progressing. Few people have had the opportunity to rise to the top of our sport’s pro ranks alongside that same person who was there when they made their first turns. Fast-forward to 2005, and Erik again stood next to Bjorn as they buckled in to hit a gap over the Snowbird halfpipe. And here there are, still together, in this side-by-side interview feature.

ERIK

Of all the different types of riding you do—park, pipe, rails and backcountry—what is the most work? The most work I have to put into my game is on riding handrails. I never was that into it when people first started hitting them, I didn’t really believe in it. If it was a two-foot powder day and it snowed a foot in the city, at that point I was going to the backcountry to do some cliff or whatever. The Technine crew or Mikey’s [LeBlanc] crew will be down in Salt Lake hitting handrails on a lot of those days. That is the sacrifice you have to make. That is what keeps me away from riding rails—I am too much of a powder junkie. I think riding halfpipe is way harder than riding rails. But there is a line with handrails where it gets really intense and you are actually risking your life. Being in tune with transitions is a hard thing to do. Maybe the only reason why rails are easier is that you can lap the park all day and hit a rail 100 times. There is no way you are going to find perfect powder in a line that has two drops in it 100 times in a day.

If you do, you are spending tens of thousands of dollars. That’s why the progression of rails has been so quick and the progression of big mountain freestyle has taken so long. This year I went to Valdez and it was my first trip up there. When you get dropped off at the top of a line, you only have one chance to get the shot. When you are there, it’s on and you have to charge. That’s what really impressed me about my brother. The first day he was in Alaska, his second line was the gnarliest anyone did the whole time. He had maybe been in Valdez for 12 hours. I’m sure the shots are in the article. He fully committed to the steepest spine above a mandatory drop. He has as much experience as me, but he just drops in and goes.

Can a rider even prepare for Alaska? I think riding a mountain like Jackson Hole or Snowbird totally prepares you. You’ve got to have calm nerves because you are going to get dropped off on a peak and it is gonna be completely blind. You are going to feel like you are 1,000 feet up. If you go to Snowbird and drop a 100-foot line, at least you are getting experience. It is just that Alaska is on a different scale.

At what point did you start traveling as a rider for a company? I got a pro form from Hot snowboards. I was like 12 or 13 and didn’t know much about it. When I was 15, they sent Bjorn and me to Chamonix for two months. They rented a house and we lived there.

Seriously? For two months when you were 15? What did you do about school? I was going to France, so my parents were like, “Right on!” I don’t remember what we did for school. I definitely didn’t do any over there. By the time I was 16, I was doing homeschool; I never graduated, which I highly do not recommend.

When I met my wife, we were sitting down talking one day and she said, “So, when did you graduate?”

I was 20 years old at the time and responded, “Actually, I never graduated.”

She was like, “What? How could that possibly be?” She didn’t get it and I told her about being in France at 15 and traveling the world snowboarding and going to Sweden. Really, all I had to do was make a few phone calls because I had enough credits, so I have my diploma now.

So what was it like being in France at 15? Were your parents there chaperoning? No. BJ was 17. He was a great chaperone. That was when Ingemar Backman, Daniel Franck and Terje were peaking, so we’d go to these ISF world tour events at these cool spots and watch one of them win every weekend. Actually, Joni Malmi and Ami Voutilainen lived with us. They were like this little Finnish posse. Chamonix was the first time Joni had ever ridden powder. The kid was psycho and he’d jump off anything.

When did you first consider yourself a “pro snowboarder”? When Airwalk started paying me. I was 17 and traveling the world, learning things that my friends in high school weren’t. My sponsors were asking me how my boards were performing, or Oakley was asking me about my goggles. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building all these skills and learning how to develop products and work with people on a business level. Now that I am 26 and missed the college window, I have still learned a lot from snowboarding. You build a business sense from negotiating contracts. There is a lot more to pro snowboarding than just going to a jump and throwing a frontside nine. There is a myth that being a pro is just waking up, eating some Wheaties and then going out to shred. I’d love to say yeah, that is what I do every day. But I am also on the phone talking with all these guys about their products, and that takes a lot of responsibility and effort to make that happen.

At what point in your career did you start filming? Actually, my dad wanted to make a documentary about us. I was 14, Bjorn was 16 and my other brother Tor was 18. He thought it would be cool to get a 16 mm camera. He basically got it from Hollywood. It is way bigger than anything that would be appropriate for the backcountry. We still have it. He then hired this guy to film us, some totally random dude named Guy. My dad’s vision was just to capture what we were doing. We would snowboard every day training and going to these national championships and stuff. He would film us at contests, at Snowbird, in the backcountry and interview us. We never made a movie with the footage, but it was cool. Maybe someday it will surface. With the Volcom movie Es Scramble coming out, we have all talked about getting older footage like that together to show a timeline.

You referred to the riding as training. You were still having fun though? My goal was just to win contests. I don’t know why, but I loved to win. I was focused and dedicated, and I was having fun. I definitely have seen the soccer-mom syndrome with parents yelling at their kids to get back up the hill and land a trick. It is super sad to see that, and I hate to see parents go down that road and get greedy. My parents didn’t care; they were just giving us the opportunity to excel. They never turned us down for lift tickets, that’s for sure. My parents’ whole goal in life was to make sure us kids had whatever we wanted or needed.

Do you ever wish you could compete more? You know, it is a pretty intense balance. If you compete all the time, your opportunities to film go right out the window. When you film your video part, you are at the will of nature. When nature says it is going to snow two feet in Canada, you better be there at 6 a.m. with your snowmobile ready so you can get those sick shots. It is a crazy scramble to film a video these days. The thing about contests is that someone wins. With video parts, it is all based on opinion. When you can say you won the X Games or whatever, it is a pretty good feeling.

What prompted you to start Celtek? Basically, I had a vision of owning my own company within snowboarding. Of course, it was only natural to get my brother involved right away. It started because I was seeing pro skaters making their own brands, so the idea seemed right. We decided to call it Celtek and that we would specialize in gloves and a few accessories. It is run from my basement in Utah and we will continue to feed off snowboarding to grow the brand.

Has there ever been a rivalry between you and Bjorn? We have never hated each other at any point, and we have always been good friends. But there is an unspoken thing of who’s better or who did better that day. We never rub it in each other’s faces or anything, but I think about being as good or better than my brother every time I ride. I know he is going to do something crazy, so if I can do as good, I am doing pretty well.

What tricks can you do that he can’t and vice versa? My backside sevens in the pipe used to piss him off. He’s got the back lip on rails completely dialed in on anything gnarly and I don’t. I had the frontside nine on him in the beginning of the year. He finally nailed a huge banger one later in the season, but I don’t think he’d done it ‘til then. Bjorn has the Cab 1080 dialed right now; it makes me a little bit mad, but I know I can do it. Once I know I can do it in my head, I think it’ll be easy.

How is it watching your brother have a bad fall or line up to do something sketchy? That is a good question. It has been so gnarly watching my brother get to where he is in snowboarding and seeing the things he can actually do. It is definitely beyond human. I obviously know his limits better than anyone, but nine times out of ten, I will stand back and give him the confidence he needs in the moment to do the gnarliest things ever. There have been many times as a brother that I have been scared for him and imagining life without him would be sh-tty. But his skills are ridiculous. It gets to the point where my gut will tell me to say something to him, but I will sit back and watch him do it. It is like when we went to hit Chad’s Gap this year. He was going to drop in backwards to do a Cab nine on his first jump of the second day. Think about all the factors—it is his first jump, he has to go 50-plus miles an hour to get over it, he is going backwards. Do you stop and say, “BJ, maybe you should straight air it first”? A lot of people would, but I am like, “Go for it.” The brother thing kills me the most when I watch him fall. I’m like, “Oh f--k, I hope he is all right.”

Have you ever told him to back off? I have definitely thrown it out there before. He’ll listen and say, “Yeah, that is kinda sketchy. We’re over it.” He is a totally reasonable guy. He’s not on a mission to kill himself by any means. I think he sees stuff a different way than I would or other guys. Then before you know it, he’s already done it. It is cool because we know each other’s riding abilities so well. We’ll be on a jump and he’ll say, “Grab nose on that trick.” And boom—I do it and land perfectly. He can just see when I’m having a little trouble and he coaches me. We suggest tricks to each other all the time. He won’t know what to do off a jump and I can picture him doing a perfect backside 180 Japan. He’ll get stoked and do it. We have been doing that since we were 7 years old skateboarding.

Do you ever feel jealous of Bjorn for some of the opportunities he has had that you haven’t? Anytime I ever have, I check myself and say, “Dude, they are calling him for a reason and you need to get better at what you are doing if you want the same opportunities.” It is tough to understand that when you are 16 or 17, but you have to put the work into it to get something out of it.

What was it like for you when Bjorn got chosen to be a part of the Forum 8? It was pretty cool because I was a starstruck 16-year-old when Peter Line called the house. He got the number from Mack Dawg. He talked to BJ about being a part of a brand he was starting called Forum, and he wanted him on the team. It was just Pete, Bjorn and JP Walker the first year and then everyone else got on. Going from looking up to these guys and then having them call my house was a major deal.

How is it going from having someone as a hero to having them as a peer? I actually got to go on an Oakley trip with Craig Kelly; Haakon and Michi Albin to Island Lake Lodge in Canada. I’ll tell you what—it freaked me out because I had only seen Craig Kelly in videos. There I was, chasing him down the mountain and watching him ollie, which was probably the coolest thing ever to see in person. The guy had more pop—his ollies were ridiculous. He would flow down the mountain effortlessly. That is what it was all about.

What are your thoughts on the current state of pipe contests? I don’t like to be a robot to the machine. The bottom line is that to do well at a contest, you need to be consistent. If you really analyze the top contest guys, they are not changing their run. Look at Andy Finch—the guy is throwing it out there, for sure! But I can watch him go down the pipe and dictate his run; the same with Danny, Ross or JJ. When my brother rides, he just wants to freestyle it; do things more sporadic and that in turn makes you less consistent, so it doesn’t pay off. But if you do land your run when the heat is on, you do well.

If you had a chance to go to the Olympics, what would it mean to you? It would mean the world. But the Olympics would feel more real to me if the coaches and people working with the US team were a little bit closer to snowboarding. I sometimes wonder what it is all about for the US snowboard team at the end of the day.

Why haven’t you had that breakout film part yet? Everything from who I was riding with to the snow conditions and filmers. Mostly just myself because I am the root of how good things happen. Last year I brought back the training day. Last summer I went up to Hood for six weeks and rode every day. I got really in tune with my snowboard. Once the season came in October, I was hiking Brighton every day. We had a powder jump on October 25th and I knew it was on—it just felt right. The best part about filming for Volcom is I get to ride with my brother every day. You can ask anybody; Mikey LeBlanc has even said it before. Basically, when we ride together, my riding goes up about three levels. I can ride by myself or with other pros, but for some reason Bjorn brings out the best in me. It has always been this way, but we have never spent much time filming together.

At the end of a season, do you ever wish you had certain days back? Yup. It can go either way. You can watch the footage and think, “If I could go back to that day, I would have leaned a little bit more forward or kept at it ‘til I got a trick; hiked it one more time.”

But that is when you are sitting in an editing bay and you’re not exhausted. Exactly. You can analyze your sh-t all day long, but at the end of the day, you’ve just got to give 100 percent. If you do that, you know whether you landed the trick or not, you still made it count.

BJORN

Was 2005 one of the best years you’ve had? It was the most productive and fun season I’ve had with the most days riding. A lot of that had to do with being able to ride with my brother. We rode in Utah, Tahoe and around the West Coast. We had good luck with the weather but we did a lot of research on the Internet. We would check the weather for a 500-mile radius around Salt Lake City.

Erik explained to me how on the second day you two were hitting Chad’s Gap you dropped in to do a Cab nine on your first jump. How do you prepare to just drop in and throw down without any warmup? It is mental at that point. I didn’t even do that many 900s up to that point in the season. You have to know what you can do and see yourself doing it. I just pictured myself going into the takeoff, being calm, snapping into the trick and knowing what my eyes were going to see when I was coming out of it. That jump was a big ordeal; we had to build it for five days and there was a crowd and ski patrol. It is a technical jump, as far as getting the speed dialed in. We even had a radar gun there. The landing on it is really not that rad. I just try to see myself doing something, think about it, then do it.

When did the radar gun come into play as a tool for your snowboarding? That was the first time. It works sweet on jumps where the in-run is critical. The skiers we were with had it. They were going 61 mph backwards into it. We figured we had to go 55 at the takeoff to clear it. You need to be able to tell the difference between going 45 and 55, and the radar gun got us dialed in on that. With it, we could always go back and check how fast we were going like, “OK, I went 51 on that trick and it felt good and I dropped from that spot.”

Besides where you start and whether or not you speed check, how can you adjust your momentum on jumps that big? You can scrub speed on your heels by doing mellow slide turns, but at 50 mph, there is a point where you have to commit because you can’t stop without sliding right off the jump. There is always that moment right before takeoff where you are like, ‘Uh-oh, I’m going too fast.’ On stuff like that, going too slow is hardly ever the case.

Describe what it is like to go 55 on a snowboard. You notice the wind. If you have ever seen a skier or snowboarder haul ass down a mountain, you hear their jacket flapping. It is that same speed rush you get on any moving vehicle going that fast. You get more vibrations the faster you go. The worst feeling is to know you’ve gone too fast off something and watching the landing go by as you overshoot it.

How does hitting a big jump compare to dropping into a halfpipe or going at a handrail? It is all the same. You’ve got to get into that zone of “I’m going to nail this?’ Not to be cheesy, but it’s nail the trick or put a nail in your coffin. You hit your head on a rail or snap your neck off something, you’re going to be all done. You definitely have to know what you are capable of anytime you ride your snowboard.

Do you session a lot with skiers? That was the first time. In Utah, there are some rad skiers who made it to the pro level. As far as the whole skiers vs. snowboarders thing, I let go of that years ago. It was cool filming with those guys because they are on top of their game. Tanner Hall did a switch 900 over Chad’s. The filmer, Kris Ostness, was sweet to work with. He set up this gap over the Snowbird halfpipe. We got to jump that with him and he shot it from a cable cam.

What was that like? It had a crappy in-run. There was 100 feet of flat before the jump. The radar gun came into play again because we couldn’t get enough speed until the in-run was dialed. We had to get going 65 mph because of the flat section before the jump. That was probably the fastest I’ve ever hit a jump and it was one of those where you don’t want to overshoot it.

How many tries did it take you to get it? First, I tested the speed like ten times. I’d be going 65 on the in-run hill and 45 at the takeoff. Then I did it and went too big and crumbled into a pile at the end of the landing. I waited 15 minutes after that and then jumped it another three times. I did a backside five, frontside five indy and then a backside seven Japan. I was done after that because my back hurt from crumbling on that first attempt.

Do you have a safety trick for the first time you hit big stuff? Whatever you are comfortable with that you can land. For a lot of the gaps, a backside 180 is easiest to judge speed, get your pop on the takeoff and see the landing.

Besides your brother Erik, which riders are pushing you? I like powerful snowboarders with a lot of pop and control; guys like Devun Walsh, Marc Frank and Mikey LeBlanc. Just the greats of snowboarding, I guess you can say. They all contribute to me with their different style on stuff and different ways to snowboard. There are tons of guys who stoke me out, like Frederik Kalbermatten, Chris Dufficy, Peter Line, Danny Kass and this endless list of riders who have their own deal going on.

Have you ever had a sponsor pressure you to play up an image? I’ve seen someone’s style off the hill definitely come into play, as far as a person’s marketability. I’ve seen firsthand where decisions have been made where acting g’d out or like a thug has benefited them. It sets you apart if you’re an up-and-coming pro with a different style.

Who is coming up that you feel has a good future ahead of them? The Youngbloods are on point with technical freestyle. Some of the guys who are getting older are taking their snowboarding to such a gnarly level, like Romain De Marchi or Frederik Kalbermatten. I think those guys who are already established are going to expand the realm of snowboarding. I don’t know too many of the up-and-coming kids’ names, but I know there are a handful of kids tearing it up. Shaun White.

Will the average kid eventually not be able to relate to what the top pros are doing? I think it is at that level now. You can only go so fast into a jump and so far. It is pretty maxed out right now. It is turning into skateboarding where it is so hard to fathom what Jamie Thomas is thinking when he kickflips down a 15-foot drop. That level seems so unattainable.

At what point does the do or die consequence become too apparent? For some guys, it is already here. How much steeper of a mountain can Jeremy Jones ride down? That boundary is being pushed to the limit. How much faster can you go into a jump than 65 mph? In a 20-foot halfpipe, 20 feet out is pretty much the top level it can get to.

You mentioned Jeremy Jones. You are one of the few riders in the world who can throw their board down and hang with him in most situations. The same goes for you with JP Walker on rails and Danny Kass in a pipe. Who are the other riders you see in the world who can do this? There aren’t many, but there are some who can do it. Travis Rice. Danny Kass can hit the pipe, park and backcountry jumps. Next, he’ll be hitting cliffs. It just depends on having the amount of time to do it all.

But you have found time to do it all. I just want to be able to ride every type of terrain or obstacle. Riding big mountains is what comes most natural to me on a snowboard or hitting jumps. But I learned to do 270s onto a rail because I think they are dope-looking tricks and fun. I have a drive to try it all.

Is there a downside to having this drive, and have you been celebrated enough for succeeding at it? The only downside is that it is harder to be dialed in on the most technical tricks in each scenario. The reward I feel is being able to get paid to do this—it is quite the opportunity. I am not too concerned if someone thinks I’m the best or the raddest, I’d just rather let my snowboarding speak for itself.

What aspect of our sport do you wish you were better at? Probably halfpipe because it is the most challenging. It takes a lot of precision and edge control because you have to land your tricks on the vert of a wall that has variations in it.

Are there any overrated tricks out there? Anything with a backflip or a double back. They are crowd pleasers because the average guy can relate to a backflip. There aren’t too many clown tricks in my eyes, except for backflips.

So what tricks have you been working on lately? I have been trying to dial in some cork variations; you’ll see in the Volcom movie. There are only so many tricks you can do. It is like, “I want to get a frontside seven.” Then there are five different grabs you can do, and then you decide if you want to cork it or not. Doing off-axis stuff is a lot harder when you go bigger.

How tough is it to keep producing a video part year after year, where other sports have a more drawn-out cycle? The variables are a whole deal on their own. You have snow and the weather; those are the main variables. Then there is the terrain and if the jump and cliff are big enough. Next is the filmer and if they are getting the right shot from the right angle. There are also the materials you need like a sled, truck and avalanche beacon. Also, tricks come into play, what you land and what other people have done on the same feature. If everyone does their job, the shot gets used and ends up in a film or magazine. The season to get these shots is so short and all the variables come into play. You hear guys say they got skunked by weather and that can happen easily. Just look at the Canadians this year. They didn’t have a good winter, so you won’t see as much stuff from Canada of Kale Stephens and Devun Walsh. Snowboarding is one of the hardest sports to film because of the challenging locations. For a surf movie, you just go to the spot and wait for sun and waves. In skating, you go to where the concrete is and land your trick.

Having been a part of the Forum videos in the past, what affect will this new crop of team videos, including Volcom’s, have on the snowboard media? There are only so many filmers out there who are even capable of making a snowboard video, so guys like Mack Dawg will always have their deal. To me, team videos are cooler and better for the industry because you actually get to see these guys go out and feed off each other. With Volcom, I get to film with people I don’t get to ride with much, like Seth Huot, Wille Yli-Lluoma, Shaun White and my brother. It comes down to marketability and how you promote your team. In skateboarding, that’s how they market their products and let people know who’s on what team. I wish snowboarding was more like skateboarding in a lot of ways. The companies are much more core and rider-driven. In our sport, there is only a handful where the guys who design and make the products actually ride. In my eyes, the ski industry has become way too big a part of snowboarding.

So which companies do you see that are more like skateboard companies? Forum, Capita, Rome, Technine, Grenade, Celtek, Volcom—companies where their stuff is made by riders, for riders. Lib Tech. Even DC is plugged into the sport. The ski companies bring a lot of technology and can make quality stuff, but for the most part, when it comes down to it, it isn’t about being a snowboarder; it is about making lots of money. Obviously, snowboard companies do it to make money, but for some snowboarding isn’t just a job, it is a way of life.

What have you learned about snowboarding that you didn’t know before starting your glove company, Celtek? Celtek has brought me knowledge of how a company works from merchandising and selling to marketing yourself and the company. It is a way for me to bring what I know about product design and function as well as my mountain experiences into a company that we created. Celtek is our outlet to create a part of snowboarding in our vision.

Religion has recently started to play a more important role in your life. How has this affected your riding? I have always been a Christian and I believe in the Bible. For me, I grew up in a good household with a solid foundation and learned about Jesus. When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I was trying to do the right thing but making stupid choices. After having a lot of time to think about who I am, why I’m here and what I am doing in the world, I have become a truth seeker, you could say. I read books and came around to the Bible. Just figuring out what God’s plan is for me has given me a rebirth of my existence. To me, snowboarding is an avenue for this. How is it that I’m blessed to snowboard and be pro in this circumstance? Snowboarding is an opportunity to help bring others to God for the most part. I want to be a voice where people can look at me and say, “He’s making the right decisions, and why is that?” It trickles down to your belief in God and Jesus Christ.

I have heard of riders who have had their sponsors tell them to remove “Jesus” from the topsheets of their boards. Why should it bother anyone if “Jesus” is written on someone’s board? What has Jesus done to them? As for the perception that they are going to sell less boards if someone has “Jesus” on their topsheet, give me a break!

For years, you were seen as someone who took snowboarding very seriously. Has your approach changed? That hasn’t really changed. It all comes from having to have a real job and work long hours when I was a teenager. With snowboarding, it was like, “Whoa, what do I have to do to keep that paycheck coming?” You can tell the guys who have never had a job before because they are taking it for granted. They are sleeping in on a powder day instead of having fun, landing a trick and getting something done. You need a sense of responsibility. It all looks like fun and games, but there is a point where it is go time and you need to make it happen. It is tough; after you’ve ridden eight days straight, you feel worked. You are just trying to stay alive out there when you are hiking or digging your snowmobile out. But people are going to do what they want. There are only so many days you can ride, and I want to take advantage of ‘em.

Where would you be in snowboarding if you didn’t have Erik? That’s a good one. I don’t think I’d be where I am now. We have been through so much together. All the experiences we have gotten to share made it kinda like growing up with a wingman. It is weird to even think about him not being involved in snowboarding.