Taylor Godber is a professional big mountain snowboarder on The North Face team. She’s also a chef, an artist, a writer, a lover of dogs, surfer, adventurer, picnicker and a very kind soul.
Taye was the founding editor of Mountain Life: Below Zero, our annual winter publication that Covid shut down. Nowadays, we see her in the pages of Mountain Life shredding steep, exposed lines on dream trips into crazy zones throughout the Coast Mountains. Feet Banks catches up with Taylor just as winter is (finally) starting to arrive in Whistler.
Check these highlights from the conversation:
Judgment and Belonging
“Judgmental people exist. So do open-minded people. I think we’re always going to have that full range. When you add things like Instagram or anything with immediate validation, you get these low dopamine hits and these highs, and you experience the full gamut. You get purists, and you also get this ‘everyone’s welcome,’ loving, inclusive community vibe. For me, I haven’t found that anywhere else in the world other than with mountain people. There’s an openness there—a sense that people can come as they are—and that’s what’s kept me here.”
Alaskan Turning Point
“I didn’t grow up in a family of skiers or snowboarders. I didn’t watch all the movies everyone talks about. I just came to Whistler, connected with the sport, and followed that feeling—followed what I saw and that curiosity. I was working on a project where the last part was going to be in Alaska. We camped on the pass for about a month, and when I saw those mountains, something moved in me. It was this deeper love and a trajectory that felt really solid—like, this is what I want to do. I didn’t know for how long, but I knew I needed to investigate it.”
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Risk and Loss
“Another layer of the mountain community is living in a space of risk—people who want to meet their edge. You’re constantly aware of the fragility of life. You’re not in charge. There’s a lot of surrendering to the outcome, and then coming face to face with the reality that sometimes people lose their lives in the mountains, way sooner than we would have liked. There’s no silver lining to losing anybody, but in those moments, everything reorganizes into what’s really important. You see people come together, and you see this deepening trust, support and love.”
Doubt
“I’ve never made enough money to rely solely on my sport, so I’ve been building two careers at once—snowboarding and being a chef. And none of this comes without doubt. Every year, there’s self-reflection. I joke that I go into this little wormhole in the fall, asking, ‘Is this really what I want? Do I want to keep going in this direction?’ Then I get over the hump, I’m back in the mountains, and I’m like, ‘Oh no — I’m not done.’ The wild thing is that the passion has been growing every year.”
Art and Process
“…It’s all a form of expression. Whether it’s snowboarding, cooking or writing, it’s about having a vision from the beginning and seeing it through to the end. That whole process in between—the uncertainty, the doubt—that’s part of it. You make something and wonder if it’s any good, but you keep going because the expression itself matters.”
Listen to the pod here and be sure to check out out Taye’s Instagram.
