MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2018

FALL/WINTER 2018 MLCM 43 town.) Returning the next winter, he knew he wanted to be able to ski tour from both hills. “I got a job at the dual mountain ski tuning shop under the Longhorn,” he says smiling. “It was the best. You got a dual mountain pass, parties and perks. And when it was slow, I would draw.” Over the next few years, Rowles used his art skills to supplement his income—illustrating ads and posters for both ski hills, painting custom helmets, and airbrushing t-shirts for Toad Hall Studios’ legendary Whistler shop Santini Designs. “They were these hand-painted airbrush shirts that said stuff like: And on the 7 th Day, God went for Sushi. And I’d have to paint 250 of them.” It wasn’t very long before Rowles’ artistic sensibilities found a way to mesh with his adventurous ones. He was already spending his days skiing and touring with the athletes that would come to define the hard-charging, big fun, freewheeling Whistler style of riding. Why not try to capture some of that feeling? Rowles bummed some hand-me-down camera gear from his parents and started teaching himself ski photography. “It took a while,” he admits. “This is before digital, so every time you clicked that button it was 25 cents.” Skiing and shooting big lines with strong technical skiers like Johnny Foon, Jeff Holden, and Chris ‘Beeker’ Romeskie—it didn’t take long for Rowles to capture shots well worth that 25-cent click. “I started sending slides to Dave Reddick at Powder ,” he says. “And he would respond with thoughts and pointers. I kept shooting. I got better. I was hooked.” And his timing was good. In the mid 90s Rowles’ boss, Spicy Sports owner Steve ‘Cuz’ Cousins, brought him to the SIA show in Las Vegas to look at new tuning machines. “But he also made sure I had time to go show my images to the magazines and gear sponsors. I would have never gotten that exposure otherwise. Cuz helped me a great deal.” Cuz was also letting a young Whistler skier crash on their hotel room floor. Rowles remembers the kid “kept talking about twin tip skis and about doing snowboard tricks but on skis, saying ‘its kinda like freestyle, but not.’” That kid was Whistler skier Shane Szocs, who was ushering in the ‘new school’ ski revolution with Mike Douglas and a trio of freestyle rebels from Quebec. “I saw Szocs and Douglas again a few months later at Cuz’s season kickoff party and they had a video of all these tricks—Lincoln Loops and rodeos and whatnot. Szocs said, ‘Yeah these French guys are coming and we’re gonna go build a jump. Come shoot it.’” Rowles joined them and helped build that jump out on the edge of what is now the Harmony Zone on Whistler. A lightning storm prevented them from finishing, “but we went back the next day and there was a big crew “I straight-lined all the way down and launched past the bottom of the tow and into the trees. The liftie had to pull me out.” Old-school 80s airbrushed-photo artwork