MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter Spring 2019

64 MLCM WINTER/SPRING 2019 mill on one shore and an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium on the other. Famed poet Robert Service once described the area as “weirdly desolate and aridly morose.” Kamloops is a tough town—parents are tough on their kids and kids are tough on each other, and perhaps because of that the city is known for producing top-level athletes. Built thick, sturdy and fearless, Tippie fit right in. He was a high school football star, known for his ferocious tackling skills. “Tippie is made of stone,” says Stu MacKay-Smith, a friend since the fourth grade (Stu also created the cover of this issue). “Kids used to call him ‘Indian Muscles’ [Tippie is of First Nations heritage] because he was so strong. Or ‘Headbutt’ because he would head butt people in football and knock them unconscious. He’s impenetrable.” That genetic sturdiness would later serve Tippie well as one of the founding fathers of freeride mountain biking, but in the early 1980s Tippie was drawn to a different gravity fueled sport—his first passion was snowboarding. “I started in 1983,” he recalls, “on a board I hand-built out of plywood with layered steps on the nose that I sanded out into a curve. I used strips of BMX tires for bindings with pieces of inner tubes wrapped around my heels to hold me in.” At the time, almost every ski hill in North America (including Whistler Blackcomb) considered snowboarding a punk fad for degenerate kids. But Harper Mountain, Kamloops’ tiny, family-owned ski hill, held no such prejudices. “They said if you buy a lift ticket you can run whatever you want. You can slide down in moon boots if you like,” Tippie remembers. “There were no snowboard magazines or movies back then. Except for my one buddy, Craig Olsson, I never met another snowboarder for years, until I started converting people. That’s the story of my life: converting people to a new sport so I’d have someone to ride with.” Kamloop, Fall 2018. ANDREW LAWRENCE In February 1988, Tippie turned 19 years old and was rocking a real, store-bought Burton Backhill 145 Woody snowboard. Itching to shred, he migrated to Sunshine Village, Alberta, the first ‘big’ Canadian hill to allow snowboarding, and fell in with a like-minded tribe of shredders from across the country. “I worked as a lifty,” he says witha sigh. “Watching people shred and saying, ‘Have a nice run!’ with a big jeaolous smile. I swore I would never work in the winter again.” Instead, Tippie spent the next summer back in Kamloops putting up fences around swimming pools and along the new Coquihalla highway. “Then I started tree planting in the summer and riding all winter. It was physical, and I did that for nine years. I had muscles in places most people don’t even have places.” Fake plate from the Dodge Viper scene in Kranked 4 . JUSTA JESKOVA Red Bull Rampage 2002. JOHN GIBSON