STEP MOTHER

IN MANY PLACES, RIVERS ARE THE OLDEST ROADS IN THE WORLD. A LONG TIME BEFORE PEOPLE BUILT ROUTES ON LAND BETWEEN DIFFERENT PLACES, THEY USED TO NAVIGATE WITH RIVERS. FOR ANCIENT PEOPLE, IT WAS EASIER TO BUILD BOATS OR WOODEN SHIPS AND CONNECT LOCATIONS BY WATER THAN ORGANISE FULL-ON LONG-DISTANCE PATHS THROUGH THE UNPEOPLED TERRITORIES WITH FORESTS AND ALL KINDS OF CHALLENGING TERRAIN. RIVERS PLAYED A VERY IMPORTANT ROLE IN ANCIENT RUSSIA. SLOWLY, THE RIVERS LOST THE COMPETITION TO DIRT ROADS AND LATER TO RAILROADS, HIGHWAYS AND AEROPLANES. BUT UP UNTIL NOW, BIG RIVERS STILL PLAY IMPORTANT COMMERCIAL, RECREATIONAL, ECOLOGICAL ROLES AND SUPPLY PEOPLE WITH WATER AND ENERGY. AS FOR SNOWBOARDING, RIVERS ERODE LANDSCAPES AND CREATE SLOPES AND DOWNHILLS, AND ULTIMATELY, SPOTS TO SHRED. IN FEBRUARY 2021, THE VANS RUSSIA TEAM HEADED DOWN THE VOLGA RIVER TO FIRE UP THE COLDEST AND SNOWIEST WINTER RUSSIA HAS HAD IN THE LAST FEW YEARS. IT FELT GOOD TO SEE THAT GOOD OLD RUSSIAN WINTER WAS BACK. WORDS. KIRILL KOROBKOV PHOTO. PONCHIKZ

The original plan had four cities and was supposed to be an almost a month-long adventure. Unfortunately, it was cut into two weeks in two cities because of the last-minute injury of Vans Russia’s master and commander Nikita Sekh. Torn ligaments in the knee changed his status from captain to mascot, but his demons still needed to break free, and the team headed East of Moscow towards the Volga. The city of Nizhny Novgorod, with a population of over 1.2 million people, was the rst stop. For the last couple of years, Russia has been experiencing problems with snow. I know it might sound like there was a lack of sand in the Sahara, but it was true. The winter before this one, we were barely provided with any snow in many Russian cities, something that has never happened for as long as I can remember.

DIMI SHUBIN HIPPY JUMP

ARTUR KURGAK

CREEPER 50-50 BS3 OUT

Siberia was a bit more natural, but even in Siberia, winter 2019-20 had ended way sooner than it was supposed to. It was too warm for Russia. With all these climate extremes, we didn’t know what to expect from the current season, and it felt nice to see that good old frosts and snowfalls were back. Proper winter is an important part of the Russian lifestyle, culture and iconic visual symbol. I could even call it the intangible climate heritage of planet Earth. On top of everything else, it turns the biggest country in the world into a snowboarding playground.

ARTUR KURGAK

FRACTURE

with maximum capacity.

Nizhny Novgorod is as Russian as it can be. There’s a Kremlin on the top of the hill above the rivers. Numerous tops of ancient Russian Orthodox churches shine brightly when it’s sunny. Traditional wooden houses in the city centre give you the feeling that this place is old. The Communist age left a huge mark on the urban landscape. Examples of Soviet architecture are spread all around the city. Most people still live in Soviet housing blocks and use infrastructure from that era. At the same time, Nizhny Novgorod has its modern face. The city hosted games of the 2018 World Cup and had gone through a renovation right before that. The crew even got invited to the World Cup’s football arena to inspect the stadium and park around it for snowboard spots. The season of snowfalls resulted in a unique opportunity to do midday freeride or street snowboarding in the centre of the city. The boys saluted the comeback of powerful Russian winter Well, it’s about the time to introduce who else we had on board. It was nothing more or less than the rst Russian national Vans snow team trip. I already mentioned Nikita, who was in charge of the whole project and came up with the route. Egor Chebanov is an experienced warrior who had guest appearances in several international street stories and numerous successes in national jibbing contests. He started snowboarding in the city of Perm, so he was de nitely experienced with street missions in Russia. Vadim Taran studied in the States (SLC). In his case, the verb study refers to both education and snowboarding. The USA days upgraded his disaster tricks game, moustache style and turned him into a gin-tonic fan.

Now he’s is fully back in Russia and is an indispensable part of the national scene. Anton Borodachev, also known as Brook, is another charismatic Russian who’s been a key player on the national scene for a while. He’s done it all from the Moscow city snowboard team to membership in the Dog with Sword gang. When he is o his board, he runs a tattoo studio with his girlfriend and DJs at parties. Dima Shubin came from Belarus. Belarus is a neighbouring country of Russia. The president of their country has been denying COVID for a long time and recommended sauna, vodka and even tractors as weapons against the coronavirus. Around the second part of the year, he almost lost the presidential elections and started tyranny to stay in power. It didn’t take him long to start using the pandemic as an excuse for restrictions. As a part of his aggressive campaign, he started the national quarantine and closed all the borders, so people were not able to leave the country and go abroad. Dima had to look for an illegal bus ride that followed dirt roads and took the passengers through the elds and forests all the way into Russia. This was the risk Dima had to take to join the tour. Roma ‚Mitsybissi’ Romanov could be a character from the ‚Look at this Russian’ Instagram account. He’s got a hooligan’s look, warm heart and cool mind when it comes to snowboarding. He is a young blood machine with a personal army of followers on social networks who is stepping up his personal game right now. Arthur Kurgak was another up-comer who migrated all the way through Russia from Kamchatka to Sochi. It was his rst street experience, and sadly he got hurt after only a few days. Still, he managed to get a couple shots before the injury. Right now, Arthur is on the way to recovery, itching to get back on the board. Russia’s nest snowboarding photographer Zhenya Ponchikz was behind the lenses to capture all the action and Sasha Dorinov plus Dima the W1zzzzzzzzzzzzzard took care of the video. As for myself, I am the Volga river region local expert who got a green light to join the trip in exchange for this story and party manager’s duties. I am also Vans Russia’s skateboarding team manager who was free because skateboarding life was on winter pause.

Both cities haven’t seen too much street snowboarding, and with Russian people’s tempers, the boys were ready for potential con icts and kick-outs. How awesome it was to realise that by the end of the trip, we didn’t experience even one single issue with police, security or even local people. People were happy about what we did and showed support. It feels good when „from Russia with love” is not only a famous quote from the postcards, but also re ects mood of the trip. This type of luck and tolerance for snowboarding surprised even Nikita who had prepared for local wars, but de nitely resulted in good stacking of clips and tricks, and kept the tour vibes high.

One of the bigger hills right above the river has been asking for joint freeride the whole stay. It was full of fresh powder and contained a few different levels that made it even better. One morning Nikita made his boys ride it and posted the clip on his personal Instagram. Half a day later, this video went viral and got reposted in many public accounts related to the city. The Gang had become big in Nizhny Novgorod! Taxi drivers and random locals started to recognize the new city heroes. When we went to a party organized by one of the local media outlets, the team pretty much took over. We could even hear people whispering Vans Russia team here and there. A couple of local snowboarders showed up at the party with boards wearing full-on gear and masks like back in the days. Another cool little episode we went through while in Nizhny Novgorod was meeting a homie from a different city who drove 300 kilometres, alone, just to met Roma ‚Mitsybissi’ who he knew from Instagram. He had some other stuff going on and could stay

EGOR CHEBANOV

FS 5-0

with us only one day. Nevertheless, he drove 600 kilometres in total in the dead of winter just to spend one day with the snowboarder he liked. We found this story inspiring.

The second chapter of the trip was based around Cheboksary city. It’s located 250km further down the Volga. I assume that some of you may have heard about Nizhny Novgorod due to the World Cup or some other sport events, but I am pretty sure that Cheboksary is the combination of letters that you’ve never seen or heard before. This place isn’t famous, but it’s interesting in its own way. First of all, it’s the capital of the Chuvash Republic. It’s a federal subject of the Russian Federation that was created around the local nationality known as the Chuvash people. Russia is a melting pot of its own that includes more than 150 different nationalities besides Russians. All of them have different origins, historical background, history and culture. With such a huge piece of land, Russia is one of the most interesting countries in terms of ethnic diversity. You can drive for a few hours and end up in the place where people are bilingual and use both Russian and their own native language, follow local traditions and just look slightly different. The second cool thing about Cheboksary was the fact that it turned out to be a secret El Dorado for jibbing and street snowboarding, and this was what Nikita’s demons liked the most. Once again, the riverside location provided all the spots. A big piece of the city turned out to be a huge spot garden with all kinds of rails and other random things to shred with an absolutely empty ABD list.

The spots shaped the bright side of the Cheboksary, but the accommodation was our local defeat. When you go to small Russian cities, it’s quite hard to find a proper base for a crew of 10 people. Most accommodation options are smaller. You can find a big hotel but most likely it will be expensive. Hotels also mean a lack of team vibe because the gang gets separated. We really want to stay in one big house, and after few days of research, we found an option that could fit us all. The place was called The House with a Domed Roof. It was described as a legendary spot, widely known all around the city. They also proposed that we Google the place to find out all the craziness that had gone down in this place over the years.

The legend said that originally this has was supposed to be home to the Miss Russia 1996 winner Sasha Petrova who was from Cheboksary. While the house was under construction, she got shot down with her boyfriend by professional killers. Her boyfriend was in charge of the local central market, and probably this murderous assault was aimed at him, but she happened to be nearby. A few years later, the new owners of the property finished the construction the way he wanted and started to rent it. Surely, we said yes to this place. Quite soon after arrival, we found out that nowadays this was a place where people go to have sex and party but not to live, sleep and rest. The house was big and had an endless number of bedrooms but didn’t have a kitchen or even dishes. Parties were fun, but first of all, we looked for the rest house after the sessions. Also, even though we were supposed to have the whole house, the owner decided to rent out the second part of the place to another group of youngsters to make some fast extra money. We said yes to this sketchy deal because we didn’t need that much space. The second half of the house got filled with teenagers who ended up looking for interaction with us. It was all good till one of them declared that with my age, I could be her dad. This was the first-ever time someone something like this to me, so it was about time to separate our companionships. It was all relatively ok until one night the house heating system went down. It was around -20 Celsius outside that night. It didn’t take long till it got super

ANTON BORODACHEV HALFCAB TO BS 180 OUT

VADIM TARAN FRONTSIDE 270

VADIM TARAN

REY MYSTERIO SLIDE cold inside. We called the owner, but all he did was give us instructions on how to restart the boiler. It didn’t help because all the water in the heating system was already frozen by then. The temperature conditions felt like we were close to sleeping on the streets. The following day a few of the guys woke up cold as ice. One day later, the plumbing specialist managed to warm up the system and restart the heating. We also had a sauna in the house, but I think needless to say that the maximum capacity it could produce was a temperature where you still wished you were wearing a hoodie.

Other than that, it was all good. While in Cheboksary we broke the bumper of the van and we fixed it. We lost the keys from the car roof rack and managed to get a duplicate from old key that was broken into two pieces. We had an endless amount of pelmenis (Russian dumplings) in the local restaurant and cooked BBQ on a grill. We invited the locals to our places every night and partied like there would be no tomorrow on the last weekend. The boys were still hungry for the spots and tricks and went snowboarding even on the last morning when they were supposed to be packing for the ride back. Even Nikita, with no ligaments, couldn’t resist to session a double-sided curb.

Traveling in Russia is fun. Russian winters are fun. Snowboarding is fun. The privilege of good times on a road trip is golden. Check out the tour video when it’s out, don’t stay in the house with a domed roof when you’re in Cheboksary and spasibo (thank you in Russian) for reading. Hope to see the guys on the next trip.

MIDWEIGHT FLEECE & FLEECE BEANIE

SHOP.METHODMAG.COM

FLORIAN FISCHER [ SNOWPARK LAAX ]