Editor’s Note: For English subtitles select CC option.
If carvers and carving are finally cool again… then these “extreme Russian” types are the coolest. And we’re all the better for it. After nearly a decade of twists and flips and corks defining progression, we’re once again leaning heavily into style and back to embracing the smoother side of snowboarding, the side that is more lifestyle and less sport.
Not to sleep on the forty- and fifty-somethings who have been hugging groomers for a couple decades now, but the environment and thereby timing is only now just right for carving to transcend from demographic-specific practice (and it was pursued as such) to a fully-embraced style of fluid, surfy flow harking back to its wave-riding roots. And this renaissance of sorts is being ushered by the likes of Alex Yoder and Josh Dirsken and Alex Lopez, giving it the right kind of flag-bearers to not only make a mark but push it to new levels.
That is all to say: carving was always cool; we simply weren’t cool enough to know it — thank god that is over with.
