As much as we like to preface season edits with phrases like, “this rider needs no introduction,” Canada’s Joe Lax might actually need an introduction.
Lax is a 47-year-old snowboarder who fights wildfires in the summer and slays massive lines in the cold season. This edit is from last winter and was filmed in Canada’s Coast Range outside of Pemberton, British Columbia, where Joe’s lived since the early 2000s. He’s been silently tagging peaks since he moved across the prairies from Saskatchewan in the late ’90s, and has earned his status as an underground hellman along the way. But even though Joe’s generally shredding lines in the middle of nowhere, word (and documentation) of his exploits have gotten to the right people and he’s become a core member of both the Arcteryx and Jones snowboard teams.
Not that it matters, Lax and his crew — loosely referred to as the Pemberton Big Mountain Hunting Club — would be punching trail into remote zones long before sunrise whether anyone’s watching or not. Their approach can best be described as “snowmobile mountaineering,” a tactic that puts Lax et al on top of sunlit spines that look like they’re straight out of the Chugach Range. Of course, they’re not in Alaska. They’re right in Lax’s Backyard.
Lax has been pioneering lines in the Pemberton backcountry for more than two decades. This edit gives us a chance to see what he gets up to while the rest of us are waiting in lift lines at the resort.
