Austin Smith taps into that crew energy for an end-of-day drop straight to the lodge.
“Film this guy,” River says. “He’s the Trash Man.”
We can’t see the Trash Man, but we can hear him patting down a takeoff next to a lone dead tree. His name is Coleman. Some call him the Trash Man, others the Trash King, or the King of Trash. Whatever you call him, the dude rips.
Coleman’s atop Trash Chutes, just outside the boundaries of Nelson, BC’s Whitewater Resort. A half-dozen other folks are stretched out across the same ridge, while a dozen more linger at the bottom of the bowl laughing, snacking, in no hurry to get anywhere. A few others make their way up the bootpack for another round. We’re with a cross-section of Whitewater regulars, a loose crew ranging from their teens to their 40s, and hardly anyone else.
It’s Saturday afternoon and we’ve been in Nelson nearly a week now, riding the resort daily. With me are Austin Smith, Mary Rand and Ben Poechman, filmer Liam Gallagher, and erstwhile Smartwool Marketing Manager Michael Casarrubia. For the past couple days, we’ve also been cruising with 14-year-old River Slootweg, a member of the Whitewater Freeride Team, and local nursing student Evangeline “Eva” Van Vugt.
The Trash Man doesn’t call his drop. Or maybe he does, but we can’t hear him above the hum of this Saturday afternoon gathering. Either way he’s tired of waiting, so he sends a back 3 into flat light, landing clean 30 feet below, straight lining to the bottom and throwing up a single frontside whip. His blue coat and mushroom-stickered helmet emerge from a powder cloud as he rolls back to his crew.
“That’s the guy who flew by us on our first day,” Liam says. He’s right. It’s hard to miss that style. We didn’t know it then, but we’ve been following his tracks all along.
So nice he hit it twice. Austin Smith started with a frontside 360 off this drop, then followed it up with a fakie backside 180, pictured here.
Nelson has been firmly on the freeride map for decades—at the very least since Craig Kelly put down roots here in the late ’90s. With a constant flow of powder seekers heading to nearby cat operations like Retallack and Baldface, plenty of folks have sampled the goods at Whitewater over the years. And those who know, know—it’s worth more than just a day trip. Justin Hostynek lives in town and has been filming around here for a while; go for a hike at Whitewater (or even a stroll through Nelson) and you’ll recognize a few classic Absinthe Films spots. Jamie Lynn, Mark Fawcett and many other low-key legends live in or near town. It’s a nice place to settle down if you want to carve out a bit of space of your own, with plentiful touring options, some snowmobile access, and a handful of mechanized backcountry operations delivering Kootenay dream lines nearby.
Despite the steady stream of media output, Nelson still feels inconspicuous compared to many other locations in the Pacific Northwest. Situated on Kootenay Lake in the southern BC interior, it was founded upon silver mining in the late 1800s and sustained through forestry and other forms of resource extraction and agriculture for much of the 20th century. Nowadays, with an economy skewing a bit more toward education, tourism and regional politics, it’s still a relatively quiet home to 11,000-ish folks. With a thriving arts and culture scene and a handful of great restaurants, local businesses outnumber big retail chains. There’s a refreshing lack of resort town aesthetics for a region endowed with such plentiful pillows and consistent snowfall.
Maybe that’s because it’s a bit harder to get to than places like Whistler and Revelstoke. The closest airport is an hour away in Castlegar and is unaffectionately known to some as “Cancel-gar” due to frequent inclement weather. By road, it’s a four-hour drive from Spokane stateside, and 7-8 hours on sketchy provincial highways from the nearest major cities of Calgary and Vancouver. Nearly every little town along the way has their own hill worth riding, too.
Geography aside, it feels like the lack of hype is by design. The locals are proud of their small town and its endearing eccentricities, and the same applies to their ski area. The last several miles of the 30-minute drive from Baker Street to Whitewater are on washboard gravel roads. There are no accommodations up there, just a high-ceilinged lodge serving deliciously healthy rice bowls alongside burgers and fries, four chairlifts, and one large peak named Ymir hanging over it all.
Ben Poechman flexes a corked frontside 540 with his unique tweak.
River Slootweg is only 14, but his composed style already reflects that hard-charging Whitewater local status.
My personal relationship with Whitewater goes back to the early 2000s. That’s when I took my first avalanche course in the backcountry near what is now the Glory Lodge. Then, the “Backside” was a road run—2,000 vertical feet of trees and pillows requiring a hitchhike back up to the base area.
Although Whitewater has been spinning chairs since 1973, significant expansion wasn’t front of mind for most of its history. It took five years from ideation to operation, with volunteer efforts playing a large part in getting the ski area up and running. It remained mom and pop until 2008 when then-owners Mike and Shelley Adams1 sold to Knee Deep Development Corp. out of Calgary, AB, and that’s when the area’s modest modernization began.
Glory Ridge opened in 2010, a triple chair turning those road runs into lift laps. In 2017, a quad replaced the original two-seater Summit Chair. And in 2023, the resort installed a brand-new, high-speed quad known as the Raven / Yutlx / Qukin chair, paying homage to the Sinixt, Syilx, and Ktunaxa Peoples upon whose ancestral lands the area is located. The new chair accesses the top of Silver King Ridge and provides easier exploration into the Ymir high country.
After that initial visit, I rode Whitewater a few days here and there, but I hadn’t spent an extended chunk of time on hill until this winter. It wasn’t for lack of interest. Nelson always just seemed to serve as a jumping off point to more exotic backcountry locales.
That changed with my attendance of Robin Van Gyn’s Research & Development gathering at the end of February. Over that week, I worked with a team documenting 18 women tearing the hill apart. It opened my eyes to the true potential of the place. And it opened my eyes to the level and character of the local riders—particularly, Eva.
Mary Rand’s East Coast surf roots shine through in her backside hack.
A Whitewater lifty taking pride in his job, and his Japanese-inspired broom technique for clearing snow off the chairs.
Ben Poechman finding power and flow amongst the crags of Trash Chutes.
A story about Eva: from the bottom, it looked like a big cliff—20 feet or so tall at the highest point looker’s right, overhung by a little cornice, tapering into a slightly more manageable size looker’s left, framed by spine lines. And there was Eva looking at it, stick and poke dinosaur tattoo beside her right eye, wearing hand-repaired black pants and a burgundy coat.
“I’m gonna hit it,” she said.
“Which side?” I asked.
“The big side,” she said.
Of course Eva was going to hit the big side. The day prior, during contest day at R&D, Eva went huge—straight off the nose of a large, three-stage pillow stack. The landing was too flat for such a big air. But her friends were there watching in makeshift Eva T-shirts and she’s good at going fast. So, she went fast and missed the second pillow altogether, taking the compression at the bottom in stride.
I was up at the top of the venue for this, and it looked like she launched into oblivion. “I just came to a complete stop,” she reported upon returning to the top of the venue, casually shaking it off. Thus, a fan favorite was born.
“I want to leave room for the dark horse,” Robin Van Gyn later told me about Eva’s invite to the R&D. “There’s always someone who surprises us.”
Eva, a virtually unsponsored rider in a field of well-kitted international athletes, was recommended by a few local media folks and the Nelson head space, Tribute Boardshop. Eva’s clip from contest day got a lot of plays, which led to us cruising together on R&D’s first media day. And Eva was ready to launch again.
Her Australian fiancé, Jack, called over the radio. “Dropping in 10…”
There was Eva, going way bigger than we expected, again. She nearly stomped the landing and rode over for a consult.
“Maybe a little slower,” I said.
“Slower? Okay…” I’m not sure she was convinced.
Filmer Greg Weaver backed up my assessment: “You got this.”
She did go a bit slower, and she did have it, gliding perfectly into the landing. She still went big, but this time flew smoothly out through the trees, cutting into a traverse track near where we stood, which hooked her nose and flipped her upside down. She popped up with a shy smile, loosely arranged blond hair caked in snow. No hat, no goggles—apparently that’s an Eva thing. “My brain can breathe,” she’d later say about her lack of headwear.
A few days later Eva earned $1,000 as the Seal Team Sender for her efforts—a special, last-minute award for R&D 2025 sponsored by well-heeled onlookers. “I like riding fast through the trees and catching some air,” she told me. “It’s what I’m good at.”
True.
Eva Van Vugt turned heads at Research & Development by going huge and stomping this drop.
Eva likes to let her brain breathe and can often be found charging without a hat or goggles, always with a big smile on her face.
When we returned to Whitewater with a more focused, smaller crew, it had to include Eva. She was busy with her studies for the first few days of our stay, so we explored the resort and its adjacent backcountry as a crew of outsiders. Ben had filmed at Whitewater in the past, too, and he knew his way around. The goods weren’t hard to find—most of what we rode was within sight of a chairlift.
Graced with a foot of new snow and sunshine upon arrival, our mid-March visit was perfectly timed. With more snow in the forecast, there would be plenty of fresh lines. First chair was optional, and we spent most of our week lingering late in the backcountry, hoping the clouds would part in the afternoon. It was easy to set a bootpack, lap it and pick apart a zone.
Still, something was missing. It’s easy to approach a snowboard media trip with an extractive mentality—show up, get your clips (or whatever it is you’re seeking) and leave. But to truly understand a spot and its character, one must engage with those who call it home, who hold it dear. The locals know best. And they’d be the ones to show us the true character of the underground Nelson snowboard community.
Ben met a few folks from the Whitewater Freeride Snowboard Team during his last visit to the area, and he reached out to them. Coaches Ian Lamoureux and Jacob Erickson were happy to oblige and introduced us to River Slootweg. Ian works as a guide at Baldface Lodge; River’s dad is a guide at Baldface Valhalla. The freeride program, Ian explained, aims to help youth “find themselves in snowboarding through competition, filming and mentorship.”
For ten weeks each winter, they spend Sundays together, riding, learning new tricks and “life lessons through snowboarding,” as Ian says. The coaches take kids aged 8-18 under their wing and explore the mountain, instilling a solid foundation of snowboard skills and, hopefully, life skills in the process. It showed in River’s mature approach—he wasn’t afraid to ask for advice when eyeing a line. Once he was feeling good about it, he sent and stomped with confidence built upon camaraderie. It was emblematic of the snowboard community at Whitewater—everyone we encountered supported one another. That was fully on display as we cruised the hill together on Friday, and even more so by Saturday afternoon.
The “Spliffboarders” and friends posted up at the bottom of Trash Chutes, providing moral support as their friends send the lines above.
The sun is out again. We’d spent the morning rebating a few inbounds hits then migrating to the Glory side for that afternoon light. Around 2 p.m., everyone else arrived. The Trash Man now shares a laugh with his crew at the bottom. Jacob and Jack hike up to catch some air, getting swallowed by an incoming flurry, but still sending. A few more riders charge down, leaving Eva up there alone. For one young ripper, it’s his first lap in Trash. For others, their hundredth. But no one is here to judge—wherever you’re at, to all assembled, it’s worth celebrating.
By the time Eva bounces her way down a little spine line it’s just after 3 p.m., and the Glory Chair closes at 3:15 p.m. We pack up and ride the trees, still soft at the end of the day. Then we meander down a cat track, following a 20-person train off a handful of side hits to the bottom. The lifty is already flipping chairs as we pull in past the stated closing time, but she greets us warmly. At the top, everyone waits for everyone else to unload before strapping in. “These are most of the good ones,” Eva says.
It feels like we’re the only people on the mountain. I follow Eva off the top. She cuts through the trees into a hidden gully, over a blind hip, and she’s gone down to the valley.
The Raven Chair loads till 4. There’s still time for a lap or two. This crew intends to make the most of it, together.
Mary Rand, frontside approach into a hip landing off a storm-day pillow.
1 • Shelley’s Whitewater Cooks: Pure, Simple and Real Creations from the Fresh Tracks Cafe (2005) remains a cult classic and her homestyle cuisine remains well represented in the lodge.