When I was a little kid, I lived in Aspen, Colorado for quite a while and that was when the freestyle boom of the 70's was happening. My mom would send me up the mountain with five bucks and it was three dollars to buy a lift ticket, so I'd have two bucks left over for lunch. I'd get a hard-boiled egg and make tomato soup with some ketchup packets. Then we'd go jumping off all of the cliffs we could find and when the lifts shut, we'd build jumps at the base of the mountain until it got dark.

MZ: Lift tickets in Aspen were only three bucks?

Yeah, for the kids that lived there.

MZ: So how did you end up in Mammoth Lake, California?

Before I lived in Aspen, I lived in South California as a child. Mammoth was the first place I skied when I was a little kid. I went to college in Southern California and after school, I wanted to move to Mammoth, but at the time they didn't allow snowboarding. I ended up moving to Vail, but I had a hunch that Mammoth was going to open to snowboarding, so I rolled the dice.

	Klassen dropping yet another cliff with impeccable style. Photo by Lucas Kane

June Mountain had already opened to snowboarders and it was going well, so the sport was almost getting too popular for Mammoth to not open to snowboarders.

I had decided to open a snowboard shop (Wave Rave) in Mammoth before they officially announced that the mountain was open to snowboarders. I took a risk but my timing was perfect - the next season they opened to snowboarding. That was back in 1989 and it's been going strong ever since.

MZ: Mammoth is now regarded as one of the freestyle meccas worldwide. Do you ever find yourself in the park?

The parks are cool and I think the tricks that the freestyle guys are doing are sick, but I'm 39 years old now. I mean, how far do I really want to take the park stuff? I'd rather spend my time away from the crowds and riding the steeps. I've just always been into dropping cliffs.

MZ: Do you think that freeride competitions such as the Verbier Extreme are a good way to measure a rider's ability?

When you can combine big mountain skills and freestyle skills, that's where I see the ultimate expression of the sport. The big reason that I see it that way is - you go to Verbier and look at the mountain for a few days. You pick your line and then when the comp begins, you have to do your line and throw down what you have, and the entire time you're being compared to other people. If I'm filming, you can't tell how steep it is - camera angles can make it look steep when it's not and you aren't comparing yourself with other people.

MZ: But what about the judging? Is it always fair?

I think that as long as there is a final where you send four or five riders back up to make a second run, it becomes obvious who the winner is at the end of the day.

MZ: So, you seem to be one who is a step ahead of the times. What new sport are you into these days?

Kiteboarding - I'm hooked on it. It's about as close to big mountain riding as you can get. You can go fast, you can go uphill or downhill with a kite. It's like taking my snowboarding skills and adding an engine...

— Lucas Kane, www.lucaskane.com