My name is Nick Russell and I'm a professional snowboarder. I live in Truckee, California, and I call this Sierra Nevada backcountry my home range.

I grew up back East and in Vermont, and learned how to snowboard on icy parks and half-pipes, but it wasn't until I moved to Utah that I first experienced powder for the first time. Pretty instantly it was this light bulb moment for me. There was this first backside turn in fresh snow, I can remember it like it was yesterday, just gently touching my hand against the slope. And I looked back up at my track, and it was a whole new game for me, a whole new sport.

All I wanted to do was ride powder and figure out how to do it safely. So, that was about 15 years ago. And since then, I've taken some sort of avalanche course or first aid training every single year. And this has been a very long process in order to get to where I am today. 

With my splitboard, I've been all over the world from Chile to Turkey, to Bolivia, to Alaska, India, and beyond. I can't tell you the freedom that splitboarding gives you. Being able to look at a map and try to find the most conducive line for snowboarding is this never-ending, wild goose chase for the perfect line, for the perfect run. And the great thing about it is there's a million more out there. 

So being able to do this safely and efficiently is my goal. Something that I would like to do for the rest of my life and be snowboarding when I'm 90 years old.