You’ve had a long and successful career. Why are you deciding to end it all now then?

I’m not quitting snowboarding and I’m not quitting filming, it’s just going to be my final video part. I’ve filmed video parts for big productions since 2002, which is 13 years, and it sort of repeats itself – it’s always the same. As soon as the snow falls you’re just struggling to get shots, you kind of just want to fill up that four-minute video segment. To me gets a little bit boring after a while.

Did it start to become very mechanical?

Yeah, the season’s so short that kind of try to plan everything ahead. I’ve been to Japan 10 times and I always keep going back to the same place because I know the spots already, and I know if the weather changes I’m like ‘Ok we can still his this spot’. You always need to play everything sort of safe to be able to produce 25 shots that you can use for a video part, and I want to drift away from that; I want to be able to explore more and do projects that have more thought behind them. I don’t want to travel around the world trying to find snow so I can get one trick more for my video part, I just want to have a cool project that I can get my mind into, get it done, and then move onto something else.

I want to be able to explore more and do projects that have more thought behind them. I don’t want to travel around the world trying to find snow so I can get one trick more for my video part.

Something along the lines of what Grilo is doing seems a lot more of an interesting way, especially when you get a bit older and you want to pick and chose what you do with your time, rather than just ticking boxes.

Exactly. The thing is, I’ve been running my own program since 2009… Mack Dawg was done in 2008 and I started filming for Tracking Eero in 09, so for six years I’ve been kind of running my own program and producing my own things, doing Cooking with Gas, Tracking Eero, Eurogap 3 and now this movie. It’s been pretty hectic too, so hopefully next season I’ll be actually able to ride for myself and… I want to be available. Let’s say Grilo wants me to go to fuckin’ Siberia. I want to be able to go. In the past I couldn’t because I was too caught up in trying to get four minutes of footage for my video part. I would always have to say no, because I was too worried I wouldn’t get enough footage.

How did those guys influence your riding when you were a grom?

I think everyone influenced each other. Two guys, Eero Niemelä and Heikki Sorsa, those were the big dogs at the time, even though they were pretty much the same age – well, Heikki’s two years older – but I think their riding level was a little bit higher than everyone else’s. At the same time because we were all riding in the same group we were all learning the same tricks at the same time. If someone would learn a trick everyone else would learn it the same day. But you could tell that some of the guys had more talent and some of them just worked a bit harder to make it to the same level. I think if I’d started riding in Talma maybe the resort would have been better for snowboarding but in the end it was more about the crew I was riding with instead of the resort and how good it was.

As you’ve been doing it for over a decade, can you explain just how hard it is to film a part you’re proud of? I mean, out of all the parts you’ve filmed how many would you say ‘Yep, I’m fucking stoked on that’?

There are definitely a few that I’m not super stoked on. I’m stoked on the White Balance part – it has a lot of park footage but I think still it was my first part in a big American production and I’m happy with it. The Follow Me Around part, maybe the Eurogap 3 part and the first Cooking with Gas season. I think maybe those four out of 13 parts that I’m semi-satisfied with. I mean I’m happy with all of them, but if I had to pick the parts that I’m stoked on, that if I would have to show one of the parts to someone that hasn’t seen me snowboarding before, those would be the ones that I would probably pick.

But when it does work out how much is down to the rider’s talents, hard work, how much the weather, how much just luck?

I think almost the biggest part is of course trying to stay healthy. If you’re riding at a pro level it’s more about the creativity and being able to visualise the things that you want to have in your video part, and want to achieve. When I go into a season I already have this little text written out of the tricks that I want to do. And then I try to think about the spots where it would be possible to do them on to make the footage as banger as possible basically. Of course for me it always easier to plan all the urban stuff ahead and for the backcountry and park I’m just hoping I’m going to get sometime. But I think it’s more about visualising and almost defining yourself: like how would you want other people, other riders, to see you? I need to be stoked on the trick too, but I end up thinking ‘why would I do a switch backside 50-50 on this because I think no one would care because there’s so many other people who can do this 10 times better’, even though it would be a hard trick for me I’d rather do something that’s easier for me but still people would be super stoked on. But actually this season, I knew it was going to be my last part, I thought I’ve never had a switch backside 50-50 before so I’ll film one of these. I was actually going to the hill trying to learn new tricks so I would be proud of myself that I’d actually be bringing something new to the table. I wasn’t trying to step up the rail guys, but I was trying to step up myself. Trying to get something new out of myself.

If you’re riding at a pro level it’s more about the creativity and being able to visualise the things that you want to have in your video part, and want to achieve.

I think it gets to a stage when YouTube is full of video parts and kids don’t actually even care anymore. No matter how good the fucking video part is, it’s still only going to live in the internet for one day.

Let’s talk about the past winter. When you decided this would be your last season filming a part, what happened next?

The thing is you know Jaakko Ittäho, who filmed for Mack Dawg for those three years from Follow Me Around. I felt he was pretty much the mastermind behind those three movies – Follow Me Around, Picture This and Double Decade, he was mainly editing and most of the time he was filming with me 24/7. He’s a really visionary type of dude, but he used to work for Pablo Films and we had been talking about making this movie for the past year-and-a-half to two years. But suddenly Jaakko left Pablo Films to do some other work so I was left alone. I was like, ‘Alright, I mean I still want to make this movie but I don’t know with who…’ And then there was that video A Match Made in HEL, with Aarto Saari and some other guys were skating at Helsinki airport, so that thing was produced by Pablo Films too. So when that video came out I was super stoked and I called up the guy who directed and edited the film, and asked if he was into making my film if we got the budget together. He was fucking stoked, because he basically said he was pretty fed up with making tomato soup commercials [laughs]. He really wanted to get a job that he could concentrate on for a year straight, instead of doing something for two weeks and then have something else to do for the next two. Then we sat at a table, talked to Red Bull and got the budget together. And now here we are.

If you get too comfortable in your own crew you don’t feel you have to step up your game, but when you have these new people around you feel this urge to really do something good.

When did you start filming? Did you start in Finland?

Yeah, we started in Finland, it must have been late December. It’s kind of the way we always do it – wait till it snows in Finland and then we just start shooting. But it started snowing in Lapland, the most northern part of Finland, so we just drove all the way up and hit some handrails and stuff to get the project going. It was a cool learning experience, the two filmers I was working with were Jukka and Juri from Pablo Films and I’d never shot with either one of them before, so it was cool to get to know those guys and get on the first trips. We had Toni Kerkelä, Antti Jussila and Heikki tagging along, so we had a good crew. All the pieces came together and it was super fun –I think it was really motivating for me to to actually have new people around me, because I feel I get a new chance to show what I can do. I feel like I need to prove myself again – if you get too comfortable in your own crew you don’t feel you have to step up your game, you don’t really have to prove yourself anymore, but when you have these new people around you feel this urge to really do something good.

Just maybe without JP Walker crying.

Yeah, he’s not crying but there’s actually a little section of me when I’m probably three years old, when my dad’s trying to put me on a horse and I start crying [laughs].

Any other stuff around it? B footage, or just all focussed on the movie?

There’s going to be other segments made only for the internet. For sure we’ll release parts of the movie separately after those 24 hour viewings, but there will be stuff for sure. As we talked before, we can get you guys some exclusive footage to put out on Onboard.

Cool. That’s plenty. I’m sure you’ve never done this before, so do you want to give a shoutout to any friends and sponsors?

There’s too many people to thank. That’s actually one of the things I need to do for the end credits of my movie. Just thinking back to all the stuff, it’s pretty unbelievable that I’ve been able to snowboard for a living for the past 15 years. And having a great time and meeting all these amazing people, you can’t really describe the feeling. Like, fuck, when I finally retire and don’t snowboard professionally anymore… there’s some things and some memories… you can’t buy that stuff.