Snowboarding
Ben Ferguson's Powder Strike to British Columbia
Watch as Ben Ferguson and his crew ditch the contest scene for neck-deep powder at Baldface Lodge.
3 min
Ben Ferguson at Baldface
Powder missions in British Columbia.
Beneath a hazy, clouded sky deep in the British Columbia backcountry, Ben Ferguson straps into his bindings and surveys the scene below. There’s no halfpipe in sight, no jersey on his back, and no pressure on his shoulders. All he sees is powder, kilometers and kilometers of powder. If you had asked him at that moment, he would tell you he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
Ferguson is known for many things in snowboarding. At the top of that list is his prowess in halfpipe competition, where he’s had one of the most decorated years of his career. A silver at the Aspen X-Games and another at the Burton U.S. Openwere two high marks of his podium efforts this winter. However, that remains just a sliver of the Ferguson we’ve all come to know in snow.
Ben Ferguson and the boys
© Aaron Blatt
We sent him to Baldface Lodge in British Columbia, as far as we could get him from any contest, to a place where really, everybody wins. Flanked by a core crew — his brothers Zach and Gabe Ferguson, his coach James Jackson, and a hometown Bend, OR, hero in Pat Malendoski — Ben was sent to tap into the core essence of why he loves snowboarding. Simple as that.
There were deeper roots at play here as well, which starts with every guy on the trip being a Mt. Bachelorlocal. James Jackson, an industry stalwart, renowned digger, and Ferg’s coach, shaped the very parks, ramps, and pipes the Ferguson brothers learned to snowboard on. Malendoski was one of the most prolific park builders in snowboarding as well until he discovered a brain tumor in 2014. This trip was his first return to the backcountry after treatment of the cancer. And Ben’s little brothers, Zach and Gabe, are following in his tracks, almost directly in step.
So this was more than just a strike mission, technically, but that’s not to say there was much complexity to it at all. The boys all found exactly what they were looking for, and tapped into the core of it all: Powder, powder as far as the eye could see.
