Professional snowboarder Austin Smith lived in his fire truck at Mt. Bachelor this past ski season. In this video he describes what it was like.
Austin Smith picked a great season to live in a fire truck at Mt Bachelor. From New Year’s Eve to February he parked his custom-designed “Northwest District Truck No. 1” at the Mt. Bachelor lot and boarded almost everyday.
Born in December 1988, Austin grew up shredding the slopes of Mt Bachelor in Bend, Oregon. He eventually earned sponsorship with Nitro and others and hit the circuit until this past December when he converted an old fire truck into a sweet mobile home and moved in New Year’s Eve day.
“When I was 15 I snowboarded here every day… I wanted to do that again this year,” he says about Mt Bachelor and he choose the perfect time because January brought 2.75 metres of new snow followed up another three metres in February!
Of the fire truck Austin said in an interview with TransWorld Snowboarding, “It’s a 1953 GMC fire truck. I don’t know what the model would be. Back then I think it was just like ‘truck’. GMC Truck. It’s a gasoline straight-line 6-cylinder. We took off the fire truck portion and added a sh**load of weight to it, so it’s gutless. It tops out at about 30 miles per hour.”
In that interview Austin goes on to say, he decided to park at Mt Bachelor this past season because, “I’ve been traveling so much for the last ten years; I just wanted a reason or excuse to snowboard here at Mount Bachelor and snowboard every day like when I was 17. When I was 17 I’d take the bus up to the mountain. First bus up, last bus down—just ride from open to close every single day, whether it was raining or if it was good. But I’ve become such a powder snob and gotten busy with other stuff, I just wasn’t snowboarding as much as I used to or as much as I’d like to. So this has been helping facilitate me snowboarding every day. It’s working very well. I’ve just been going open to close. Normally I’d come up for a couple hours then head back to town for lunch and deal with emails and such.
For more about Austin’s fire truck lifestyle, check out our blog post featuring another video of him and his sponsor Smartwool: kootenaymountainculture.com/honest-review-smartwool-baselayers.
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