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Breaking trail

Victoria Jealouse goes where no woman has gone before

It was the early 1990s. Snowboarding, once the pariah of the snow sports industry, was just starting to move into the mainstream. A new breed of snow stars was emerging, along with new magazines and movies that promoted snowboarder culture.

Talent got noticed early, and when it came to the females in the sport, Victoria Jealouse was in a league of her own almost from the beginning. Although the league has gotten a lot bigger over the years, Jealouse still stands alone as one of the top big mountain riders in the sport.

She’s a member of the Whistler-Blackcomb Pro Team as well as a 12-year veteran with Burton’s Global Team. Her list of video and magazine credits is as long as any pro rider’s in the biz (over 22 movies and counting) and she hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down. If anything, she says, she’s getting better with every year.

"You can’t stagnate," she says. "You have to keep pushing yourself every day you ride. The only way it’s satisfying for me is if I keep learning, keep progressing.

"I still get scared out there sometimes, if a line is super-exposed or tight through some rocks or something, but sometimes that’s what you need to bring out your best.

"So many things have to come together to have a great run. It just feels like I’m still learning and that so many pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together for me."

Several members of the Burton Global Team were in Whistler last week for a company marketing meeting. Although Jealouse calls Whistler home, she spends so much time on the road that the conference provided a rare opportunity to catch up with the girl that Powder Magazine called "the world’s preeminent big mountain rider, laying down lines and accomplishing feats no other female – skier or snowboarder – can match." High praise from a magazine that caters mainly to skiers.

Some of Jealouse’s appeal no doubt has something to do with her obvious appeal – five foot one, blonde and stunningly beautiful. But it’s her ability to shred the most technical backcountry lines that has really gotten her the most attention over the years. As far as the industry is concerned, she’s the real deal.

It didn’t start out that way. Jealouse has had to work to gain the respect of filmmakers, pro riders and the industry by bravely going where no woman has gone before.

Jealouse started out as a ski racer, and tried snowboarding for the first time in 1989. She made the switch permanently the following year, and the year after that she headed to Europe with her alpine board to race in giant slalom events.

"The first races I just crashed and burned. I only planned to be there, travelling around and racing, until I ran out of money. When I was almost broke, I had my first good result. I took the money I made there and used it to get to the next race. And the next race. And the race after that. I was getting some pretty good results and I was just loving the races and the people."

She attracted the attention of Burton Snowboards, who sponsored her race career for the next few years. In the 1993-94 season, just as FIS was taking over the sport from the ISF, she decided to make a change.

"I asked at Burton, can I do what all those guys are doing, the ones who don’t compete, they just film?" Jealouse recalled. "It was really open in those days. They said sure, and gave me a chance. There were no girls doing that at the time so I think they were curious to see what would happen.

"It was really difficult at first, because I didn’t have any girls come before me. I had to learn everything myself, how to film, how to be professional. At first a lot of the guys didn’t know me or what I could do, so they would all get their lines and shots first and I’d just get to ride what was left over.

"The guys could be really aggressive about who goes where, and who gets what and that wasn’t really my style, I wasn’t going to compete with them," she said.

Gradually she started to prove herself more than capable of riding the toughest terrain, earning the respect of the riders and film producers. Over the years she developed a bit of a cult following for her video segments – nothing it seems was too steep or too narrow or too technical for Jealouse, who went on to top reader polls at Transworld Snowboarding, Powder Magazine and other industry publications.

The days of Jealouse having to fight for lines and industry respect are long gone. She mostly rides and films with people she considers her friends, and if not the respect is still there thanks to her reputation. She hopes some of that respect rubs off on other female riders coming up, and is always happy to give friends and up and coming riders advice.

"Maybe they won’t have to go through what I did, because it was a struggle in the beginning," she said.

Jealouse doesn’t feel any pressure to be a role model, because she believes that her job as a pro snowboarder is to show girls what they can do, "so they can go out and do what they dream of doing. I have other women as my role models, too."

There are other ways that Jealouse has made a difference for women in the sport. It was her idea to make a line of once unisex snowboard boots for women – "the liners were hurting my calves and digging into my shins," she said – and market a line of smaller, lighter boards.

She also had a hand in helping to design snowboard fashions that fit women’s bodies, allowing them to feel more comfortable on the slopes.

While women-only snowboard videos have a limited following, she has helped out there as well when she could. She even served as guest editor for SG Magazine, a girls-only surf, ski, snowboard and skateboard magazine.

"That was just such an awesome experience for me, I got to write an article and pick the pictures and write all the captions – for me it just validated this crazy idea that you can snowboard as a career, and that I was doing something that could affect other girls."

Jealouse hopes that women-only venues will continue to grow, at least until the industry changes its practice of portraying men and women differently.

"When I ride it’s with both my girlfriends and guy friends, and from what I’ve seen around that’s a pretty normal thing in most circles. I’d just like it if the media was able to portray that as well, as it really is," said Jealouse.

"Right now I’ll support an all-girls anything, that’s just my reaction to the lack of women’s coverage out there. I wish it didn’t have to be like that. I really wish I could open a snowboard magazine or watch a movie and see guys and girls riding together."

Jealouse is not only concerned with equality in the sport of snowboarding. While working with Teton Gravity Research for the past three years, she has been riding alongside skiers.

"All of this division between (skiing and snowboarding) is pretty ridiculous to me. A snowboard is just a tool, like skis are a tool, but the snow is the same, and the mountains are the same and the spirit is the same. I find TGR’s decision to show both sports and treat them equally to be really refreshing."

Big lines come with an element of risk, and Jealouse has been swept away in a few avalanches in the past. She’s never been buried, but those experiences have been etched into her mind. She doesn’t take chances any more and doesn’t make decisions based on avalanche ratings and snow science, because they can be wrong. Rather than play the odds, she imagines what the worst case scenario could be in any situation.

"I’ve said ‘no’, and I’ve turned back. A lot of people get out there and say ‘Hey, I’ve come all this way, I’ll take my chances’, but I’ve never put that kind of pressure on myself. Sometimes someone else will ride the same line and everything would be okay, but if I’m not a hundred per cent sure about something I won’t do it," she said.

"If there’s no way out of the avalanche path, or if the path takes you off a 300 foot cliff, or there’s a depression at the bottom where all the snow is going to pile up, then you have to be prepared to die that day, if that’s the worst case."

As a snowboarder who makes her living tackling steep, big mountain lines, she says it’s important to tell people the other side of the story, and how much safety is really involved in a movie or magazine shoot.

The new TGR movies do show the safety side more than movies in the past, and Jealouse is proud of her segments in movies like Soul Purpose, High Life and The Prophesy . In those movies she used a new method of getting to her lines – sitting on the basket that’s strapped to the landing gear of the helicopter, her snowboard strapped to her feet, while grabbing a sling for dear life.

"It was pretty scary at first, you think the wind from the chopper blades are going to rip the snowboard off your feet and it’s so loud, but it’s pretty cool to be able to drop right onto the slope and it opened up a lot of new terrain possibilities for us," said Jealouse.

"It’s actually pretty safe, which is something I really like about TGR. They let me pick my lines and never try to get you to do something you’re uncomfortable with."

Jealouse’s only goal for this year is to stay closer to home filming. Although she loves to travel and see new places, she regrets that she often spends about six days travelling for every day snowboarding.

"Whistler is my home and really has the best terrain anywhere. I’ve been to a lot of places now and I have obligations to travel, but as much as I can I’m going to try and stay in my backyard. I love to travel but it cuts into my snow days," said Jealouse.

Jealouse also likes to be able to snowboard in-bounds at Whistler-Blackcomb, taking a break from snowmobiles and filming. After coming here for 17 years, she says she’s still learning new lines, connecting sections of the mountain in different ways. The backcountry will always be her first love, but she needs to do a little of every kind of riding to feel complete.

"I love the halfpipe, I love learning new tricks, I love hucking myself when the conditions are good, but for me the most exciting thing is big lines on big mountains. It’s so surreal when I’m doing it. It’s a dream to film big mountain stuff, and the reality of it is even cooler than my dreams."