Kael Hill Manifests Hump Day

Kael Hill is one of the best rail riders in the world, but life can definitely get in the way of snowboarding, no matter how good you are. A wild child party animal and known fan of drugs and alcohol, Kael managed to get by and compete as a sponsorless rider for years, but was really forced in to the real world when he had his first child three years ago. He continued to compete and win some, but it seemed his snowboard glory days were behind him. Kael made a bold resurgence though, when he lauched a successful crowdsourcing campaign on Make a Champ and got himself to Quebec and Colorado, where he managed to win even more cash. It’s a great under dog tale of success, but obviously there’s much more to it.

You just won the Dew Tour Rail jam?

Best trick.

Don’t call it a comeback, how did it feel to win something after really putting yourself out there for a second chance?

It felt really good, I did a lot to prepare for the competition in Quebec and the Dew Tour, more than I ever have in my life, so I had a lot of confidence going in. I don’t think I would have had the audacity to do something like a crowd funding thing without taking it seriously.

Yeah, I don’t know how to feel about crowd sourcing your own snowboarding. Why did you decide to do it?

Because my friend Logan did it and I was In the midst of making some big personal changes and had some really good opportunities. Realistically it was my only option. Intuitively I knew I needed to be at those contests and it all happened in synchronicity.

You couldn’t go work on an oil rig or whatever it is Canadians do for quick cash?

Yeah, I could but I had just moved back to Calgary after losing my job house and girlfriend in Canmore and only had a few weeks notice. What would you have done?

I don’t know, I have said, if people are going to give out free money on the internet you might as well take it. 

No, I got half my funding before that video. I want to speak my truth and I think being transparent and giving insight into my past and why I’ve had problems with addictions, etc is necessary for solidifying positive personal growth. I think people are disempowered by those situations in life and speaking out hopefully other people will be inspired to rise above their challenges. But thanks for being so sensitive.

Sensitivity is not one of my skills. How much did you win at the Dew Tour?

$1000 at the Dew Tour and $4000 in Quebec.

And how much did you crowd source?

$3400, minus their fees, for a total of $2800, with which I payed for both plane tickets costing $1600, hotels, a snowboard pass for the season to train, a yoga pass and a few other training related things.

Sounds like you’re pretty set up. That’s amazing, seems like it’s all working out.

Yes, completely set up for the year, I feel absolutely blessed. Good things happen when you make space by letting go of that which does not serve you.

Empire City Troopers. BABAS PHOTO

So you quit drinking and drugs?

I quit the patterns that habitually lead me astray, habitually drinking and doing drugs being one of those things, but it’s much more than that.

Do you think the snowboard industry glorifies that stuff too much? You can’t watch a snowboard video without seeing someone blow smoke at the screen…

Definitely, and I’ve been a part of it in the past. I want to be a positive influence. It hurts my heart to think that I’ve participated in making it seem cool. Using as medicine drugs has a place and a time (not just marijuana) but blatant recreational abuse is not necessary.

Being bad sells! Doing contests only pays the bills if you win.

I agree, however I’m not concerned with that sells. I want to do what I know is right in my core and I believe that will resonate with people beyond what sells.

Where are you living this winter?

I’m going to be based out of Calgary.

Do you think making a living as a snowboarder is harder in Canada than the US?

It is definitely harder. There’s 1/10 the population so the market for snowboarding companies to market to is a fraction what there is in the States.

So I assume you are working in Calgary?

Yeah, I work for the Source Snowboard shop doing deliveries and wearhouse work.

How often do you get to snowboard?

A couple times a week, usually for a few hours after work, before yoga. I will snowboard a lot more in the New Year because my job will be less demanding. We’re just really busy for Christmas season.

When you can’t snowboard…Photo Nat Hunter.

Do you have plans to go to any other contests?

I’m going to enter a video contest called Stair Masters at the Snowboard Jamboree in Quebec and the Shakedown later in the season. Other than that I don’t know of any other rail contests. Most of my season from now on will be back country and handrails.

Alright, so, what happened to all your sponsors? How did you end up in the predicatment you were in?

I don’t know if I would call it a predicatment. Basically DC offered me a contract to ride just for them and I countered offered to just ride boots and hoodies because I didn’t like the boards. They wouldn’t accomodate for that, so I was like, ok, see ya. And then most of the other small brands that I was riding for went out of business when the financial crash bullshit happened, so I didn’t have any sponsors really.

When was that?

Sometime around 2008 or 2009 or something.

So it’s been a while since you’ve had sponsors?

Well, I kinda rode for the Source and I kinda rode for Niche, but other than that yeah, I didn’t really have any sponsors.

Were you still pursuing snowboarding and trying to travel anyway?

For a little while I was. I went to the US Open without Sponsors and Shakedown and shit. And I still filmed my part for Dope II and I filmed a little segment for Nuulife a couple years ago. But I don’t know if pursue is right, I was never really pursuing anything, just kinda doing it. Just making it happen, I guess.

The good old days. 2008.

You were a big fan of acid and drugs.

Yeah, I’ve done a lot of drugs.

What’s it like snowboarding on acid?

It’s good, it’s like snowboarding on a better version of yourself so you’re a better version of a snowboarder. If you do the right dose and it’s done properly. But if you do too much and you’re just a jiggly ball of goo then that’s not going to get you very far.

But you’re off it now, right? 

All those drugs can have a positive benefit in your life, but it’s kind of like a scale. If what you have in your life is wose then the drugs are going to bring you up to a certain point, but if you move past that point in your life, every time you do drugs you’re kinda being brought back down. It’s kind of like a scale of relativity. People say certain drugs are uppers or or downers, but a whole wide variety of drugs will give a variety of people a different experience. I think the reason is all related to the frequency of vibrations. Let’s say we’re on a pathway and if you’re below where the drug is, it’s going to bring you up. That’s why when people do weed or acid for the first time a lot of times they say they have life changing experiences. But once your normal life is at par with where the vibration of that drug is, you get beyond it, and basically it’s just bringing you down. That’s where releasing things that no longer serve you kinda comes into play. If you’re always being brought down by drugs, obviously it’s preventing you from moving forward.

How did you break the cycle of addiction and move past that?

I think for me, I would like to do Ayahuasca and I’d like to experiment with more shamanisitic types of drugs, maybe continue my experimentation with DMT a little bit, but for the most part, I think you can get a lot of the same results out of meditation that you get out of drugs. I’m still undecided about that. I think as far as how to balance doing drugs versus keeping your life on track –  was a pretty damn functioning drug user in a lot of ways, especially when I was holding jobs and supporting the kids and stuff. But I think at the end of the day, if you can just not do drugs, it’s just a lot better for moving forward in life. Is it possible to hold a balance and try to keep this things in your life, yes, but for me, I’m over it. Especially in a recreational setting.

Peace and love. BABAS photo

How did having kids change things for you?

Well, basically I went from pretty much the epitome of zero responsiblity/party animal/drug abuser/ all around traveling vagabond to pretty much having to support a family overnight. I’ve got some pretty cool stories about hitchhiking and traveling between when my girlfriend was pregnant and when I ended up being there to do the full time dad thing, but I’ll save that for another day. Ultimately yeah, huge transition. Very shocking, paradigm shifting. Just an overall shock. Does that shock you? I’m shocked. It was a huge shock to the brain. So you mean I have to be responsible and support and guide and mentor a small human verison of myself? And I’m nowhere near in a place to do that right now? That’s a lot to soak in, but I don’t know, I just fucking gave a shit, and did my best. I think I am just now fully getting to the other side of the full circle progression of having kids some three years later now, and they’re not even in my life. But were they in my life, I’m definitely in a position to be the coolest, best dad ever.

What happened with your kids? Why aren’t they in your life?

They live real far away from me right now and basically I’ve been completely shut out from all communication. I’m not 100% sure the reason for that. Her parents don’t really like me and she lives under the iron fist of her mother. I think that she threw me under the bus quite a bit when she stopped having other excuses for her depression. I would say there was the drug use and stuff like that. There’s a lot of factors but ultimately it takes two to tango and I was never a bad dad. I didn’t do any sketchy shit to endanger the kids, or anything ever, and overall it’s fucked. I miss my kids, I need my kids, I love them. Kaiden Xavier is 3 and Lotus Emerald is 6 months, and I’ve only met her like two or three times max.

It is a goal to get them back in your life?

I wouldn’t say it’s a goal, I’d say its imperative. I never ran away from the situation in the first place, which a lot of people thought I would and thought that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. That I would just pussy out and dick off, and I’m certainly not gonna do that now. I think they think if they ignore me I’m just gonna go away, but realistically the situation just gets worse for them as they ignore me, because that just means I am going to have to take them to court. There’s been all sorts of fucked up shit that they did on their end of things. Moving her to a different province, in a not-sound state of mind. Without me really having a choice. Shutting me off from communication. When my first son was born, my baby momma’s momma actually forced me to leave the hospital before the document signing so that I wasn’t legally the father on paper. There’s lot of fucked up shit. The only thing that they ever could have brought against me was to say that I partied or did drugs or anything like that, but now that I’m in the process of changing my life on that aspect, they really have nothing. They’re kinda just fucking themselves.

How has snowboarding played a role in your growth through all this?

There’s two different places you can snowboard from. You can snowboard from an ego center. Which is the center that defines all of your decision making in regards to what you’re doing. Anytime that you’re snowboarding you get little feelings or thoughts about what trick to do here or there, whether it’s a bad idea or a good idea to hit the jump or the rail. Sometimes we listen to them, sometimes we don’t listen. If we’re not listening to that little guidance that has our best interests at heart, then we’re probably snowboarding from an ego center. For me, snowboarding is yoga. Yoga basically just means union, a union of mind and body or soul, whatever words you wanna use. The self connection and the ability to fine tune that experiment with what is the vision that I’m having in my head and what is physical result that is coming from that? It’s the process of assertation or concious creation, but applied in a physical setting where you can see the results in a dynamic and almost instantaneous sort of way. I find that fascinating.

How did you balance snowboarding with having kids.

I didn’t really. To be honest. When you’re working full ass time and you have kids, the last thing your kid’s mom wants to hear after you’ve worked 12 hours a day for a week straight is that when your day off comes around that you wanna go snowboarding with your friends. Let’s face it, that’s not going to happen, unless you wanna be in the doghouse for like a month. Basically all I did was competitions. She knew that I would usually win money and winning money is good for the family. That was sort of my jusitification. “Thank goodness there’s two competitions his weekend, honey. You know that car payment is coming up or we need groceries.” As pathetic and counter to my self-professed mind-body-soul connection through snowboarding as that sounds, it was the only way that I could get out and do it. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, and for me that was competitions. I think it’s been good though. At a couple contests I basically showed up to the ski hill with nothing, and went into the rental shop. You have to sell your way into them giving you free rental equipment and then you have to win the competition on the free rental equipment. That’s always been a fun game that I’ve gottem myself into playing over the last few years.

How do you pull that off? How do you win a contest having not snowboarded and board you’ve not ridden before? Are you just that naturally talented?

You just make the choice to win. You make the choice that it’s gonna work out and you just manifest it. You set the intention, you constantly visualize and you listen to your inner guidance. And if you do that, without having any lapses if your self connection, then you end up following the pathway thought to the end result. If that means winning the contest, then you’ve manifested success.

What’s your plan with snowboarding now? Are you gonna try and pick up sponsors again and do that whole thing?

I’m not sure I’m going to follow the typical route of sponsorship. I’ve definitely got some support from some companies right now and I’m gonna take a second to give a shout out to those companies, cause well, they hooked me up with product and they’re giving me the opportunity to build a relationship with them. Jason at Fix Binding Co, Guillame at iFound, Mark at r57 recovery drinks, Beau over at Nutritive Health Foods, Darrell Trinidad and Greg at Spy. Dave Bernie at 32, Dave’s bastards at Timebomb trading, as well as Brady Gant at Clifford Menswear and my homey Dalton at Marble Mansion. And Kevin at Sandbox.

As far as direction, I’ve got this website going on and I’ve had this process of constant mental progression that I’ve been working on in my studies and my learning over the past goodness knows how many years. I’m actually gonna be releasing a little peek into that in this web video that I’m going to be putting out next week. I’m going to be looking to do a lot of explanation in regards to that and with a lot of web videos over at my website. A lot of snowboarding related videos. Really trying to amp up my website in alignment with that. I want to basically get a collaborative brand going. Basically make collaborative versions of products with the companies that support me. That would be another channel for funding my snowboarding. My goal is really just to transcend the norm of how people approach the snowboard industry. I want to be a businessman within the industry, as well as a snowboarder and a staple in that sense.

Doing the make a champ thing, going to all those contests, deciding to sober up and all that stuff, it all happened in sequence. It’s sort of like, yes you can intellectually and mentally create a plan with your concious mind to do stuff. Make a vision, make a plan, make some action. But when you really find that flow in your life, it seems to just kind of unfold. Right now, the vision isn’t 100% clear but it’s been kind of unfolding and opening up to be as I make more space in my life. The most recent thing that I’ve done is go to a stop-smoking hypnotherapy thing, so I’m really excited to see what comes from that. I don’t really know what’s gonna happen next. But website, videos, and concious progression formula theory, kinda get that out there. Just be myself and kinda make some waves.

The think that’s a great ending for this, but anything else you wanna say?

Yeah one more thing, just about snowboarding. Go snowboarding, god damn it.

You can follow Kael’s journey at http://www.kaelhill.com/