Travis Rice Talks Velvet Castle, the Never-Before-Ridden Pillow Line

Velvet Castle is a peak near Revelstoke in British Columbia.

Travis talked with Shelby Stanger about the experience, including how things had to align, from weather to snow conditions and more, to even give him and Austen Sweetin a chance to ride the peak.

"This face, the Velvet Castle.... We run through this whole procedure of green lights. Because any red light, it's like 'Okay, this isn't happening.' So we ran through probably ten green lights that morning that we got out to ride it, and it was like, 'Alright, everything has come together. We can go give it a shot."

Shelby asked Travis what was going through his head as he was riding down the run.

"Well, this was a unique face because a lot of times we shoot and film small pieces of terrain," explained Travis. "The thing with this was it was almost 4,000 feet with hundreds and hundreds of different pillow combinations and trying to ride the whole thing without screwing up, right? And so the goal that we set out with was trying to grease a top-to-bottom line through these hundreds of different obstacles, the majority of which, it's too complicated to plan out."

Travis continued, "You have a general idea. I had an idea what I was doing and where I was going, but there's so much that a lot of it you have to make up on the fly. And I think for myself, that was it.... It was one of the best days I've ever had in the mountains." 

When you are the first person to ride a line like this, you get the honor of naming it. Velvet Castle is named from Travis' partner, Brook Castle.

On the episode of the podcast, Travis also talks about Natural Selection and new endeavor Sendy, an app-based marketplace for buying and selling gear.

List to the whole episode of Wild Ideas Worth Living.