Snowboarding
Behold Ryan Hudson’s amazing journey—from homeless youth to pro snowboarder.
Jackson, Wyoming, is 1,000 miles and 10 light-years from where Ryan Hudson grew up. Hudson, a professional freeride snowboarder, is visiting the mountain town in late December to carve turns on the notorious steeps at Jackson Hole and work on a yet-to-be-announced video project. “I feel such a strong connection to the mountains,” says Hudson, 31. “When I plug into the mountains it feels like all the negative energy I’ve had all day just disappears.”
This sounds like a universal expression of the majesty of the outdoors from an elite mountain athlete, but Hudson’s path to enlightenment is far from universal. Fittingly, he’s coined a hashtag, #Streets2Peaks, that distills his journey and his mantra.
To be blunt, Hudson did not have a childhood like most pro snowboarders. The first 14 years of his life—living in San Diego with his mother and four siblings—often were defined by homelessness and instability. When he was 15 he secured legal emancipation from his mom and enrolled at the Toussaint Academy, a housing and education center for at-risk and homeless teens.
The trajectory of Hudson’s life changed one day in 2004 when he went on a trip, organized by the center and a nonprofit called Outdoor Outreach, to visit a ski resort in the San Bernardino Mountains. “There aren’t a lot of words to express the reality of being in the mountains and feeling snow for the first time,” he recalls. “The air and the clouds and the people were different. I suddenly felt part of a community that was different. I felt like I was in love. I got out of the van and jumped into a pile of snow.”
There would be more mountains of snow in his future. Already a gifted skateboarder, Hudson picked up snowboarding quickly, and the combination of his verve and his backstory got him lots of attention. Life changed rapidly. At 19 he was living at Utah’s Snowbird Resort and riding 100 days a year; a year later he became an ambassador for The North Face; and at 21 he was competing as a sponsored athlete. Quite literally, he’d gone from streets to peaks.
But bigger peaks were in his future. At the 2012 winter Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City, Hudson met mountaineering icon Conrad Anker, who had summitted Everest three times. Impressed by Hudson, Anker invited him to join a 2013 expedition to climb Mount McKinley in Alaska, the 20,310-foot beast widely known as Denali. The team was led by Anker, noted mountaineer Phil Henderson and acclaimed writer and climber Jon Krakauer.
Even now, Hudson can visualize glimpsing the summit—and never reaching it. He and Krakauer had pushed on alone and were bonding—Hudson was feeling strong and sharing the story of his climb from shelters to brand ambassadorship without a clue that he was chatting with the author of Into Thin Air. “We were 200 feet from the summit, and I was about to tear up because Jon and I were having our bro moment,” Hudson recalls. “But Jon turns around and says, ‘This is great, but we’ve got to get out of here.’ Suddenly the clouds turned black and there were 60-mile-per-hour winds.”
The situation went from bad to worse as they descended to meet the rest of their group. Lightning began pounding the mountain. The air and their gear bristled with electricity. “Conrad took command,” Hudson says. “For 10 minutes we laid face down in the snow. It went from one of the best moments in my life to one of the most terrifying moments.”
Every day I think about how the mountains move me.
The lessons Hudson learned high on Denali—that the mountains are more than a playground; how skills can save your ass at high elevations—increased his attraction to the mountains. “I had this feeling that I really was in my element up there,” he says. “That felt more like home than the streets I grew up on.”
A lot has transpired in the years since that climb—more triumphs and skills; a long-term move to Utah; and top-shelf sponsors like Jones Snowboards, Smith, Vans and Discrete Clothing. And there have been times, especially in 2020, of instability. “No doubt, I’ve had financial challenges this year,” Hudson says. “But I’m OK. I’m used to not having a lot of stability.”
Still, Hudson’s commitment to #Streets2Peaks has not wavered. “I come from nothing and I am addicted to the mountains,” he says. “There is no plan B.” To make plan A succeed, he’s focusing on his backcountry education: working on his avalanche certification and riding as much as he can in the Wasatch backcountry. He’s been invited to be filmed in Jeremy Jones’ next film, a sequel to Ode to Muir that will feature pros showing their backcountry chops in the remote wilds of California’s Southern Sierra.
I know I’m a unicorn and every day something reminds me of that.
Hudson has some longer-term plans, too, which include a push toward financial stability as well as a second chance at Denali’s summit. “I have to go back and conquer that thing,” he says simply.
As our call winds down, the conversation turns to race. It’s a tough topic for Hudson—his Black experience is part of where he comes from and has defined many of his struggles in life and sport and his own advocacy, but he wishes he could just enjoy his time in the mountains without peering through the lens of race. “I know I’m a unicorn and every day something reminds me of that,” he says. “I’ve had an endless number of interactions making note of the whiteness of this sport, and eyeballs are on me all the time. There’s almost like a cultural misunderstanding of who is allowed to do these things.”
In the end, Hudson is committed to his own journey and to blazing a trail for future wintry unicorns. “Every day I think about how the mountains move me,” he says. “This is not some exclusive thing—we all belong here.”
