Interview – Mike Graves, AKA Dino Mike
Years in Revelstoke?
6
Favourite Snowboard movies?
The Wild Cat movies for sure.
Do you have any all time favourite or inspiring snowboarders?
I’d probably say like Nicholas Mueller and Gigi Ruf are major inspirations. More local and you have the likes of Johan Rosen, Dustin Craven all those guys are rad and doing cool shit right here and now.
Favourite trick?
Front 720 off the toes! Just feels crazy good!
Originally from?
Nova Scotia, drove my little Camry 6000km, was a big deal for me and I haven’t really wanted to leave since.
Did you know you were coming to Revelstoke when you did that? Had you been here before?
Yeah, I had been here on a couple of trips/ I was looking for a place to move, looked at Banff and Golden and they just seemed a bit too much for me, too touristy. Whereas Revelstoke felt more in the middle of nowhere, but still along the Trans Canada.
How did you start snowboarding? Like when & how did that happen for you?
I started of skiing and then my brother started snowboarding, at around 12 I wanted to do what my brother was doing. So I remember taking a couple of lessons.
Then one year we went to Lake Louise on March break, and got a couple more lessons. I remember doing a run with my family but getting lost in the woods. Screaming and crying, having to take off my board and walk through deep snow. Kind of a horrific memory, turns out I was just between two cat track, so not really lost at all. I guess weirdly those experience grew on me and now I love going into the backcountry.
Haha, the right of passage! Yeah so those experiences grew and you started competing at some point, right?
Yeah. So another March break trip we went down to California to Kirkwood and there, I entered in my first snowboard contest, which was a snowboard cross race. It was super fun and jokes. I met a couple of American kids that I wouldn’t have normally met going snowboarding. Of course I was nervous and stuff but I ended up getting third in the contest, which was sheer luck. People fell in front of me, so I got to get over them and make it through.
That’s competition right there.
Yeah totally. After that I realised you can compete and snowboarding, and it’s a lot of fun. When I went back to Nova Scotia, I joined the Nova Scotia snowboard team. I started doing snowboard cross racing, and I met a great group of people and we were all super into it. And the Canada games were coming up. This was like 2010 going on 2011. So we were all pushing really hard to get those spots. Which I didn’t end up making it, but I got to for run, I was really young and everyone else was a lot older, so I was still super stoked.
I was still competing pretty heavily and I went to the world university games in Italy and that was like the biggest shit show of my life. Showed up in Italy, all my gear had been lost so had to borrow everything until competition day. I wasn’t sure but it was costing a lot of money to achieve very little. I still love snowboarding, just doing it for myself.
Right, so is that when the shift to doing more video stuff happened, or had that element always been there?
So it was kind of always happening as a very side aspect of it, but it slowly grew and grew. I loved to throw a GoPro on my head and rip through a border cross course and then put music of the run or something like that. Then after training or competition stuff we just started taking cameras out to have fun and film all kinds off stuff.
Just fun to film with of your friends.
Yeah, and then I guess for me I now this on film forever. Just be able to remember it forever. Like yeah., take me back to that moment.
Let’s just jump into the movie that you put out year. Where did thee name come from?
Honestly, like we were struggling really hard to pick a name for the movie. We were just like, what do we say every day that like some it all up and so often we would say Whaddaday!
You’re just like, bam, there’s the name for the movie.
Who’s in the movie?
Ah, so my there’s a lot of us, but like the crew mainly was myself, Lucas, Nato, Andrew, and Bambi. Then just like everyone else who had shred with us had a part in the friends section.
Did you have an overall vision or goal for the movie?
There wasn’t really a goal for it. I knew over the years, I’ve always really enjoyed making an end of year edit. I remember at the beginning of the year I found a great deal on a cinema camera. So I was like, well, I’m gonna scoop that up cuz I want that for my life. It just came down to like, yo, like let’s use this thing as much as we can. That’s kind of what we did. We’d always talk like, oh, what are we gonna do with all this footage. It was kind of just a throw together
I think you lot crushed it, with the screening on the truck at City Transfer it definitely felt like hanging out having good times with the homies!
Yeah, it was cool. How much of the community was down to not only come out and watch, but like support local snowboarding stuff. Kurt, the owner of Infinite Power Sports was so down to have us play a movie at his place, which we were stoked on. And then all the companies, Society, Free Spirit, Somewon just name a few, they were all super down and very helpful. It was pretty incredible that a bunch of snowboarders could put this all together and have people come watch it and be stoked.
That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day, get everyone stoked!