CHRIS ROACH: How's that mic sounding now, is it all right?
Yeah, I have duct tape.
We could actually kind of put a pinch on it and tape it up.
-Yeah.
CHRIS ROACH: You want to do that?
-Yeah, that's fine.
CHRIS ROACH: When you put a little pressure down on it--
yeah.
Yep, 250F.
This is my son's 150 and my other son's little TTR50.
We're all into motocross, man.
Yeah, Santa Cruz is just doing an amateur team this year.
-Oh really?
CHRIS ROACH: Yeah, so--
oh, here they are, right here.
And I called them, you know, I've been dealing with them
forever, but I'll be their only rider that's, I guess, a
professional.
But I'm old.
You know what I mean?
[LAUGH]
I got a model from last year with Santa Cruz.
[INAUDIBLE]
I don't know if you ever saw that one.
But, this year's board, this one here.
And this is what I did when I rode, I think, in , like, '90
or '91 or something.
I just stickered my board this way.
And then they sublimated it and made those graphics.
That one right there I ride at the Donner Vintage one.
That was my first model, the one with the genie up there is
my first one.
And I rode that at that Donner Vintage contest.
-We probably didn't have one.
[LAUGH]
I got lucky.
When I was younger, I gave all that shit to my mom, you know?
I knew I wouldn't build any out with all your friends and
shit, taking everything.
Palmer's board, for the championship, him and Brushy
we're going against each other.
And it was raining on the snow, so I quit riding,
started drinking and cheering them on because it was so
shitty, I mean, you couldn't even get above the pipe.
It says Roach did not win the truck, but I did get mad, and
we will get drunk [LAUGH]
in '92.
And he just destroyed his board.
And I'm like, dude, let me have that board.
Write me a story on it.
He should do [INAUDIBLE], too.
My biggest influence in snowboarding was him and Noah,
for sure-- no doubt about it.
I mean, those guys were the gnarliest guys, man.
We need Noah's rhino to get up there, man.
We're going to have to walk.
NOAH SALASNEK: So you know, he's an a regional Grass
Valley guy.
And though I do live here now, I'm not from this area.
So Chris, and Tucker, and Monte, and all these guys are
from Grass Valley.
And I always respected that whole little crew because they
were all so talented.
So I'd see them riding and ended up meeting then and
becoming friends with them, I guess, over the years.
Yeah, it's always been a mutual friendship, either
skating, or snowboarding, and now motocross
occasionally together.
And we stayed friends, and it's pretty cool.
He's a really good skateboarder, too, and people
probably don't know that he's a really good
motocross rider, too.
He's an avid rider.
And he's been, actually, competing and doing well.
So it's good to see he's that motivated, and he's with his
family and works hard.
He's a good guy, so much respect for him.
CHRIS ROACH: Right now, I'm in the process of clearing all
this shit out, all this--
you know what poison oak is?
Yeah.
You guys have that?
So you don't want to touch any of that.
I get it horribly bad.
Well, I'm going to clear all this out, so you can actually
walk around everywhere here.
Yeah, this would've been cool to be able to film this.
This is like, you could've gotten up there, the view.
This is a triple jump right here.
That would've been sick back drop.
Click third gear, and then it's about a 60 foot double.
And then this one's about 82 right here, step down triple,
right here.
Yeah it's fun, and it goes all the way around.
I mean, we could walk it.
It goes way up around the woods over there.
It's got a sick step up, and then another table out, and
then back round.
It's about a 45-second long track.
I do a lot of amateur stuff.
I ride the 30-plus intermediate class, and then
the 250 novice class.
And locally, I ride the E-street races and
then we do hang town.
We did the MX crossover down there.
I think I got it than that in the monster class.
And in the intermediate class, I got third.
Fuck, that sucks.
I wish I could write it.
It'd be so sick with you standing up on the ditch, and
me stepping up to you.
There's a rock plant that's just right down the street
that I work with all the time.
They're going to sell me some sand for cheap, so I'll bring
a bunch of sand in here, and just this'll
be like a sand track.
That'll be sick.
And then, once again, you just land.
So this is just a third gear little step up right here.
I tried to mimic Hangtown's step up.
Yeah this give here that you've going to step down,
[INAUDIBLE]
and then the line is kind of right there.
I mean, you can see, it's like the perfect, fastest
lines on the edge.
It's so nice.
The tracks are probably about 45 minutes away from me.
So having this here, it gives me the exercise
whenever I want it.
And it's just so nice.
Rider's 2 and 1/2, almost three, and he's real
interested in it.
And my other son, Talon, he's 8, and he's
totally into motocross.
And Jaren's just, he's got the 150.
He loves it too.
So they're all into snowboarding and motocross.
Yeah, they love skateboarding, but I'm kind
of hurt right now.
So it's too bad because they should be skating
even though I'm not.
But right now they've kind of do everything that I do.
So skateboarding's had to take a backseat to
everything right now.
It's unfortunate.
That's what hurts the most on my leg.
So I've got to wait to get it fixed in early winter, and
I'll probably be back to skateboarding.
Skateboarding, I started when I was really young.
I started skateboarding, probably, when I was five
years old or whatnot.
And if I could get my leg fixed now, I'd still be
skateboarding, which I plan on doing.
I mean, skateboarding will always be in my blood.
Skateboarding gave me snowboarding, is
the way I see it.
And snowboarding has given me what I have now.
So I owe a lot to, probably, skateboarding and
snowboarding.
They give you the same great feelings when you learn
something, or you're progressing or whatever.
Oh, well I grew up in Salinas till I was
probably 10 years old.
And we were skateboarders down there in Salinas.
And then, when I moved up here, we met the skateboarders
that a lived in Grass Valley.
And Tucker Fransen was one of the them.
He's the one that got me into snowboarding.
And we start going to Donner ski ranch
with him and his family.
We hiked around, I guess, before we went to Donner in
the back country.
And then Donner ski ranch was the first resort that opened
up to us for snowboarding.
And then we spent most of our time there, probably, for the
next five years, at Donner.
Probably been John Ackright, and Damian Sanders, Tucker,
myself, my brother--
yeah that's probably--
I don't know, those are the guys I was riding with.
Yeah, Monty and I rode pretty much together
the whole time we--
he drove before I could even drive.
And so we were always riding together.
And he had the same passions, did the same things, so--
CIRCE WALLACE: Chris and Monty were the quintessential Grass
Valley troublemakers.
You know, they were cute.
They were blonde..
They were very California.
They were kind of good old boys.
So they were always having fun.
And Chris had a really respectable style.
I mean, to this day, I think he was one of the most stylish
snowboarders.
He had a very distinct way of riding that a lot of people
really responded to.
DAMIAN SANDERS: Yeah, Chris Roach?
He's got a talent.
He's got a style that was just insane.
He had a skate style that was so cool.
He would poke out a frontside air and just hold it for the
longest time like Chris Miller on a skateboard.
And it was just the coolest looking thing.
It's like a guy at a motocross whipping it and just holding
that whip forever.
It was so much style.
And everybody else was, like, get the trick
done, do it real quick.
But Roach was right out of the stoner guy
from the surfer movies.
He was like a Spicoli.
He was fucking hilarious.
TODD RICHARDS: Roach's style was all about
being, like, really--
fucking train--
Roach's style was all about being super squatty, and
really tight and compact.
I mean, we were grabbing way up on our
tip and doing methods.
Every grab that Roach did was like full
skate, around his feet.
Everything was proper.
And there wasn't just wherever your hand happens to hit while
you're flying through the air.
But that's what we were doing back East.
And those guys were all tight.
Everything the super tight.
KEVIN ENGLISH: They were there kind of what I'd say is the
next generation.
They were the young dudes when Damian, and Sione, and Graham
were the big guys.
And I definitely got into in.
There's a shot of Chris Roach doing a frontside I grab in
the Western Front that is so insane.
And it's probably only like three feet off the ground.
But he was, in my mind, the first guy that brought style
to snowboarding.
So in terms of how you actually rode, I would try to
more emulate, probably, Chris Roach than anybody else.
MIKE RANQUET: Because he was the coolest looking due I'd
ever seen at that point.
I remember first seeing him in the Sims ad.
And I snowboarded for Sims then.
And just doing this frontside nose bone.
Aaron was like, dude, that guy's so rad.
You know?
CHRIS ROACH: Well, I always just did what felt good to me.
And I know I mean I had posters up of Palmer and
Kidwell doing backside airs in my room when I was a kid.
So I felt like I needed to look like that or something
close to that.
And what I saw me riding, or whatever I
always felt, eh, whatever.
But everyone always said that I had good style or whatnot.
And now, I really appreciate it more than
I did then, I guess.
SHAWN FARMER: You know what always used to trip me out?
This is so funny, man, but I used to look at Chris Roach
and go, that's looks like Palmer.
That's Palmer.
I thought it was Palmer.
And I'd go, but Palmer's riding goofy?
That's not Palmer.
Palmer doesn't ride goofy.
I used to think Chris Roach was Shaun Palmer.
You know, I did.
But then I'd realize, he's goofy, man.
Just in videos, when I first started seeing him.
And then, I don't know, I mean, I'm just
equating the style.
But yeah I talk to people who don't know who Chris Roach is.
I'm like, really?
Fuck, come on.
MIKE HATCHETT: I'm always impressed when a snowboarder
today knows who Damian Saunders is, or
Chris Roach, Kidwell.
You've got to know where it came from.
And I always give props the kids that have done their
homework and seen the old videos or whatever.
I mean, a lot of guys are like, who's Damian?
Who's Chris Roach?
I was like, are you kidding me?
Who's Chris Roach?
Hey, if you're not a pro, that's cool.
But if you're a pro snowboarder, you'd better know
who Chris Roach is, in my opinion.
-So Mr. Roach, how do you feel about
California Snowboard Series.
CHRIS ROACH: I would do it again.
[INAUDIBLE]
GS is rad.
They set up good GS courses.
It was structured and pipes and types of stuff.
Dude, I don't know, [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah, fully because I won that.
CHRIS ROACH: The California state snowboard series, and
that was just kind of the lope for the local mountains.
We went up to Shasta and just all the local
mountains around here.
And I think I won that series, but we raised gates at that
point, too, and half-pipe gates,
moguls, it didn't matter.
We did everything at that point.
We went to Breckenridge, and that was the World Cup.
And I broke my Sims board that I'd bought in the pipe.
And Tom Sims actually watched me break it.
And I think that was my biggest break, was from Tom
watching me snap that board because he might have been
watching me earlier in the day.
And then he invited me to is hotel room.
And he had probably 100 boards in there, and he said, you
pick one and if you do well, we'll try to see what we can
do from here.
And that was probably the best thing I ever could have done,
is break that board.
TODD SIMS: Well, that whole NorCal scene had a lot of
players, like Tucker Fransen, and Chris
Roach, and Noah Salasnek.
These guys all sort of had kind of is the Sims soul in
those days because they had their skateboard background,
and they were low key, and they performed incredibly.
And that was sort of the whole image of what a Sim rider was,
just almost by default because these guys--
I don't remember the exact time that each one of them
ended up on the team, but it was almost like, sure, of
course you're on the team.
CHRIS ROACH: Oh for me, it was a dream come true because I
was a skateboarder.
And I got all the skateboards and all that.
And then Sims was such a big company for means because I
was a kid, on it was Sims.
It was like skating, snowboarding, and
knowing who Tom was.
And Terry Kidwell rode for them, and Shaun Palmer.
And those guys were my heroes of snowboarding then, as well,
so it was rad to be on the same team as them.
And Sims was paying me $700 a month, and I was, like, that's
a career, man, that's killer.
You know, when you're that young.
And by the time I switched to Santa Cruz, I got on with
Santa Cruz, and they were paying me good money, and then
Quicksilver, and got with Dragon, and Vans.
And I just felt like, at that point, that I could probably
make a living off it.
So I don't know what year it was or whatever.
But I knew I couldn't work, man.
And I had to do that because I didn't know what the hell else
I was going to do.
Didn't do good in school.
Wasn't that smart.