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Internet Roundup: Madison Blackley For Arkade Magazine and More

Originally posted on SNOWBOARDER | By Josh Sullivan | Last updated May 26, 2025 7:01 AM ET

It's Memorial Day, and we’re back with some stories from around the internet that you might have missed.

Hopefully, there’s a ski area near you still spinning the chairlifts. If not, I hope you’ve taken to hiking uphill to earn those turns. If your board has been put into storage, happy skating/mountain biking/golfing.

Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer. Someone call Lana Del Ray, because I'm about to get hit with that Summertime Sadness.

Here are some things around the internet you might have missed this week:

NST Recap by Taylor Boyd

At this point, we're far enough removed from the Natural Selection Tour stop in Revelstoke for it to be reminisced upon. Taylor Boyd picked up a pen to wax poetically about snowboarding for the first time in half a decade in a beautifully done story for Torment.

"We came to Revy to watch people compete, and behavior observed from competitors leading up to the contest logically looks like that of athletes more than artists: abstaining from alcohol, hitting the gym, going to bed at 9:00, obsessively studying footage and plotting lines, playing mental games with one another," Boyd wrote. "While some of the stoney camaraderie touted during televised competition is rooted in reality, we don’t have to pretend professional snowboarding is good times all the time."

Business as usual at Mammoth Mountain

The World Quarterpipe Championships went down at Mammoth Mountain at the end of April. It was “business as usual” as Slush, The Magazine’s Norm Schoff reported, but that didn’t mean the riders didn’t go as huge as possible. Stefi Luxton was awarded the best handplant for the women, while Nik Baden laid down what Pat Bridges called “maybe the best mandrect ever done.” Ho hum.

Perhaps no one went bigger than Sumner Orr, who McTwisted 19 feet high out of the quarterpipe on one hit, and was awarded the opener of Slush’s recap video. All this while recovering from a broken back.

An Interview with Madison Blackley

The April 2025 issue of Arkade Magazine features an interview with Madison Blackley written by Mark Seguin. Blackley’s 2024-2025 season highlights include a killer video project called Hinterland (in which she did not fake a country accent to narrate, despite several people asking her if she did). She also competed in another Kings and Queens of Corbett’s contest, as well as her first Natural Selection Tour.

As Sequin writes, Blackley not only walked so others could run, she walked so she, herself could run. Head to page 56 of the digital issue to read the full interview. It’s a great one that touches upon the challenges still facing women’s snowboarding, the weird dichotomy of becoming pro, and being an all-terrain vehicle.

Community, Not Core

Speaking of Arkade, Splinters Boardshop, located in Warren, Vermont, was featured in the April issue’s shop profile. Head to page 34 of the digital issue.

“We happen to be in a ski dominant town, home to the only resort on the East Coast where snowboarding is still prohibited (Mad River Glenn),” shop co-founder Travis Kerr writes. “It’s like a corny 80s movie out here sometimes, but that seems to bring the board community together.”

I'm thrilled that Splinters got the shine it deserves. Though I've only ridden Sugarbush a handful of times, I'm a certified Mad River Glen hater who chuckles every time they get a bad snow year. I've had a "You Ski Mad, We Ride Happy" sticker on my board since 2020.

Throwback Burton U.S. Open Documentary

The glory days of Vice gave us some great content. Trips to North Korea with Dennis Rodman, skateboarding around abandoned North Carolina racecar speedways with Rick McCrank, and of course, Power and Rails. The show invited the outside world inside the snowboarding bubble, and welcomed industry legends to help tell the story.

Recently, I rewatched the episode that breaks down the history U.S. Open.

It’s so important to reiterate the importance of the event to the earliest days of snowboarding, and to see clips of Terje Haaksonsen, Hannah Teter, and Danny Kass throwing down in the halfpipe. Take yourself back in time, and give it a rewatch if it’s been a while.