I first met Brandon Cocard when he and I were both around 12 years old,
both riding on the Alpine Meadows freestyle snowboard team in Tahoe. Back then, Alpine was off the map, but its endless ridgelines and solid terrain park proved to be the perfect incubator for future talent. Despite a full time USSA completion schedule, our coaches Jason and Kaveh took us in the backcountry, hiking steep lines, teaching us how to build jumps every day, and then had us hiking and sessioning the parks rails, jumps and pipe until we couldn’t walk. A decade later a huge chunk of that team was riding professionally: Johnny Brady, Ross Baker, Chris Galvin and Brandon Cocard were some of the standouts that made it to the top. Even back then I was toting a camera around, and now I shoot snowboarding full time. Flash forward... I hadn’t seen Cocard for almost ten years, and while on a photo shoot with Think Thank in Michigan we crossed paths with Bode Merrill and the Absinthe boys. And Cocard was right there in the mix, going shot for shot with one of the biggest players in the game. Since then, Cocard and I have stepped to Tahoe terrain we dreamed of as kids, travelled around Switzerland together and camped out at Superpark. It’s pretty rad to live the snowboard dream alongside childhood friends. Cocard’s perfect methods, back lips and backside rodeos haven’t changed over the past 20 years, only difference is back then he couldn’t grow a pirate beard and wasn’t a member of a band touring the globe.
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