Xavier de Le Rue is an artist with a snowboard: a Picasso without a paintbrush, whose medium is mountains. The freeride extraordinaire has left his signature splashed across some of the most astonishing peaks on the planet, with a penchant for charging the sort of unlikely cracks and precipitous, hanging snowfields that most would deem unrideable.
Interview: Xavier de Le Rue
Despite his many successes, Xavier isn’t one to sit back and rest on his laurels: aside from snowboarding with his daughter, riding in competitions and shooting film segments, he is currently working on developing his autonomous camera drone Hexo+, while also running a succesful media production company.
After an epic day heli-boarding together in Verbier along with the winners of our competition, LUEX CEO Tim Heising caught up with Xavier to learn more about his upcoming projects, including a return to the Freeride World Tour for this weekend’s event on Verbier’s infamous Bec des Rosses, and a unique ‘para-motor’ powered snowboard trip to Alaska..!
So Man Xavier, thanks a lot for guiding us today. Did you enjoy it as well or was it more call of duty?
Xavier: No it’s really cool actually to come and do some new itineraries here and get a bunch of really passionate riders. It’s actually cool because they come from very far here and are really hardcore snowboarders. They always have a big smile and they give me the best energy.
We definitely had a big smile. It was a beautiful day! So what are you up to? What kind of projects are going on?
Xavier: This weekend I’m going to do the Verbier XTreme and after that I’m going on a trip to Canada for a heli trip with GoPro and then I’m finishing my last film in Alaska. So we are getting dropped off in a zone that we have been scouting a few weeks ago and we are going there to hike some runs. We have a new setup which is really cool with parameters to kind of go into lines and jump from the lines.
Oh Really?
Xavier: Yeah. We have some really cool setup so it should be fun.
So what kind of production team do you have with you on those kind of trips?
Xavier: I always ride with my production crew, so we are 9 people. We have 4 camera men, 1 photographer and 1 Pilot. So we take the camera men in the air and we have a drone set up, plus I would bring my drone as well. So we have a bunch of tools to make a good film.
Yeah man we would love to do some projects with you and luextravel in the future. That would be awesome.
Xavier: Definitely. That would be cool. It was a pleasure!
Thanks man. It was so much fun.