Sent on a diplomatic mission of sorts by Alterna Films to the Toronto Ski and Snowboard Show this fall, Chris Rasman made quite an impression: Due to a backflip gone wrong while site-seeing at the CN Tower, he spent the weekend sporting a truly gruesome-looking shiner. And no, he repeatedly had to explain, he didn't mouth off a bouncer at a party like so many other misbehaving, visiting pros from out of town. Quite the contrary: Rasman is as nice and polite as they come.

Upbeat and endlessly energetic, Rasman is the perfect interview subject: willing to talk and talk until your recorder's hard-drive fills up. Shit, he didn't even mind thoroughly explaining his shiner's origin for what had to have been the umpteenth time. Rasman teamed up with Gaetan Chanut for many filming days, and the combination of youthful exuberance and veteran experience obviously paid off, as both shredder's turned in some impressive footage.

Read on, and learn more about Rasman, his shiner, and shredding with Chanut.

I know you've told the story a million times, but I'm gonna have to get you to put it on record one more time.

For the record, in case you didn't know, I fall a lot, but not doing back flips. I'm a clown, a circus act. I love doing back flips off things. My team manager Nic Moore [Quiksilver] starts busting kickflips on his skate at the CN tower, getting photos of it. Me: man, that's totally Facebook-able, I need a back flip photo off this rail. I balanced myself on the railing, realized the roof was pretty low, so I did a really tiny one and opened up a bit early. The first things to hit were my toes and I slipped out, right to my left eyebrow. We were with a couple of girls that were recording it on their camera, so we got documentation of the whole thing, which is pretty good.

Of course there were girls there.

Because there were girls, I don't even know how bad the initial pain was because I sprung to my feet right away out of embarrassment, playing it off like it was no big deal. And then a while later a little lump started, and I started seeing some stars, so I started icing it right away. We saw the rest of the CN Tower, just hanging out. The girls wanted to see Peak Season (they're buddies with Dré), so they went to see the MTV After Show. I was gonna go, but I went back to the hotel, iced it, took a nap. When I woke up to go to the Alterna premiere, it was fine; little lump, kind of ugly, but pretty mellow, no discolouration. I took a shower, went to the premiere, and then it progressively started getting worse. By the time the movie started it was like a fucking golf ball. I'm on stage, tossing out stuff, and I think all the little kids were afraid of me. They're keeping their distance while we're tossing out product.

So how many times have you told the story since it happened?

I'd say 20, not even exaggerating. It gets to a point where random people walk by and ask me and it's "oh man, you don't even want to know." People just assume it's a fight right away. It doesn't really look like something you'd get doing a backflip off a railing.

It wasn't my first thought.

The cheap and quick thing is to say the CN Tower kicked my ass. Toronto 1, Rasman 0.

Filming with Alterna, who was your regular crew this winter?

What was cool about this winter is that I had a chance to session a bit with pretty much everyone from the Alterna crew. I went to Slovenia with Gaetan, so I got to know him really well. He's a guy that I've been watching since way back, like the Wildcat videos. If you didn't know, he's walking comedy. I don't think that people appreciate his personality enough.

Gary Chinuts...

Oh man, it's almost like none of the older movies did justice for what a character he is.

I was pretty stoked when I saw he was gonna be in the crew because I know he's got a lot of good riding in him.

That's the thing: it's cool riding with him. The guys were kind of making fun of us because it was like watching the older brother bossing around the younger. I was one of the rookies in the crew, and Gaetan has nearly ten years on me. We were hitting this big death gap, and I was packing down the in-run. I hike up to the top, going to side slip it, and he says "No, no...you're not going to side slip it. You're just going to put staircases in the in-run...that's stupid." Everybody just looks at each other, says "okay", not even questioning him. He's just got so much knowledge when it comes to snowboarding that you can't help but listen to him. Not once was I frustrated or mad with him because you see he knows what he's talking about; he's got everything dialed.

Filming in the backcountry is so different from the park. In the park, you're hitting the same jumps over and over again; you've got a memorization of how much airtime you got and how fast you need to initiate your spin. There are so many different types of backcountry jumps: cliffs, step-downs, big poppers, step-ups...and even the angle of the jump, if it's got a dip or a funny in-run. One of the hardest things is picking the right trick, and that's where Gaetan helped me out a couple times. Knowing that, I'd be like "what trick are you gonna try? I wanna do this." and he'd look at me and be like "that's stupid, the jump goes this way...you're not gonna do that. Try a frontside 3."

You take the information that all these different people know, and they all have different riding styles and opinions, you put it all together and take it in; that's what helps me grow as a rider.

Chris rides for Quiksilver, Drake/Northwave, Libtech, and Gnarcore.com.

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Related:
In The Editing Room With Alterna Films
Alterna Elektro Premieres (video)
Inside Out: Private Alterna Shoot at Grouse (video)