Cam Melville-Ives: Halfpipes, Snow League, & Weather
Photo by Chris Witwicki
Cam Melville-Ives is New Zealand’s only competition half pipe snowboarder at the moment. He was born and raised in Wanaka, New Zealand and I can best describe his family as frothers on the pursuit of year-round winters. Cam’s twin brother Fin is a competitive half pipe skier, his parents were snowboard instructors, and his uncle, John Melville, is a park builder and developed the Global Cutter (a half pipe cutter) here in New Zealand. Cam and his family have deep ties to the snow industry.
Starting out on skis at age 3, Cam swapped to snowboarding at just 4 years old spending time riding Cardrona Alpine Resort and catching the last couple of years of Snowpark. His first time overseas was doing a season in Whistler at age 7 with his brother and parents. Cam explains that his parents introduced “that ski-bum lifestyle” at a young age, which has helped him navigate his life the older he's gotten.
Since Whistler, Cam has spent a lot of time riding New Zealand, Japan, Europe, and North America. His hard work and talent gained him support from brands such as Monster, K2 Snowboarding, Smith Optics, Skullcandy, Mons Royale, and DB. We sat down a couple of weeks ago to talk about half pipes, his past season, The Snow League, and weather. Cam is very well spoken, passionate, and has great ideas on how to grow the industry. He has a hunger for snowboarding that is infectious.
Photo by Jack Dawe @wjackdawe
NP: “Thanks for meeting with me Cam. You’re coming off an incredible season. You won the European Cup, again, in Corvatsch this year. Including that win, you’ve had 9 ‘Top 10’ finishes [out of 10 total competitions] in half pipe since this time last year. That’s insane. Are you looking forward to bringing that energy for this New Zealand winter?”
CMI: “Haha, thank you so much. Yeah, it has been a good run with pipe so far and I am looking forward to the season. For competitive snowboarding, I was originally a bit more into slopestyle. My headspace was a bit more slopestyle focused as most of my mates were slopestyle riders. I made the choice to focus on half pipe and I am the only competitive half pipe rider from New Zealand at the moment.”
NP: “That’s super admirable–but also must be tough being the only pipe rider.”
CMI: “Yeah, it can be. It’s so much easier to build off other riders. New Zealand has a super sick slopestyle team and you can see the growth among those riders throughout the season. There’s not as many riding pipe. On the skiing side, there’s a few pipe skiers but not so much on the snowboard side.”
NP: “Why do you think it's like that?”
CMI: “I think the biggest reason comes down to accessibility. We only have 2 pipes in the country so it is hard to train. First, it requires a lot of snow to build a half pipe. With climate change, we can expect this problem to become bigger: ‘Where do we get the snow?’ The answer to this question already exists if you take a look at Kitzsteinhorn, Austria. In New Zealand, our pipes don’t open until midway through the season. This is due to a few factors, one of them being the amount of snow available. At Kitzsteinhorn they create ‘snow depots’ around the mountain, including the pipe. For example, you could fill in the pipe with snow and cover it with insulation. Let’s say it reaches a volume of 100,000 cubic metres of snow, and it only loses 10% of its critical mass over summer, effectively making it a glacier. When the start of the next winter rolls around, you use the snow from the glacier to build the pipe. This allows the pipe to open much earlier. If New Zealand could do something similar and open pipes sooner, I think we would see a shift in some of the riders who are training in slopestyle to want to train more in pipe.”
*Editor’s note: Numbers given are examples. The volume of snow collected and the percentage of critical mass lost changes due to a variety of factors including location, temperatures, wind, and humidity.
NP: “Yeah, you're bang on with that. Accessibility does include how quickly they can open. ”
CMI: “Yeah, and also the number of pipes available too. At one point, there were half pipes at almost every big mountain in New Zealand and now there are only pipes at Cardrona.”
NP: “I would like to see more mini pipes or ‘people’s pipes’ available for the general public. They are accessible to almost every rider, from beginners learning to ride transition or pros getting creative. Even doing cool modified mini’s with jibs and things would be fun.”
CMI: “Exactly. The more people we have riding the pipe, the more we will be able to grow snowboarding. I look at what Scotty James is doing over in Australia, really giving back to the community and pushing pipes and I would like to do that someday too.”
NP: “Scotty’s the man! That’s amazing to have a goal to give back to the community like that.”
Photo by Jack Dawe @wjackdawe
NP: “Can we talk about The Snow League? You are a part of the inaugural season. What is it like being a part of it and how did you find the competition format?”
CMI: “The Snow League is a new take to competition half pipe snowboarding and is more of a head-to-head format. The idea is to push the progression of half pipe snowboarding and make half pipe competition more enjoyable for the viewer. I am competing in four Snow League events and have completed one. You start in a heat of five riders and the top rider of that heat moves on. The rest compete in a last minute qualifier to move on. I had the second highest score of the day overall but unfortunately didn’t make it through the last minute qualifying which I am bummed about. My initial heat consisted of Ayumu Hirano, Chaeun Lee, Joey Okesson, and Siddhartha Ullah and I felt stoked to be competing next to them.”
NP: “Yeah, that's a pretty heavy heat but having the second highest score of the day is something to be pumped on. I also think it’s really cool that New Zealand gets to be represented in The Snow League.”
NP: “Weather Guy Cam. I’ve seen the videos and the daily updates. They are awesome. What's the story behind that?”
CMI: “I'm always forecasting snow-wise, long term and short term. I had a joke with my friends that I was gonna start doing daily weather reports. A couple of seasons later and I have a few hundred followers and do daily cardies updates. I ended up getting a weather forecasting subscription and my goal with the weather forecasting is for it to help me build pipes in the future.”
NP: “I hear you have a ‘good luck charm’ that travels the world. Can you tell me more about it?”
CMI: “Haha, I got a cardies ‘priority lift access’ arm band that I put it on my glove and it’s been there ever since. I’ve had it for a few years now and it’s been all over the world including North America, Europe, and Asia.”
NP: “That’s sick. Only a few continents left for it to see. Who are your inspirations in snowboarding?”
CMI: “There’s heaps of sick riders that I take inspiration from. Ayumu Hirano and Lilkeytaki [Chauen Lee] are pipe riders I really like. I am also really inspired by Tiarn [Collins], Txema Mazet Brown, Zoi [Sadowski-Synnott] and Dane [Menzies], he snowboards like he's angry at the world and I love it. I’m also inspired by my friends like Rocco [Jamieson] and the entire Platinum Crew.”
NP: “What are your snowboard goals outside of competition boarding?”
CMI: “I want to keep riding everything. I love everything in snowboarding. Pipes, jumps, rails, big mountain, pow. I also really enjoy filming. Last year in Mt Hood I made a few edits. I got a VSX2100 to film and I’m looking forward to doing more of that.”
NP: “Speaking of Hood, lets talk about your NBD. I did take a hard look into pipe videos on Instagram and I cannot find anyone doing that trick. What are you calling it?”
CMI: “There’s still so many ways to be creative in pipe and I am excited to learn something new. I’m calling it the ‘Rambo Roll’ right now.”
NP: “Hot-take: Methods–in front or in between, what do you consider proper?”
CMI: “I feel in-between is a bit more old school, classic look. In front is a bit more new age. Both are super sick, when done well.”
NP: “Anything else to add?”
CMI: “There’s so much talent coming from slopestyle and big air here in New Zealand. Skiing has support in half pipe. I would love to see some of that talent ride half pipe. New Zealand is such a special place as a snowboarder. It teaches you to ride so well. We just need a few more half pipes, more accessible pipes, and pipes built earlier. I want to see the pipe culture grow more here in New Zealand. I look at places like Japan, where there are a lot of accessible half pipes. Not only does Japan have some extremely talented pipe riders, but they have this whole entire pipe culture that you don’t get here in New Zealand. Over there, pipe isn’t for people trying to go to the Olympics. Pipe is for everyone and you see a huge range of ages and abilities riding and having fun. I would love to be able to bring that here.”
