Erica Kutz is a freelance graphic designer, art director, and producer as Mountainmind. She represents outdoor brands as an ambassador including Kona Bike and Arc’teryx. She tells us about snowboarding and splitboarding in the North Cascades.

Erica talks about growing up snowboarding and skiing, and more recently split boarding. She explains how she approaches testing the slopes before starting a day on the back country slopes. Erica mentions areas off Highway 20 as favorite areas to go snowboarding.

Erica told us about going to Revelstoke’s Split Fest to visit the Powder Highway as her most amazing week of snowboarding. She goes on to give us a history lesson on split boarding.

On the graphic design side of her career, Erica talked about working for various companies such as Zumiez and Microsoft.

Places:

Maryhill
Alpental
Snoqualmie Pass
Crystal Mountain

Erica Kutz Episode Transcript

Erica Kutz [00:00:00]:
So this is your first time on a splitboard, and you are trying to summit Baker right now. And I said, yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:00:23]:
Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan. Well, Erica, welcome to the show I just threw you. We’re going live now, so welcome. Erica Kutz is my guest. Erica, you are the brand steward at Mountain Mind. You are an ambassador for multiple outdoor brands. We actually know the same person, but when you were working up at Crystal, I threw a name out at you that I worked with 20 some years ago. You knew Deep Patterson, and you were recommended to us by one of our previous guests. So all of that being said, where do you want to start? Where do you want to start this conversation? Do you want to talk about graphic design? You want to talk about snowboarding splitboarding? What do you want to talk about?

Erica Kutz [00:01:13]:
We can talk I mean, I’m always down to talk about snowboarding. I’m always down to talk about splitboarding just because that’s approaching. That season is coming.

Scott Cowan [00:01:25]:
So you’re based out of Bellingham. Where did you grow up?

Erica Kutz [00:01:29]:
I grew up 20 minutes outside of Seattle, just over the lake in Kirkland, Washington.

Scott Cowan [00:01:35]:
Now, let’s be honest. 20 minutes outside of Seattle is really about a block out of the city limits with traffic. You can’t no, I kid, but all right, so you grew up in right. All you start did you start skiing or snowboarding?

Erica Kutz [00:01:50]:
I started skiing as soon as I could walk. My dad grew up in the Puget Sound area, so he basically raised my brother and I and taught my mom how to ski as well. He raised us in the same mountains that he was able to learn how to ski in. So that was pretty cool.

Scott Cowan [00:02:11]:
Where did you start your skiing and snowboarding adventures then?

Erica Kutz [00:02:14]:
Qualmy Pass.

Scott Cowan [00:02:15]:
Okay. The home of the Cascade concrete.

Erica Kutz [00:02:18]:
Yeah. I think it breeds good skiers. Okay. And yeah, Alpental as well, but I didn’t really start riding Alpental until I became a snowboarder.

Scott Cowan [00:02:30]:
Okay, so at an early age well, you’re still doing it. Not that you’re old. I don’t mean like that. But at a very early age, you were exposed to this sport. You’re still doing it. You’ve enjoyed it. I’m not a skier. I’m certainly not a snowboarder. And this whole splitboarding thing that we’ll get to, up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know what a splitboard was. I mean, the guy said it was a split board. I’m like, anyway, we’ll get to where I’m going to put you on the spot. Where’s your favorite place to snowboard in Washington State?

Erica Kutz [00:03:03]:
I’d say anywhere in the backcountry, especially in the North Cascades. I just love the high alpine. I love being able to get out in that rugged terrain where you don’t realize how you don’t get to see that every day down lower in the valleys, because there’s peaks just hidden behind one another. And once you’re up there, you can see everything, and you can see all these little zones that you are like, wow, if I had a couple more days out here, I could probably go ride this, this, and this. Yeah, it’s very expansive. It’s just to see out here.

Scott Cowan [00:03:45]:
So help me out, because backcountry to me means a gravel road that’s next to the interstate. I’m not an outdoors person at all. My initial reaction is, isn’t that a complicated it’s not like going up to the parking lot at Snoqualmie Pass, parking your car, getting on a lift and going down the hill. You’ve got to work here. But is there not a level of danger involved?

Erica Kutz [00:04:13]:
Definitely, yeah. I’d say it’s years of experience and avalanche training, avalanche awareness to understand and also constantly paying attention. Like, in the wintertime, it becomes an obsession. Like, you’re looking at the snow forecast. You’re looking at how the snow pack is stacking up so you know what’s happening in the mountains, and you know how to read, but you’re also looking at wind and temperature and aspects so you know how to read the mountains. You can not only read the surface, but every day. I mean, when you go out there, you always test the stability of something before you drop in to make sure that it’s a safe line for you.

Scott Cowan [00:05:01]:
And your help me out here because you say you test, and once again, I know nothing. But without actually going down the hillside, you can’t really test other than right where you start. So is it just kind of an educated guess and assumption that if the snowpack is okay here, that I should be okay down there?

Erica Kutz [00:05:23]:
Well, there’s always a risk, and I think that’s the part that is the scary part.

Scott Cowan [00:05:31]:
Okay.

Erica Kutz [00:05:31]:
But you usually take a sample. So you’ll find an aspect and find, like, a north facing aspect, for example, and you’re looking for a similar slope degree of what you’re going to be riding. And you’ll dig in and do a test where you can see the layers of the snow and how things are bonding, and you can kind of tap it, and you can see where it might shear off. Okay, so really it’s risk tolerance, but it’s also just being smart and knowing what your environment is and what’s available, what information is available in the snow.

Scott Cowan [00:06:16]:
So when you do this, you go up by yourself without a cell phone, just untethered from the world, not a kid. When you do this, are you going up with a group of people?

Erica Kutz [00:06:27]:
Usually, yeah. I try to keep groups, like, smaller than four or five.

Scott Cowan [00:06:37]:
So give me an example to help me wrap my brain. You said the North Cascades. Give me an example of sake of conversation. We’re recording this on a Wednesday. Let’s say it’s a Wednesday in January, and there’s snow up in the mountains. Okay, so now it’s January, and you want to go up snowboarding today. Where are you going to go? Where’s the go to place that you go?

Erica Kutz [00:06:57]:
If I had all day?

Scott Cowan [00:06:58]:
Yeah, you got all day.

Erica Kutz [00:07:00]:
Okay. I’d probably go out to highway 20. Honestly, I love it out there. And you can drive up the highway and go hike for a few miles, up a few thousand vertical feet and find some really sweet terrain. But there’s also anywhere from basically highway 20 or, like Everett to the Canadian border, there’s tons of stuff to explore, so I’d probably be researching online and gathering my crew and seeing who else wants to who’s got a Wednesday. Yeah. Who else wants to humor this crazy idea? It also just depends on what’s accessible. Right? I don’t have an overlander vehicle. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:07:56]:
So what are you driving up there?

Erica Kutz [00:07:58]:
I drive a Honda Element. All wheel drive? Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:08:02]:
Okay. So I have a Honda Pilot. So it’s a reasonable vehicle, but it’s not going to get you super, super off road.

Erica Kutz [00:08:13]:
Yeah, exactly.

Scott Cowan [00:08:15]:
At least mine doesn’t go super, super off road. Okay, but you just said you’re going to hike. You’re going to hike up. So all I’m hearing is this is a lot of work. So this is what I’m hearing. I’m hearing well, we’re going to research. We’re going to have to herd the cats to get together. We’re all going to pile in the Honda Element, we’re going to drive, let’s say, an hour, and then we’re going to hike up a few thousand feet. That won’t take long, and then we’re going to ride down.

Erica Kutz [00:08:50]:
Yeah, sounds fun.

Scott Cowan [00:08:53]:
That sounds like a lot of work. So my question is, if you go to all that work, is that to get one ride in that day, or what’s the payoff here? Is it not just one run down the hillside?

Erica Kutz [00:09:09]:
It depends on the objective. If you want to ride something really cool, it’s like maybe that’s your one objective of the day. There’s a certain cool r, there’s a certain peak, or if there’s something a little bit shorter and you just want to get laps in and get some powder, it’s the best way, I think, to get the fresh powder that everyone’s chasing in the resort. I love a good resort day. Don’t get me wrong. I love skiing resorts, but it’s a lot easier on my knees and all my joints to ride softer snow.

Scott Cowan [00:09:47]:
Okay.

Erica Kutz [00:09:48]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:09:49]:
All right. How long had you been snowboarding when you started doing this more? Oh, gosh back country stuff.

Erica Kutz [00:10:01]:
Let’s see, I think I was 13 when I started snowboarding, and then I think I was 21, 22 when I started backcountry, I think. Yeah, that was my main I had gone on a couple of little trips with snowshoes and my snowboard strapped to my back with friends in college, which was very stupid. I had no avalanche awareness and no training, but my friends were like, oh, you’ll be fine, just like, come on this Hut trip with us, we’ll take care of you. So I definitely am grateful for those experiences, but I don’t recommend doing that because if something happens to your friends, you’re going to feel terrible because you don’t know what to do. Right, but fortunately, there was a lot of us and we all kind of stuck together. But yeah, so I guess that’s I can’t do math this early in the but I go ahead.

Scott Cowan [00:11:07]:
But you went to Western just to give the audience a little so you went to Western. Okay.

Erica Kutz [00:11:12]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:11:12]:
All right.

Erica Kutz [00:11:13]:
Just the foothills of the North Cascades. Really?

Scott Cowan [00:11:16]:
All right, so put you on the spot. What’s your favorite memory of all these so far?

Erica Kutz [00:11:23]:
I went on a solo road trip up to Fernie, BC. Back in 2019, right before the Pandemic. And I was on my way to Revelstoke to go to their split fest because I had a couple of friends working up there and giving presentations, and I had a friend and mentor who had given me a lot of advice on international travel, like in Chile and New Zealand, like, what mountains to go check out there. And I really wanted to meet him and go touring with him. And then a brand that I’m friends with, like Caracorum, they make backcountry snowboard bindings in North Bend. And yeah, they were giving demos and there’s all these other brands. So anyways, I made the pilgrimage up to the, I guess, like the Powder Highway area. Off the top of my head, I can’t tell you what the Powder Highway all encompasses. I think there’s like a really specific area, but I think Rebelstoke is a part of that. And yeah, golden and Kicking Horse and that whole zone. But that was just the most amazing week, I’d say, of my snowboard riding career.

Scott Cowan [00:12:47]:
So we’re going to fact check that, by the way, just to make no, I’m just kidding.

Erica Kutz [00:12:51]:
You could have someone fact check me.

Scott Cowan [00:12:54]:
You could have said Calgary and Edmonton, and I would have just nodded. Oh, yeah, those are Canadian places. I get it. Okay, so that was the memory that serves you. All right. Now, you mentioned splitboarding a couple of times. My knowledge of splitboarding was I had a guest on who runs gearhouse and they rent equipment, and during this conversation with him, he mentions splitboarding. And I probably had this perplexed look on my face and he kind of explained to me, and up until that time, I’d never heard of this at all. How on earth did this contraption get what’s the story to splitboarding? How did it come to be? And how common is it now?

Erica Kutz [00:13:46]:
I’d say it’s very common. You see a lot of splitboarders out there now. It’s not as big as backcountry skiing. I think a lot of people try splitboarding and then they give up and they just switch to skiing. So the gear has improved quite a bit since I think it started in the late 90s. Also need to fact check me on that. I don’t know the exact date, but backcountry skiing and snowboarding has been around for thousands of years. I’ve seen videos of people doing it old school, where they put the yak skins on the bottoms of their wooden planks and they’re touring up into their backyard and having a great time on the way down. So it’s been a way to travel in the snow in an efficient way and have a fun ride down. Yeah, for a long time. But splitboarding specifically, it’s something that there’s just no matched feeling. Then it’s like surfing. It’s what keeps surfers coming back. And it’s like once you make that connection and once something clicks in your brain, that writing powder feels good. That’s like all you want to do. And it just makes you smile. And it’s super fun. And it’s a fun experience to share with your friends. And it’s a really cool way to experience the backyard and go places you wouldn’t normally go.

Scott Cowan [00:15:36]:
So help me out here. So a splitboard is basically super layman’s explanation of this. You’re going to probably correct, you’re going to fact check me. It’s basically a snowboard that’s been cut in two. So to me that’s just translation. That’s fat skis. Yeah. Okay, so because it’s split in two, you can kind of use it to climb with. Okay. Now Gearhouse was saying that people put carpet underneath them to help. And I’m like, huh, but why not just use skis?

Erica Kutz [00:16:18]:
I think there’s something special about riding one board.

Scott Cowan [00:16:25]:
Okay.

Erica Kutz [00:16:25]:
For some people, yeah, like I said, it feels a lot like surfing. And I grew up skiing, so I have memories of the boots, the skis, the poles and everything. And when you garage sail, it’s like your shit’s all over the place, all over the mountain. But when you’re snowboarding, it’s just you and the board.

Scott Cowan [00:16:51]:
You still have bindings, you still have boots, you don’t have poles, but you do have poles.

Erica Kutz [00:16:57]:
But usually split orders get the collapsible ones that fit inside your backpack. But some split orders like to I mean, it depends on what kind of terrain you’re in. But some people will be like snowboarding with poles, which is a funny look, but it totally works.

Scott Cowan [00:17:14]:
Okay, how did you get exposed to splitboarding? I’m going to guess is the progression. Your dad taught you how to ski on two regular traditional K two skis. And then you got into snowboarding because it was becoming everybody was doing it, I mean type thing. It’s very common to see people snowboarding nowadays.

Erica Kutz [00:17:38]:
In the early two thousand s, I was just really entranced by the skate in snow and surf culture. And I’d see these badass women with this long flowy hair, shredding and carving, and I was just like, wow, that sense of empowerment and that sense of strength, but also the femininity and the fluidity that you can find. It just kind of becomes like a dance with whatever medium you choose. But I’ve always been a total tomboy. I was reading thrasher magazines that I found it. Of course, my parents were like, no, you’re not going to subscribe to that. But every once in a while, I would get to pick one up, and you open a page, and it’s like really bloody wipeout or a broken bone, and you’re like, oh, god, I’m not ready to face that side of skateboarding. But I had a really old school longboard that I would try to teach myself on, and I just didn’t have the community or the mentorship necessarily, but there were people that I looked up to. And obviously, social media wasn’t really a thing back then to the extent that it is now. So I wasn’t following anyone on Instagram. I just wasn’t looking at anyone else, really, and how they were doing things as far as celebrities go or athletes. But there was, like, movement and there was culture that I was really influenced by, and that was skate, surf, snow, which I feel like all require a plank of some sort to ride a plank of some.

Scott Cowan [00:19:46]:
So have you took let’s talk about longboarding for just a second. Have you ever heard of this downhill longboarding out of Goldendale?

Erica Kutz [00:19:59]:
It’s insane. Like, seeing the kind of stuff that people can ride.

Scott Cowan [00:20:06]:
I had a guest on they own a coffee roaster, right? And we’re talking, and typically the way the conversation goes and you’ll get this question a little later, it’s like, so when you’re not doing the thing that you do, what do you like to do right when you’re not roasting coffee? And he goes, well, I’m a longboarder, and I raced downhill, and the guy’s about my age, which means he should be in a home. And I’m like, what do you mean, longboard? He goes, oh, well, there’s up in and I forget the place, but out of goldendale, mary Hill, I think it.

Erica Kutz [00:20:39]:
Yeah, we grew up camping there.

Scott Cowan [00:20:41]:
Okay, so Mary hill, I guess this estate that was made by a guy who was in the concrete business. And so there’s like 2 miles of pristine concrete winding down the hill. So they race downhill, and he’ll hit like 50 some miles an hour on his longboard.

Erica Kutz [00:21:02]:
Wow.

Scott Cowan [00:21:02]:
And all I can think of is broken bones and missing teeth. And then he tells me that his daughters, who are early teens at best and probably preteen, they’re writing loughs down the hill.

Erica Kutz [00:21:18]:
Oh, my gosh.

Scott Cowan [00:21:19]:
And I’m like, okay, I am not an adrenaline junkie, but on some level, all of that sounds really cool in a scary sort of way. It sounds like that would probably be your wheelhouse, too. It’s a plank. It’s got wheels. I guess you could just ride down a hill really fast.

Erica Kutz [00:21:37]:
Yeah, I guess when it comes to risk, and when it comes to injury, knock on wood. I’ve avoided a fair amount, and I think that’s just choosing. I’m also not the most coordinated person, but yeah, risk management.

Scott Cowan [00:21:58]:
Risk management.

Erica Kutz [00:21:59]:
Okay. And also just like, risk tolerance. My tolerance for risk is, like, I like to take things in bite sized chunks, but when it comes to dropping a cliff or riding a certain steep face, it’s like, okay, let’s just work our way up to that. Because I’m mostly self taught in everything, I haven’t really had any former lessons. So when it comes to technique, I’m kind of unlearning some bad habits. The longboarding thing is more just fun and cruisey and a fun way to get around and get that kind of surfy feeling. My partner and I recently decided to try and longboard down from Snow Kwami Pass to Franklin Falls. And that’s quite the road, I must say. It’s a one way road out of a campground, which we were staying at, and we thought, oh, might as well. Like, it’s only, like, a mile. And it’s kind of a fun, smoky day activity, didn’t take too much output, and we were both in over our heads. Like, he has more of a carver longboard, where it’s almost like snowboarding. You can really get those nice fluid turns, but I just have this little rocket. So it’s like it just wanted to go straight down the hill, and I just took it in bite sized chunks to preserve my ankles.

Scott Cowan [00:23:34]:
Okay, so we rabbit hole there. Splitboarding. How were you exposed to that?

Erica Kutz [00:23:42]:
Okay, yeah, split boarding. Let’s see. So my first backcountry trip, I was with a group of friends from college that were all from Idaho and Montana and Wyoming. Like, all these just rad mountain people and sorry about the notification there rad mountain people that I really looked up to and just had a great time with. And they invited me out to a little backcountry trip up to a hut. And I had I think I mentioned this earlier, but just snowshoes and my snowboard and my overnight gear strapped to my back. And I remembered that feeling of being just walking up the hill, like, breathing with each step and thinking about how my heritage is kind of Northern European mutt. But I just could feel that there’s this sense of, like, this is in my blood. This is what my ancestors did, and this is really what my body is happy doing. And what makes me happy is being at higher elevations and being in cold weather and just kind of feeling the elements. And I saw my friends. So my friend, his nickname is Squirrel, or the Flying Squirrel. He’s an athlete for Burton Snowboards, and he runs a window cleaning business up here in Bellingham. He’s been really successful with that, but he’s a professional snowboarder as well, and he just had a split board, a Burton. I don’t know, family tree. I think they started that around that time. But, yeah, he had a splitboard. And another friend, Ryan or RyMo, he had a splitboard. And I just know that looks so much more efficient and so much more just fluid and less gear. So you don’t have to carry your snowboard on your back, right? And they just had their splitboard on the bottom of their feet. And those little unidirectional stickers that I like to call them like hairy stickers, which are your skins that go on the bottom and then your bindings adjust. So I first rode a splitboard, not until maybe later that spring or the next year at Alpental Vertfest where they do a race from the bottom of the mountain to the top, and then you ski down and that’s skiers and snowboarders. But they had a bunch of demo tents, and I rented or demoed a Vole split board and got to ride that in the side country. Like, my dad took me around and kind of showed me some of the side country and the shoots there. So I got to experience riding a splitboard as a solid board to see what that felt like. And it felt really good. It didn’t chatter, it didn’t come apart or anything. It felt quite solid. And I think the technology has gotten so much better and lighter since then, and it just feels like you’re riding a normal snowboard. Caracorum makes their tip and tail clips that are really bomber and their bindings that help keep everything together. And I’ve been riding Arbor snowboards since I started snowboarding. I was 13. So they make really amazing women specific split boards, and I’ve been able to kind of just see how the technology has advanced since then. But my first real splitboard experience, like getting up on the skins and walking uphill, was summoning Mount Baker in 2015. And I had convinced a friend who’s a mountain guide to take me up the south side. We went up the Squawk Glacier and we had started at 03:00, a.m. Dodging frogs on the trail and it’s dark out, the sun’s coming up over the glaciers, and we got to the snow line and I put my splitboard together and started walking. And this is a demo that I had gotten from the American Alpine Institute. I’d won, like, a raffle to rent a certain amount from the Alpine Institute. And I thought, you know, I’m going to rent a splitboard and climb Baker as my celebration of graduating college and moving on from Bellingham for the time. Thought, well, what better way to do that than to go ride the peak that has been the great White watcher, the Komokulshan, over the city? So, yeah, I put my skins on and immediately started sliding backwards and realized, oh, I don’t really know how to do this. And my friend said, So this is your first time on a splitboard and you are trying to summit Baker right now? And I said, yeah, and he’s like, oh, my God, what are we in for? This is at, like, 530 in the morning or six in the morning. Just like, what did I get myself into? But we made it. We summited. And I definitely was like, wow, this is one of the most intense experiences of my life at the time, and just the most physically exerting. Like, at the time, I was experimenting with different dietary things, too, and so I was, like, raw vegan at the time, and I was just like, I don’t know how much dried mango I can eat for this. I experienced a very heavy bonk, which is, like, when you don’t have enough food, you don’t have enough water, and you feel like your body just, like, totally giving out on you. But we got to the summit, and it was just, like, the funnest ride down, like, thousands of feet on this really nice corn and jumping over little crevasses, trying not to get solid up there. But, yeah, Mount Baker was my first splitboard trip.

Scott Cowan [00:30:20]:
Okay.

Erica Kutz [00:30:21]:
Yeah. Don’t highly recommend that way of going, but I don’t like to half ass anything.

Scott Cowan [00:30:30]:
No, I’m getting that. So you summit Baker. That’s your first time summiting Baker, your first time splitboarding. What have you done for fun since?

Erica Kutz [00:30:48]:
I have just become, like, a total splitboard nerd. Not as much of, like, a gear nerd. Like, I have friends that are really into it, but I did the turns all year thing for a while where you make a point to go splitboarding and go ride some kind of snow at least once a month. So that includes August and September and October, when you have to hike really far to go find snow.

Scott Cowan [00:31:23]:
Where did you go to find snow in September?

Erica Kutz [00:31:26]:
Primarily, I mean, Mount Rainier, you can see snow up there, so you just have to hike a little further to get there. Or in the North Cascades, there’s a few trails you can go, but it just really depends on what the snow level and what the snow path.

Scott Cowan [00:31:43]:
Have you ever summited rainier?

Erica Kutz [00:31:45]:
I’ve gotten pretty close, and I wanted to go for it this year, but as far as lining up the conditions, because I want to snowboard off it, I think off the summit. But there’s a lot that needs to kind of line up, and your schedule needs to be kind of like, okay, rainier is good right now. Let’s go. And my buddy Max, he’s a really just powerful human and athlete. Got the line that got the route that I was looking at this year. And I saw that he had powder from the summit to Midway and then corn, and he rode all the way down to the bridge past the Nisquali shoots. And I just thought, oh, man, he got the perfect day to do it, or else it could be really dangerous.

Scott Cowan [00:32:46]:
How long does this take?

Erica Kutz [00:32:48]:
You can do day.

Scott Cowan [00:32:50]:
You see? You go up and back in a day.

Erica Kutz [00:32:53]:
Yeah. If you’re like Max and you have superhuman strength. Yeah. Or most people do it in two days. Two or three days?

Scott Cowan [00:33:00]:
In two days, yeah. Okay. Wow. I’ve had a lot of climbers on a lot of people that have summoned Rainier. I have a guest, he’s been on twice now. I’m actually going to record another episode with him this coming weekend, so he’ll be on for a third time. And I was introduced to him because he’s a musician. So we’re talking and I think of him as a guitar player.

Erica Kutz [00:33:29]:
Right.

Scott Cowan [00:33:29]:
And we’re talking, and he likes to go hiking. And I thought, oh, he said something about summiting Rainier. And I said so you summoned Rainier. He goes, oh, yeah, I think 13 times now.

Erica Kutz [00:33:40]:
Wow.

Scott Cowan [00:33:41]:
And I’m just like, what? He goes, oh, yeah, that’s what we do. So this summer, they recreated a hike from the 18 hundreds. Instead of riding horses from basically from Stellacum area and Dupont up to Rainier, they rode electric bicycles to replicate the horses. And then I think I don’t know that they summited. I haven’t this out when I sit down with them this weekend.

Erica Kutz [00:34:06]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:34:06]:
There’s some weird people in the world. We all have our weird hobbies. Because what I’m into, you might go, oh, that’s really weird. I wouldn’t want to do that. I’m not thinking I don’t want to do what you’re doing. I’m thinking I’m terrified of doing what you’re doing. So I won’t do it because it’s too scary for me. And besides, it’s cold and I don’t even though I’m northern European heritage, we’ve migrated to Southern Europe. We want the warm climate. I don’t want cold anyway, being on.

Erica Kutz [00:34:35]:
The east east side.

Scott Cowan [00:34:36]:
Yeah, well, but it gets cold here, too.

Erica Kutz [00:34:38]:
Yeah, totally.

Scott Cowan [00:34:41]:
Anyway, I kid this last winter was brutal. So you summoned at Baker first time and first time really on split. Okay. That’s a head scratcher to me, honestly. That is like a you say you’re risk adverse.

Erica Kutz [00:34:59]:
I think that was just pure stupidity on my part.

Scott Cowan [00:35:03]:
Nothing personal, but okay, I agree with you. Yeah.

Erica Kutz [00:35:06]:
I would not encourage anyone to do this. I don’t even really like telling that story that much because it just wow. I just don’t want to encourage other people to do that because it puts others at risk as well.

Scott Cowan [00:35:16]:
Right. No, and I’m teasing you, but I agree that it is a thing. So you’re not paying the bills by splitboarding, you’re not paying the bills by snowboarding and all that. You’re paying the bills by doing graphic design brand work for people. But your work seems to have very much influenced by the outdoors.

Erica Kutz [00:35:42]:
Definitely.

Scott Cowan [00:35:44]:
So how have you been able to find that niche?

Erica Kutz [00:35:51]:
Yeah, so I’ll kind of go back a few steps just to give you a little bit more context. But when I. Was deciding which colleges to go to and what to study. I grew up sailing. I grew up in the Puget Sound. I loved marine biology. And my original idea was to go be a marine biologist because the flora and the fauna just are so amazing. And so there’s just discoveries to be had in the ocean still. And I just love the idea of being outside and getting to commune with nature. So I originally thought, okay, I think it’d be cool to be more in the marine world. But I had applied for colleges and looked at pre RECs and looked at just and I took some high level art classes in high school and I took some pre college art classes through Cornish College of the Arts and where we learned some more fine art skills like figure drawing and oil painting and screen printing and printmaking. And both of my parents were career designers. My dad was an art director for Boeing, and then my mom was an apparel skiwear designer for Pacific Trail. And, yeah, both Seattle based companies. And they said, you should be a designer. You’d be a good designer. You should just be a designer. And I thought like, okay, but the environment needs saving and everything. We need to pay attention. And we grew up pretty eco conscious and pretty health conscious as well. So there was that influence. But also we spent a lot of time outdoors together as a family, whether that was sailing or windsurfing or skiing or whatever the season provided. And I went to Western because I have a family history of other family members going here. And just good kind of it just lined up with financial like, I looked at art colleges in California and whatnot, and it was expensive for our family, so we decided to keep it local. And they also had Western, had Huxley College of the Environment, which is now College of the Environment. And they had just like, an amazing environmental program. So I thought, okay, my plan is I’ll minor in environmental studies, and I’ll major in graphic design. That way I can learn more about the climate. I can learn more about marine biology. I cowan take ocean science courses. I can take ecology, but I can also take sociology and psychology and philosophy and all the other things that I’m interested in. So I think that all really led to where I’m at now. And that is just kind of coming back to my roots as a human. But I did internships in college, and one of those internships was with a local agency in Bellingham that was hired to do the rebrand for ski to see which is the relay race that happens here every Memorial Day weekend. And so that was like my first kind of outdoor industry brand project. And I got to do the website for that and help with the I wasn’t the one who designed the brand identity for that. But we worked together as, like, a small team to kind of bring the brand to life. And that was kind of my first exposure. And then I saw there was an internship and position at Frequency, the Snowboarders Journal and the Ski Journal, and it’s also the FlyFISH Journal. So it’s three magazines under one brand or one company, and they’re based in Bellingham. So I applied for an internship there for my next one. And I just loved it. I loved working with the beautiful content, working with the photographers and the writers and all of the just amazing stories that people had. And I was just really inspired to keep going in that route. And then I worked for a skate and snowboard retailer based in Seattle as well, Zoomies, as many of you might know.

Scott Cowan [00:40:54]:
So just a little company. Yeah, just a little.

Erica Kutz [00:40:58]:
They’re huge. Yeah, I worked on the Web team there, and then I decided to try and go try tech. And so I worked at Microsoft for about nine months. And I decided, although it was a very wonderful experience with amazing humans, I was in a time in my life where I was having like, a quarter life crisis, and I was thinking, like, maybe design isn’t what I want to do. Maybe I want to go be a mountain guide. Maybe I just want to I was burning myself out because I was also doing freelance, so I was moonlighting, and I’ve been freelancing since 2011. So just hustling really hard on clients of all kinds. So health and wellness, outdoor recreation, there’s CBD Brands. There’s kind of been a good array of clients, but that’s how I kind of got into the outdoor industry, I guess.

Scott Cowan [00:42:06]:
Yeah. No, one of the places that you have on your resume is Crystal Mountain Resort with the title a Brand Identity Manager. Walk me through that. What did you do for Crystal? Don’t say I helped build their brand. No, I mean build it out a little bit more. What is a Brand Identity Manager doing for Crystal?

Erica Kutz [00:42:40]:
So a brand identity is really just the expression in who a brand is. When you think about your favorite company, you think about, okay, you’ve got their logo, you’ve got their ethos, you’ve got the way that they write, the way that they take photos, the way that they take videos. There’s a whole system, like an identity system that works together to create this voice. So brand voice, I mean, that’s what I work on with an agency where they do a lot of copywriting and voice development. But an identity is kind of the holistic approach. And I had a professor once tell me that she’s like, your brain kind of works like when you’re working on projects, your brain kind of works as like a funnel. All the ideas are up here. And then you refine, refine, refine until you have the final product. And that final product is the brand. So it’s like, okay, you have this cloud of concepts, like this theme, and that’s the identity, but the expression could be just a logo or just a color scheme or there’s kind of a lot of different avenues that a brand can be expressed.

Scott Cowan [00:44:05]:
So did Crystal bring you in to help clarify their vision then? Did they know the cloud full of ideas and they were uncertain of what they wanted to do because Crystal’s been around for a long was the what was their impetus to bring in this type of position? Just a refresh, if you will.

Erica Kutz [00:44:31]:
Yeah. I don’t know if Crystal knew what was coming. When I applied for a job there, I was coming in super really amped up. Like, I just spent a year in New Zealand living working remotely, living out of a van, snowboarding and surfing and climbing and just like super amped up on all of that. And I had kind of some clients down there and was working for clients in the States as well. And I was just like I had fully recovered from my quarter life crisis and had reaffirmed my purpose in life that, yes, I am a brand person. I love doing brand design, and I want to focus on I wasn’t necessarily going to funnel myself into the outdoor industry, but I thought, okay, if I could do anything with my life, what would it be? What sounds the most fun? And the answer that came up really organically was, I’d snowboard as much as possible and do graphic design and make cool art. And I was like, okay, that would be like, my ideal reality. So once I thought about that and started kind of looking at patterns and looking at ideas of how that could manifest itself, a colleague from an old instructor job at Baker had reached out and said, hey, we have a job at Crystal and there is some design involved, but it would be like a cool opportunity for you to get your foot in the door here. So, hey, and I found a place. You have a place to live, like, here’s a room you can went I drove to Crystal Mountain, and they told me to dress mountain casual for my interview, so whatever that I was like, oh, I can wear patagonia. This is great. And I went to my interview, and it was primarily a group sales position, so I learned more about sales and marketing, and there was about three or four other people on the marketing team. And after about a month of doing sales, they realized, wow, Erica sucks at sales. So they said, no offense, we’re gonna because I just don’t want to sell. Like, I’m not good at upselling my I’m not a salesperson. I’m like, well, if you don’t want it, don’t buy it. I’m not here to convince I’m too honest for my own good.

Scott Cowan [00:47:32]:
Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with that. My day job is sales, okay? My day job is sales. And it’s completely okay if the prospect doesn’t want the add on that they don’t buy the add on.

Erica Kutz [00:47:50]:
Right.

Scott Cowan [00:47:51]:
You don’t have to feel guilty that you didn’t sell them something they didn’t want. That’s good salesmanship. It’s bad salesmanship. When you sell them the extended warranty on the 2011 Ford Explorer that’s got 300,000 miles on it, that’s going to explode in two days. That’s bad.

Erica Kutz [00:48:08]:
That’s bad.

Scott Cowan [00:48:09]:
So don’t say you’re not a good salesperson.

Erica Kutz [00:48:12]:
Okay?

Scott Cowan [00:48:13]:
That’s limiting self talk. Now we can move on.

Erica Kutz [00:48:15]:
Thank you.

Scott Cowan [00:48:16]:
But you sucked at sales.

Erica Kutz [00:48:19]:
I also like numbers. Like looking at spreadsheets and things, my brain just kind of turns off. Okay, I can understand numbers when they have context and there’s like a visual expression, it’s like, okay, I know that 1080 by 1080 is like a social media square in my brain that’s like locked in because I have a very photographic memory. Like, I can look at something and just remember the details, but I see the vertical line, I see the know, I see shapes in numbers and I have to like anyways, so they’re like, Erica’s really right brained. Like, she’s better at doing design work, so we’re just going to let her do design work and we’re going to bring someone else in for sales. Because we were pretty overwhelmed at that point with only three people on the marketing team, as you can imagine, for the world or not the world, washington, washington’s largest ski area, having only three marketing people. And this was like before we had gotten bought by Altera, which is like the company that owns the icon Pass. And so once I had started, when I started, just at that turning point, like Altera had just taken over. Not taken over. That sounds like there’s still a lot of autonomy. It wasn’t like they were like, this is the way you need to operate your mountain. They kind of just gave us funding in exchange for being a part of their past family and whatnot and allowing their guests to have access to the Just. I just did a lot of poster design and event design and part of that Altera purchasing was funding for a new logo and brand identity and brand expression because it had been since the early two thousand s, I think since Crystal Mountain had done that. And the team was in upper management was starting to feel like we’re kind of ready for a new face. We’re ready for a refresh, an identity refresh, something that’s a little bit more current with the times. So what we originally did was brought in an agency from Denver that our president had worked with and he had had success with them, like rebranding Snowshoe Mountain where he used to work. And they had a nice portfolio of other mountain rebrands and so they seemed to be a good fit for us. We did look at local agencies, but I think they had some competitor clients that it didn’t line up to work with Crystal. So the agency really helped us build a foundation for the brand with all the brand strategy and the research and looking at our customer demographics and where are people coming from and who is Crystal? Who is the Crystal skier and snowboarder?

Scott Cowan [00:51:41]:
Let me interrupt you. Who is the Crystal skier and snowboarder? Where do people come from that ski and snowboard on that mountain?

Erica Kutz [00:51:48]:
Primarily? So because it’s not a pass necessarily, it’s a one way road up 410 because they close it right there, Mount Rainier National Park. So we do get people over from the Akima, the East Side, but it’s not as common as, let’s say, White Pass, for example. That’s their closest home mountain. So it’s primarily people from the greater Seattle area. And that can be anywhere from up to Everett, down to Olympia and even down to like we’d have people coming up from Portland on an extended mean. There’s just a lot of terrain that Crystal offers, so there’s a lot of space for people to spread out and they work their asses off to keep the lift spinning so that everyone can enjoy it.

Scott Cowan [00:52:55]:
Okay, so really, Crystal, though, is because of 410 being closed, it really is kind of a Western Washington destination.

Erica Kutz [00:53:02]:
Yeah, you can definitely say that. I’d say to classify it as a destination, there’s a lot of, like, typically you think of like Whistler as a destination because there’s so many things to do there if you’re not a skier or a snowboarder. And Crystal’s kind of it’s, it’s kind of got that mom and pop feel still because some of the people that have been working there have worked there since they were teenagers. And so there’s this kind of mom and pop feel that you still have there and people that are just super passionate about the mountain and super passionate about the terrain and the lifestyle that they’ve created there. But yeah, it is a destination. I would say for a lot of people, when they get there, they’re either really stressed out because they’ve just spent 4 hours driving with their kids, screaming in the back, like wanting hot cocoa or whatever, or they really have to go to the bathroom or they’re really just relaxed to be there and happy to be there if they’ve planned accordingly for their day.

Scott Cowan [00:54:16]:
So the Zad agency was able to quantify, if you will, who’s the avatar for Crystal Mountain.

Erica Kutz [00:54:25]:
Okay, so we came up with a few kind of personas, and here are these archetypes for our customer. We have these three different personas that we feel like our brand speaks to. These are the people that are paying attention to us and these are like general archetypes. And once we had that, we thought about, okay, how do we reach these people and how do we talk to these people and what do these people want. So looking at where do these people ski? What stores do they shop at? What’s their income level? What’s their lifestyle? What are they interested in? So you get that psychology aspect in the brand research. You really just want to learn how you can connect with people and how you can relate and how you can communicate better. So they really helped us build a good foundation there.

Scott Cowan [00:55:33]:
And then after you left Crystal, you’ve got your own mountain mind now, which is your own firm. Firm sounds grandiose.

Erica Kutz [00:55:47]:
It’s really just me in my spare bedroom here, right?

Scott Cowan [00:55:51]:
Exactly. So you’re a solo entrepreneur, so I’m going to remind you of a couple of things you said here. Not that I agree with you, but I’m going to remind you of a couple of things you said. Number one, you said you don’t like to sell. And number two, you don’t like numbers. So running your Cowan business doesn’t require either of those two things.

Erica Kutz [00:56:14]:
Absolutely not.

Scott Cowan [00:56:16]:
None of that. You don’t have to look and I kid as a solopreneur. How has this been? Now, you said you’ve been doing side jobs for a while, and in my brain, a side job is something you enjoy doing, but the lights are going to stay on because of the main gig. Whatever you do for the main thing keeps the basic of life going. But the side hustle is something that you’re doing to refresh your soul from the soulless job that you have or whatever. Or whatever. So you’ve obviously sold because you’ve had side hustles for a long time, so you’ve obviously sold. But how has the journey been for you now? This is your shingle, this is your thing.

Erica Kutz [00:57:11]:
I’ve always been a very, I’d say, like, independent person, but I really, really believe in the power of the collective and the power of collaboration. So although I do things alone, it’s all about these things would not be possible without other super talented creatives. Because I’m not an octopus. I don’t have a camera over here, tablet over here, and whatever. I can only do one thing at a time. I try to do as many things as I can at a time, but it’s really been just tapping into the creative network here in Washington. Specifically, I work with creative directors, art directors, illustrators, people of all practices to help bring these brands to life or refresh a new life, or communicate a new vision for whatever their goals are. That’s been super fun. So I can’t take all the credit for everything that I do. It’s not just me out here. It’s a pool of creatives. We’re all just kind of in this fishbowl together, and the outdoor industry gets smaller and smaller the more I’ve been in it. And I love that. I love, oh, so and So used to work at MSR, and now we work on projects altogether. And it’s just so fun pulling people together from different backgrounds that have maybe known each other for years. And it’s really cool kind of seeing what kind of collaboration can happen. But one of my first couple of projects, Freelancing, was a lot of illustration work because that was my background, was in fine art. And so people would hire me to paint pictures of their pets because they thought, hey, you’re an artist and I like your style. Can you paint a picture of my horse? Can you paint a picture of my cat? And that was kind of where it wasn’t really a business or like a hustle necessarily. It was more just like doing things because people needed them or wanted them, and they liked what I was putting out there in the world as an artist. And it’s kind of always been that way. People have just seen my art, my designs, and they’re like, Well, I really like that. Can you do that for me? And I think people are realizing that there’s so much more that goes into it than just like a pretty picture or a logo. There’s a whole process because it just becomes so much more rich. Anyone can make something that looks cool, but it’s like, what does it mean and what is it trying to communicate and what is it trying to sell?

Scott Cowan [01:00:31]:
Okay, you’ve just basically have said that you call yourself a brand steward. I would say a brand wrangler, maybe because you’re hurting the cats to get them all together and all these things. But this is all involves salesmanship, too, that you have to convince a business owner that they don’t need to go to Fiverr to get a logo, that there’s more to articulating the brand’s vision and mission. And it’s obvious that that’s what you’re passionate about. How do you convince business owners to and I’m asking because as a business owner so how do you convince business owners that I’m not trying to disparage fiber, but totally a lot of people, they want something, and they want it as cheap as possible because they don’t necessarily understand the value that it’s providing. So how have you been able to express that to your clients, to these outdoor companies that you’re working with?

Erica Kutz [01:01:42]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s kind of a two way street. It’s like, if you want to work together, let’s find a way. Let’s meet each other in the middle. Whatever works for budget and timeline and needs. But I find that the best relationships with clients are never the ones where I feel like I’m forcing them to see my value or see the value. In branding, the best relationships are the ones that they already know they want to work together because there’s something that there’s experience that I have or that I know that they want. So typically, it’s just word of mouth, like how I get my clients or referrals, like, hey, we really liked working with Erica. You should go talk to her, or people just find my work on Instagram or through friends of friends, and that can be just super organic. And I find that the relationships feel so much less strained. And sometimes I do get people reaching out and saying, hey, I’m a small business, and this is what I want to do. And I say, well, yeah, I would love to help you, but I also am a small business, and I have bills to pay and groceries to buy, so I have to charge accordingly so that I can keep going. So sometimes those numbers don’t line up, which is okay. And I like to have other designers and people that I can refer that maybe are side hustling as well, and maybe they don’t charge as much, or they’re younger in their career, and they don’t have, like or they don’t eat as much. Who knows? I do eat a lot, surprisingly.

Scott Cowan [01:03:37]:
Yeah, that’s surprising. That’s surprising. This is an audio only format, and so I have to describe, from what I’m seeing of Erica, she doesn’t look like she eats a lot, folks. She’s quite fit looking on the thin side, where I, on the other hand, am not. Well, I love that because I think what I’m hearing in our conversation is you’re passionate about the outdoors, and this carries over to you’re passionate about helping brands reach their market in a more of a holistic way. And I think that there’s some synergy there. But I have to ask you a really important question. I mean, this is maybe the most important question on the entire show, and that is coffee.

Erica Kutz [01:04:27]:
Yeah. Are you a fan of coffee fuel?

Scott Cowan [01:04:30]:
Creative fuel. All right, where do you go for creative fuel?

Erica Kutz [01:04:38]:
I love just trying different coffee roasters, and I love trying different blends. And I’m a black coffee drinker. I don’t put anything in my I love it unless it’s the afternoon, unless it’s, like, the second dose, and I know it’s going to wreck me for the rest of the day. I’ll do some oat milk in my coffee or coconut milk or whatever, but in the morning, it’s just black drip pour over, maybe a little bit of, like, chaga reishi lion’s mane mushroom blend in there for some mental clarity. So I don’t get the crash. But, yeah, I’m like a gasoline drinker.

Scott Cowan [01:05:23]:
Okay. Currently, where are you getting coffee from? Who’s roasting good beans for you? And what type of coffee? What do you like? What’s your coffee roast profile?

Erica Kutz [01:05:38]:
I love chocolatey with a little bit of fruity, dark flavors that are just really rich. I’m not a huge fan of the tangy, lighter flavors. Like, there’s a couple of coffee roasters I’ve tried in Portland that are really trendy, and I just am like, I don’t know if this is really suiting my palate. I love the rich, dark chocolate kind of undertones. One of my favorite roasters in Washington is blue star coffee and they’re based out in the Method, and you can find their stuff in stores, like, select stores around usually co ops, because I think they’re organic and fair trade. But, yeah, they’re they’re in the twist.

Scott Cowan [01:06:28]:
Which one of Blue Stars roast do you like?

Erica Kutz [01:06:30]:
I like the highway 20 blend. That’s pretty good. Yeah, I like that one, but I also haven’t tried all of them, so there’s a little bit of exploration to do there.

Scott Cowan [01:06:46]:
Have you been to their roastery in Twisp?

Erica Kutz [01:06:50]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [01:06:51]:
The new one or the old one? The little one, I think.

Erica Kutz [01:06:54]:
The little one? Yeah. I don’t think I’ve been to the new one.

Scott Cowan [01:06:58]:
The new one. I haven’t been inside the new one yet. I’ve only been to the order window.

Erica Kutz [01:07:08]:
They’re so good.

Scott Cowan [01:07:10]:
I agree with you. Trust me. There’s plenty of other great coffee companies, but Blue Star, everything about that company has been I agree. And the highway 20 Blend, that’s probably my go to.

Erica Kutz [01:07:32]:
Yeah. Whenever I go over there, I have to get some, and it’s just not the same. Sometimes if I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll buy it at the grocery store here, but usually it’s at the mazama store or at a little shop over there. I like to stop there, but it just reminds me of good times out there because the Method is one of my favorite places, and it just reminds me of really good adventures and good vibes out there. But, yeah, like, Mocha Joe’s is great. I think they’re based in Anacordis, and right now I’m sipping on Pachamama Roasters. I think they’re out of California somewhere. But I also just buy things based on the labels and the packaging because I’m a designer.

Scott Cowan [01:08:23]:
I’m teasing you. I do, too.

Erica Kutz [01:08:24]:
I just like to have things on.

Scott Cowan [01:08:26]:
My shelf that look pretty if somebody invites us over, and it’s like, okay, so what are we going to bring? I’ll just bring them a bottle of wine. I’m like, okay, great. So I go to the store, and I like, this label looks cool. Okay, if I’m going to lunch in Bellingham, where’s a great place for me to go grab lunch?

Erica Kutz [01:08:48]:
Depends on what kind of food you like and what atmosphere you’re looking for. But let’s see. I’m pretty partial to plant based foods because that’s how I keep myself healthy and running.

Scott Cowan [01:09:10]:
It’s not the coffee.

Erica Kutz [01:09:11]:
Well, probably the coffee. I’ve heard it’s good for your heart, so I’m going to hang on to that one. Let’s see. It’s so hard because there’s so many restaurants that I love. There’s, like, new stuff popping up all the time, too. There’s a place called Wild Oat. That’s where if I were to go to lunch today, what I was craving, I would go there. And they have gluten free vegan stuff, but they also have stuff for everybody else, too. They’ve got really great kind of sandwiches and soups and salads and fresh baked goods and coffee and yeah, good desserts and everything, but yeah, wild oat is great. I think they’re kind of like, whenever I go there, they’re really busy, but they’re kind of tucked away, I think on commercial Cornwall, I always get those two streets mixed up. But yeah, they’re great.

Scott Cowan [01:10:15]:
Okay, as we wrap this up, I have, well, two questions, and then you’ll get the final word. So question number one, and this is a very important question, I want you to take it seriously just like everything else in this conversation. I’m not joking. Cake or pie? And why.

Erica Kutz [01:10:41]:
I’d say I was so much more of a pie person because I love Thanksgiving pies. But I recently had some amazing cake from Port Angeles. There’s this place called New Day Eatery, and they make, like, a gluten free vegan cake. They make this, like, champagne cake that’s just, like, insanely good, or peanut butter cake as well. They’ve got that. But okay. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I’m becoming more of a cake person. But I used to love apple pie. That was like my go to.

Scott Cowan [01:11:22]:
That was your go to? There’s no wrong answer.

Erica Kutz [01:11:24]:
It’s so hard.

Scott Cowan [01:11:27]:
I stole this question from a previous guest. They used it on their podcast, and I thought, this is just a great question because it’s but what I didn’t realize was just how difficult the question is for everybody. Yeah, nobody goes, I like X like cake or pie and Y. And they’re like they don’t know how to answer it’s pretty funny. So the other question, then is what didn’t I ask you that I should have asked you?

Erica Kutz [01:12:05]:
Let’s see. We could go so many different routes. Let’s see. Yeah, we talked about snowboarding, we talked about splitboarding, we talked about design. I’d say OOH, I think this is a fun question for people. Okay, I’ll have two fun questions. Okay. Number one is, like, what do you collect? What’s the weird, random thing that you collect? Because I think everybody collects stuff, but to a certain extent, and I don’t know mine. I don’t even know why I brought this up. I just was looking around my room and I saw well, so now you.

Scott Cowan [01:12:46]:
Have to answer the question. So what do you collect?

Erica Kutz [01:12:49]:
I collect things from the beach. Specifically bones that I find that are cool. It’s pretty weird, but I love finding little animal bones because I like to kind of guess where they came from. And I’m a huge fan of Georgia O’Keefe, and her style and her illustration style is just, like I don’t know. She was a very influential artist, and so the way that she painted bones and skulls and stuff, I loved.

Scott Cowan [01:13:23]:
Okay, I’m giving you the kind of, like, perplexed. Okay, seriously, I do understand. It doesn’t matter what I think anyway. So you collect bones from the beach.

Erica Kutz [01:13:37]:
All right, what do you collect?

Scott Cowan [01:13:41]:
Currently, I’m not actively collecting anything, but in the past, I’ll tell. Two things I’ve collected. I used to collect baseball cards and for a while actually made a living selling pre World War II west coast minor league baseball memorabilia. So think about how niche that is. That’s super niche. But I used to collect baseball cards that came in cigarette packs from 19 oh, 919, ten, and 1911 from a tobacco company out of San Francisco called OBAC Tobacco. And they were baseball cards of West Coast ball players from Victoria, Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. And so I collected those. That’s very random. And the other thing I collected was and this was something didn’t have to cost money to do. So it was kind of a fun thing. I collected and traded every Grateful Dead concert that was recorded.

Erica Kutz [01:14:52]:
That’s awesome.

Scott Cowan [01:14:56]:
I did have a complete collection of every show that they recorded.

Erica Kutz [01:15:00]:
Very cool.

Scott Cowan [01:15:02]:
Yeah. So those are random things that I’ve collected in the I I’m not collecting any.

Erica Kutz [01:15:10]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:15:11]:
Now I want to go look at my baseball card. So to wrap this up, if people want to find out more about you, where can they find you? Online?

Erica Kutz [01:15:19]:
Primarily, I’m the most active on Instagram, and that’s Mountainmind. So Mountain like a peak and then Mind. Like Mindfulness. So just one word, all lowercase or Mountainmindesign.com is my website. That’s all linked on Instagram as well. But Instagram is kind of a raw day to day, like, what’s going on, what’s inspiring, what’s happening, events, artwork, like stream of consciousness kind of style. That’s all there.

Scott Cowan [01:15:55]:
Awesome. Well, I appreciate your time. This was a lot of fun for me. I learned there’s a bunch of things I don’t want to, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean but it’s really apparent that you enjoy this stuff a lot. And we live in a state that has a ton of opportunities. I do have one last question.

Erica Kutz [01:16:20]:
One last totally.

Scott Cowan [01:16:21]:
So we’re recording this in October of 2022. I was going to say 2021 because I don’t know what year it is anymore. October 2022. We’re getting close to fall and winter, which means there will be more snowfall, theoretically. Where do you want to go snowboarding this season?

Erica Kutz [01:16:39]:
I would really love to just explore more in the backcountry up here in the North Cascades. But I’d also love to go Canada. Like, never been to Whistler. I’ve never explored that. So that’s that’s on the list.

Scott Cowan [01:16:58]:
Well, and you’re fairly mean. You’re closer to it than we. So awesome. Well, Erica, thank you so much.

Erica Kutz [01:17:03]:
So much. Scott. Yeah. I really appreciate you having me on. This was super fun.