As part of Mervin family, GNU‘s been making boards since the 90’s and Barrett Christy has been riding them. So in honour of 90’s shred she hunted the GNU ad archive to find us some cracking retro pieces of snowboard history and takes some time to chat it all over with us. So take a read, be inspired and then get involved with A Brit Weird, the video contest supported by GNU, aimed at getting girls filming/shredding/getting weird…

1) OUR BEST RIDER IS A GIRL AD / AND BARRETT ON SNOWBOARDING IN THE 90s

You’ve been snowboarding since the 90’s, what was it like when you first took it up?

I first started snowboarding after high school in the early 90s. It was a fun time to get into it, I was in South Lake Tahoe and Palmer was king. I moved there to ski and realized pretty quickly that I sucked at skiing so I tried snowboarding and was hooked. I first tried it on pine needles down a hill in the back of my friends house and jumping on a trampoline. I figured I could stand up there so I was ready to go. My first day on the snow wasn’t so awesome though, I broke my tailbone and had to sit on a foam donut for a month. Regardless, I was determined and eventually figured it out. I moved to Crested Butte, CO. the next season and learned a lot there trying to follow skiers around the hill. That mountain was amazing, I had to learn how to go fast, traverse, ride natural terrain look at the whole mountain as my park.

Any snowboard highlights? When were the good ol’ days?

I think I’m still living the “good ol’ days”! I guess those early days in Colorado were pretty great. I got sponsored by Lib-Tech when I was in Crested Butte and eventually went to Summit County, Breckenridge and Vail to try riding pipes and parks. Thanks to my start in CB I caught on pretty quick to the freestyle thing and got into doing some contests. After doing one weekend of qualifying events I did the Nationals in Vail and won the women’s pipe event. Then I went and did the first US Extreme comp in Crested Butte and won that too. Those days were fun because snowboarding wasn’t so disciplined and I could float around and do a little of everything. 1997 was the first X Games in Snow Summit, CA. and I won the slope style and Big Air events there. That was really fun, and a big first for snowboarding events getting that kind of major media coverage.