Nik Pahno: The Alaskan Freak

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Sledder Cast podcast. We're still here at Hay Days in North Branch, Minnesota. It's a Sunday morning, a little bit warmer than yesterday. I think we got to the 50s this morning, and yesterday we were in the 30s, so you brought a little bit of that weather down right from Alaska. I've got Nik Pahno here. You were just telling me this is your first in-person podcast.

Yeah. I've done a few over the phone and they've always gone well, man. I love talking and chatting, so I'm pumped to do it on camera. You get that good quality, there's no lag, you're not talking over each other. It's a little bit difficult to sync up on the internet in Alaska, right?

Yeah. So first time at Hay Days. How's it been?

Oh man, I'm like a broken record right now. I'm telling everyone it's the bomb. Everyone's here. Out of the million people, the thousand people you want to meet, they're all here. It's the most happening place as far as the sled community, and it's so much more than that too. Everybody that comes here, the array of businesses and people and stuff that's going on. I haven't even touched half this place yet. I'm serious. I'll be here all three days and it's going to take three trips to touch everything. It's more than I could have pictured. Way more than I could have ever imagined.

Yeah. Like you just said, with you being up in Alaska, it's difficult to get down to some of these shows before the season kicks off. So for you to get down here, where everyone in the industry migrates to one location, that's a tough thing to pull off from Alaska, right?

Yeah man, it definitely is. That's why getting out and putting my face to people is a big deal for me, because it's been years since I've been able to actually get out. Everyone's kind of seeing my videos and what I'm doing up there, like, who's this Nik guy? What is this guy doing?

Who's posting these videos?

Yeah. So here I am, trying to talk it up. The OEM brought me here to do some talking about the new rigs, and I'm super blessed to put my foot in that door. That's been a dream trip honestly, just having wanted to do this growing up and then being on the stage up there talking.

Help me jog my memory. Were you the first Alaskan on the Ski-Doo team?

No, Ashley Chaffin. She's from Alaska. I think there's been a couple here and there that maybe just pop in. Cory Davis was riding the Ski-Doo maybe. There's a couple guys. We're just few and far between up there. I feel like that's probably Ski-Doo's first investment up there in a while. Ashley is like a vet, she's been in for a long time, since before I was riding probably. So I think it was a step towards a younger cat, maybe taking a little bit of a leap of faith. They picked me up and we started working together a year and a half, two years ago. They kind of took a gamble, right? I was still kind of a loose cannon. And that builds a good relationship too. Same as my relationship with Deviant Ink. Y'all were my first sponsor a long time ago.

A long time ago, right.

Yeah. So dude, it pulls on my heartstrings. I was just that kid chasing a dream, and now it's coming to flourish, and here I am at Hay Days.

Yeah, it's awesome man. We've loved following you along. You've done some cool stuff on the snow, winning awards in competitions with the work you put in, and it's really fun to watch.

I try not to be self-conscious about it. I try to show the progression and really get it out there. It's hard to post YouTube videos, it's hard to talk on camera and stuff. Everyone that wants to do it, I just encourage them, there's no bad time to start.

Well, you have to start. How can you get good if you weren't already doing it the last five years?

Yep. And the thing is, no one watches your first few videos anyways.

No, because there's no one there. You don't have anyone.

Right. So it's practice. Getting into longer videos and talking with people was kind of hard, but it's good content too. It's personal stuff people engage with. And then I come here and people feel like they know me already. They're like, oh dude, what's up, I watch your YouTube. They've already got a feel for Nik Pahno, so it's easy to talk to me.

I will say this, bud, you for sure nail the soundtrack on your videos. You're literally the best at it. The vibe, when you drop a nice crispy one, the tunes you throw on there. And it's all over the place too, right? There's variety.

Yeah, I listen to anything, man. Rap, hard rock, whatever, seriously.

And it adds a lot, because there's a feeling. You can watch something and be like, oh, that's cool. But when you can spice it up and sync good audio to it, that provides the feeling, and people walk away feeling it.

Believe it or not, I make a lot of them and then I weed through them all. I'll be going through a bunch of videos, and I'll put a track to one and it gives me a chill, and I'm like, that's the one. That's the ticket. I bet a lot of people are going to dig that one.

That's awesome. And sometimes people are worried about what other people are going to like, and they end up selling themselves short on their own personality, because they're trying to cater to their audience versus just being themselves.

I see it as art. It's my way of presenting myself, my style or whatever, so it should be 100% original. And it's not like I don't take tons of inspiration from all sorts of people, whether it's downhill mountain bikers, freeride mountain bikers, dirt bikers, Caleb, other guys in the industry. Take a little bit of everything and then make it your own.

Yep. Make it original. That's the right way to do it for sure. Well, we've got a question to kick things right off. We had a nice little intro there to get the cobwebs off, it's a little early. But Nik, for those who are just tuning in, they're swiping through their gram right now or thumbing through thumbnails on YouTube, and they see this thumbnail of us sitting here. What can we tell that person, knowing what we're going to talk about in this episode, that's going to intrigue them enough to stop what they're doing and dial in to this episode?

Right. I was thinking about this, and we could go on forever about it, but really it's so unique and it's so high level. It's world class stuff, whether it's hunting or snowmobiling or cliff diving or whatever it is, and it's in a place that offers a scenic view that's majestic, man. That is world class in itself. And then we're going to try and put an athlete that's next level in there to do something, or put yourself in a position that's maybe risky and offers a big payoff.

Test yourself, right, in a place as rugged as Alaska.

Yeah, in a place where there's no help.

That's what I'm saying. When I was putting this together and coming up with some of these questions, I'm like, man, the stakes are a lot higher for you guys in a lot of cases.

Yeah. In fact there are specific places you'd like to recreate, whatever you're doing, because it's a lot safer, the access isn't super dangerous, and say a helicopter could come pick you up if you got injured or something.

Yep. Well cool, let's kick it off real quick with a little background here.

Earliest memory of snowmobiling.

Earliest memory of snowmobiling. Someone was just asking me this. Me and Steve Martin were talking and he's like, how long have you been riding? Sleds are a tool in Alaska, right? So everyone knows how to ride, but not a lot of guys care to rip. That's the deal. Everyone knows how to ride them around and go get firewood with them and all of that. We always used them to get up to the cabin. But I had this picture of me doing a wheelie, and I just remember thinking that was the baddest ever. And then I would try to ride across the lake on one ski. I'm not carving, I'm just riding a straight line across the lake on one ski. So I had a little drive early on, that was my little blip, and then school sports kind of took over.

You played football?

I did. I played football and basketball and track. I did all sorts of stuff, and I was a super competitive athlete. Every kid wants to be a professional athlete at whatever it is they love to do at the time, and that consumed my life for a few years. And then I found myself coming back when I was about 21. I was back in Alaska, I got a mountain sled, and it just took off. It snowballed so fast, because it's only been four years since I really started riding. You really can't ride while you're going to school full time. You get winter break off, but everyone's going to be toast in the zones, and what if you don't get good weather in the 10 days you're back home? So I would do spring breaks. And what's crazy is I went to school here in Minnesota for college.

What brought you to Minnesota for college?

I got a small scholarship for football, and I wanted to be somewhere like Montana, Minnesota, Wyoming, somewhere in the northern Midwest, so I picked that out. Everyone here knows what snow machines are. Everyone ditch bangs when it's a good winter. And I'd go back home on spring break, halfway through March, and ride my snow machine, and they'd be like, dude, what in the world are you doing? We only hear about trips out west. Everyone does trips out west, and you went back to Alaska? Just like, yeah man. And you realize it's a pretty notorious place, and it's a dream for a lot of guys, believe it or not, even though a lot of people up there take it for granted, because it's just the way of life. Like anything, it's effort. You've got to load up, sometimes it's cold, sometimes it's hard. And then when you get out there and you're on top of the mountain, you're like, yeah dude, it's worth it. That's why we wake up stupid early in season. It's so dark out, you get like three hours of light, it's cold, and then you're back at the truck tired because you just beat the piss out of yourself, and it's pitch black.

Jeez. I'm going to dial into that a little bit more, because Alaska is super intriguing to me in general, the state, so I'm going to pick your brain on that in a minute.

It's good. I've traveled around a little bit, so I can see how, after being gone for six or eight months and then showing back up in Alaska, you're like, damn. It's not flat here. The mountains go right into the ocean. It's just nuts.

So what do you do outside of snowmobiling that allows you to get as much seat time on the sled as possible?

Basically Alaska is construction, roads, infrastructure, and oil and gas. So there's a lot of great-paying jobs. We've got the ports too. I dabbled as a commercial fisherman for a bit, and I dabbled as a longshoreman at the port for a bit. We'd send pipe up to the Slope for gas and oil companies, BP and stuff like that. And now I'm moving into more specialized work. I still want to work. I like to provide the service for people in the community, I like to have purpose. But I'm trying to scale down the amount and be more specialized and niche, so I'm doing private contracting, specialty work that pays real well, but I'm not doing it all the time. That way I can focus on my passions, hunting and trapping and snowmobiling. And I want to be a figure for Ski-Doo. And I like to post the YouTube videos. So there's so much, and stuff has to get prioritized somewhere. Something takes a back seat. And family is going to come first.

You just had a kid about a year ago?

Yep. I have a baby girl, she's a year and a half now. And I actually have another baby girl due this next month.

There you go.

Yeah, so I've been keeping that on the down low, like, I can still come to Hay Days, guys. I can handle it. I'm not that busy.

Nice work, bud. Shortly here you're going to be outnumbered. Gender-wise, you're outnumbered.

I'm outnumbered, man. I've got my dog, though. I've got a big pitty.

Nice, man. So what's one breakthrough, pivotal moment? Because you said you really started getting into it about four years ago, watching the YouTube videos and being like, man, I want to get a GoPro. What was the transitional moment where you were like, hey, I want to take this to the next level? Was it watching some videos and saying, I could do that?

I think growing up and watching the YouTube videos, whoever it is, it almost seems unattainable to be that guy. Then I had done two years here to get an associate's, and I stopped playing ball because of injuries and stuff. It was real hard on my head. And I went to Colorado. There are Woodward training facilities there, and there's a place with an indoor airbag facility, and all the mountain bike parks around there are crazy. They're breeding professional athletes. I was in Boulder, and believe it or not there are some athletes that come out of Colorado, like Frisco or Boulder or Grand Junction. You go to Woodward and you're going to see a guy pop a 720 on his bike.

Wow.

I was pretty good on my dirt jumper, I could do flips and stuff like that, and those places let me skyrocket with talent. I'd see these guys and think, there's no way this guy's not sponsored, and I'd look them up and it's DJ Brandt and Nicholi Rogatkin, and these guys ride Red Bull Rampage. And I'm like, man, why can't I try to do that? So I was doing some big stuff on the bikes. And I loved the sleds, like I was saying, I always had this weird little love for sleds growing up. And honestly, I obsessed over it, and some years it was tearing me apart. I wanted to flip the sleds so bad. That was it. I could backflip my bike and 360 my bike, but a backflip on a snow machine, dude, oh my gosh. And then seeing guys do it in the backcountry, I'm like, dude, I've got the best place to do it. There's no excuse.

And the flip gives you a lot of credit with people, so that kind of stuff went hand in hand. I wanted to be more relatable, because I started out as a tree rider and I still love to get in the trees. But that was it, man. I saw these guys, they weren't missing out on life at all, and I have this weird syndrome where I just don't want to miss out. I go and go and go, and sometimes I have to check myself and be like, hey man, relax, take it slow, this is hard stuff. Like I was saying, I wanted to do the flip so bad I was stressing myself out about it. I'd go out and ride and it wouldn't be as good as the last one, and I'd be like, can I even do this? Am I that guy? I'm not Brett Turcotte, dude. What am I even doing?

Imposter syndrome, man, is what they call it, right? Your brain tries to tell you that you can't be that person. And it tears you apart, and you almost prove your brain right because you listen to it a little bit.

Go get it, man. And even if you've got to take a break from riding for a couple weeks and go check out, that might be the best thing for you. But I'd love to see all the guys, it seems like everyone's wanting to flip these days. Everyone's tugging on flips.

Was your first flip on a 165?

I pulled a couple that I didn't really ride out. I'd pull them all the way around and then I'd usually end up scraping off. I'd try to throw them to an off-axis landing with a lot of powder or something. I'd probably done about five like that, and then I landed one on my '06 Rev, the short track. It wasn't even the Rev as much as I had learned what worked. It was so weird going from a 165 to a 120, but I knew it could be done. And I'm all about film study. I love to watch people do it, and then I feel like I've got a better chance at it. I was riding Turnagain hardcore that year, watching everyone flip Revs, and I'd been trying all year, and I was like, dude, I think this is a better sled to do it on. And I stuck a few.

And I don't have it figured out at all. I'd like to pick the brains of all the guys that are better than me and learn how to do it safer. That's the ticket. I have a checklist now that I have to go through before I'll do a hit, if it's a flip or a big jump. I have to probe the landing. Let me just get it out here and I'll read it to everybody.

That's awesome. Guys can write it down.

People ask me for a how-to on flipping, and I'll send them a video of me explaining it, like a 50-second video, and try to give them all I've got. This is all I've learned. I can do them consistently, take it as you want. It might feel different for you, you might explain it differently. Guys do tricks differently, so whatever works for them.

But this list, let me see. Is it the flip jump list? Oh dude, come on. I know the word landing is in it like a thousand times, and I can't find it. But it's: probe the landing. And then afterwards it's, is there a landing, in all caps. And then it's, are you sure? Because in my opinion, it doesn't matter if you have a lot of snow there. If your landing isn't set up to transition your jump, that's not a landing. If you're not stepping up to a smooth landing, or you're not landing on something that's the same pitch and even, it's not set up correctly. That's not a lander. So this list I've built helps me stay safe and be a lot more successful at it, be smarter about it. And that's the ticket, because everyone can do them, and the sleds these days are so nuts. You can almost just buy a backflip with a 146 9R, dude.

Right. Just buy a backflip.

Yeah. It's more about having someone there that's willing to say, this is a good jump here, this one's tall enough, and you need to carry this much speed.

Especially if you have people who are consistent, who are with you quite often and know, hey, for him, this is money.

Exactly. That's like my boy Braden this year. He's a solid rider all around, and I saw him tug on a couple of flips and the jump was just horrible. This jump was like 4 feet tall, and he was yanking on the bar so hard his hands were flying off. Him and his sled were catapulting in the air. Man, he's got a set on him for even trying one there. Then we went out to a good one. Unless they're way better than me, I don't like letting people hit a jump first, especially if I made it. It was so hard for me to let him do it. But this thing was perfect. It was like a 45-foot kind of step-up, and we had like 5 feet of fresh powder, so I was like, you can't go wrong, man, this one's perfect. Just be as patient as you can, wait as long as you can, and it'll come right around. And he stuck it. He looks back and he's like, oh damn, that does work. And everyone was like, yeah, Braden's the man. His next three, he wadded them up, because he went and picked out a bad one again.

That's the hard part, seeing the terrain. Guys like Andreas or Brett or Caleb, believe it or not, they're masters with their eyes. They're masters at seeing what's possible with their bag of tricks and what sled they have.

Reading the landscape.

Exactly. And what gets guys off. I was talking with Brandt Cormier, he's from Haines, and they have wind lips like we do. We get these huge wind lips that blow in because we get coastal warm stuff. It freezes, then there's this crazy jump, and then it gets plastered with snow and now it's powder and straight up and hard underneath. And everyone has a different style. Guys in Canada do tons of big drops, man. I did a drop like two years ago and I was like, dude, why am I not doing more of this? It's just a different setup. A different zone, a different rider. Everyone's abstract.

I don't know if you started with a question on that, or if I answered it good, or if I just went off.

Oh, you're good, you're good.

We're talking a lot about Alaska, because I think that's super unique for our conversation here. Growing up, dude, if there was a TV show and it had the word Alaska in it, I was watching it. Some of them are popular. There are ones about guys homesteading, there's a lot of homesteading, Gold Rush, Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers.

Yeah, there's a lot. People are curious, man. They don't know what's going on up there. But dude, that's not even the half of it.

Oh man. Okay, so I've got questions about the fishing industry, the crabbing industry, the trucking industry.

I think everyone kind of gets it from that. How else do you see it other than the TV shows? That's literally the illustration everyone has in their head. And it's a lot looser. Everything's getting more sanctions and getting tighter, but Alaska is still the wild west, I think, compared to a lot of the states. There's a whole generation that isn't used to it not being the wild west, and they just kind of do what they want. In all those industries there's stuff you do and don't do. There are people you don't look at or talk to, you let them do whatever they're doing. You don't mess with them. Even when I'm out hunting, if I see guys, I don't want to talk to them, I don't want them to freak out. There are a lot of guys up there. It's just the wild west, man. It's crazy.

And all those industries are super official. They're huge industries that make tons of money, and there are tons of super capable businessmen and super talented guys in Alaska. Because it's so rugged, it almost makes you rugged yourself. It can suck sometimes. Winters are hard up there too. It's tough to live up there for a lot of people, that's the deal. You're going to pay so much in heating fuel.

Tell us a little bit about that, because for some of us we're maybe not familiar with the daylight. You guys have to mess with daylight, right?

Right. It's just rough for December and January. You'd better be at the trailhead way before light. You should be going up with a headlight, because you have like four hours of light.

So what's light like?

Around the solstice, towards the end of December, it's light around 11, and it starts to dusk up at like 3. So you get from 11 to 3 with riding light. We're not as bad as maybe Barrow, where they don't see the sun for a couple weeks, but dude, it's kind of depressing. A lot of people are snowbirds. They just dip out for December and January. Everyone runs down to Havasu, Arizona, Hawaii, Mexico. A lot of people work seasonally, especially in Southcentral. We're super tourist-inflated because of the fishing and all that, so everyone will rip a job that's summer-oriented, and then Hawaii kind of pops off during the winter and everyone boogies down there. People do contracting or restaurants, a lot of servers, the food industry.

So there's some sort of fund. I remember hearing someone say, hey, if you move to Alaska they pay you like 15 grand a year, some crazy number. So when I was sitting down putting this together, I'm like, I'm going to look into that. Is that even true?

The PFD.

The Permanent Fund Dividend. Is that a real thing? Because Google says you should be getting $1,312 this year. Is that what it is?

Yeah, it varies. It is a thing, and it's for the inflated grocery prices and heating costs during the winter. It's for the difficulty of living in Alaska, essentially. It varies every year. We've had from like 900 to like 4,000 since I've gotten it. Once you're 18 you get your own, and I think kids get it too, so if parents have four kids, they're going to cop four of those for them too.

But you're not making any dividends on that. The kids are costing you more than 1,200 bucks a year.

Yeah. But it's legit. You have to live in AK. You can't be gone more than 90 days at a time, you have to spend at least 185 days in Alaska, you have to have a primary residence with your stuff in it, your voter ID, all this stuff. It's actually kind of a hassle if you're coming to Alaska, because you have to prove that you live here and stay here and you're not out of the state for work too much. But yeah, the PFD is legit.

Pahno gets them.

Yeah, they're cool, man. They're dope. As soon as the PFD hits, the marketplace gets flooded. You'll see everyone ripping off these little dirt bikes and four-wheelers for sale for cheap.

So what you're saying is we need to figure out when that drops, and then have our PFD sale.

Bingo, dude. That's what it is.

The PFD wrap sale. Oh shoot, we just told everyone about it.

It's October, next month. Keep your eyes peeled.

All right, nice. Well, what's the worst part and the best part about living in Alaska, if you had to answer that real quick?

Danger, right? Whatever it is. Roads, outdoors, everything. Probably danger. Your chances of dying are just higher.

They're high, yeah.

The road, it's one of the most lethal roads in North America per capita. It might be the most. It's a deadly road, and really you're not worried about yourself, man, it could be someone else. It's brutal. And then when you're out doing stuff, it's remote. You're real remote a lot of times. Even just driving to Fairbanks. I was doing a drive and it was 35 below, and then going to 40 below. I was on my way to Delta, because I had a dealership up there, Delta Powersports. They're the bomb, big shout out to Delta Powersports. And I took my wife's truck, and dude, as soon as I saw it was 25, 30 below, I started sweating. I was like, gosh, the transmission's not going to like that. It's not looking real hot. And then I get there and I didn't leave the truck running. I turned it off, dude, and it was 30 below. I should have pulled it in their shop or something. I wasn't thinking at all.

And then on my way back, the Glenn is a dangerous road, and in the middle of the night you might not see anybody but maybe one trucker for hours. It's 30 below, and on my way back I lost fifth gear, I lost fourth gear, I'm in third gear, and I'm just praying. I'm not a sitting duck, I've got OnStar in this thing. But golly, it could be bad. Man, I might have to light this truck on fire to stay warm, whatever I need to.

But yeah, people get into trouble up there quick. There's this zone called Nellie Juan, Nellie Juan Lake, and you ride a river drainage up, and the river is no joke at all. It's anywhere from maybe one inch to 10 feet deep, so you might think you've got it and then boom. And it's gnarly fast, it's pushing water, there are big rocks. The guys that are pretty popular on Instagram, they all rip it. They go up there whenever they want, they're super talented. I remember watching them water skip the crossing, and growing up I would never go up there. I didn't want any part of that. You're coming off like a two-foot ledge, slapping a creek that's ripping, and then having to bunny hop out over another two-foot ice wall.

And now everyone's learning where all the cool spots are, so people are like, yeah, I can go there, no problem. I do a little bit of trapping up there sometimes, and I like to go poke around and look for critters or whatever. And man, three times this year I'd be coming down this trail and there'd be two guys up to their chest in water with their sleds in the river. It's just a slush bowl, and I'm like, dude, what are you guys doing? You've got no business being here. You've got to go fast across the river, man. Don't try to just cruise across the slush. It's 10 feet deep. And they've got ropes out and they're pulling sleds through.

And then two other guys ended up spending the night up there. You have to cross this river, and you've got these single track trails, and you might be in the river for like 100 yards. If you miss your single track out, dude, it's pitch black. It's January or December. These guys were in trouble, man. They're going down the river and they miss their trail out and just keep going down the river, and eventually the river gets too deep. What do we do? They turn around and they can't find the trail, because they've gone past the trail they came in on, and now they're just in the river. They ended up spending the night up there.

And all my boys, Richard and Jeff and all these guys, they're the guys that have to go out, because someone's like, hey, someone's overdue at Nellie Juan. So they rip out at 1 a.m. to go find them, and they found these guys up there, no problem. That's usually how it happens. The community is the guys that get out there and get it done. A lot of the older guys have friends that passed away in avalanches or serious situations, or they've had close calls, and they know it's no joke. They do a real good job, the older cats, of, like you said, if you don't know, don't go.

Yeah.

They're just good at not being dumb about it. Certain zones, you just don't go in there when the crossings aren't good, and you don't bring a guy in there that's not confident or whatever.

And then the best part. I know it sounds messed up, dude, but it's almost the same answer. That's what makes it so great. You have to be at this level. You have to use your brain, you have to think, you have to be smart. You have to be not only good at what you're doing, but you have to think it through on different levels. And if you're taking what guys with experience are saying with a grain of salt, you could get hurt up there.

And it's great, because I feel like I'm kind of dominating Alaska, is how I feel. Which maybe isn't quite right, a little bit. I just feel like I'm getting good at being out there. I like to go by myself, I like to hunt and trap, and I feel super confident out there. It feels good, man, in a place where not a lot of people would be safe, I'm pretty damn safe. I've got my inReach, I have gear, I have a brand new, super reliable snow machine. I am set up. I have friends that know where I'm at. I know where the bad zones are, and I don't mess around with the stuff I shouldn't be. There's no textbook, so you learn this stuff almost subconsciously, and then you check it off. You're like, yes, that is why I do that. This is the way it needs to be done here.

So that's why. Alaska is just so dangerous, and the stakes are high, man. The animals are big, the jumps are just as big. They're scary. Everything wants to kill you. And a lot of guys there have done a lot of gnarly stuff. Some of the most premier riders have ridden these jumps that I'm riding, and all of the most premier hunters are coming up there, 15, 20 miles away from me, because it's the best in the world. Guys go to Africa or they go to Russia, and they come to Alaska.

The biggest animals in the world. You guys aren't far enough north to get the old polar bears, are you?

Oh, we get polar bears.

You get polar bears coming down? Polar bears in Alaska?

Not where I'm at, but up higher north. Dude, there are too many of those things, bro. They're everywhere.

So how do they know not to just come down?

They're good up there, man. Polar bears and brown bears breed, you get a little mixture. If anything it's the brown bears that aren't going up. The brown bears are like, we ain't going up there. And the polar bears do so well up there. They're essentially aquatic animals, really. And there are so many seals right now, they don't need to go anywhere. There are so many bears. There are so many polar bears, there are so many brown bears. Don't let anybody fool you guys, the bears are doing just fine.

We were talking about that yesterday.

Give some love to the ungulates, man. Give some love to the sheep and moose. With the polar bears, everything's sanctioned to where certain things are protected, specifically those animals, marine mammals and stuff. They're just off limits. So stuff's getting kind of skewed. But the native population up there, they're happy to harvest the seals and eat them too. And I love to harvest. That's my thing, man. That's like, in Alaska...

What have you got in your freezer right now?

That might actually take number one, fish and game meat. Oh yeah. In my freezers there's moose, elk, caribou, black cod, red salmon, silver salmon, whatever. My buddy just shot a sheep, so I'm trying to go score some sheep off him. It's everything. Blacktail deer, probably some of that. My buddy got a black bear this year and he said it's good. I don't eat black bear.

I've heard canning your bear meat can turn it pretty tasty.

Well, these guys woof it down. A good spring black bear, a berry bear, or a grass bear, they love a black bear. And I'm not one to hate, man. To each their own. Eat the black bear, it's good, cook it through. But when you've got deer, moose, elk, caribou...

Oh yeah. Oh man.

And it's readily available for your harvest, usually. You can do caribou, you can do whatever is there, and it's a no-brainer. Don't go to the grocery store, this stuff's too good. I was at a restaurant the other day and my wife was getting some salmon, and I was like, man, that does sound good. She's like, why don't you get it? I just have this rule: I don't eat fish when I'm not in Alaska, because it's never panned out for me. It's just not the same.

But yeah, that's a huge plus. And I like the homesteading feel. I like to have freedom. I like to feel like I'm in charge of my own life a little bit, like I've got the reins, and Alaska is a great place for that. You've got some freedom up there. I'd like to get a bush plane or something eventually. That's the way to really get out there.

Are you familiar with Stuck in the Rut?

Oh yeah, man.

I forget their last name. Trevor, and one of the brothers, brother-in-law, sister are up in Alaska. And Adam Granda.

Yeah dude, a beast. My gosh.

The distance between you guys. He's up there in King Salmon, but it sounds like he flies into Anchorage quite a bit.

Whatever, he's delivering fuel or sheds or whatever. Those guys, I like all of that. I'm just not a content creator in that fashion, and that stuff is so intriguing and cool to me. He's up in King Salmon, so he's out west a ways, and it's way rugged out there, man. It's windy. He flies a plane out there. It's just gnarly. They're up on the peninsula but way up north, way above me. And they have critters beyond belief out there.

I follow them a little bit. It's crazy, huh?

That Adam dude, that's why I feel like I'm not even grazing Alaska yet, other than the snowmobiling. I get some places on a sled. But those guys are living remote, truly. They're living in a village, so his access to town is his airplane. Your kids have to go see the doctor, we've got to fly to Anchorage, hopefully there's weather. I'm living a detuned Adam Granda life. I'm in town and stuff. But those are the people that would give it to you straight and tell you how it is, whether it's the hunting industry or the fishing industry. They see it all out there.

Big state. And they're probably miles and miles away from the next little village.

Everyone's spread out. A spot where there was good fishing was a great place to live, and that's where the native people were. That's why they're there, because there's a killer fish spot and there's moose in the area. There's food. That's why there's a bunch of shacks and houses there. Or there's a place to barge. That's the thing. If you can get a barge in there, that's the ticket in Alaska. Logistics. If anybody wants to come to Alaska, man, logistics is 90% of your battle, seriously. Getting there, staying there, the weather, whatever you're doing, you're battling Alaska. But you're almost guaranteed to have a great window for snow machining or hunting or whatever. You're almost guaranteed to have a legendary one. You might have to wait for it a little while, but it's going to come eventually. You're going to get that little beam of sunlight.

Man, that's cool you mentioned Stuck in the Rut. Those guys just kill it with the production. It's a fun channel to watch.

They're world class. Those guys are the best. I just love to see people that are super invested in stuff and try to perform at their best. And for all of them to be blue collar and have jobs like we have, I'm like, dang man, you could totally knock everyone out of the park and just be this dude that loves to do it.

Yeah. We're actually starting to work with one of the brothers, Trevor Schneider, on Deviant Ink.

Trevor rips. I've talked to Trevor a couple times on the old Catalyst. I think I talked to Trevor before I knew that his family was Stuck in the Rut. Is Trevor the older brother?

He's the youngest, I think. The older two brothers are the guys that really started that deal.

So I talked to Trevor a couple times before, and then I realized, dang man, those are his older brothers, his sister and stuff. Cool people.

Yep. Well, we're moving right along.

How are we doing on time? How long are we doing this?

We're about 50 minutes.

Okay, we're cruising, man.

We're cruising. There are a few other areas I want to tap into the old Pahno brain on here.

Yeah, what do you got?

This is more along the professional side of snowmobiling. We already talked about backflipping. How much work did it take to get on with Ski-Doo? Was that a goal?

How do I gauge that, right, how much effort I put in? I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't like, man, I want to be the poster guy for Ski-Doo. In my head, I can do it. I'm from Alaska, I've got the best spot up here, I'm going to buy a camera, I'm going to do it right. And then you lose sight of that for a little bit. You tear your hair out for a year or two. That's kind of how it was. I remember getting so jacked up on my first sponsorships, like Deviant Ink, and I work with 509, and I was like, man, whatever, Ski-Doo next. Like, yeah dude, I'm riding the Doo. But that's a pipe dream, right? That's a big deal. You not only have to be a rider, you have to be this person. You have to carry yourself a certain way and talk a certain way. You have to be a guy that's going to offer something to them.

So I tried to develop that with that in mind. I should show them I could be a representative of the product. I can be consistent, and I can engage this specific audience, and just that audience. My page isn't too crazy. I might post a hunting picture every once in a while, or a life update maybe twice a year, but everything is really geared like a Ski-Doo commercial. That's how I see it. It's basically all these advertisements of what the Ski-Doo can do. So to me, there's no way that being an ambassador wouldn't eventually be a product of this, if you just keep doing it and doing it.

And it's crazy, because there are so many different ways to manifest that. My boy John Gibbs runs the Facebook groups, like the Ski-Doo riders groups, the Ski-Doo 850 riders, these specific motor groups. That's his way of engaging and advertising, and he's touching a ton of people, hundreds of thousands, and on a real level too, with his profile. So there are all these different ways to do it, and doing just that kind of advertising was naturally my idea of what I wanted to offer companies as an athlete. That's kind of how it went. But man, I was gunning for that.

I've always been a Ski-Doo fan, man. My mom's mom and dad were homesteaders in Alaska. They had 15 Elans. There's a picture of them all with Ski-Doo full-face helmets on, old school, like the '70s. I'd be copping those helmets at the swap meet. And I bought a couple other sleds, and my mom was giving me junk about it. So it was bonus, man. I wanted it, and it was totally bonus. It was the dream. I was absolutely gunning for it, 100%. And looking up to a lot of those guys too. An OEM is what everyone would like, right? It's prestigious, I guess.

Well, it means you've put in a ton of work. It means you've matched talent with a ton of work.

Right, exactly. You're multifaceted, and you're engaged with the industry in some sort of way. A lot of people do it through racing, there are so many ways. The Facebook groups, snocross, hill cross, hill climbs, all that stuff. And dude, I'm so small in the industry. Hill climbs are so big. There are so many more people that go watch that in person than are chilling with me, man. There are like five of us.

But where your influence comes in, it may not be in person, but it's offering that experience. It's the online, social experience of giving someone a glimpse into what it's like to do what you do in a remote place like Alaska.

Yeah, that's what it is right there. And I think the guys that are real good at doing it want to share with people. I would love for more people to see Alaska and come up there. Please come up, man. Take your trailer, or just fly in, rent a truck and go pick up a sled from the rental. It's just hard, though. It's logistics. It's so far. There's no all-inclusive. I was like, man, we need an all-inclusive, a huge lodge that has rentals. Fly in, hop in the van, head over to the lodge, and it's food, drink, sleds. The business model is there. Someone just needs to do it.

One day we'll have the Pahno Resort. That's what we need. What is it, Carl Custer has the mountain park. We'll have Pahno Mountain Park.

AKA Pahno Mountain Park, brought to you by Ski-Doo.

Yep. I was interested in avalanches. I had a podcast conversation with a couple riders who were in an avalanche recently, and I was like, I don't really hear much about avalanche fatalities, motorized, in Alaska. Maybe I'm just not in the right circle. So listen, I did some data research here. From 2020 till now, there have been 100 avalanche fatalities in Alaska. Any guess on what percentage of those were motorized?

If I had to guess, depending on what happened, because there have been incidents where multiple people were buried, I'd say between one and five. That's what I'd say personally.

You're pretty close, actually. The percentage was 11%. It's an even 100, so 11.

Okay, if there were a couple with multiples, that jacks the number up. And that's what happens, man. It's not the sleds for a lot of them. Most of them are climbers or heli skiers, a lot of people on foot, believe it or not. That's where you get stuck. In my neck of the woods there are usually at least a couple, specifically in this place called Hatcher Pass. A lot of people are on foot, and there are terrain traps everywhere. These little gullies, little ravines only 10 feet deep, everywhere on these hills. It just takes a small one. If you're in that ravine and you get 10 feet of snow coming down, it's such a bad position to be in. Like you said, there were two people snowshoeing up a mountain and they passed away. It's dangerous. I do not like being off my sled on the hill. I like to be able to book it and move around.

I actually just read that number wrong, so I'm going to correct it.

Yeah, what is it now?

Am I off? You're actually closer. There were 100 avalanche occurrences, not fatalities, from 2020. 11% of those were fatal, and 0% were sleds.

Zero percent were sleds. Yeah, because I was going to say I haven't heard of that.

The 11 fatalities were all in the snowboarding, skiing, climbing area. So the reason I was asking: what is going on? Are you guys doing something different up there on sleds, or what?

Well, one, I feel like a lot of the people recreating that are passing away in avalanches aren't riding snowmobiles. The zone I'm talking about, usually one or two people a year are going. I don't know if there's a lack of communication there, but we're really tight about it. And I think maybe it's because enough people have passed away. Avalanche safety, not only the avalanche courses, like the ones in Anchorage, those classes are packed, level one and level two Avy. But also those guys I was talking about, the dudes that have been around a long time and know when to go.

We have a group called AK Snow Shredders. It's this huge group, there are like 15,000 of us. Every shredder in Alaska is on Snow Shredders. There's a bunch of talking and all this stuff on there, but when it's time to not ride, there are huge PSAs on there. Like, guys, don't be idiots, seriously. If you're going to ride today, ride the flats. Don't kill your buddy, don't kill yourself. We're super transparent, and they're not nice about it either. If they catch you in a zone that's maybe sketchy and you don't have a beacon and a bag, you're getting torched. I've seen it happen. I've seen older guys come and rip people for it, and probably rightfully so. Your buddy's in danger if you don't have a beacon. If you don't want to have a bag, whatever, I guess, but you need to.

And those guys usually aren't educated. If you've taken an Avy course, man, I learned so much in my Avy 1 that I was like, I'm doing 2. I couldn't even believe it. We did our first drill, a burial, and I was like, homie's dead. He's done. I didn't even know how to dig correctly, where to dig, how to get someone out. And then how to use beacons, multi-burial sequences, all this stuff, having a new Gen 4 BCA or a Pieps or something. My brother and a couple of my boys, we're all pretty trained up, so if I have one or two of those guys with me, man, you're just feeling way better.

And a lot of the groups in Alaska, it feels cliquey, it feels like nobody likes each other. But really they only ride with people they feel safe with, people they're comfortable with, who they know can stick around and are taking care of their rigs so they're going to be reliable. Sometimes it sucks, because you're a kid with this beat sled and you want to go ride with all these guys that are real good, and they're like, dude, you're just not there yet.

For sure.

But for the most part I think we're super transparent and just call it what it is. We had like six people die at Turnagain Pass, in one slide, and then another burial up around Grandview. A couple of big ones like that, and that generation is not going to let you forget about it ever. They lost a couple of real good buddies, and usually it's someone that's real tight in the industry. It's not a coincidence. We're out there a ton, and you're playing those odds a little bit. So that's what it is. It's that knowledge, it's listening to those guys with experience, and it's taking those classes. It all plays a part.

Isn't that great.

I can confidently say one to five is what I was thinking. Zero, locked in, man. And we hear about it, that's the thing. If someone's overdue, we're probably out there helping with the recovery.

Yep. Well, what's in the future for Nik in the backcountry? Anything cool on the horizon that you're really excited about?

Yeah man, just exploring more, I guess, and trying to share more. I don't take many videos when I'm out just walking, when I'm shed hunting or trapping and stuff. So I'd like to move into a bigger audience, like an outdoor enthusiast audience, an adventure-based kind of deal, because that's where I really get off. I love big adventure, and Alaska is such a place to do it. And not only that, I'm going to do some big flips this year, a couple big jumps. Got some plans in the making. Going to bring Tristan and the boys up. We're planning a movie, so we're going to try to get a one- or two-hour movie going. I've got a lot of things moving.

If you're into the hunting, if you're into the trapping, if you like the sheds, fishing even, all sorts of that stuff, I'm trying to move into that more. I enjoy taking huge critters, and I think that's a good move.

That's just me being selfish, because I'd love to watch that.

Well, right. And I want to do it at a level that's nuts. I've done it already, actually. I took my first bull moose this last year solo, and it was like 5 yards away, charging me. I was like, babe, if I had a GoPro, you wouldn't even believe this. Everyone just rolls their eyes, and I'm like, man, I've got to have a GoPro next time so you guys can see this. So that's what I'm trying to get to. I see those Stuck in the Rut guys, they're so good at it, and it's hard. If you want to think of something that's harder to capture than sledding, it might be hunting. It happens so quick, and when you don't expect it. You're usually never ready, especially not with a camera.

You want to film it, but in the moment...

It's like when you pop up on the zone and you're like, we've got to film first, and everyone's like, yeah right, I'm not blowing this, we're going. No, that thing's broadside. Forget about the red button.

So those guys are inspiration. Where am I going to take it, what's the goal? I don't know. Big sponsorships or whatever, that stuff is so driven by actual accomplishment, truly getting it done. If you could trap 20 wolves, or get a 240-inch moose or whatever, it's so raw. It's tangible, it's right there. It almost has nothing to do with your ability to capture it. You could just take a picture and someone's like, wow, that's probably a story and a half. I wish he made YouTube videos. So I'll be doing my best to do it. I do a lot of stuff solo. I love to just be out there alone. It's dangerous, but I just enjoy being out there, man. So that's what I'd like to do. I'll try to up my production. I'll get to it.

Busy life, baby.

Well, we call this our lightning round. We ask the same two questions to everyone.

Oh, let's go.

The first question: you have a brand new sled. She's naked, straight from the factory.

That's how I like them.

What would you be riding, and the real question is, what are the three modifications you'd make to it if you could only make three?

If I can only make three. So one, hands down my favorite sled ever is the Turbo 146 Freeride. Just nasty, man. And honestly, I'm not a huge aftermarket guy. I'm not building these crazy sleds you see from guys like Mav and Kyle, where there's not a bolt untouched. I'm all about functionality, period. So what do I want? I'm going to protect my sled, so I'm going to wrap it. Oh, I forgot, a wrap doesn't count?

We're breaking the rules here.

Dang, okay, it can't count. So I'm going to clean the bar setup up. I'll probably drop the bars down maybe 2 inches or something. I've been running the stock bars ever since they made narrower grips. I really like the narrow grips, I can just yard on those things. The stock bars have a good bend and they're like an inch and a half rise. But yeah, clean up the bar setup. I ran a finger throttle a little bit last year, and I do off and on. I like them both. I hurt my thumb, so sometimes it helps.

And then suspension. I've never valved shocks, I've never had a guy do my shocks, but this last year riding a Freeride that had the 40s that were valved better, dude, it's a no-brainer. Suspension is so key. If you're trying to send it or go big, you're going to have so much more fun if you're dialed in. And take it to someone that knows what they're doing, because we probably don't, and ask them, hey, I'm doing this, what do I need?

Yep, be open.

And then third, man, do I even do three mods to my sled? I don't know. If you don't have LED lights, I like LEDs. They don't melt snow off, so it's kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, but I like a good set of lights, an aux light for on my way home. So maybe an auxiliary light. And I haven't been running bumpers. I probably should run a front, but I haven't, just because I'm a snob for lightweight. Oddly I'm weird like that. I might strip things off I don't feel like I need, so the back bumper might come off, or I might never change that little tiny stock one on there. I'm just kind of picky. I like to set mine up a certain way.

You know what, we've actually never had anyone on here say, I don't even think I'd do three.

Right. Oh, and I'm trying to maybe try some big wheels. I'd like to try some 10-inch, but apparently on the 146 when you compress, that little rear arm bumps into them, so I don't know. I don't know enough yet, obviously. But I'd like to do a couple things. I like the powder coating and stuff. I'd like to make the sleds my own.

And I don't know if you're allowed to talk about it, but we're going to be spicing mine up this year.

It'll be sick to see. So we will have a Pahno signature dropping here soon. We've seen some mockups of it. She looks spicy, it's pretty slick. So that'll be a fun one. And I would imagine when we drop this, we might just time it right up and drop the pod and the signature at the same time.

Oh man, no-brainer. Why not? Do it, hype it up. So dude, if you got through all this and you're hearing this, awesome. Love to see it.

And the last question, Nik: what's one thing that those of us watching this don't know about you? What's that little secret thing we're opening up here on the Sledder Cast podcast?

Dang, was that on my rundown here? Was I prepared for this one?

The very last question, right down there at the bottom.

Ask it one more time.

I'm going to ask it slow. What's one thing that most of your followers don't know about you?

Probably that I'm just kind of weird, honestly, man. I'm different, bro. I live a different lifestyle. I care about different things than most people, I think. I try to be very straight, and I'm living presently. I like to do yoga, man, and I'm into the ice bath. Maybe the followers do know a little bit about this stuff. But I'm like a hardcore hippie or something like that. I want to grow my own vegetables, you know what I'm saying?

Hardcore backcountry hippie.

Yeah, but not really. I don't know, I'm just a freak, man. And hopefully everyone can take that as a good thing. Don't be afraid to be different, and don't be afraid to not fall in line. If you don't want to go party tonight and you'd rather go home, go home, man. If you want to eat good, then eat good. It's cool. You're not dumb for not falling in line with everyone. Or if shooting bears isn't cool with everybody, dude, I don't care. I like to do it, and I know for a fact there are more than there should be where I'm at. I just try to be myself. That's what Kyle was saying, man. Don't change, be yourself, bro. We're going to give it to you straight.

I'm just like everyone else. I'm a normal dude that's just got a little screw loose. That's it, man. I'm human. I went to school, I didn't think I'd be a ripper or whatever, and stuff just happens. If you work hard, I try to tell everyone, you can do anything. And we have so much opportunity where we're at. We're all pretty dang blessed to be where we're at, with what we can do with our time and our effort. It's almost like the sky is the limit for all of us. We all deal with our own crap, and Nik Pahno's dealing with crap too. We all deal with struggles and have our own things. Talk to your boys, keep in touch with all your friends, man. Go 100%.

Love it.

So hopefully that works for an answer, man. I'm weird, dude. Everyone can know Nik Pahno is a little bit weird.

A little bit weird, but we like it, man. He's going to share that weirdness with you guys. I've enjoyed this conversation. Epic. You're very personable, easy to talk to, and you've got a lot of experience even at a younger age, a lot of cool stories. So glad we were able to connect.

I'm stoked, dude. Thanks for having me on, baby. Thanks, Trevor.

Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you on the next episode.