“The design is primitive compared to what I’m used to, but beautiful in its simplicity,” says Alex Yoder. He’s referring to a board shaped plank of wood with some cow fat on the bottom, one that’s just been made in minutes and is ready to glide across the snowy foothills of Petran, Turkey. In Patagonia‘s Foothills: The Unlinked Heritage of Snowboarding, Nick Russell and Alex Yoder (featured in issue 11.1 of The Snowboarder’s Journal) travel to the small mountain town of Petran and connect with some of snowboarding’s oldest, deepest roots. The two ripped the foothills of Petran using the locals’ creations before taking to their splitboards to explore a bit of Turkey’s Kaçkar Mountains. They connected with the people of Petran just as much as they did with the alpine surrounding them.