From super-grom status to globetrotting pro and, now residing on the Olympic Peninsula, Temple Cummins has taken a consciously quiet path through life. Temple lives on his own terms with his wife Barrett Christy and their two kids–surfing when there is swell, finding flow through northwest nooks when there is snow. This is sleeping in the dirt with Temple Cummins.

The defining moment in Temple Cummins’ life on a snowboard wasn’t his first win at Mt Baker’s Legendary Banked Slalom in 2001, or his fourth in 2010. It wasn’t when he guinea-pigged the infamous train gap at Lake Tahoe’s Donner Pass with Andy Hetzel in the spring of 1995, either. Rather, it was an inconspicuous air off a mogul in 1996 that changed everything and set him on a path that has made the soft-spoken Washingtonian an underground legend—a legend that continues to grow to this day.

Undoubtedly, Temple’s public presence has become transient in recent years, appearing for a moment in a lift line or atop a backcountry stash before disappearing into an indecipherable abyss, leaving only contrails whispering “catch me if you can.” So, when Temple phones during a mid-March blue spell in the Pacific Northwest, I try my best to listen…