Interview: Xavier de Le Rue

Xavier de Le Rue is an artist with a snowboard: a Picasso without a paintbrush, whose medium is mountains. The freeride extraordinaire has left his signature splashed across some of the most astonishing peaks on the planet, with a penchant for charging the sort of unlikely cracks and precipitous, hanging snowfields that most would deem unrideable.

Despite his many successes, Xavier isn’t one to sit back and rest on his laurels: aside from snowboarding with his daughter, riding in competitions and shooting film segments, he is currently working on developing his autonomous camera drone Hexo+, while also running a succesful media production company.

After an epic day heli-boarding together in Verbier along with the winners of our competition, LUEX CEO Tim Heising caught up with Xavier to learn more about his upcoming projects, including a return to the Freeride World Tour for this weekend’s event on Verbier’s infamous Bec des Rosses, and a unique ‘para-motor’ powered snowboard trip to Alaska..!

So Man Xavier, thanks a lot for guiding us today. Did you enjoy it as well or was it more call of duty?

Xavier: No it’s really cool actually to come and do some new itineraries here and get a bunch of really passionate riders. It’s actually cool because they come from very far here and are really hardcore snowboarders. They always have a big smile and they give me the best energy.

We definitely had a big smile. It was a beautiful day! So what are you up to? What kind of projects are going on?

Xavier: This weekend I’m going to do the Verbier XTreme and after that I’m going on a trip to Canada for a heli trip with GoPro and then I’m finishing my last film in Alaska. So we are getting dropped off in a zone that we have been scouting a few weeks ago and we are going there to hike some runs. We have a new setup which is really cool with parameters to kind of go into lines and jump from the lines.

Oh Really?

Xavier: Yeah. We have some really cool setup so it should be fun.

So what kind of production team do you have with you on those kind of trips?

Xavier: I always ride with my production crew, so we are 9 people. We have 4 camera men, 1 photographer and 1 Pilot. So we take the camera men in the air and we have a drone set up, plus I would bring my drone as well. So we have a bunch of tools to make a good film.

Yeah man we would love to do some projects with you and luextravel in the future. That would be awesome.

Xavier: Definitely. That would be cool. It was a pleasure!

Thanks man. It was so much fun.

Tim

Tim is the LUEX CEO, and a ripping skier and surfer to boot. When not shredding his 'home mountain' Silvretta-Montafon, you can find him chasing waves from the Maldives to South Africa.