At the end of last spring, Ted Borland caught up with Max Warbington to spend a week building, creating, snowboarding, and sharing a park with anyone that wanted to come join.  It was the last possible window of nice spring weather and enough snow to get down on before the summer hit. After a few years of creating these sessions, there was plenty of hype and enough people who still wanted a piece of the action.  It started off with a few volunteers the first day, and by day 4 there were probably close to 50 people helping create this late-season snowboard park. A true "By the people, for the people" snowboard setup. Watch the video, and then start making plans to join in on the next session near you. 

We also caught up with Max to get a current lowdown on his season so far, and what his plans for the next couple Brain Bowl sessions are.

- Interview/photos by Ted Borland

What Up Max?  Where you at right now?  

Currently I am chillin’ in Mérida Mexico down in the Yucatán. Just learned that this is actually the place where the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs hit earth!  Super special place with incredible people, culture and natural beauty. I’m down here with my wife Alex and some friends soaking up some heat and seeing as much cool stuff as we can. Gonna do some Cenote scuba diving and lots fun stuff while we are down here. My last true chillin before I start some more travel and hopefully boarding!

So we went to Austria at the end of pre-season to hit DIYX Street Jam, and we also had some plans to start filming for the year.  First day filming, you blew your shoulder up while trying to get a last minute clip for your video “Finest”.  Wanna talk about that quickly and talk about how that’s affected your season so far?

Yupppp, day one of shred on that trip I had an opportunity to try to get one more banger for my video that was about to come out. Along with doing the DIYX Street Jam, getting a few more clips for the Finest Video was the whole goal of the trip. So when I was up at moonpark with you there to film and the hippy jump popped into my head I was hyped.  A clip on day one would have been a real nice start to the trip.  However not every idea works the way you want it to and this one definitely didn’t. 

Basically I just got a little off balance on the way up to a corrugated tube that I was trying to hippy hop. I had tried maybe 5 times, each time just going a little faster, and on this attempt I definitely had enough speed. Sadly my jump was just a bit too late and I clipped my foot on the front which sent me flying over the tube without any hope of recovery. I thought I was gonna be able to tuck and roll out of it but my board came out perfectly timed from under the tube and kinda took my hands in a funky direction which forced all the impact onto my left shoulder. 

Pretty much immediately I knew it was dislocated and I had a feeling more was badness going on inside. So we let it stay out and didn’t mess with it ourselves to try and get it back in place. Which was smart because turns out I had also a big crack through the ball of my shoulder which could have definitely been made way worse if we had tried to move it around too much.  My whole arm was in front of my left boob, it was freaky. First time shoulder injury for me as well. 

Major shoutout to You, Dinar & Julian for getting me down to the hospital in Innsbruck. That car ride was like an hour in hell but we made it and by that night I was all out back together and chillin at the hostel relatively ok.  No surgery and I could walk around and didn’t feel crazy pain so I wasn’t too bummed. Most of my other serious injuries have been to the ankle.. so now any injury where you can walk around normal the next day seems mellow compared to the ones where you can’t walk at all. 

I changed my flight to right after DIYX and just fully committed to being iPhone recap guy for the street jam. Still had an absolute blast at that contest just watching the madness go down. Ethan absolutely killed it on that one. Definitely one of the coolest events I have been around for and super inspirational for me as someone who also loves organizing events.  Major takeaway is: we need more crazy after parties at events in the USA. 

I flew home and had it re checked by my doctor in Oregon with new x rays and a MRI to get a proper diagnosis and start the healing process. It was definitely a bummer getting hurt right before the season but I’m glad it wasn’t worse and I’ve been making good use of the down time. 

How’s it feeling now?  

Happy to say that’s it’s feeling pretty good!! 

The injury happened on November 12th (my brother Gus’s birthday!) and it’s now February 23rd so I’m just over 3 months out from the slam.  Overall feeling pretty good it’s just pretty stiff still. Because of the fracture I had to keep It relatively immobile for the first month and a half ish, which lead to some stiffness but it’s now feeling pretty close to good to go. Just been in PT, the pool and the gym as much as I can trying to get pain free motion and build up all my muscles to hold that sucker in place. 

I’d say I’m like 80% normal right now but my goal is 95%-100% before I start shredding. I’ve heard too many horror stories and know too many people who have chronic dislocation problems with shoulders and I don’t want that to happen to me.  So my plan is to not do too much crazy boarding this season which kinda sucks but I’m planning on filming a summer video part with Gnu and I just wanna be as strong as possible for that. Should be dope! 

My spring is gonna be mostly mellow cruising on the board and trying to get comfortable and confident with the shoulder.  And of course lots of shoveling at the Brain Bowl Sessions we are doing this spring. 

But soon as I get back from this Mexico trip I’m gonna go cruise bachelor on board for the first time. I’ve got a few days to chill test out boarding a bit at home and then I’m flying back out to Europe for the next DIYX event In Helsinki Finland. Mostly going to film and make recaps but if I’m feeling ok I might shred a tiny bit at the contest. Super excited to see everyone and watch everything go down March 10th-11th! 

What kind of plans do you have for Brain Bowl Sessions this year?

The injury changed up my plans a bit for sure but we are getting ready for some awesome sessions this April & May.  In the meantime Logan Boyd and some of the Tre Squad Events team have been hard at work on a continuous bowl up in the mountain by Mt. Bachelor in Bend, OR. It’s a fun little bowl set up at Edison sno-park that has been active for like 4 or 5 weeks now. I love to see this happening even with me not having much of a presence up there at the session. I’ve been heading up randomly to help shovel and bring some hype but for the most part it has fully been functioning like intended, basically a skatepark just in the snow. A free place you can pull up to and shred awesome features with some homies or maybe even just by yourself. That’s always been the goal for us at Brain Bowl Sessions, to create spaces for anyone and everyone to get freestyle for free. 

For the end of the season we are planning a Tahoe session in April and probably one more location as well.  These will be “normal” Brain Bowl sessions that run for about a week and are capped off with a fun little contest. As always, everyone is invited!  Just be sure to follow @brainbowlsessions on Instagram to stay up to date on when / where we will be! 

But what I am most excited about this year is our Brain Bowl Sessions Final up at Mt. Baker.  This will be our third year doing a huge session at baker.  Tre Squad will be posted up there in Glacier/Baker May 5th to the 22nd!   Building bowl, shredding baker and having a blast the whole time.  There’s really nothing like this vibe. I really hope people can make it up to experience what we do up there. Complete with rope tow (shout-out tow pro lifts!) and by far our biggest and most complex build, it is guaranteed to be incredibly fun. 

This year we are aiming to do a sort of collab contest with the already legendary Mt. Baker “Sesh Up” contest that is a long standing PNW springtime tradition. Over the weekend of May 19th-21st we will have some extra invited pro/ am riders from around the world show up for a crazy few days of riding the bowl build, chucking carcass on the Sesh Up backcountry big air jump and partying it up baker style.  Rider judged, two or three days of “contest”, big cash prizes, on and off hill parties and much more is in the plans. More details to come but as far as I can tell, it should be completely legendary.  I strongly suggest clearing the calendar and finding a way to get yourself up to glacier / baker in May. It’s gonna be all time. 

So yeah that’s the plan!  Very excited and honestly this injury has allowed me the time to get this stuff all organized and set to be epic. I can’t wait to get up there and shovel all damn day long. The build days have really become my absolute favorite thing. I love seeing the zone go from just flat snow, into a crazy big skatepark built of snow with features like you have never seen before. Super hyped to get it all going. Tahoe early April we start it up!! 

Hope you see you at a session!! 

Thanks! 

• Max