Meet the Brigtown Chronicles crew
If you have been paying attention to the Brighton Facebook page over the last couple of seasons you probably have noticed the work of the Brigtown Chronicles crew. However you probably dont know too much about the people behind the name. I took some time recently to take some laps and pop some questions to the crew about their history, their love of not only Brighton, but of snowboarding and most importantly of SHARING snowboarding. Take a moment to read up and see whats up with Brigtown Chronicles…
Who are the principle people behind the Brigtown Chronicles?
My wife, Bree, and I, Nate Millard, are the principal photogs, and our crew consists of our friends that we’ve been shredding with for many many years. The crew generally consists of, my brother Grayson, Nate Murphy, Luke Barnes, Scott Dickson, Dustin Hawkins, and Brandon Christensen, as well as a few others here and there. Unfortunately, Brandon had to move back to California this year, so he only rides when he comes to town. He is a Graphic Designer for Skullcandy, and had to set up shop at their San Clemente office, but now he gets to surf everyday so he’s stoked.
We’ve all ridden for various companies in the past, and Nate Murphy rode at the pro level for many years, but we all slowly faded outta the scene. We feel pretty blessed to still be riding on a regular basis and be a part of the snowboarding culture. It’s something we’ve all based our lives around for decades, so to be able able to remain a part of this sport feels really good, and hopefully that is relayed in our images.
Bree and Grayson Millard of Brigtown Chronicles
Are you from Utah? If not, where are you from and how long have you been here?
Bree was born and raised in Park City. She started shredding at Wolf Mountain before PCMR allowed snowboarding in the early 90′s and worked her way into half pipe Nationals by 1998. Grayson and I are from Connecticut. We started riding at a small place called Ski Sundown in the early 90′s as well. I moved here in 1997 to snowboard and go to school. My plan was to ride a few years and then move back, but the idea of going back to 500 feet of ice isn’t all that appealing. The rest of the crew is from Utah, or Idaho.
How did the idea of Brigtown Chronicles originate?
I had been providing photos as a freelance photographer for many years to Brighton, as well as other snowboard publications, but with other ventures taking up most of my time, I lacked the ability to put quality time into shooting and traveling with film crews. Bree has a degree in photography from the U of U, so combining our love for snowboarding and photography seemed to be a great way to stay involved. I approached Jared Winkler, and we discussed ideas to provide a blog of daily photos at Brighton. But, since there was already a Brighton blog on the website, Jared posed the idea of posting photos to the Brighton facebook page. However, neither Bree or I had a Facebook account at the time, so we came up with Brigtown Chronicles to represent ourselves and our crew as a whole. All this wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t have such a tight crew of talented riders. Having patient subjects who also want to get shots makes it all possible.
BrandonChristensen Ollie pNate
You guys concentrate on the freeriding aspect of Brighton, do you ever feel out numbered by the park kids at times?
Yeah, definitely. There are so many ripping young bucks cruising the park doing tricks all day long that ten years ago would’ve been bangers in a video part. We’ve all had our days in the park, but rarely do we venture through there anymore. Don’t get me wrong, the Brighton Diggers do an amazing job of providing a fun and quality park, we just prefer to ride the mountain. Brighton itself is like one big park with so many natural jumps, jibs, cliffs, and just all around fun terrain, that we have a hard time getting away from that. Part of the fun of snowboarding to us, is trying to find unique features or lines to mess around on. I personally feel more comfortable on a sketchy run-in to a natural hit, than charging at a perfectly sculpted park hit. There is a lot of work like searching and building that goes into some of our shots, and that, to us, is part of the trick. It’s similar to Ricky Oyola’s view on skateboarding. He might not have been doing the most progressive trick, but doing a trick on an interesting feature and with a bit of style is our goal. I’ll be the first to say that we are not doing ground breaking tricks or progressing level of tricks. There are a ton of kids ripping the park out there, and providing progressive web edits and photos of such. We are not trying to compete with that. Our goal is to document and share the way we see snowboarding on a daily basis at Brighton, and hopefully thats the way its portrayed because snowboarding is fun, and we love it.
What are some of your favorite spots on the mountain?
There are so many fun pockets on the mountain, and thats what makes it so great. You can venture out into Mary’s and feel like you have the whole place to yourself. Although we haven’t hit it in a long time, Sunshine Quarterpipe, holds a dear place in my heart. It’s a fun spot to kick it with a good crew and have a fun session. This year, I was also really looking forward to hitting the Evergreen gap, but the snow conditions have kept us from doing that.
The crew in Millybowl picking lines
It’s a two foot pow day. where are your first lines?
Definitely Milly bowl if we get there early enough. I love the bowl. You get some steep pow turns down to a ton of cliff options that you can hopefully do some tricks off. We eventually work our way out towards Mary’s chutes, and to field goal if its not slaughtered.
What keeps you coming back to Brighton?
The terrain and the fact that you can find powder stashes days after a storm. We also love the fact that you don’t have to race the masses for powder turns. You can set your own pace of riding, and find whatever you are looking for. It just feels like home.
Luke Nate and Brandon shaping a hit
You have a few art shows going on right now. Tell us about them.
We actually have art hanging and for sale at three venues right now. We have some large format black and white prints hanging at the Vertical Diner downtown, of which are mostly shots from our Brigtown albums. We also have some urban color photos on display at the Backdoor Deli in Park City, and we have some lino print artwork for sale at Raunch Records in Sugarhouse. It’s pretty fun because we have become obsessed with framing our images over the last couple years and we kinda ran outta room to hang it in our house. So we have opted for public display. It’s visual art and it’s supposed to be seen, right? We have both always been into photography. We actually have a dark room set up in our guest room, but when the cost of paper and chemicals sky rocketed the search began for different mediums to present our photos. We had accessibility to printing large black and white plotter prints and we discovered hand carved lino block printing, however, we will always prefer fine art silver gelatin prints. We have a blast creating images. It’s fun to put concepts together and get them out there in the world. Hopefully peeps can get around and check em out.
Nate tailgrab pBree
Lastly, any words of advice/ wisdom for the riders at Brighton, and thanks / shout outs as well.
First off, many thanks to Jared Winkler and Randy Doyle for providing us this opportunity. Thank you to all our dedicated followers on Facebook. Thanks to Daniel Cochrane, all our friends, families, and all our homies we used to ride with. Thanks to Jamie Lynn for blessing snowboarding with his all-time method.
As far as advice goes, enjoy the mountain for what it provides ,enjoy snowboarding for what it is, and never stop the props! Snowboarding wouldn’t be as fun without your crew so keep ‘em stoked.
