Travis Rice from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of the best snowboarders in the world. He is particularly known for his freestyle snowboarding skills. Snowboarder magazine has ranked Travis #13 out of 20 of the most influential snowboarders in the past 20 years. With such clout, Travis has created his own snowboarding event based out of Jackson Hole.

In 2008, Travis invited a group of professional snowboarders to Jackson Hole to compete in a new type of venue, one that encouraged natural expression among the wild and natural terrain that Travis grew up around. By 2012, the Jackson Hole event had gained enough popularity to go mainstream with Red Bull as a sponsor. Today, the tradition continues with Travis’ Natural Selection Tour beginning in Jackson Hole and traveling to 3 other peaks with naturally made complex courses. Along the way, Travis, now almost 40 years old, has learned a lot about the sport and how to market it for long time fans, and newbies alike.

“Over the years of trial and error with filmmaking,” Travis said, “we realized pretty early on that the nature of this event, and how large and complicated the event venues are, meant it had to be captured in a special way.” Traditionally, cameras are set up along the trail to capture riders as they come down the mountain. The riders are also followed by skiers with GoPros on their helmets. For those watching the action, this delivers a choppy view that isn’t always in real time. And for the courses found in the Natural Selection Tour, that run through landscapes with plenty of trees, traditional filming wasn’t enough.

Travis wanted a seamless 3rd person point of view, similar to the simulations found in video games when filming the Natural Selection Tour. So, Travis reached out to Gabriel Kocher from Switzerland. An amazing aerial cinematographer, who has twice been runner up in the World Drone Racing Championships, Gabriel knew how to utilize drones to bring Travis’ vision to fruition. But for Gabriel, he quickly realized that simply sending up his racing drone with a camera would not be enough. “You can’t just buy a drone to do this, I’m going to have to spend some serious time building it,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel custom built the drone off an X8 cinematography platform. The drone has 8 rotors, a full spectrum broadcasting system, a custom gimbal, and a stabilization platform. The drone can maneuver with extreme agility at speeds upwards of 100 mph. Gabriel then had to find a way to bridge his extensive experience of using drones for cinematography and racing to capture the fully immersive experience Travis wanted. “When they run the easier line, and they’re just going smooth, I’m trying to tap into my cinematography background, but sometimes they’re just gunning through the trees and I just basically need to throw the drone through some turns just to catch up with them,” Gabriell explained. “It’s definitely a culmination of the drone racing skillset and the love for riding and snowboarding, to see them and be able to anticipate what’s going to happen.”