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At the 48th International Ski Congress set for Kangwonland, South Korea, next week, one topic is likely to receive heavy discussion among freestyle ski and snowboard members: the potential for crossover judges to work both freeskiing and snowboarding events at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

As reported here last month, the International Ski Federation (FIS) plans to promote "efficiency and economy" by having one or more judges officiate both sports. This was part of FIS's original proposal to add ski and snowboard slopestyle as well as ski halfpipe to the 2014 Olympic program. That possibility has led many in both sports to question whether such a system would compromise the integrity of the results.

National governing bodies were required to nominate judges from their respective countries to work the 2014 Olympics by May 9. From those nominations, FIS will then select a pool of officials to work the Sochi Winter Games.

In advance of the May 9 deadline, the independent Association of Freeskiing Professionals held a meeting in Whistler, B.C., encouraging athletes to express their opinions on the matter to their national governing bodies. ESPN.com subsequently contacted prominent ski and snowboard federations around the world to find out how they handled the nomination process as well as how they intend to approach the topic in South Korea next week.

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Courtesy photoMatt Cummins, owner of One Ball Jay and brother of Temple Cummins, has been riding for Mervin since the early days and was very influential in shaping the future of snowboarding.

The rise and fall of pro models mirrors the business side of snowboarding, for better or worse. Board lines shrink. Budgets get slashed. Contracts don't get renewed. Riders get hurt, change teams or start their own brands, and so pros and their namesake snowboards usually have a limited time in the limelight.

America's Top Pro Models

Check out these other boards that have stood the test of time. Gallery

Then there's Matt Cummins' board. Cummins was one of Lib Tech's first pro riders, and his pro model, the MC 5'3" has been around longer than many pro snowboarders have been alive. Old school snowboarders know what I'm talking about -- you may know it as the bones board. It's the one with the big skeleton on it.

"I started riding Gnu boards in 1988. I bought my first one from Mike [Olson] and Pete [Saari]," says Cummins. "It was a 156-swallow tail. I ended up placing pretty well at some contest and they asked me if I wanted to be on the team."

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The folks over at the Bleacher Report just put up a nice little interview/edit with "Brothers on the Run" occasional co-star Travis Rice. Fans of Rice will recognize a lot of the footage in it from past Brain Farm and Absinthe movies, but it's also got some great shots from pre-dvd-era snowboard videos that are worth watching again. It's also nice to see snowboarding get some love on shows that usually only cover mainstream sports. We figured since it was a slow news week for snowboarding, we'd share it with you here. Enjoy.

When the second episode of Eric and John Jackson's AK-to-Chile shred/surf road trip web series "Brothers on the Run" came out this week, we weren't surprised to see Travis Rice make a cameo. After all, the footage was shot in Alaska's Tordrillo Range, which is where Rice and John filmed most of their all-time-banger AK lines for "The Art of Flight."

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@ejackshredsJohn Jackson, Travis Rice and Ian Walsh prepare to get rowdy in the AK backcountry.

Anyone familiar with AK missions knows that you do not just fly to Alaska for four days and expect to get weather and snow conditions good enough for shooting. Most people wait weeks for a window like that. And yet, this is what happened for the boys on this trip. If a god of snowboarding exists, it is clear that he loves these guys.

What we didn't expect was to see big-wave surfer Ian Walsh on screen, ripping steep lines with authority. Because, while it's true that most pro snowboarders harbor closet dreams of being pro surfers, the pendulum rarely swings back the other way.

The few surfers who do snowboard mostly spend their time riding mellow pow lines on low-profile family vacations -- they definitely aren't jumping out of helis in AK on the same peaks that Rice and the Jacksons are filming on and holding their own on the way down. We tracked Walsh down to figure out what kind of special Superman powder he's adding to his papaya juice.

ESPN: First off, how does a guy who grew up in Maui, and makes a living surfing full-time, become a snowboarder?
Ian Walsh: Andy Irons. He was a close friend of mine, and when I was about 20 he won the world title and ... well, right after that he just wanted to do something different. He wanted to go snowboarding. So I went with him. We went to Park City, Utah. I'd never been in the snow before, but after the second or third day we were jumping around and I just thought, "Whoa, this is really fun."

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Eric and John Jackson are two of the best snowboarders in the world who just happen to be brothers. Their Crowley Lake, Calif., upbringing might now be the stuff of legend -- big hikes, big cliffs, big tricks, big fish and true mountain-man style -- but their new road warrior Web series, "Brothers on the Run," helps flesh out any assumptions regarding which bro is radder: They're both radder.

@ejackshredsOh the places they'll go...

"BOTR" documents the trip of a lifetime: Alaska to southern Chile, by rig, on the longest navigable road in the world -- 15,000 miles minimum. They started in Anchorage on April 1 and expect to reach Chile by August, shooting and shredding the whole way down. The series will feature cameos by other pros, bros and guides.

We hit up younger-brother-with-more-manly-beard, E-Jack, to see how the trip's been going so far:

ESPN: When's the last time you and John spent this much time together?
E-Jack: I can't remember the last time we spent a whole summer together. Probably since we were kids and still lived at home. It's been a long time.

How does filming this "bro movie" differ from your normal winter filming routines? Seems like you guys aren't often in the same crew.
Totally. This particular project isn't like a snowboard movie. It's more of just ... we are going on this crazy journey and documenting it. We're gonna do awesome snowboarding. Awesome surfing. Fishing. Whatever crazy adventures we can get ourselves into.

That's why it's so much fun -- it's totally different than your average, film-all-winter-just-to-have-a-four-or-five-minute-video part at the end of the year. This is cool because it's actually coming out every two weeks and people can follow us on our journey. It's not something that's really been done before.

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On Sunday, while training with the U.S. snowboard team in Mammoth, Calif., Elena Hight became the first woman to land a double backside alley-oop rodeo in a halfpipe. This may be the trick that finally unseats Kelly Clark and her contest-dominating 1080. We caught up with Hight to have her tell us more about it.

ESPN: Elena, what has gotten into you lately?
Elena Hight: [Laughs] I just finished off the season on a really good note. We had such a great season as far as weather for contests. It was a bad snow year, but for contests it helped out a lot. It really added to people's ability to progress. With the Olympics coming up, I've been trying to set goals for the next couple of years, trying to set timelines. This has been a good year for me to learn new tricks.

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Snowboarder Magazine has hosted Superpark for 16 years now. This was the second year they took the show to Mt. Bachelor, outside Bend, Oregon. It was a pretty good winter at Bachelor, which left more than enough building material for park crews from Loon, Seven Springs, Boreal and Bachelor to get creative with. What's more, the weather could've have been nicer. It was sunny and sick all week. This really could have been the best event yet.Here's Snowboarder Magazine's very own Senior Editor Tom Monterosso to tell you all about it.

Bob PlumbCale Zima, influenced by Nate Bozung in all of the ways that matter.

Cale Zima is a direct descendent of the BozWreck crew, so that fact that he isn't incarcerated or on TMZ doing something embarrassing is as impressive as his snowboarding. Zima is one of the only rail savvy kids in the backcountry progressive Absinthe crew. When your peers are as savage as Bode Merrill and Dan Brisse, you know you will have to prove your worth time and time again to stay in the game.

After taking a year to film for Capita's "Defenders of Awesome" movie, Zima was back at it with Absinthe. However a knee injury and subsequent knee surgery have sidelined the Salt Lake City ripper, so we thought it would be a good time to catch up with him and see what he's been doing with his free time.

Cale, how are you?
I'm good, just doing some yard work.

Do you have your own house?
Well I don't own it, but I don't live with my parents.

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Snowboarder Magazine's latest Superpark mega event has officially been planted in the history books as one we won't ever forget.

Of the many things happening last week up at Mt. Bachelor, Ore., 18 brands with video crews covered the hill to put together their best edits possible. All these videos will be used in a viewer friendly judging contest to determine who had the best Superpark 16 crew.

GNU, of course, decided to take the "weird" approach and had a great time with it. The "Weirdos" (Gnu Team) came through the camp throughout the day to hang out and get, well, weird.

Creative director Tim Karpinski -- aka Dr. Weird -- shows us a little of what makes camp weird so fun to hang out around: crystals, Danny Kass, and ... well you'll just have to watch the video to find out the rest.

I was fortunate enough back in the 1990s to briefly share a house in Whistler with Dave Lee, where he coached at the Camp of Champions for many summers. I say "fortunate" because this was an era when a lot of riders, both pros and wannabes, were trying way too hard to be either gangsters or rock stars and Lee and his fellow Seattle pros seemed like the exact opposite: mellow, humble, down-to-earth and smiling all the time instead of scowling or throwing vibes. A chair ride or coffee with him always made your day a little happier.

Lee's current success with Signal Snowboards, one of the few brands actually building their boards here in the good ol' USA, is no surprise to anyone who's met the man. The snowboard industry has certainly taken notice, as have mainstream outlets such as Entrepreneur, Wired and Gizmodo.

Through Signal's groundbreaking web series, Every Third Thursday, we get to watch Lee and his crew building ridiculous-yet-functional concept boards every month (see above).

In some ways, Signal is a natural outgrowth of Lee's long involvement in snowboarding. Before he turned pro in '93, he was a factory employee at Mervin Manufacturing which, he says, "definitely led to my comfort in building the Signal factory." A nasty back injury slowed down his pro career for a season in '98, and that led to an opportunity to start Supernatural, a boutique Mervin brand that lasted until 2003 and left him wanting more:

"In 1997 I started dreaming of owning my own company," explains Lee. "I knew pro riding wasn't going to last forever and Mike McEntire [Mack Dawg] was always telling me that the pro snowboard scene was a meat grinder and I should save my money and always be looking ahead. Some of the best advice I've ever got back then."

Read on and find out why it matters that snowboarding still be in creative hands such as Lee's.

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