So you’ve done the holidays: the queues, the crowded slopes, the tracked out powder. You’ve found smaller resorts with more lines, booked guides, split your board, bathed in onsen springs… But you still want more?

For some, an adventure needs to be just that, which is why Steve Lewis – a Brit who put his first turns down in Milton Keynes – founded The Empire: a backcountry touring operation specializing in Northern Arctic snowboard missions. For anyone who’s ever dreamed of the ends of the earth, this is it.

“We want to show the world that there’s a whole island here that could be the future of snowboarding.”
– Steve Lewis

Steve was the guide during Xavier de le Rue and Ed Leigh’s first foray into (and experiments with paramotors in) Svalbard – an epic story of polar bears, teeth shattering cold and shit-peppered privies that remains one of our favourite stories ever published. Why not sign up for your own adventure?

Offering base camps in abandoned Russian towns, mountainside gourmet cooking and midnight powder courtesy of 24 hour daylight in the spring – as well as Icelandic missions – this is one of those rare times when the phrase ‘experience of a lifetime’ means exactly that. We can but dream…

Have a gander at their website via the link below and start planning your dream adventure now!

TheEmpire.no

All photos by Tero Repo