How is rory bushfield doing

And living this way, it's how Sarah would want him to be. There's no book been written on how to do this. There's no easy way.

I just do what I can," he says. That's what Sarah was here to do, too, and she lived her purpose. People were so inspired to be around her. She was doing what she was put here to do. I just hope I can do the same. Learn more. X Games Aspen Returns Jan. X Games Aspen Is Back! Highlight Reel: X Games Aspen Best of Snowboarding: X Games Aspen Best of Skateboarding: X Games Best of Moto X: X Games Highlight Reel: X Games Real Street Real BMX Real MTB Glacier landings are easy, Bushy discovered.

I have done some of the softest landings ever. The take off is another story, there are a lot of variables. After eventually choosing a spot with good ski lines nearby, plans were made for a heli drop of snowmobiles and supplies.

The morning dawned clear, cold and beguilingly perfect. I punched it back into the air, but it was close. But I had a GoPro on my right wing and the app on my phone so I watched the footage.

I still had my ski and I could see from the video that I had landed with the wind totally wrong. So I went back and landed perpendicular to those tracks and it went perfectly. The heli showed up with Mase and the gear, we built the teepee, and then it stormed for four days. We had just enough time to sled off and gather firewood before the glacier went total whiteout.

Luckily, being snowbound in a foot 5 metre diameter teepee in a blizzard at 7, feet requires constant fire tending. The rest of the time they used the snowmobiles to pack and maintain a runway even as the snow kept falling. That teepee camp stayed set up until late June and we had a ton of good days.

Some really nice skiing. He learned at age two, chasing his sister and parents around the ski resorts of Alberta. By age 14, Bushy was competing at mogul events — any sport requiring a combination of speed and jumping skill suited him perfectly.

At 17, he earned a spot at the Junior World Championships in Finland. And he won — a gold medal and the chance to represent Canada on the World Cup. It sucked. I wanted to hit jumps and ski pow. I left because of the rules: why am I allowed to do a backflip in the moguls but not a double back?

The X-Games were more his style. One sponsorship in particular, Bushy attributes to his hometown of Balzac, Alberta. I got made so much fun of, one day I came home to visit my sister and she was having a Splash-watching party with 45 people. But he won the show, beating original Baywatch babe Nicole Eggert with a triple backflip in the grand finale.

And those Splash paycheques eventually helped realize another lifelong dream — in , Bushy bought a seven-acre patch of rainforest paradise in the Squamish Valley with no driveway, no plumbing, no electricity and no permanent structures. For a dude who loves chainsaws, oversized bonfires and hacking trails through the bush with an excavator, it was already the perfect home. Constantly blowing it if you got it can lead to a habitual disregard for any number of societal norms and rules of conduct.

Bushy will trespass on a corner of your private property in order to access a perfect river beach on Crown land. Behaviour like this, while causing no real or lasting harm, still pisses a lot of people off. He was five. He cries at dog food commercials. Anyone who knows Bushy, knows Dex. Dex also has over 2, followers on her yungdexthegreat Instagram account and is about six months away from launching her own brand of high-end kibble called Dex Knows Dog Food.

She waited until I was concussed, brought Dex home, and to convince me she told me Dex was a male and a Labrador, my childhood dog. Dex is neither, but after one look, Bushy was won over. Right away I knew Dex was a character. That was in the spring of and Sarah passed away in January Three years ago, after moving out of the house he shared with Burke, Bushfield bought a heavily wooded plot of land in Squamish that is marked by crumbling fencing covered in chartreuse moss.

He has two campers parked there. One belonged to his grandmother and the other has a generator that supports a Wi-Fi signal. He has plans to build a house made of shipping containers stacked high enough to have a view of the glacier. At the property one morning, Bushfield and I met with his friend, photographer Mason Mashon, who was prepping a pile of downed lodgepole pines they would use to build a teepee on the glacier, where they would ski from all winter.

Mashon was meticulous about the way he separated the bark from the trees, peeling back long curls of wood with a sharp knife until the wood was left bare and white. Using a machete, he hacked at the wood, making fast work of his stack of logs, though less precise.

Instant gratification feels better. I need to trick myself into it with a project. His grandfather was a bomber plane navigator in World War II, and flying always seemed to Bushfield as the best way to access remote places to ski.

At Langley, he had retractable skis installed near the landing gears so he can take off and land on snowfields otherwise nearly impossible to access.

But first he had to pay the mechanics. And to do that, he had to find a blank check he hoped he had somewhere in his truck. He found the check after 15 minutes. Walking out to the runway, Bushfield realized he had removed the bench seat for a recent trip, so he wedged an inner tube in its place, and I buckled myself in around it. A mechanic helped him prop start the Cessna on the runway.

Soaring over the Howe Sound, Bushfield maneuvered his bird through a light snow squall and toward the rays of light, splintered by the clouds, dancing mystically on the water. The white noise from the hum of the motor was deafening, yet peaceful. Now I can get into the backcountry in 20 minutes instead of 90 hours. As long as I can find something that gives me that same feeling without pain, that will be my path.