JKWON FOREVER.
Jeff Keenan. Method on Mystery, Mt Seymour. Photo by Jesse Robinson Williams.
On March 24th an avalanche near Kaslo, British Columbia caught four men, three of which – Jason Remple, Alex Pashley, and Jeff Keenan – were killed. In light of this, I have been wrestling with a lot of emotions surrounding snowboarding and if the thoughts in my head are worth writing down. But after seeing several people who are much closer to these men, people who have lost so much more than me this week, express similar doubts, I have come to feel that sharing our memories of these men’s lives is something worth doing, even if those memories are short. I didn’t know, nor did I ever meet, Jason Remple or Alex Pashley, and I feel unable to do their lives any justice through writing. But from 2012-2020 I was a Mt Seymour local and had the enormous pleasure of a few brief meetings with Jeff Keenan. I was lucky enough to both watch him snowboard and to see the way he treated people. These years were the tail end of an era when Seymour was often an intimidating and unfriendly place to snowboard. But although Jeff looked the part of a true Skid, every time I saw him he proved himself to be kind. The older I get, the more I’ve realized this is the single trait that is most important to me in a person: kindness. Someone who supports their friends and is welcoming to strangers. In those fleeting moments, Jeff Keenan proved to me that he personified those words. I’ve put together a few short memories of Jeff that I feel compelled to share, so that I can do what I can to convey to those that never met Jeff the sort of person he was.
A Meal Train page has been set up to support Erin Pashley, Alex Pashley’s partner.
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Even before this last week I thought often about Jeff Keenan, regularly running over one short memory, a moment that would have stuck with me no matter what but that was lucky enough to be captured on camera. I remember coming off the lift at Mt Seymour and there in front of me was a collection of my heroes. In front of them was a tiny take off with a confusing and choppy in-run and a steep and choppier landing, all bathed in a milky flat light. It was the sort of side-hit that epitomizes Mt Seymour: fleeting, difficult, rewarding, the characteristics of a mountain that produced so much talent. Though I couldn’t see all of the faces, I could tell by the style that the guy in all black dropping in was Jeff Keenan, navigating the awkward heelside approach and then shifting edges, popping, grabbing, and cranking a method all in one movement. The crowd shouted and cheered. I’ve never been that big of a fan of methods, but I just stood there speechless. In a lifetime of snowboarding, it was the most memorable grab I’ve ever seen.
They say don’t meet your heroes. Snowboarding doesn’t always afford us that choice. No matter how long you shoot around at the gym, no NBA player is ever walking through that door. But if you get up early and get on the chair often enough, one day someone you’ve looked up to for years is sitting there next to you. One of the funny things about snowboarding is that when you do end up meeting your heroes, end up meeting Jeff Keenan, you find they are someone so worth meeting, even just for a moment.
The first time I talked to Jeff Keenan he called me about a warranty claim I’d made on a Dinos board. He asked a couple questions and we talked for less than a minute about the board and he said a new one would be in the mail. Then he asked me about how my season at Mt Seymour had been. He didn’t mention the board again. He just wanted to know if I’d enjoyed the snow, if I enjoyed riding there. It was just two people who loved to snowboard, talking about it on the phone for a couple minutes.
The last time I met Jeff Keenan was one of the last times I rode at Mt Seymour before the pandemic came and I moved away. I’d been invited to take a lap with a big group of Seymour legends on a gloomy and mostly empty morning of a weekday pow day. I dropped in last and trying to slip my way through a steep section whipped a branch perfectly into my crotch. When I got down to the run, winded and speechless, the group took off. Except Keenan, who patted me on the shoulder and asked you alright, even though he didn’t know my name. When I told him what happened he laughed a happy laugh and patted me again and said now that's a run to remember.
I didn’t really know Jeff Keenan, but in reading all the accounts of his loved ones over the last days I feel as if these are stories worth adding to the canon, stories that get at something intrinsic about who he was. Someone who loved snowboarding, someone who loved the people who snowboard.
But more than any words or grabs, the image that keeps returning to my mind though is of Jeff Keenan, the strict but kind, the teasing but kind, gate attendant of the Baked Salmon Banked Slalom at Mt Seymour. One thing about those events that’s stuck with me is that, despite all the fun we had, when I got into the gate, I was nervous. And the last person I saw, the last person all two hundred of the riders saw, before we dropped in, was Jeff Keenan. Keenan standing there with a shit eating grin ready to offer a few words of wisdom, a hint about the course, maybe a joke or two. The last thing he’d say was always “have fun.” The nerves might still be there, but thanks to Jeff I was ready to drop in.
One year my bib number was close enough to his that from the lineup I saw him realizing that he himself had to get ready to drop. I watched him as he ran to get his board and strapped in and offered one last joke and then took his run. I watched him pull out of the gate and pump through the turns effortlessly, and I watched him fly through the finish line. And then I watched him fail to stop and instead head straight for the lift so he could rush back to the top, so he could get back to the gate, so that he could be there to help us all follow his lead.