The Second Mountain

The Summit is a Lie: Why I stopped chasing the peak and started focusing on shape of the turn.

My twin daughters just turned thirteen.

For years, our mornings had a quiet ritual. They would sit on the edge of the bed and ask me to do their hair. It was small, ordinary, steady. Fingers moving. Conversation drifting. A shared beginning to the day.

And then—almost without warning—that ritual ended.

Now I hover outside their rooms in the morning, listening. Waiting. Sometimes hoping they’ll ask. Mostly knowing they won’t. They do their own hair now. They close the door. They move at their own pace.

What surprised me wasn’t the sadness. It was the space.

All of a sudden, I had these open minutes in the morning that didn’t belong to anyone else. Time without a script. A pause where a ritual used to be.

That’s what made me think about something I read recently… the idea of the second mountain.

The first mountain is often about building, proving, refining. You climb because you’re supposed to. You get good at the ascent. You learn the moves. You optimize the path.

In my years designing snowboards, I was focused on the ‘first mountain’—the optimization of speed and the pursuit of the perfect edge and the graphic style to encapsulate it all.

And then, quietly, something shifted. Teaching my girls to ride and watching them grow up has taught me something else.

The second mountain isn’t a race to the bottom; it’s the quiet grace of a turn in deep powder. It’s the realization that the ‘perfect line’ isn’t the fastest one, but the one drawn with the most intention and heart. You stop asking how far can I go? and start asking, how do I want to shape my line?

It’s about choosing differently. It’s about meaning over momentum. Rhythm over speed. Contribution over accumulation.

Watching my daughters grow into themselves has felt like a marker of that shift. A reminder that seasons change whether we plan for them or not. That rituals fall away. That space appears.

And the real work isn’t filling that space quickly. It’s listening to it.

Lately, my mornings are quieter. I don’t rush to replace the old ritual with a new one. Sometimes I just stand there with a cup of coffee and notice what the day is asking of me. Sometimes I write. Sometimes I do nothing at all.

That’s the second mountain, for me, right now: learning how to relate to space without immediately trying to optimize it.

If you’re reading this and feeling a subtle sense of “something’s changing,” you might be standing at the base of your own second mountain.

Not a dramatic pivot.Not a reinvention. Just a gentle invitation.

Here’s a small ritual you might try: The One-Shift Question

Ask yourself: What’s one thing I could do differently in this season—not to get ahead, but to feel more aligned?

Don’t solve it all at once.Just notice what comes up.

Maybe it’s a different way you start your mornings.
Maybe it’s loosening a habit that once made sense but no longer fits.
Maybe it’s allowing space where you used to force structure.

The second mountain doesn’t announce itself loudly. It shows up as quiet signals. As changed rituals. As unexpected spaciousness.

You don’t have to rush the climb. You just have to notice you’re on it.

And sometimes, that noticing is enough to change everything.

I am lucky I finally found the lines I want to spend the most of my life shaping. It’s not on a mountain, and it’s not on a screen. It’s right here, one quiet moment (or brush of hair) at a time.

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