Bi-monthly, Buckrail sits down with a local mover and shaker who plays a role in making Jackson, Jackson.
JACKSON, Wyo. — About 30 years ago, an anonymous wealthy patron in a Jackson barbershop handed a $500 check to the shop’s owner.
The check was neither a tip nor a payment of service, but rather a spontaneous act of mountain town generosity that would allow a mother to buy her youngest son a snowboard.
Her son was Adam Dowell.
At the time he was just a kid, and his mother and father, a local carpenter, worked to provide their four children with opportunities as parents do. But it was a grind.
“If you’re a working-class family in Jackson Hole and you have four kids growing up, things can get extremely expensive,” Dowell said. We all played hockey, soccer, baseball, flag football. We also skied and snowboarded; really, everything. But kids outgrow gear, stuff breaks. How much can you afford to spend on everybody?”
Respectively, mountain sports were a steep financial risk in the ’80s and the ’90s and the price tag has only increased since. The barrier to entry to ski or snowboard is significant, it takes buying gear, purchasing a pass and really, risking it all. Extreme sports are often unforgiving, especially when they break the bank. But luckily, when Dowell’s oldest brother Brodi got picked up as a pro snowboarder by K2, Dowell started to get some hand-me-down gear for free, although most of it didn’t fit and frankly it was dangerous to ride.
As younger brothers do, he had no other choice but to sit on the sidelines where Dowell began to idolize his brother and the sport. That is, until the anonymous stranger handed his mother that check. One could say the rest is history.
“Little did this guy know that his one little act of kindness changed the entire course of my life to become a professional snowboarder.”
From there on out it was Dowell and snowboarding. Through tragedy and hardship, the sport became his outlet. When he turned pro, Dowell found a sense of affirmation in the sponsorships he received. He was able to travel extensively, from Switzerland, to Alaska and Japan.
“No one was telling me what to do, I didn’t have a coach or anything. Basically, the mountain was my oyster and I could go as extreme or slow as I wanted, there was no limit and I really latched onto that,” Dowell said.
Today he’s a father, a husband and a Jackson local of over three decades. He’s the epitome of a mover and a shaker, with a full-time career in YouTube business marketing but also the founder of the nonprofit Carving the Future, whose mission is to put skate and snowboarding gear in the hands of local youth. Carving the Future came about when Dowell found himself overwhelmed by the amount of gear he’d received as a pro-snowboarder.
“When I was in my 20’s, I wasn’t anything near the best snowboarder in the world but I still had tons of gear being sent to me. I mean boxes and boxes. In my early to mid 20’s I had so much gear I couldn’t even get rid of it.”
So the seed was planted, and while he didn’t act on it for years he saw the potential in how all this extra, unused gear could benefit the community.
“I thought if I’m one snowboarder that has all this stuff and if every single snowboarder took their extra gear someone should have a company that gives it to families that don’t have anything because when I was growing up people were giving me stuff when I didn’t have anything.”
With the vision set, it took years for Dowell to recognize and develop a mission that would give back just as a random stranger did for him years ago. After attending a personal development course, he found it time to hold himself accountable and put things into action.
“When I die, what will I have done. Snowboarding in it of itself if pretty selfish, it’s like ‘hey I’m going to go enjoy riding powder’. It’s a me thing.”
In 2016, Dowell set out to build what is now, Carving the Future. With his first son on the way, he was confronted with the questions of what type of father he wanted to be and how would he build something that improves the quality of life for other people. His initial plan of what the nonprofit would be was just setting up underprivileged kids with gear. But as soon as he turned it into an actual company, he quickly realized it needed a culture with events, movie premieres and things for kids to look forward to.
In just a couple of short years, his nonprofit has given away countless snowboards and has fully sponsored kids in the free ride program. On top of it all, Dowell aims to be a mental health advocate for youth struggling in the community.
He’s absolutely no stranger to the hardships this community faces and has paid witness to the struggles of the valley in recent years. To Dowell, “the community is being squeezed like an orange right now”. He’s watched as housing costs rise, local businesses dissolve and the mental wellbeing of locals plummet.
“My wife and I, we still feel pushed out of the community because unless you make $500,000 a year you cant buy anything more than an apartment. More and more local things that people grew up with here are just going away, the staple businesses are being replaced by big corporations, or galleries and real estate. It’s really lost a lot of its soul.”
But despite these challenges and seeing a community head in an unfamiliar direction, Dowell sees that his work is a testimony to doing what one can with the resources they have.
“In spite of what Jackson Hole is experiencing as a valley, it boils down to if you can do anything you can do something. I think of this all as an extension of ‘who knows where I’d be today if some dude didn’t give my mom a check to buy me a snowboard.'”
