Wayward Film with Mia Lambson

Mia Lambson reflects on making Wayward, a feature-length documentary tracing the history of women in snowboarding, and on her own path through media, creativity, and culture within the sport.

Interviewed by Gracie Hinz

Hope you enjoy this written format of the interview—if you’d like to listen, check out this podcast episode.

Gracie Hinz: To kick things off, I always like to start simple. Who are you, and what do you spend most of your time doing?

Mia Lambson: My name is Mia Lamson. I’m a filmmaker, director, videographer—media everything. I primarily work in the snowboard industry, but honestly, anything sports or outdoors, I’m there.

Gracie: Usually I jump straight into background, but I want to start with Wayward. I’ve been reading about it, and I’m so curious about how this project came to be—especially since it’s coming out this winter.

Mia: Yeah, in about six weeks. It’s wild.

Gracie: It feels like something you’ve been carrying for a long time.

Mia: Definitely. Wayward is a full-length documentary I’ve been actively working on for the last two to two-and-a-half years, but it’s been in my head since probably 2018. I’ve never done a project this big, and I think it stayed with me for so long because I knew I didn’t yet have the skills or experience to make it the way it deserved to be made.

So it sat on the back burner for years. Then a few years ago, I realized I was ready—and also that I had to do it. It felt like one of those projects where if I didn’t try, I’d regret it forever.

At its core, Wayward is about the history of women in snowboarding. But more than that, it’s really a dissection of snowboard culture itself. We start at the very beginning—the inception of snowboarding—and move through the generations to where we are now.

What we’re really examining is the evolution of an industry and a culture through the lens of gender. Because the experience of women in snowboarding has been fundamentally different from the men’s—and historically, we’ve only really heard the men’s version of the story.

Gracie: What first pulled you into that history?

Mia: It started really simply. I just wanted to know more about the women who came before me. I’d stumble across these little breadcrumbs—names, clips, stories—and think, Wait, how have I never heard of this? Or, This woman was doing that trick back then?

The more I learned, the more obvious it became that there’s this incredibly rich history on the women’s side of the sport that’s never been told in a complete way. And it’s not just athletes—women were behind early snowboard video games, product innovations that changed how we ride, and foundational work inside the industry that shaped snowboarding for everyone.

So yes, the film looks back—but it’s also very much about the present. Right now, women’s snowboarding is exploding. It’s one of the most exciting spaces in all of sports. Every day there’s a new breakthrough, and people genuinely care. That wasn’t always the case. The film is about celebrating where we are now, while understanding what it took to get here.

Gracie: Was there a moment in your research that really stopped you in your tracks?

Mia: Learning about Morgan LaFontaine. She was huge in the ’90s and early 2000s, but when she retired, her legacy basically disappeared. If you got into snowboarding after that era, you probably never heard her name.

What blew my mind is that Morgan was doing double backflips in 1995. Most people think the first women’s double backflip happened in 2011 or 2012. Even the women doing them then thought they were trailblazing—and they were—but only because they didn’t know Morgan had already done it.

Her accomplishments weren’t preserved. So the next generation had to reinvent the wheel. And it really makes you wonder: if that history had been celebrated, how far could progression have gone even sooner?

Gracie: Why do you think that history wasn’t preserved?

Mia: There’s no single answer, but context matters. Snowboarding became an industry in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and it was overwhelmingly run by men. Participation came largely from skateboarding and surfing, which were already male-dominated. Title IX was still new, and culturally, women in sports weren’t taken seriously.

In the early ’90s, only about ten percent of snowboarders were women. From a business perspective, brands didn’t see value in investing in such a small demographic. Add to that the media landscape—no internet, no easy archiving. If something wasn’t intentionally preserved, it just vanished.

Unless you owned the VHS tape or were physically there, you never saw it.

Gracie: And now you’re interviewing both past and present athletes. What’s stood out to you about the current generation?

Mia: I interviewed around thirty-three women for this film, across generations. And what struck me most with the younger athletes is that I had to change how I asked questions.

When I asked about discrimination or barriers, many of them didn’t have answers—not because challenges don’t exist, but because that hasn’t been their defining experience. They weren’t told constantly that they didn’t belong. They weren’t denied opportunity outright.

That shift in mindset is everything. When you’re not carrying the weight of being told you can’t do something, progression accelerates. These athletes are rocket ships. They’re fearless.

Gracie: Do you see a clear turning point where that shift started?

Mia: There were definitely ebbs and flows. The early 2000s were rough—snowboarding went mainstream, big non-endemic brands came in, and women were heavily sexualized. Then after the 2008 recession, diversity initiatives were often the first thing cut. That led to tokenism—one woman per team—which created competition instead of community.

The real upswing happened in the mid-2010s. Athletic breakthroughs played a huge role. When Anna Gasser landed the first women’s triple cork, the argument that women “weren’t capable” completely collapsed.

At the same time, opportunities expanded—women were finally allowed back into big-air events, social media gave athletes a voice, and brands and events started getting called out publicly. It was a perfect storm.

Gracie: I want to talk about you for a second. What was it like coming up in the snowboard media world during that earlier era?

Mia: It was hard. Even though I wasn’t in front of the camera, the environment was still hostile at times. There were constant little comments—“That’s a big camera for a girl”—that chipped away at your confidence. And then there was online toxicity, especially on old snowboard forums where comments were anonymous and unmoderated.

You’d pour everything into a project, and the feedback wasn’t even about the work—it was just hateful. Watching my friends get torn apart for trying their hardest was honestly the hardest part.

Gracie: How did you cope with that?

Mia: Not well, honestly. I couldn’t stop reading the comments. I convinced myself I needed to hear them to get better—which is deeply toxic and something I don’t recommend. But at the time, it was the only way I could rationalize pushing forward.

Those comments sit in your subconscious. They make you create from fear instead of inspiration. And fear kills creativity. It took years to unlearn that.

The shift happened when I started making work for myself instead of trying to please everyone. That’s when my work got better, opportunities came, and real connections formed.

Gracie: Was there a moment when you felt like you’d really arrived?

Mia: Working at Snowboarder Magazine. That was around 2015. It felt like validation—I was doing the thing. I loved the people there, and it gave me confidence and legitimacy in the industry.

Gracie: And then you went freelance… right before COVID.

Mia: Worst timing imaginable. I lost everything overnight and seriously questioned whether I should keep going. I stepped away for over a year, opened a small vintage furniture shop—total opposite world—and eventually started taking production assistant jobs just to pay bills.

Ironically, working in traditional film production taught me skills I never would’ve learned otherwise—organization, planning, professionalism—that became essential for making Wayward.

Gracie: Do you think you could’ve made this film without that detour?

Mia: Honestly? No. This project forced me to become a producer, a lawyer, a project manager—everything. I’ve learned more from this film than anything else I’ve ever done.

And here’s the thing: if I’d known how hard this would be, I never would’ve started. It took a little bit of delusion to even try. But I genuinely believe that’s how most big, meaningful projects begin.

Gracie: That feels like the perfect place to end. Any last words?

Mia: Be delusional. Make things for yourself. People will resonate. Don’t make things for other people.