More Than Viral: The Family Behind Chasing Sage

Behind the viral clips, Robert and Samantha are building more than a rider – they’re nurturing resilience, joy, and a love for the mountains while redefining what it means to share your story online.

Interview: Alba Pardo | Photos: Robert and Samantha Garlow

What began as a dad with a camera capturing family days on the mountain has grown into one of the most beloved windows into kids’ snowboarding on the internet. Through their Instagram account, @chasingsage, Robert and Samantha share their daughter Sage’s snowboarding journey — from her first turns in the backyard to mic’d-up powder laps that melted hearts worldwide.

But while millions have discovered their story through short clips, Robert resists the easy label of “influencer.” For him, documenting Sage’s adventures is not about likes or sponsorships, but about creating memories, living by example, and showing that kids are capable of more than we think. In a culture quick to dismiss online creators, Chasing Sage stands out as proof that social media can be authentic, ethical, and even inspiring.

In this conversation, Robert opens up about what it really takes to guide a young child into snowboarding, the lessons hidden in every fall, and why they always choose fun over progression.

How did you and Samantha introduce Sage to snowboarding? Was it a natural progression or a conscious decision to involve her so early?

Snowboarding has always been an important part of Samantha’s and my life, so we knew when we had kids, they were going to be ‘raised on the slopes.’ We knew as active outdoor parents that the kids would be coming along for anything and everything, a belief that was encouraged by necessity due to our previous decision to move across the country, where we didn’t have any family,  so ‘leaving them with grandma’ was never an option – and I’m not sure we would have done that even if it was.

We started slowly, first in the backyard, and on each outing, she just wanted to do more and was always having a blast sliding around. So, we began taking her to our local mountain, where we started co-riding and working on her skills a little at a time.

What were the very first moments when you thought, “Wow, she’s ready for this,” either on the board or emotionally?

We’ve always believed ‘kids are capable’, so I wanted to cultivate a supportive environment where she could try anything without fear of ‘failure’ and progress at her own pace in activities she enjoyed.

Samantha and I knew we would continue snowboarding immediately after having kids and planned to ‘bring them along for the ride.’ I assumed that would mean she would spend plenty of days crawling around and making friends in the lodge, playing in the snow at the base, for a few years. However, at 9 months old, we decided to test the waters and take her for her first ride. She rode the chairlift and then down the slope, tucked into an Ergo Baby carrier on my chest. I remember how calm and comfortable she was, and then she started happily humming a little song to herself, the precursor to her now well-known slope songs.

After seeing her demeanor on that outing, we decided to ease her into getting on a board earlier than we had ever expected. We got her a used 80 cm Burton snowboard, bindings, and tiny little 8c boots the following winter at 18 months old. We started in the backyard and then progressed to short days at the mountain, and through every stage of this journey, she’s blown us away with her resolve, determination, and bravery.

Viewers often see ‘picture-perfect’ or cinematic moments. What does a real day of snowboarding look like for your family?

Believe it or not, what we share is a surprisingly accurate rendition of what we experience. There are certainly comical moments and sufferfest gear hauls (which we also share), but we’ve been very intentional with this journey with an intense focus on making memories and having fun over progression. That simple core principle means every day is different depending on how we’re feeling. We’re always ready to pivot if conditions or family dynamics – or something else – are off in order to self-correct and end on a good note. If they are asking to go back again, it was a successful outing. Once that internal love for snowboarding is established, there is no turning back!

I think people may be surprised to learn that we often prefer ‘short days’ around 3-4 hours (even shorter when the kids were really young). I think this has been a reason for our ‘success’ as we rarely ride until we’re crashing out, leaving on a good note – and always wanting more. 

Can you share an anecdote where it all went wrong (falls, tantrums, logistics), and how you handled it?

We’ve had plenty of falls and mishaps. It’s in those moments, and how we (and her) handle them calmly, or comedically, or gently, that have gone viral and garnered the most attention because I think it’s become increasingly rare in the over-reactionary society that has developed.

It’s in those brief moments right after a fall where a parent’s reaction begins to determine exactly how the child will respond in that moment – and in the future.

I think it is my calm demeanor in times of stress or after falls that has cultivated a mindset in our children that everything will be okay. After a few years of consistent calm support in those moments, we now see it internalized in them. When they fall and are uninjured, their response is always something like “I’m okay,” or “I want to try it again,” or “That was fun!” By four years-old, our daughter had already developed a resilient attitude towards falling, evidenced by her sung words in the viral video “I won’t fall. Maybe I will. That’s okay, ’cause we all fall!”

What are the biggest challenges (emotional, logistical, safety) of taking a toddler/young kid to the mountain?

For us, it was all about nailing the logistics and then leaving the slopes before crashing out. We worked hard to develop a routine that worked well with her nap schedule, allowing us to make the 1-hour drive up to the mountain with excitement, snowboard for 2-4 hours, and then leave on a good note, taking a nap on the way back. I cannot overstate the importance of leaving before things go south.

Our local mountain is an incredibly considerate, safe and uncrowded place to ride so there was never any crowd-based safety concerns, but when she was young and we would visit a big resort on a weekend, I remember times where I would ride right behind her – just in case someone came down too fast and out of control behind us so I would absorb the impact. It’s essential to be aware of all the variables present so you can make informed decisions that keep them safe and increase their chances of success. This includes slope selection, weather, and snow-quality decisions, and always having a pocket full of snacks to pivot to when a little well-timed distraction is needed.

How do you balance encouraging her growth with making sure she actually enjoys and wants to continue?

I always err on the side of fun. The growth and progression come naturally at their pace, and because we’re not trying to ‘groom a professional champion,’ it’s easy not to push too hard. I’m also very in tune with her abilities, so I know when it’s appropriate to give her a nudge of confidence, but ultimately it’s always her decision. 

How has the content creation project affected the family dynamics and your family routines? Would you do it the same? Do you do things now that you wouldn’t do before?

We’re unique – and fortunate – in the ‘influencer’ and content creation space because we can do it for the love of it rather than for the financial need for it. Samantha and I entered this social media journey with very strong family boundaries that we have stuck to to navigate this journey intentionally and ethically. 

We also still work in our traditional careers as an architect and a pediatric nurse practitioner. Not only do we enjoy the careers that we invested so much effort into achieving, but we are also dedicated to not going ‘all in’ on social media, so we can remain financially stable, independent of social media, to be able to make decisions – or rejections – of partnerships that don’t fit our vision. 

We live our lives by the same principles and in the same way that we always have; the only thing that has changed is that we now have more opportunities to travel and explore new resorts.

How do you decide whether something’s a “show clip” versus a genuine family adventure? Where does work end and play begin?

I love this question because I think it is another moment that reveals how different we are from the majority of the ‘influencers’ out there. As the years go by – and our popularity increases – I find myself documenting and sharing less and less, which feels like the opposite of many others in positions of influence and visibility. We’ve never been in it for the attention – I’ve always made videos because I loved doing it. It started with my first digital still camera back in middle school in the mid-90s, followed by video cameras after video cameras. My first ‘production’ was during the transition from middle school to high school, when I spent two years filming myself and friends skateboarding, snowboarding, and other shenanigans ( it was the dawn of the CKY days…) onto a Hi-8 camera. I then ‘edited’ a full-length video by spending weeks carefully creating a compilation of parts using a janky dual-input (Hi8 video and CD player) to record piece by piece onto a VHS cassette. The result played out in a friend’s basement in front of 10 or 12 friends before being misplaced and lost to this day. 

I love capturing moments and memories of friends and family doing the things they loved and looking back on them in the years to come.

I may not care about the skyrocketing attention, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to see so many people appreciate a skill set and passion I’ve been developing for decades, but that’s a long-winded adjacent discussion to the original question. 

A main goal of the boundaries we set as a family was not to live our lives differently just because we had the opportunity to create content for a large audience. To not let our ‘fame’ invade our personal space and our personal peace, and to not sacrifice privacy or our children’s future in a potentially negative way.

We live normal lives – rarely captured on camera, and that’s a very intentional decision. We’re happy to share a small part of our journey in the public social media space, but it’s just that, a tiny fraction. The rest of our time is for us to enjoy freely without cameras, just like everyone else has the privilege of doing. 

How did you react the first time a clip went viral? Did it shift how you filmed or shared content?

It was true disbelief. I didn’t know what ‘viral’ meant until that mic’d-up stuck-a-saurus clip circled the globe 10-fold and skyrocketed our family to the position we’re currently in. I remembered being offered money and products and licensing contracts from many different brands and companies within days of posting that video, and realizing we needed to take this slow and do it right if we wanted to honor our boundaries, our children, and continue on this journey as stable long-term content creators. 

It was actually the first time I had ever put a mic on her while snowboarding. I had originally decided to try it because I loved the added perspective/context it gave the video clips I wanted to capture of our kids to look back on, so, naturally between my interest in doing it and the popularity of that style of video, it became a semi-regular part of our content when appropriate. But we’ve never changed what we share on social media, which has been, and continues to be, four-season outdoor oriented adventures as a family. Our account is, and always has been, a family account – not a singular family member’s account.

You once mic’d her up at age 4. How did that change how she communicates or behaves on camera?

It hasn’t. I think people think her songs or dialogue, which can be chatty at times, are part of an ‘act’ because she’s on camera, but she is the exact same way as she has always been, whether a camera is on or not.

Avoiding the potentially subconscious feeling of needing to ‘perform’ is why I shoot primarily with a 360 camera. Because the 360 camera films everything in every direction – and can later be ‘reframed’ – it doesn’t require the filmer to point it in any particular direction so the subject of the video doesn’t have a camera pointed at them. Furthermore, the subject is very rarely a single person, or just one of our kids. We are naturally filming the experience together and whatever happens as a result, rather than setting out to perform or capture a particular clip. 

Do you enjoy snowboarding as much as Sage does now? How have your goals or style evolved with fatherhood?

I love snowboarding more than ever.

I developed a passion for snowboarding in late middle school and high school. I grew up in Western New York, 20 minutes from a tiny ski-hill named after the bridge at the bottom, rather than any sort of prominent mountain – which tells you all you need to know about its small stature. But it had night riding 7 days a week, which allowed me to be there after school in addition to the weekends –it was amazing. I grew up on those slopes, both literally and figuratively, and was deeply in tune with the snowboarding culture that unfolded through print magazines I would read in bed before falling asleep; visualizing tricks I wanted to land and dreaming of wishful trips to places like Utah and Mt. Hood.

I couldn’t get enough of it. I became a lifty so I could get a free season’s pass and spend more time at the hill, signing up for a paltry six bucks an hour in order to ‘live my dream.’

But as I grew older, and was dealing with academia and adulting, and worrying about my future… I conceded that my position both geographically and economically wasn’t going to allow for anything ‘bigger’ in the snowboarding world, and the days on the hill dwindled.  Even after following friends to a party college in the North-Eastern corner of New York state to be closer to bigger mountains (Jay Peak was still 2 hours away) I was riding 8-10 days per year. 

Before having kids, Samantha and I made a big decision with positive lif/ changing results. We committed to leaving everything and everyone we knew back East and finally made the move out West that I had always dreamed of. This decision is the foundation of everything we’ve cultivated since. What was intended to be a temporary 3-year adventure before heading back East to start a family turned into a lifelong commitment once we realized this was where we wanted to raise our family – in the mountains and wild places of the West. We put down roots, cultivated a community around us, and have been here for over 13 years now. 

The beauty of having children is the opportunity to see the world through their eyes. To share the world with them and live vicariously through their first-time reactions to all of the amazing things life has to offer. The experience of seeing her fall in love with snowboarding allowed me to fall in love with it all over again and rediscover the flame of passion that was burning low and quietly in the background all these years. 

I sat on a chairlift with a friend shortly after moving West, and he said to me, “Snowboarding is cool and all, but it’s really about being out here with the people you love” – I couldn’t agree more. Now I’m getting out into the mountains with the people I love 50+ days every winter.

What personal values or lessons are most important for you to pass on through snowboarding?

It’s never really been about the snowboarding, but as a way to acknowledge the many different skills and life lessons learned while snowboarding: determination, resiliency, confidence, commitment, critical thinking, and creative thinking. It’s all there.  

Have any mountains, conditions, or situations pushed you to pause or rethink taking Sage there?

Absolutely. I will not take her anywhere I am not 95% confident in her ability to get down on her own – and 100% confident in my ability to help her down if needed. We have ridden (or picked our way down) some really gnarly terrain. She learned at a young age that nearly anything is possible as long as you take it one step at a time. Right now, she is only limited by little legs and muscles making it exhausting to go uphill to big or far places while splitboarding. When it comes to the downhill, I’m confident she can get down nearly anything safely. 

What gear, skills, or safety systems did you have to learn or refine specifically for guiding a small child?

I learned quickly where I needed to be in relation to her, depending on the conditions and terrain we were riding. For instance on really steep terrain where a mis-hap could happen in a jump turn I remain below her to stop her slide or tumble if necessary, but in powder and trees I remain behind her so if she falls and gets stuck or encounters a tree well, I can respond quickly by riding down to her rather than needing to unstrap and hike up to her. 

We’ve also had to find a unique workaround for touring with her because they don’t make splitboards small enough for her. So, we got her adult Drift Boards (Short approach skis) that fit her little boots. She tours uphill on those while carrying her snowboard on her back, and then I put the approach skis on my pack for the descent while she rides her snowboard down.

Because we live in a very snowy region and love riding powder more than anything, we spend plenty of time each year refreshing on the basics of deep snow immersion risks, such as tree wells, as well as some avalanche scenarios and gear.

When we’re in the backcountry (on appropriately chosen terrain and snowpack conditions) she rides with a backpack, shovel, probe, and beacon – not because I think she could respond quickly enough and dig me out, but because we believe in cultivating good habits early so they become second nature over time. 

You mentioned wishing there were more little kids snowboarding. Have you looked into ways to connect, support, or inspire other families?

I think that’s a driving factor behind our channel: to show that kids are capable not only of learning how to snowboard at a young age but also of excelling at it and having a blast while doing so. If everyone could experience the unparalleled feeling of surfing powder on a snowboard, I think we would see many more snowboarders. However, it can be a long journey to get there, and many opt for what they think and are told is easier: skiing.

By sharing our journey as a snowboarding family with young kids, hopefully more people will consider it as an option. The tiny gear is there, and it’s improving year after year.

Now that we have numerous opportunities to travel to new ski resorts, we seek out and connect with other families with young snowboarders, some of whom have become good friends of ours, and we reconnect whenever possible. 

While some third-party ‘stuckasaurus’  sticker sales go towards the cause I also have a dream of more significantly supporting the White Pass Foundation – our home mountain’s non-profit foundation with a goal of supporting and helping local youth get on the slopes. What better way to encourage more people to snowboard than to support their journey from day one right here at our local mountain. Right now they are outfitted with the gear and volunteers and are teaching local youth how to ski in a great program that has been successful year after year. I have been in discussion with resort management about extending this program to begin offering snowboarding as well.

What would you love to see happen in “kid snowboard culture” over the next 5–10 years? Is that something you’re involved with?

I would love to see a wider demographic of kids given the chance to snowboard. To me it’s not important to see more 3 year-olds from committed winter activity families on snowboards. Instead, it would be amazing to see more 5-12 year-olds who have never skied or snowboarded and didn’t come from a ski-family to be given the chance to snowboard; to be  the first generation in their family to feel the joy that snowboarding can bring. As a self taught 11 or 12 year-old that started on a plastic board in the backyard to become the first person in my family to get on the slopes, I see myself in those kids. The ones who will need to step outside their comfort zone to try something new – and in return, hopefully, discover a life long passion that will change their life for the better.

For me the ‘culture’ isn’t built, determined or strengthened on the competition circuit and in events like the Olympics, the culture of snowboarding is in the youth, it’s in the movement and creativity, the days building jumps or closing down your home hill with the homies. It’s in the shared passion and enjoyment of a common feeling. Sliding sideways and surfing the mountain.

You described yourselves as “instigators of adventure.” What does that label mean to you personally?

That tagline has manifested itself in slightly different ways depending on the stage of life I’m in but at the end of the day it’s my proclamation to be committed to adventure. I’ve always preached the importance of doing things that make you uncomfortable and how it leads to personal growth. Those opportunities don’t often come knocking on your door, you need to actively seek them out. My goal is to instigate the adventures that result in memorable experiences and personal growth for myself and those around me.

Looking ahead, what’s the next milestone you’re both dreaming about, snowboard goals or life lessons you want Sage to carry forward?

I try not to think too far ahead and enjoy the wonderful opportunities we’ve been offered over the last few years. We want to seize the opportunities to travel to new places as they come, but ultimately our goal first and foremost is to embrace childhood. It only happens once, and it’s the most formative years of their lives so we’re dedicated to pouring ourselves into their childhood years by being present and supportive.