Navy Reserves · Seabees
Steel Worker out of Schenectady, NY. Honor Student at "A" School, Blue Jacket of the Year FY19. Seabees build what other units need to exist.
Our Story
OUR STORY
BUILT FOR THE UNDERDOGS.
DESIGNED BY ONE.
A one-Veteran operation out of Charlotte, NC. A snowboarding comeback, told in the open.
Where others dream, we create reality. #StayLucid
I'm Zach Nash. I founded Lucid Reality Xtreme Sports in April 2025 and run every part of it: brand development, marketing, content, the store you're reading this on. One Veteran, one stubborn refusal to do anything else with my life. But the story doesn't start with the brand. It starts on a mountain.
Raised on snow at Royal Mountain.
Royal Mountain, in Caroga Lake, New York, is the hill that raised me. I was on skis at two and on a snowboard by six, and I was up there just about every weekend, winter and summer both, always around the culture, snow when it was cold and racing when it wasn't.
I was never a real racer, but I ran a couple of one-off supercross nights in my later teens on my own budget, a beat '91 RM250 lined up against machines two decades newer, outgunned and there anyway. That mindset never left me.
I skied all over Colorado as a kid, and at sixteen I booked my first solo snowboarding trip and flew out to Park City, Utah, on my own. Riding was never a phase for me, it was the constant, and everything else in my life just got louder around it.
Two branches. Five years. One reason.
Army Active Duty · 19D Cavalry Scout
Airborne Cavalry Scout out of JBER, Alaska. Leading a team of paratroopers in some of the harshest terrain this country has.
Seabees build. Scouts go first. Somewhere in those years, I figured out what I actually wanted out of life.
It wasn't a paycheck.
It was to be awake for it.
Born on a board in Alaska.
Alaska is where riding came roaring back. I spent every window I could out in the backcountry, and somewhere out there in 2023 the whole thing hit me at once: make a documentary around it, that riding, that country, that feeling of being fully awake in a place that doesn't hand you anything. The film never got shot. The idea never left. It became Lucid Reality, made official as an LLC in April 2025, but really born on a board in Alaska two years before the paperwork ever caught up.
When I got out, I tried to fit. It didn't take.
I came back to civilian life and did what most Veterans do, tried to be normal. Heavy-civil construction. NYSDOT inspection, welding, and project management. Real work. Good work. Work that paid.
It also slowly drained the part of me that had ever felt alive.
So I started carrying a camera again, not for work. I'd come home with footage of people doing the thing they loved, and I'd realize I was watching the only people in my life who looked actually awake.
There's a whole tribe of us out here: Veterans, athletes, artists, blue-collar lifers, mountain people, weekend warriors. The thing we have in common isn't what we do. It's that we refuse to sleepwalk through it. That's who I built Lucid Reality for.
I started it as a side hustle while I still had the safe job. Then last May, I was sitting in the pit box with our good friend Keith McGee, a Craftsman Truck Series driver, watching Frankie Muniz race with our logo on his spoiler. Somewhere in that moment, it hit me: if this was ever going to be more than a side hustle, I had to invest in it fully.
The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd started something born on a snowboard and watched it grow up around dirt tracks and pit boxes instead.
Then everything burned.
In October 2025, my home burned down. Total accident. Zero insurance payout. I lost just about everything I owned, down to my two dogs, some clothing, my PC, and the few odds and ends that came out the other side.
My snowboarding setup went with it. I'd sold my original gear when I moved, and the pieces I'd been holding onto to get back on were the ones that burned. That's the honest reason I hadn't ridden in the couple of years since.
I had every reason to fold. I didn't.
I'm a man of God, and I'll tell it to you straight: the only reason I got up every single day after that and tried to pick up the pieces was Him, the two dogs that made it out with me, and the handful of people who already knew what Lucid Reality stood for. There was no insurance check to rebuild on. So I rebuilt on faith and instinct instead.
What looked like losing everything turned out to be ground zero, the real restart I'd been circling since I left the military. It's what pushed me to start my academic career over at SUNY Canton, and it's what freed me to move to Charlotte and chase the thing I'd been too tied down to chase before.
Getting back on.
This fall, I'm getting back on. I joined the Ski and Snowboard Club at UNC Charlotte, and I intend to compete wherever they'll let me line up. I'm building the gear back from nothing and rebuilding the body right alongside it, no shortcuts and no pretending the time off didn't happen.
Here's the part that matters to me. I'm not chasing something new, I'm going back to what Lucid Reality was born as in the first place, a snowboarding story told honestly, from the inside. The fire took the setup I was going to return on. It didn't take the reason I bought it in the first place.
Who it's for.
Lucid Reality is for the people who refuse to sleepwalk through the week. Veterans, riders, blue-collar lifers, weekend warriors, anyone rebuilding something and unwilling to fake it. The shirt is the easy part. The life it stands for is the point.
The Family
I back a handful of athletes I believe in, a spot here and their own code that pays them. Meet them on The Lucid Family.
Veteran-Owned
100% Veteran-built and run. Five-plus years of service across two branches went into the discipline that runs this brand.
Made-to-Order
Every piece is made when you order it, shipped anywhere in the U.S. No warehouses. No surplus. No waste.
Where I am now.
I run Lucid Reality solo out of Charlotte, NC, chasing a return to competitive snowboarding and documenting the whole rebuild in the open. Snow is the priority, but I didn't land in the middle of racing country by accident, and getting back on a track in some form is still a goal I'm carrying for down the road. In March 2026, I completed Syracuse University's Military Founders Lab while attending SUNY Canton full-time and made the President's List that May. This fall, I start UNC Charlotte's BFA Art History-Photography program. I got in, and I'm taking the camera work as seriously as everything else here, because the film that started all of this still matters to me.
I'm not pretending I have it figured out. I'm building this the same way I did everything else worth doing, one decision at a time, with the people who showed up before there was any proof.
If that's you, thanks for being here.
Where others dream, we create reality.
Live Life Limitless, Live Life Lucid.
— Zach Nash, Chief Lucid
Lucid Reality Xtreme Sports
THE PEOPLE I ROLL WITH
I DON'T RIDE ALONE
This story is mostly mine, but I back a few people I believe in, and they back this.
#StayLucid