Taylor says he doesn't feel ready to ride Big Air this time around. "Riding the MegaRamp is just, you know, heavy duty skateboarding. I don't want to push it," he said.

Taylor's battle back from brain trauma began in October 2010, when he slammed the back of his helmeted head during vert practice at the Dew Tour's season finale in Las Vegas. He describes the injury as having torn apart important hardwiring in his brain, affecting not only his motor skills but also the way he regulates emotion and judgment.

"In that split second, my whole life changed," he says.

On the mend for more than a year, peaking physically but still compromised mentally, Taylor suffered another severe brain injury while snowboarding on New Year's Day in Southern California. That high-speed head snap -- again while wearing a helmet -- aggravated his previous head trauma and set him up for increasingly serious injuries in the future.

With successive head injuries that include unconsciousness, Taylor says, "each time it just gets way worse. So I can't push it harder than I'd like to. I've got to keep it chill."