my travelogue

Mar 28, 2010

-48°C

Leaving tomorrow for a trip to the end of the world to freeze my ass off!

Mar 24, 2010

still in love with snowboarding!

I heard that my last post sounded like I'm over snowboarding. Not at all! I'm just over the fact that the snow has been shit this season, that I got hurt doing stupid stuff way too many times and that a lot of cool trips didn't work out because of all those reasons! Otherwise I'm still in love with what I'm doing!

Mar 22, 2010

can't wait to get this season over with..

On Tuesday it snowed 40cm, the day after we had 15°C and the day after that 20°C! Summer started early in Austria this year. So we had this jump up at Arlberg ready to hit on Thursday. When we got up there in the morning the snow was already a bit baked but still ok to land. I jumped 2 times before I landed twice in the same bombhole and twisted my knee. At first I thought I blew one of my ligaments again, this time on the other knee for a change but luckily it was only bruised. In less than a year I did 4 MRI's! I'm so down with all the doctors and nurses by now, I even know all their names. I have to chill for a week and then I'll be good to hurt something else..ha.

Mar 16, 2010

pow for once!

It's been quite some time since I saw so much snow falling like it was today. This season has been so weird! We had a couple of ok days but I actually had only one really cool day I can remember with Gigi and Thaler in December and that's about it.. Today I went with Dimi, Lev and his girlfriend to Sonnenkopf. By the time we made it up there it had snowed about 30-40cm fresh! I had so much fun just snowboarding and not having to deal with cameras. I usually don't mind but it does feel really good once in a while. Looks like the snow won't last too long since it's supposed to get super warm already tomorrow...like 17°C warm!

even though it's only for a day, it does look like it's a proper winter

Dimi action

Mar 14, 2010

MBM week

This week started off with one of my worst snowboard days ever. We had this jump in Damüls which was actually pretty good but although I was trying super hard, I couldn't land anything.. I felt like a retard, so bummed.

After that I went with Cyril, Kimi and our Burton filmer Andro to Kleinwalsertal for the MBM photo session. Pretty cool, Snowboarder magazin invites a bunch of photographers to shoot for a week and then they fill one issue with only shots from that week. It was super fun hanging and riding with all the dudes! Since we got there a few days later as all the other crews, we had a hard time finding good spots because a lot was already claimed or tracked. It was not easy but with a lot of hiking we managed to find some good snow and I think we got some good shots too.

we have been doing a lot of that lately

Fichtl

such a fun run!

Kimi

Mar 4, 2010

Avalanches..not cool at all!

This past days we build three jumps and every single landing came down at some point! Yesterday we had this hip build. I didn't think that the landing looked sketchy at all since it was kinda flat and short. I was the one going first. As I hit the jump I travelled a bit too far to the right, I landed my trick but I hit a ditch at the bottom of the gully and stopped. All of a sudden I felt snow pushing from behind and within in seconds I was surrounded and buried by snow. At first I was just trying to push snow away from my face but at some point the snow got so compressed that I couldn't move anymore. It got dark and I had snow in my mouth so I couldn't breath. Although it only took a couple of seconds before Fichtl dug me out, it scared the shit out of me! Definitely a weird experience. I might sound like a pussy since it was really not a big thing but that little slide had so much power already. I can only imagine how gnarly it must be when a real avalanche hits you. So People, take care out there!

as you can see in this video it doesn't take much snow

no chance I would have been able to make it out there myself..

yeah Fichtl!

Feb 28, 2010

Groundhog Year!

It's been tough to find good snow in Austria this year. Right now we're in Salzburg and it snowed 15-20cm the other day. The terrain here is really good and we found some spots to build jumps. We prepared two yesterday. One of the landings slid by only throwing a snowball...pretty awesome! Last season we had a lot of landings sliding too but there was at least a lot of snow! We'll see how the scond one works. At least the sun is out!

mega laaaaame!

Berntl, Arthur, Fichtl & Flo

flying Fichtl

wherever we tried to go, little avalanches came down..

Feb 22, 2010

Zillertal

Went to ride Penken yesterday. The park is really good. A lot of jumps and rails. Though make sure to bring some earplugs cause the music in the park sucks!

Olympics

On my way back to Europe I stopped in Vancouver for a couple days to check out the Olympics. Burton had an extra ticket for Men's Pipe for me. The vibe in the city was really good, happy people everywhere and sunny weather for 4 straight days! Since I haven't been to any Olympics before I was looking forward to see it. When I was still doing pipe comps, like 15 years ago..haha.. I was never really interested being a part of it. It was fun watching it and everybody rode so good. Another thing I can mark of my "been there, done that"- list.

getting ready for the drive

entering Vancouver

bridge view

no idea what this is but it looks fancy

talking about fancy..this was our cosy apartment

Olympics.2

We had a punching bag in our living room!

Ha$i is so GANGSTA!

Chaka

Susie & Hasi

Olympics.3

It's funny that you can't really tell when you watch the Olympics on TV that there is really no snow at Cypress!

bumpy!

German tourists everywhere!

Anne-Marie & Greg

Olympics.4

the pipe set up

Hitsch and Keller didn't make the finals

Shaun definitely did!

Olympics.5

the crowed was going off!

Shaun, Peetu, Scotty

I felt really bad for Kazu cause he was killing it but he fell on his last hit!

eeööhhh!

Peace Out YVR!

Feb 21, 2010

Catboarding Holidays

We left Mt.Baker and headed towards the interior BC for some more catboarding to Fernie and Sicamous. The snow was definitely better but as well not great. Obviously it is one of the warmest seasons so far. Well, we anyways found some leftover pow and for sure got shots. The terrain has so much potential and I can only imagine how good it must be when there is a lot of snow here!