I arrived in Colorado on Wednesday night with Voleurz filmer/Dad Darren Rayner and fellow Voleurz/Ogio/Coors rider Barry Hartman. Our plan was to check out/slap some high fives at SIA in Denver and then head up to Aspen for X games and a week of filming before heading down through breckenridge on our way home. The obvious “snowboard trip disorganization” occurred, this was highlighted when we realized that my return ticket was not booked back with the rest of the crew on February 7th but somehow a month later on March 7th. Thanks expedia.
Day 1 at SIA ended with a trip out to the Burton Party which featured “Free booze/Lap dances” all night at the local “Gentlemans Club” and day 2 “began” the same way. After a 2 hour sleep we were back at the show, drinking free whiskey on the rocks at the Rome booth and beers at Transworld. After a quick meeting with Pamela Anderson we got a chance to see the first viewing of a short film produced by Jeremy Jones and his Protect Our Winters organization. The video talks about climate change, how it has affected us as skiers/snowboarders and how it will continue to affect us and everything from our drinking water to farming. Watch the full movie and check out what the POW organisation is all about Here:
We drove up to Aspen last night. We’ll be here for the next couple days, shooting some features on and off the hill and checking out X games Slopestyle finals tomorrow at Buttermilk. Congrats to our friend TJ Schiller for putting down the first ever double cork 1620 last night in Ski Big Air and winning a silver medal!
I went out sledding on Friday for the first time this season for a “fun day” up Rainbow and to get all the bugs worked out before getting into sledding again full on. Unfortunately certain members in the group were less experienced then others and the day began with a snowmobile sending itself down a creek bed and into a deep ravine over 1500′ below any form of trail and into an extremely steep and DEEP area which took almost 7 hours of digging and breaking trail to get out of. The day ended with a long descent back to the trucks in the dark.
We woke up the next morning to find it completely bluebird in Whistler and quickly decided that there was no way that our day could be nearly as frustrating as the day previous. We were right, we shuttled a nice steep powder face for a couple hours, ate lunch on the top of a ridge with a beautiful view of Whistler/Blackcomb and made it down while it was still light out. Here’s a short video of myself and SnowboardAddiction owner/coach Nev Lapwood doing a couple laps holding the GoPro POV camera.
Whistler got hit hard the last couple of days with an epic storm that brought us over 70 cm of snow followed by bluebird conditions for 2 days!!! Myself and fellow Voleurz shred Shayne Zwickle headed up for first tracks on saturday for some pow turns. We pushed it, riding from 7:30 am – Close. Shayne managed to break his wrist riding irresponsibly early in the day but it didn’t stop him from sending non-stop front/backflips all afternoon. Here’s a couple snapshots I managed to grab, It’s hard to stop and take time for photos in 70cm of FRESH!!!
Myself and Voleurz main man/filmer Darren Rayner are heading down to Colorado next week for some trades how action (SIA) as well as some filming at Breck, Keystone and Aspen. See ya there???
This Weekend I will be snowboarding in Vancouver’s “Winter Squared” event in downtown Vancouver. Come out to GE Plaza at Robson Square (by the art gallery) to check out live music, winter fashion shows and a Snowboard rail competition. If you can’t physically make it out to the event but still want to check it out I will be making a live TV appearance at 4:30 pm PST on City TV.
Finally after 6 weeks off riding with a torn miniscus, hitting the gym, icing my knee and watching non-stop episodes of Californication I’m back on the snow! Super pumped to shred some pow on Blackcomb today, CBC trees and 7th heaven were nothing short of epic (as usual). Hopefully I’ll be back in top condition and able to start shooting with Voleurz again in the next couple weeks.
On another note, I am now riding for Bataleon Snowboards. Check them out here
