Braden Dean Dot Com

No words on this one. Just look at a couple pics from a recent, last minute trip to London.

On July 14 I was given the opportunity to participate in a private shoot with Voleurz and the Alterna crew at the Camp of Champions on the Blackcomb glacier. It was the first time I have had the opportunity to ride in such close proximity to a helicopter and it was a HUGE adrenaline rush to feel the wind from the rotor blades as you are getting ready to drop in. I had a couple good slams on the jump, including a solid knuckle followed by an epic overshoot, but just about everyone left with shots. Here are a couple photos from our session. Thanks go out to Whistler/Blackcomb as well as the Camp of Champions for making this possible.

Here is the official teaser for Voleurz’s upcoming 2010 release “Look On The Bright Side” that I spent most of my 09/10 season filming towards. Enjoy!

BD

Life is good.

Showcase snowboards and Burton presented their 13th annual Showcase Showdown this Saturday on Whistler/Blackcomb. Although I made the finals, I was unable to put a solid run together when it counted and finished 11th. Fun times were had, beers were drank and Electric teammate Jesmond Dubeau went home $2000 richer. Here is a photo of me during competition as well as a shot of Wiley Tesseo jumping out of the course and sending a method over the cat track below. SICK!

FS 720 Taipan

Wiley Method

I’ve been busy the last week riding Whistler’s surrounding backcountry and logging footage with Voleurz. Early Thursday morning I built a small pat down jump on Rainbow mountain. Avalanche conditions were moderate and we all felt pretty comfortable in the Zone we were filming in. I took my first hit of the day at around 9 am, as I was riding out  I felt a strange and uncomfortable feeling as the snow around me started to move, I made the decision to point it straight and I managed to exit riders left out of the debris zone. The Slide ended up being fairly small but it definitely got my heart rate up!!! Here’s a couple pics of what happened.

Getting Chased

Aftermath

After I returned from Colorado I received a last minute opportunity in Vancouver to do some promo work in correlation with the 2010 Olympic games. After 2 weeks of Partying and riding Mt. Seymour, which has an awesome park set up right now (Thanks Nike 6.0!!!). I am excited to be back in Whistler riding and filming with Voleurz again for our upcoming fall release.

It had been awhile since I had the opportunity to ride some real powder so after a couple of  hard cartwheels in the backcountry and a bit of time spent searching for lost goggles in the snow I finally managed to ride out a SW BS 5 to what was hopefully the “minimum acceptable distance” for video, we will see in the final cut. Here is a bro cam of the shot as well as some random snaps I took in the mountains surrounding Whistler/Blackcomb this week.

So after we rolled up to Aspen the X games were already in full swing, it was amazing to see 30,000 + people all crowded around waiting to see Shaun White drop in and stomp a double McTwist, the energy in the crowd was ridiculous. The X games highlight for me was definitely watching young Halldor Helgasson compete in Snowboard big air for his very first time. He dropped in and stomped 2 perfect scores in his first 3 hits. Double cork FS 1080, Double BS 1080, Double BS 1260. Stomp. Check out the video of his Big air runs here.

We spent the next couple days scoping features to hit around the aspen/snowmass area and it was stacked. Tons of urban drops, ledges, rails and gaps. The best part? We didn’t get kicked out of ANYWHERE. We literally had cops drive by our sessions and nod to us respectfully as 2 people were passing off a bungee to a rider strapping up in the middle of the road. Ridiculous. The original plan was to spend the first couple days after X-Games up in aspen and then head down and shoot some park/pipe action in the Breckenridge/Keystone area. Plans change and due to an abundance of features in such a small area and some “unprecedented” hospitality in Aspen we ended up staying there until our return home on the 27th.

Here are a couple of the features we sessioned in the area:

After we left Aspen our adventures were definitely not over, I still had to figure out how I was going to get back to Canada Feb 7th when my ticket was booked March 7th (Oops!). Fortunately I have apprenticed in Schwankism for the last couple years with the Schwank himself and I made some plays. I saved myself over approximately $500. Details are as follows:

-When I first booked my ticket I tried to save $200 by booking a “non-direct” flight to denver, this saved me money but increased the length of my trip from 3 hours to 9 hours. LAME.

- I also messed up and as a result of my ADHD I missed some important details and my flight was booked for 03/27/10 as opposed to 02/27/10 with everyone else. When I called United they told me it would be $165 USD plus applicable taxes to cancel the ticket and $100 USD plus applicable taxes to change to flight. Total $265 plus taxes.

- After booking my ticket I was also made aware that “excess baggage”, anything longer then 158 cm would be subject to a baggage handling fee of $150 USD plus applicable taxes.

Now my discount, $400 expedia ticket to Colorado had turned into a $950 plus USD ticket and I still had a 9 hour home journey. Not stoked. How did I play it off? Here it goes:

When I arrived at Denver airport (late) I realized that EVERY east coast airport had been shut down as a result of excessive snowfall (2 to 3 feet!!!) and there were massive line ups of extremely angry and rude customers trying to get home. I waited in line and realized I was really going to stand out to the agent if I was the nicest, happiest, least stressed, smiley person she talked to all day. I also made a point of approaching a female agent that looked likely to have a son/daughter my age. Obviously I made best friends with her in the first 30 seconds, and made her aware that a terrible mistake had been made (no blame put on either side) and that it was extremely important that I make it back to Vancouver TODAY because of some “Olympic related activities” that I had to take part in. Obviously she was impressed with how stress free I was (I’m sure the Olympic plug helped as well) and she told me she would see what she could do. Ten minutes later I had a DIRECT flight home, no cancellation fees, no flight upgrade fees, and all I had to do was pay the $150 for excess baggage. Pimp. Roll with confidence, stay collected, and you’ll be fine. Always.

I’m back in Canada now, doing some Olympic related promo work in Vancouver over the games, riding the locals as much as possible. Hopefully I’ll get another update up of a Seymour/Grouse shred before I head to Revelstoke in March.

Finally, Big thank you’s to Michelle Wilson for the hospitality in Aspen. The Voleurz family loves you, always!

BD

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!

BD

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.

BD

“First Day” sledding 2010 from Braden Dean on Vimeo.