german halfpipe championships

Christophe Schmidt, old and new german HP champion! congrats, vogi!

yeah, so stoked! good things came quite unexpected, when it was announced in january, that the 'pipe aid' movement (dedicated to bring back a hafpipe for germany) finally succeeded at Oberstdorf with the help of red bull and some other sponsors. of course, it was logical to hold a german championships again (after 4 years without a halfpipe on german soil).

the smalls on their way up

so last weekend, it all went down and i have to say it was a banger! soooo many of the old crew from back in the days came to ride and to compete. it almost felt like a highschool reunion! the pipe was good & the spot at Nebelhorn is just perfect. weather held on (at least for the first couple of hours) and the whole thing on the mountain was a blast!

Xaver, Cab5 Shifty

Mini with his actual board and his very first one. he is still riding both of them... siiiiiick!

after some beers at the pricegiving down at the 'Out Of Bounds' shop, it was time for alot of talks with old friends. we all had a nice dinner at Primavera Pizza and went to Hörbar afterwards for more drinks.
sorry i don't have shots from the night... i was having such a good time that i just forgot to take pictures :)

nice trophies! vogi like!

thanks everybody for a nice reunion and a nice comp.
i guess, everybody's gonna be back next year!

tokyooooooooo!

staying in tokyo for the last two days of our japan trip was a really good idea. this city is just the bomb! our hotel was literally in the city center near shinjuku station, so we could just go out and walk most of the stuff we wanted to see.

our cubicle was quite big, at least by japanese standards. and it was a room with quite a view (see pic on top)

goh and ron, both working for 'championsvisions', our distributor for isenseven in japan, took us on a small shop tour before diving into tokyo's nightlife. it was really interesting to see, how many snowboard shops (and we are talking proper ones with all kinds of fresh stuff) can exist (and obviously do good) within a 200m radius. the riders did some signings and it was nice to realize, how good the movie has been selling in japan this season (in fact, place 2 among all available snowboard movies!!!).

it was cool to see, how stoked people are on isenseven in japan. doumo arrigatou!

peter and kevin, checking out their new headwear for 2012. and we met grilo (left upper corner) ;D

as we were quite hungry (and peter, kevlar, fips and alex had started a bet to drink 15 cans of asahi), we asked goh and ron to show us some nice sushi place and we headed to a small restaurant right around the corner of the 'snowboard shop district'... really good shushi and a funny chef and an even funnier waitress, who could not believe, how kevin was treating his shushi... :)

the crew, raging through toyko's subway...

after we all stuffed ourselves and already pretty intoxicated, we demanded karaoke and it didn't take god and ron long to find an excellent place: small room, high above the streets with an incredible backdrop against one of tokyo's main roads. insane! needless to say, that we spent more than three hours at that place!

if i remember right, this was 'it must have been love' by roxette. classic! insane backdrop!

the next day started late and we finally had some time to check out the countless camera stores, boutiques and some of the more weird stuff... well, pictures say more than 1000 words:

so many people all over the place!

so many girls all over the place!

so much gambling all over the place!

so much rubber all over the place!

we all had a nice last japanese dinner after the shopping. sashimi at its finest!

yummy... i definately gonna miss japanese food!!!

time for us to leave beautiful japan. it was a sick trip and we definately gonna be back soon! :)


thanks iku and tobi for arranging everything and goh and ron for showing us around in tokyo! doumo arigatou gozeimasu!

asahidake - lots of snow, lots of crews...

asahidake was next on our japan trip. its famous for the shit loads of white stuff it gets every season between january and march. asahidake mountain is the highest peak on hokkaido, so its only logical, that the cold northwest stream from inner russia, that picks up moisture over the japanese sea gets rid of its load along the mountain ranges of hokkaido again and especially at asahidake. there is no 'bad weather' in asahi, as its either nice weather or snowing (which we didn't consider as 'bad') ;)
asahidake has become famous through nicolas müller and kevind pearce's part in absinthe's 'neverland'.

somebody dug out our car every second day...
i so wanted to know the total amount of snow that fell during our 5 days stay...

arriving late in asahidake, we met the head crew with riders christophe schmidt and shayne pospisil, photographer christian brecheis and teammanager bernd pösl and had some brewskies after the long ride. and guess what, it was puking again outside! by the time, we left their hotel again, it was already 20 cm on top of our car and it wasn't even midnight! the head guys gave us some last minute tipps, as they were leaving the very next day. soooo many crews shooting in asahi in the past days, that it was almost impossible to find spots that hadn't been done before.

view from asahidake gondola

asahi only has one gondola and the terrain is much less steep that we had expected. except from some steeps atop of the mountain and some ridges in the lower parts, its quite flat. the gondola only makes sense to go fun riding or when the weather is clear (didn't i say, there is no 'bad weather' in asahi? :D), so we instead been hiking most of the time, which was ALOT. hiking waist-to-shoulder-deep pow is just fun and amazing for the first ten steps, after that it gets extremely annoying, especially without snowshoes. damn ANA, they have a baggage allowence of only 35kgs per person, which means, we had to leave our snowshoes  at home and the rentals up in asahi were 35 bucks a day...

one of the few spots, that hadn't been done before...

culinary highlight for sure was the small kiosk at the gondola base, who offered a wide variety of japanese snacks like 'sausage on a stick' or meat buns with some rather secret ingredients and of course all sorts of japanese candy, my personal favourite being strawberry 'air-chocolate' in a ice cream cone. totally looked like an ice cream, tasted like an ice cream...

sorry for this colour shot amongst all the b/w stuff, but i had to show these items in full colour ;)

we had some great days in asahidake, snow was incredibly good and it was well worth the trip. shooting there ain't easy though. five days of hiking (i was tracking more than 20km on my GPS) through deep pow was showing us our limits. also the myth of asahi has already attracted alot of crews (and i guess it will be rather more than less in the next couple of years). 

our hotel offered fresh kimonos every day. unfortunately, it wasn't allowed to wear these at dinner...

time for us to kiss the pow pow goodbye for this season. guess, we not gonna have any conditions that only come close to asahi back home for this season...

kevlar throwing down some steezy cab 7s

tokyo will be next for two days, before we return home!

niseko and the bluest bird...

mt. yotei

today we woke up with perfect bluebird, which is kind of exceptional here with the fast changing hokkaido weather. as the last days havent been too successful due to the frozen base below the new snow, we were really happy about this last chance that niseko offered us.

the hike got pretty steep about 100 meters after this shot. legburner!

we took two guides who took us deep into the backcountry and we finally could do some nice shots the way we wanted. the hike was short, but pretty exhausting as it was quite slippery and steep.

peter in the magic forest

in the end, we only had to do one basic hike to do about 5 or 6 different spots. the snow was pretty baked in the end, but it still looked cool on the pics!

fipse's spot: switch millerflip! stoked!

at night, we went out, as it was our last day in niseko before cruising to asahidake tomorrow. we found a decent steakhouse, as we all longed for some european food (after a couple of dinners at a sushi restaurant)... highlight was for sure, that each of us could pick some other's drink which ended with quite wild mixtures (vodka/tomatojuice/beer - whiskey/gin/absinhe) and of course the mixture i had to drink, containing 'fleshcleam'... :)

bettel than broody maly!

tomorrow, we'll be off to asahidake. we hope to be there by night, so we can catch the head-crew who were shooting there the last couple of days and have some brewskies with them before they leave on wednesday.


hope, i can post from asahidake as we won't have internet in our hotel there.