revelstoked!

(15" laptop and 13"lapfood)

after spending two super nice days in fernie, we hit the road again towards sicamous, a small town close to revelstoke. setup there was completely different to fernie, as we were staying at the best western and got picked up every morning for catboarding.

(okay, the terrain on this pic is not that steep. :D... this was the last run of the trip. sunshine and the best pow you can imagine!)

terrain had much steeper parts this time and the perfect guide: carl from K3 showed us all the good spots, sani and mu were killing it!

(thanks, scott martin (middle) and K3 for hooking us up!)

super nice chutes and drops, snow conditions almost perfect with sunshine on our very last two hours of our 'powder triangle' trip.

thanks again, scott for making this possible! looking forward to our 'powder kaiser' project already! :)

(this is blasphemy!... see one-but-next entry ;) )

fernie

after a long day travelling across the US northwest, we finally made it to fernie. we had an invitation from FWA catboarding, not only to shoot at their area with the cat for two days, but also to stay at their lodge. totally different style there. everything very laid back and a super good atmosphere. so nice to stay at the place, where the cat starts and not having to hassle in the morning.

the FWA base is in the middle of nowhere and that is another thing that makes it so great. literally in the wild, as christian can tell. he spent some minutes outside in the dark for a ciggy, came back in, pretty scared... he had heard a growling sound pretty close to the parking where he was standing.

the next day, some guys from FWA found large footprints of a wolf or a cougar just some meters away from that spot. since that, the outdoor hot tub was the dedicated 'field kitchen' or 'cougar's fast food'... :)

(yiiha, mu just invented a new trick... i call it the 'mulitwister')

(the boyz on the cat: mu, sani, corey and christian)

(sani, into the great white open)

(the temperature that the body can withstand without getting harmed is about 60°C... the wood fired hottob at FWA is about 70°... beer for sure helps)

we spent three great days at the FWA lodge. weather was not the best and also the snow could have been better, but it was great snowboarding and a very very nice overall experience nevertheless!

thanks to scott & crew for making this possible, you guys rock!

eastbound

we have been leaving baker early this morning and are now eastbound on the way to fernie, BC. we decided to take the south route through seattle and spokane all on US soil to avoid the curvy road through canada. some miles longer maybe, but obviously much faster.

first half of the ride is pretty boring so far... nothing but endless, flat land. corey is coming with us with his car, so its a quite mellow ride. we could put all our boardbags in coreys truck so we have quite some space in the car. i was able to work quite a bit on the way, as pleasure #85 will be due on the day of our return.

grilo will not be coming to interior, he hurt his knee a bit at the canadian open and wants to play it safe for the upcoming contests. lame, but this leaves more pow for us to shred in fernie and revy, hehehe...

we are already lookig forward to tomorrow, it will be our first cat day in interior BC!

mt. baker legendary banked slalom

its probably the best snowboard contest in the world. hands down! the 25th edition of the LBS took place the last couple of days. due to the bad overall snow conditions, some extra turns had to be added to reduce the speed a bit.

mu and sani were both pretty amped on racing. christian unfortunately could not enter as there went something wrong and his spot was already taken by somebody else.

(mark landvik, through the gates)

the day before the first quali is traditionally the night of 'waxing parties'. so did sani and mu. they brought some secret weapons and we had a funny evening with some beers, wine and of course some turns of applying differnent layers of wax to their shredsticks.

(sani, middle of the course, legs already on fire)

(best pricegiving of the best contest in the world!)

in the end, they only missed the finals by some 10th of a second and were pretty bummed. i think, they did really great, considering that it was their first appearance ath the banked and the only way to train for that event is the race itself. heads up, guys... we'll for sure be in baker again next year!!!

temple cummings and maelle ricker took the title for pro men and pro women. the pricegiving was probably the best, i've ever seen in snowboarding. these people at baker are just great! best atmosphere ever! :)

we'll definitely be back in 2011!

sun, son!

finally! we had the first sunny day since we got to baker. and what a day it was! bluebird awaited us in the resort, but we had other plans for today. burton filmer corey koniniec was guiding us, he is local here in baker and knows pretty much every possible spot. thanks for that, buddy! we hiked up a mellow ridge, already got some nice shots on the way up.

on the very top, we had an incredible view on mt. baker and mt. shuksan, the peak 'behind' the baker resort. its said to be the world's most photographed mountain, so the intro pic to this blog entry is mt. baker to get this peak a bit more exposure and even out the balance a bit.

tried some egocams on sani today. the backpack was broken again, but this time i gut it fixed with massive alloy sticks that connect the mount with the backpack. however, the long version of the arm ist still a bit too long so i might just use the hacksaw once again to find a handy ratio between usability and look.

after 6 or 7 spots, we called it a day and went back down to glacier to buy some beer. meanwhile, the cabin smells of expensive flouride wax, as sani, mu and christian will do the qualifyer for the banked slalom tomorrow and hell, the guys are taking it serious! we'll hopefully get back to you tomorrow with some euro-pride news!

and now for the rest of the beer... cheers!

groundhog day

we are still unlucky with the weather and the conditions. the terrain would be so sick. also we really like the mellow baker style. i definately have to get back here, when its better conditions. met jake and his girlfriend today together with greg martin from friday and went shredding the resort a bit.

we wanted to hike a big face in the afternoon, as it seemed to be sunny up there. unfortunately, the bad weather kept moving in. but before calling it a day, we shaped a little tranny into the snow walls of a parking lot and sani and mu were having a nice session there.

ended up shooting there for a couple of hours, getting some nice shots in the end.

some first shots... finally...

the bad weather keeps us in a viscious loop here. its really hard to keep the patience with poring rain and clouds every day. snow conditions are far from being perfect, but could be worse. at least, we have a solid base here.

hard for good action shots though. otherwise, baker is a really cool place to go. very laid back, hippie style, good pricing everywhere and a sick terrain. i can only imagine, how sick it must be here with good conditions.

well, we have to deal with the conditions, so we went up today anyways and tried to find some stuff. after a small hike, we found a nice gully to put some pow turns in. visibility was quite good so we went for it.

later in the day, we found another nice ravine with some nice pipe style hits on the sides. this day kind of brought our motivation back. never give up...