French Travel Guide

Start of France Travels

It’s been a bit over a week now since my southern European travels with Alba Pardo, and David Lopez. I know you all want to know the details on the trip so here it is in a nut shell!!

After two days in beautiful Arinsal Andorra at Vallnord snowparks we headed out for what I would quickly find as the most interesting adventure EVER. First stop France recap here THE EURO VAN LINK

After that wild experience in the van we headed to the first French resort to check things out. With the lack of snow on the mountain we searched around for some stashes, finding some surprisingly cool spots; A gap to wall and rail to drop. These two could easily be defined as making the most out of the conditions

Alba’s blog from that spot

http://haveyoumetalbapardo.com/2012/01/19/bang-bang-chumba-chumba/

As we made the evening drive to our next city and place to sleep we knew the trip was off to a great start! Some gnocchi, 40 beer and we called it a night, ready to see what was in store for the next day.

TORSTEIN HORGMO = BOSS

A quick Teaser from Torstein's two year video project, watch, enjoy and get stoked for it to come out. I KNOW I AM, Yeah buddy!



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Classic Torstein... Triple flip

http://snowboarding.transworld.net/1000169162/featuresobf/caught-up-torstein-horgmo/ Click here for Transworld Snowboardings little write up with him

The Dew Tour Results...

Dew tour slopestyle recap Well my time at killington Dew Tour Slopestyle has come to an end after an exciting  start in qualifiers.

 After a wild, icy, and windy practice day on tuesday, All the riders showed up nice and early for qualifiers ready to send it. Unfortunately it doesn't matter how great the course is, it's hard to be on your A game with ice, and wind. As I watch the riders ahead of me struggle with speed and the conditions, I talked to the ISTC coach Brady and got a bit of advice on switching my run up. Let's say it worked, after my first run I was sitting in second place. And as the last riders finished their runs, scores had not changed and I would be advancing into the semi finals sitting in second place.

A Sick photo of me courtesy of the Dew Tour

 A mellow night with the boys and back to the slopes bright and early. As no contest is ever perfect, we arrived to the mountain being on stand bye due to high winds. Sweet way to start a semifinals day; windy, and icy. With high practice ambitions my efforts were cut down with a fairly dangerous hour with a solid 20mph tail wind. This resulted in every rider overshooting just about every feature, and some weary competitors. With surprisingly no major injuries the contest started as weather decided to begin switching once again. Now as sketchy as it in with 20mph wind, at least it was constant, by the time I was dropping wind hang changed to random gusts, making it a bit harder to judge.

Homie Chuck G

 I dropped in constantly watching the flags and trying to gauge speed. As I approached the last jump flawless run so far, I put in an extra check used to the speed for the wind and popped off the lip ready for the late dip back 10. I instantly knew I didn't have enough speed, but I was too late, I had committed to the trick. Luckily making it around to my feet I landed, my body compressed as I hit the knuckle. Not quite a crash, but definitely not a land I rolled back up to the top to cheer on the rest of my buds, and get ready for my second run.

Winner ERIC WILLETT

 Run 2 started off a bit more sketchy but on my feet none the less. As I approached the first jump I saw the Dew around banner whipping in the wind, I put in some extra checks expecting the gust.As  I took off,  the wind stopped and so did my moment once again knuckling and butt checking. At this point I knew my run was done and I didn't have the speed for the fs 10, wanting to show some style I popped into the slowest cork 360 of my life, finishing with the bs 9, I knew it wasn't enough and my time competing here in killington had come to an end.

After Party!!

 Another great Dew Tour experience with some amazing run out down by some of the best riders in the world! My hat goes off to the top three led by my personal current favorite contest rider Eric Willett and finished off by first time podium placed Justin Morgan! Nice work boys!!! Now back to Colorado to get some new tricks to bring to the Snowbasin Toyota Championships in Utah in two weeks.  As always thanks for checking in, following my adventures, and you stay wild world!!!

RESULTS

THE EURO VAN

The Van










6:45pm Picked up David in Arinsal Andorra

7:00pm Super random shopping experience getting our food supplies for the next few days

8:00pm Stopped in Andorra for a few quick errands

8:15pm Leaving downtown

9:45pm Gased up at the last place possible before entering France. Very strange gas station

10:00pm Entered France

10:30pm FRENCH fries at McDonalds

10:45pm Random country roads trying to make our way to our destination

1:00am Arrived in the town of  Bagneres de Bigorre, now to find the hotel

2:00am Still no hotel, after driving around aimlessly for an hour

2:30am Found hotel...it's closed and no one will pick up the phone

3:00am Found a place to park the van

3:30am Van all popped out and ready for bed


3:45am Finally passed out

Alba Pardo Tour guide

Alba Pardo Tour guide;

After a powder filled week in Switzerland, and a few great days visiting Zurich with my good friend Katie Junttila and her adorable kids. I hoped my vueling.com flight to Barcelona to start my adventure around southern Europe with Alba Pardo. With some Swiss Francs exchanged to Euros, an awesome Spanish style sandwich we arrived in Arinsal Andorra for a few days at Vallnord Parks.

At this point I'd like to give a quick mention to Alba being the best, nicest, and most giving your guide ever!







http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethhill/sets/72157628869190107/
Photo set!


Back to snowboarding, our Andorra experience consisted of one day at Arinsal riding a super fun park built by ASP snowparks where we rode all day then did a sunset shoot around 6pm. Then the next day we headed to Ordino-Arcalis which is known for the free-riding to see if we could come up with something a bit more creative...that we did.
After a few laps around the mountain finding nothing but sheets of ice, we headed into the trees to check out the wood-park. Now conditions were nothing near ideal, but I'd definitely say we scrapped snow and made the best of it getting some pretty sweet shots actually. Andorra local David, who is joining us on the road trip, deserves a shout out for getting upside down on a pretty sketchy feature. With a quick break at the house and some packing we were off ready to see what the road would bring us...

P.S. Id like to thank Katie Junttila for being so hospitable and providing me with an amazing few days in Zurich!

Switzerland Wrap up

Davos wrap up

So as the contest has come to an amazing end so has my trip to Switzerland. The Snow was amazing, the people were great and I'm already looking forward to coming back next year. Now with that said I'd like to give everyone a little recap of how things went down.

Starting from where my blog about qualifiers left off...
-day 4 qualifiers/ the kind of calm before the storm...

-day 5 quarterfinals/ semi finals/ POW DAY FOR ME

As you know by now I unfortunately did not advance on to quarterfinals, luckily this wasn't the worst thing to happen. The storm which no one expected to be to this magnitude, hit, and it hit hard; dumping well over a meter that night, And not slowing down at all during the day. With all the new snow everyone decided to waste no time and get some face shots!

A constant snowfall and super flat light lead to the only intelligent decision to be made...to push the qualifiers till the night and include them in the semifinals. What this meant was a larger semi-final but at least the riders could all see. Yet with such a sick powder day, everyone's legs were beat and hitting a jump was the last thing on their minds. As semi's concluded, the field of 46 was narrowed to 16. Of those 16 heavy hitters Eric Willet, Seppe Smits, and Mark McMorris were joined by big air under dogs such as Eric Beauchemin, Jamie Nicolls, and Roope Tonteri.

-day 6 men and woman finals/ bluebird Powder

With another night of snow and no break on the horizon everyone planned to stay in and catch the powder later in the day. That wasn't my plan though, with nothing but time on my hands I woke nice and early and got about 5 runs before there were any lines. Towards the end of these soul shred runs I luckily met up with the Jon weaver and the Nike 6.0 crew. Now with our crew all together we headed to the top to get some of the best pow ever. With the lift opening for the first time

In 3 days it was fresh turns and pillows from the top to the bottom.

A nice rest of the legs, some grub and a fresh memory card and we were ready for the men's finals. With snow not really slowing down but the urge to still hit the big kicker, riders were dropping from nearly 30 meters above the drop in to have enough speed.

The finals were nothing but amazing... Especially with the conditions! Multiple 1440's perfect double 1260's and an array of 10's put a difficult task on the judges. In the end a proper top 3 were awarded with the exception of Eric Willett getting 2nd instead of first. No one will deny an amazing final with the excitement level out the roof.

The rider’s party wrapped up another outrages trip to Davos and as I packed I got more and more excited to come back next year. I hoped a bus with some of the other riders back to Zurich and continued on my travels to Spain.

As always I appreciate the checking in on my adventures and please check back for my post about my current road trip around Southern Europe.

Europe Trip part 1, including Qualifier recap

Link to my photos from the first part of my Europe trip can be found at my Flickr below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethhill/sets/72157628741715735/

Some photos from qualifiers...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sethhill/sets/72157628742336329/

Photo: Scott Moline

So to start off I'd like to say a thank you to Max and the other O'Neill guys in charge of the jump and set-up. They have done an amazing job with what they had to work with. I know they spent lots of time and effort to make the jump the best possible. Multiple days and nights reshaping and trying do the best with the snow conditions. Now with that said I have to say conditions were absolutely miserable yesterday.  It was puking snow, and visibility was not good at all... This made things very in-consistent and sucky to say the most.  I'm not sure the actual amount but let's say the in run and take off needed constant slipping to make the jump even clear able, and it was getting worse an worse constantly.

I arrived down to the base of Jacobshorn nice and early, after a fun little shred from my hotel saint Josephs house. As the first eager group of riders and me stood atop the drop no one really wanted to test the speed...with tons of fresh snow and a bit of wind it was only a guess of what might happen.  As a few riders slipped the in run we all looked at each other to be the first one test the "big kicker" as they say here. With no body stepping up, and the fact I wasn't supposed to be practicing till later, I figure what’s not a better time than now to check the jump. As it's always better to go a little too fast, than a little to slow I straight lined from the top and barely made it too the knuckle. From there on the first heat started and riders began to trick between the medium and large jump. Conditions continue to get worse. Everyone in the later heats knew it was going to be a very interesting day.

Photo: Scott Moline

I was in heat 2 and we decided as a group immediately that the big jump was not going to be clear-able anymore. which meant moving things to the smaller of the two take offs. With that said the small kicker was still as any standard park jump and very trick able. Practice went down as if nothing was wrong, we all lapped the small jump at the quickest pace possible trying to get as many hits in as possible. Tricks ranging from your standard 720 to double corks and possibly even a 1260  everyone knew this was the heat to watch. 

Photo: Scott Moline

With the field being narrowed down from 25-10, the general consensus was land a good run and you should be good to move on... With lots of 720's done in practice I figured my BS 900 and a decent rail trick should get me in no problem... Unfortunately that wasn't the case. After scoring a relatively high first run and ranking second we all figured I'd be good to move on. With riders figuring out the conditions better the riders landed more and the second to last rider pushed me out of a qualifying spot.

With my runs over and the snow continuing to fall we grabbed a crew and headed to top to catch up some powder!!! The top of Jacobshorn was nothing short of a white out, but that wasn't going to stop us. With 5 good homies and only snow in our way, we began our adventure to the base. Face shots, pow slashes, and pillow lines awaited us on an epic first powder day of the season!!





May the snow Gods treat you as well as they have treated us here, and never let a line or condition take you away from what you love!