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Hornbeck and Ahmet do france part 1

by UnderArmour
Apr 9th 2009 - 10 comments

 
 
hey hey,
 
 
Ahmet here, finally doing a blog and I think its about time to start having  them roll in. Glad I can type instead of talk, as of right now there is about half my face working, just had a root canal on my molar after having real bad headaches and a serious gum infection that was making my cheek puff out. After having massive amounts of puss drip outta my tooth as they drilled I drove to the airport looking like this.
 
 
 
The reason im driving to the airport is the fact that im heading over to the good ole land of the French. Hornbeck and myself are making a trip over there to film with my homies production where we will be riding at laux, lautaret, la plagne, and possibly l’alpe d’huez although neither of us know how to pronounce a single one of them. As of right now we are both sitting in the Denver airport waiting for our flight to be called where we have to go to crappy Detroit then to Amsterdam and finally landing in Lyon france.  Hornbeck has never made it farther than Canada and I have never been to france so the anticipation is killing us.
 
 
We are going to be updating you guys with the great shananigans that happen along our adventure with a digital camera that might’ve been bought in the early 90s and a helmet cam that should make for some interesting shots. Although this blog post maybe a little boring I can assure you the next few will be filled with ski shots, shots shots, and pretty little French beezys so enjoy.
 
 
 
P.S. a few of us from the Under Armour team just got back from an amazing shoot at Baldface B.C. and I will drop some of that knowledge on you guys as soon as I get dem photosssss. PEAAACEE

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Baldface, BC and Jay Michelfelder

by UnderArmour
Apr 2nd 2009 - 1 comments

On a recent trip to Baldface, BC photographer Jay Michelfelder found himself in a bit of a gambling mood while shooting some pool in the lodge. One thing he does not know about myself and gambling is that I hate to lose and will pull on all strings to make sure I come out victorious. When Jay showed up for the shoot he was sporting an obnoxiously long and weathered looking beard that was definitely in need of some service. When push came to shove on the table I knew the first bet had to be to shave that ridiculous looking thing into some handlebars. Nonetheless after a couple double or nothing bets Jay lost and sure enough he stormed out of the lodge to go groom his broom. The following morning he some how thought that me beating him was a complete fluke and that he actually had a chance to take me down. Lesson not learned. Humiliation factor was high as the next couple bets led to him wearing a cut off hoodie to dinner with all guests starring and clapping as he looked pretty awkward. At the end of the trip Jay had to take a full lap skiing while wearing his new UA futuristic hoodie. Maybe next time he will work on his game a bit more before he bets.

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Salomon Jib Academy: Echo

by UnderArmour
Apr 1st 2009 - 7 comments

A majority of the Salomon US Team recently fell upon the slopes of Echo Mountain to host it’s third and final stop of the US Jib Academy tour. Much to our liking, mother nature offered us a beautiful bright and sunny day to ski around with some of Colorado’s best up-and-comers…

Andrew Hathaway gets ready to coach a double tail grab clinic for the kids…

Echo has this monstrous fifty-foot rail that we hit as a group. Whoever got the farthest was offered a push pop by coach Tommy Ellingson…

Congrats to our Echo Mountain winner Torin Yater-Wallace. He’ll be joining us in Mammoth this May for a week-long trip with the other Jib Academy winners from this winter…
In other news, I have successfully dominated each of the three US stops with my coaching abilities. Every winner has come from my morning coaching group… No big deal…
Congrats to Noah Killen, Brendan Wall and Torin for moving on to the Mammoth finals…

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Made it to Sweden!

by UnderArmour
Apr 1st 2009 - 0 comments

It’s official, I’ve made it to Sweden for the Jon Olsson Invitational. The short twenty-two hour trip consisted of the following modes of transportation:

two car rides
one bus route
one taxi trip
walking
running
three plane flights
two train rides

Despite this long list of travel arrangements, it was a relatively easy trip to beautiful Åre, Sweden where I have joined up with the JOSS crew. Due to some serious jet-lag and lack of sleep, I decided to sit out on the evening’s session. However, the JOI jump is looking beautiful and the boys had quite the session today. Here are some photos compliment of Shay Williams at Freeskier.com (Schmuck is too slow writing up his recap of the shoot so I can’t steal his photos):

Wallisch follows with a camera as Dumont drops down one beauty of a switch 9…

Josiah Wells rodeo fives his way down towards the lake below. Pretty big jump…


Jonny D of Poor Boyz pulled out a serious camera set up for JOSS this year…
Prior to the jump session, Peter O, Luke Van V and I decided to stop by “Sauna World,” the other attraction here in Åre. Although I didn’t snap any photos, I was able to find this small image of “Sauna World” and some of its offerings…

This is only maybe 1/10th of the entire complex. Pretty nice escape from the those cold winter days…
More info on my Swedish adventures coming soon…

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Spring Snow Storm in Colorado

by UnderArmour
Mar 27th 2009 - 5 comments

As of yesterday, my anticipated plan of action for the coming few days was an Under Armour team cat trip to Baldface Lodge in British Columbia. To say I was beyond excited for this coming trip would be a complete understatement. However thanks to mother nature, I find myself literally stranded at my house in Boulder, Colorado…
I woke up this morning and left my home for DIA roughly three hours before my flight. The usual thirty to forty minute drive ended up taking nearly two and a half hours thanks to about a foot of snow and stranded motorists scattered throughout US-36 and E-470. Upon reaching the airport, I quickly realized that I would miss my original flight to Spokane, Washington. As a result, I would then miss the several hour van ride and helicopter pick up that was scheduled to take the crew to Baldface from Nelson, BC. Therefore, my highly anticipated trip was brought to a sudden tragic halt. As I stood in the airport, I entertained the thought of jumping on the next possible plane to Stockholm to hopefully make it in time for the Sweet Rumble Big Air in Trysil, Norwry. That would have cost me about $3,000… No go…
I quickly jumped back in the car and made my way home to Boulder. It took nearly four hours on my return trip back as I slowly made my way through snow-stricken neighborhoods and dismantled cars.  


As reported by MSNBC, there were nearly thirty-three people injured in three different fifty-car pile ups throughout the Denver region. In addition, the Red Cross opened six shelters for stranded travelers… Talk about a miserable day to add onto an already miserable season for me…
As of right now some highlights of 2009 for me are:
 

A serious lack of snow and warm temperatures (most of the time)
$3,600 in snowmobile repairs
Small injuries resulting in being dropped from the Winter Dew Tour
Flat tires in Wyoming with 50 mph winds and below zero temperatures… On my birthday…
Seriously tweaked shoulder in the Montana Backcountry
John Symm’s snowmobile temporarily dieing on me for three days in the Montana Backcountry
Running out of gas in Montana
Colorado snowstorm resulting in me missing my flight to go cat skiing in British Columbia

I leave for Sweden and JOI next Tuesday. Hopefully nothing too serious goes wrong with that…

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Woodward@Copper Video

by UnderArmour
Mar 23rd 2009 - 5 comments

A few weeks ago I attended the Freeskier Ski Test at Copper. Having heard a little about the new Woodward facility, I decided to stop by and check it out with UA team manager Scott Hibbert and some other people. Freeskier came along and made a little video about our trip that can be seen here.

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March Update

by UnderArmour
Mar 19th 2009 - 5 comments

Hey everybody,
    Sorry I haven’t updated you sooner on what’s been going on with me lately, it’s been a pretty crazy last few weeks. I’ll start with the last dew tour stop at Northstar on February 18-22. Even though I didn’t end up getting a result at the event, I ended up placing 3rd in the overall and feel like I really made an impact on halfpipe skiing. I crashed on both my runs, my first run I decked on my first hit then my second run I went down on my fourth hit attempting a unnatural double flip. I think I got more exposure from doing two double flips in one run than I would have, had I skied conservatively and got 2nd or 3rd place though. The next day we hopped on a flight and flew to Colorado to do the US Open.
In the past few years the US Open has been going downhill and becoming less and less of a respectable event. This year however, to our surprise, the event was awesome (besides the fact that it is the only event in the history of our sport where they charge an entry fee for invited athletes… and the prize money is about 1/3 the amount as the dew tours). The weather was terrible for qualifiers but it cleared up for finals and the pipe was in perfect conditions. Seeing as Tanner, Simon, Kevin, and Xavier were not there I wasn’t expecting the level of skiing to be nearly as high as any other contest this year, but was I ever wrong. It seemed like everyone in finals was putting down podium runs, which made it extremely hard for the judges to do their job. Due to a bad crash in training I only did my first 2 out of 3 finals runs but landed both of them and ended up getting the two highest scores of my life, a 95.4 on my first run and a 96.6 on my second. It was the first contest I have won in 4 years so I was STOKED! As soon as the contest ended we jumped in our truck and drove to Denver to fly out to Japan for “World Championships” that same night.
I had never been to a “World Championships” so it was a really cool experience to go there and see what they are all about. The event was very well organized and the weather for comp day was amazingly hot and sunny. I stomped my first run but by the time finals came around the skiers left wall started deteriorating and it got the best of my on my second run on my second hit tossing me into the flat bottom. My first run score was 45.3 (out of 50) and I was in the lead until Kevin Rolland put down a really sick run scoring a 45.5 bumping me into 2nd place. Even though I wasn’t the “World Champion” I am still pretty happy with 2nd and probably got more press coverage than I ever have in my life so it was definitely a worthwhile trip.
I was planning on flying home immediately after the contest but they convinced me to stay and do a quarterpipe event in Tokyo where I met the Governor of Tokyo and at more sushi than I thought was humanly possible. The whole quarterpipe set up was made of scaffolding and manmade snow but it was pretty fun. The event was an exhibition event, it wasn’t a contest so we just put on show for the crowd. By the time I did my last hit of the day, the quarterpipe was in pretty rough condition and had a big kink in the wall. I decided to do a cork 5 but popped a little to hard and got tossed into the flat bottom on my shoulder breaking my collarbone.
I went to the doctor today and he said it is about as clean of a break as they come and I should be good to go within 5-6 weeks putting me back right in time for WSI. I will be at home for the next little while trying to get organized and healed up. I now have some time to kill and want to stay productive during my downtime so please don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything from me. Thanks for your support this season, talk to you soon

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Dodging Animals in Montana…

by UnderArmour
Mar 17th 2009 - 2 comments

With snow in the forecast for Montana, I made the decision to jump in my Subaru Forester and make the lengthy drive up from Colorado. The expected eleven-hour adventure turned out to be quite lengthier than anticipated as upon reaching the border of Yellowstone National Park, I was hit straight in the face with blowing snow and an assortment of animals…
 
Imagine driving on a tiny mountain road with about thirty feet of visibility, blowing snow, and animals popping out of nowhere every hundred feet or so. It somewhat resembled something you’d see in some of my favorite levels of the game “Big Buck Hunter Pro.” However, rather than shooting at a digital animal with a fake gun, I was slamming on the brakes as I slide towards deer, raccoons, buffalo, or even wolves. At one point I had a Buffalo charge towards my car. Never have I seen CU Boulder’s mascot Ralphie seem so upset…

Go Buffs…
 
Apart from the hazardous drive, I made it safely to my final destination where I met up with the likes of Josh Bibby, Stefan Thomas, and Kyle Decker to do some shooting with Level 1. As my recently purchased snowmobile is out of commission, John Symms was nice enough to loan me his beauty of a sled. Adorned with a custom camouflage paint job, his ’01 Ski Doo is a real dream machine. Thanks for hooking me up with the sled Symms!
 
Today we were hit with some heavy winds and continued falling snow. As a result, we opted to drive around and plan out our course of action for the coming days rather than attempt to shoot in the flat light. Looks like we have some pretty good stuff lined up for the coming days… More updates on the trip coming in the near future…

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Avalanches in SoCal?

by UnderArmour
Mar 17th 2009 - 0 comments

Whats up Guys, hope everyone has been having a great season. I’ve been having  a really fun winter. Where I live in Big Bear we’ve had the most snow fall we’ve seen in 10 years and it all came out of  2 massive storms. The first storm hit us at the beginning of January and it snowed for about 4 days strait and we ended up with 4ft of snow, the most i’ve ever seen all at once in so cal. I thought that would be pretty much all the snow we would get but i was wrong, another storm just hit 4 weeks ago and dumped 3 1/2ft on top of what we still had. Above is a pic of a avalanche that some red neck plow dude took from the storm a few weeks back. This was one of 3 avalanches that had the road shut down for 6 days, the great thing about the roads being closed, was know one could get up to the mountain to ride the only powder days of the decade. So with all the snow we’ve had on the ground i’ve been hanging around here going to all the lower elevation towns trying to take advantage of all the things i’ve wanted to hit but never had enough snow. My plans now are to go up north to Tahoe for the rest of the season where they’ve been getting hit with snow the past few weeks. Can’t wait!!!

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UA slopestyle video open qualifer videos are now live!

by UnderArmour
Mar 17th 2009 - 2 comments

The Under Armour Slopestyle Video Open qualifers is complete and being judged as we speak.  To see all of the entries go to the Newschoolers entries list.  If you haven’t heard about the UA Slopestyle video open, it is a slopestyle competition with a twist.  All entrants had to film by follow cam their run through whatever park they wanted to and hit 6 features(minimum 2 jumps and 2 rails, with 2 options of choice).
The 20 male Finalist and 10 Female Finalist will be announced later this week.  The finalist will then have until April 5th to submit a new video for their chance to win a piece of the $5000 prize purse.  The closing of finals has been pushed back from April 1st because Qualifiers were extended a week.
Now go check out the qualifier runs!

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France Part Deux

by UnderArmour
Mar 17th 2009 - 0 comments

What up! Sunshine and spring weather has been on tap here in the Alps. I got around to a few different resorts in the past week…Chatel, and Tignes. Chatel was really fun, we had around 12-15 inches of fresh and found tons of natural terrain to jump. Tignes, a high alpine resort had even more snow, and it stayed fresh for the 4 days we spent there. I have done very well in a few contests in Tignes before so being back to this resort was so fun. We skied a bunch of fun smaller lines in the resort, and then built some jumps that were so fun, and we could just lap them from the chairlift…the best part about euro resorts! Before any of us would drop a crowd of about 40 plus tourists would just be there watching and cheering, so cool to see people really stoked on what we are doing.
After those few amazing days in Tignes we haeaded back to Chamonix and went up the Aiguille du Midi Tram that sets you off just a bit shy of the Mt Blanc summit, the biggest Mtn in Europe. The Tram ride up will test your nervs, the tram was built a long time ago and at one point it must be a few thousand feet off the ground. From there our guide took us down trough the glaciers, and found us a nice cravasse gap, that was I think the most scared I have been hitting a jump in a while. After hitting the gap a few times we made our way down the glacier and back to town..can’t really think of a better way to finish up being in France.
I’m now off to Laax, Switzerland to compete in the european Open. Hope the weather holds, and I can make some $$$$!!!
LATE

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Crick-ette Country

by UnderArmour
Mar 15th 2009 - 1 comments

This past week in the back country I decided to come up with a little motivation to stimulate the riders to land on their feet. Click Me mar-11-2009-vid00003 Armed with a full pack of edible Bacon and Cheese crickets, the wager was on. For every trick a rider landed they had to mow down on a cricket. I know you are probably thinking why in the world you would even want to land if that is the type of reward you are getting, but with such on odd gesture on the table it seemed to work really well. The 12 crickets in the package were swiftly munched up by the end of the second day and everyone in the crew was oddly stoked that they were landing their tricks and got rewarded with some bug juice. I am going to really make an effort to bring these crickets or other insects in the back country while filming because it seemed to work out well. Until next storm…

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Level 1 Turbosodes

by UnderArmour
Mar 14th 2009 - 5 comments

Level 1 Productions and BNQT.com just dropped their sixth episode of the series titled “Turbosodes.” Each of these videos gives you a behind the scenes look at the making of Turbo. Some of the episodes released thus far are from trips to Minnesota, Quebec, Colorado, Grand Targhee, and BC Catskiing…

In the sixth episode, Level 1 heads to Utah on a trip where I hit one of the scariest step downs I’ve ever been off. Take a look for yourself by checking out the link below:
http://bnqt.com/turbosodes
Excuse my language at times, I swear I don’t typically swear that much…

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Worst Crash Ever..

by UnderArmour
Mar 12th 2009 - 29 comments

Yesterday at Keystone I took a pretty gnarly fall. I am lucky to be alive…
In the middle of my trick, I was suddenly hit by a large head wind that managed to drop me straight into the knuckle of the jump. Literally into it…

As you can see from the photo above, I put my head one [...]

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Jiberish 08/09: Vol 2

by UnderArmour
Mar 12th 2009 - 0 comments

Jiberish just recently dropped their second edit of the season. Shot by 4bi9’s AJ Dakoulos, this video was made over one weekend in Summit County. It’s literally seven minutes of straight ski/snowboard porn…
Riders include:

Mike Hornbeck
Matt Walker
Ian Cosco
Henrik Harlaut
Tom Wallisch
Joe Mango
Justin Norman
Michael Clarke

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Avalanches in So Cal?

by UnderArmour
Mar 11th 2009 - 3 comments

Whats up Guys, hope everyone has been having a great season. I’ve been having  a really fun winter. Where I live in Big Bear we’ve had the most snow fall we’ve seen in 10 years and it all came out of  2 massive storms. The first storm hit us at the beginning of January and [...]

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“Damn it”

by UnderArmour
Mar 9th 2009 - 0 comments

In a previous post “Glorious Day of Motor Failure” I wrote a short version of how my sled seized up in the back country and that it was in need of some serious work. It has been 4 weeks now and it was finally time to pick my sled back up from BRTech (Snowmobile shop [...]

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Chamonix, France

by UnderArmour
Mar 9th 2009 - 4 comments

I am lucky enough to be in one of the most well known ski areas in the world, CHAMONIX. This is not my first trip over to France, but is my first to Chamonix. Everything about this place is mind blowing. I arrived at night and woke up to the massive peaks above covered in [...]