Living for the moment !

Hey, it's Elias. I'm also getting into the blogging business now…

The first two days of the past week out here in Whistler weren't easy. First we built a Kicker and when we finally got it done the whole landing slid!

Then we get to this amazing face with tones of lines. We can't wait and already go through the lines in our mind..… unfortunately we never got any further then that, as the Forum crew's rolls up and tells us, that they are here since a long time and basically claimed the whole face…!

Alright, next day everything will get better. After we already felt like sled pros, reality brought us back on our feet. It took us forever to even make it up to the alpine on… but fortunately we had "Bob" our big shovel always with us to dig us out…

 And fortunately Brian our filmier, local guide and friend was always there to help. It wasn't long though, till lucky Brian also blew his forth engine of the season that day… One week ago the engine made it 2,5 km till it completely broke down… this time the brand new engine made it 10km further till it blew. So at least a positive trend!

A view hours later we finally made it up the mountain and started building our sunset Kicker again from two weeks ago. This time we stepped it up though.

 As a great ending of a difficult day Marco and I did a nice line right at sunset. I'm sure that in that moment you see Marco shredding this amazing line, nothing else mattered any more and all there was was now!!

We got home at 11pm and all that we could think of was eat and sleep. Here's our dinner! I even got into cooking here. 5 eggs, 3 tomatoes….

Then the whole next day was, how the one before has ended. Perfect for moments! Moments we'll never forget...

Sushi, clouds, jumps and broken engines

After the three succesful sunny days the first thing we did was rewarding ourselves with a culinary explosion at sushi Village together with the rest of the People crew.

After a short time recovering our bodies from the last week we hit the road again to explore another amazing zone only 30 minutes away from Pemberton.

Even just the landscape next to the road was beautiful.

They've got some cosy little huts around here. Wouldn't want to spend all winter here but surely very comfortable during summer time...

Once again the terrain up on the mountain is just a huge playground! Usually for breakfast we are either having some pillows...

... or some spines and drops.

For lunch we are mostly having pasta...

... or if we are really hungry we mostly build ourselves a big booter.

We called this one the "Moon-Ramp" as it was just sending us up so high!

After a nice shoot in the clouds on this one we hit another amazing jump the next day. We've probably spent about 4 hours on it window shopping and only got to hit it twice until it was dark.

Our filmer Brian Hackenstein has already adapted to the long waiting times during a session.

Elias FS 3 First Track.

But of course not everything always works out smoothly all the time. This week we've had a broken trunk...

... a broken window on Pierre's car...

and a broken engine.

Brian was a little disappointed about his rebuit engine (that he had been waiting for about 4 weeks) blowing after only driving 2,5 kilometers.

In the past 4 weeks Elias and me have learned a lot and even progressed with sledding more and more. Elias was already catching some air yesterday.

 Whereas I am still having a hard time getting the sled onto our truck.

Now another snow storm is coming in and should bring at least another half a meter of fresh snow. Sot it is time to rest again and be ready for more powder soon!

Elias is already preparing our boards on a spot where I am usually preparing our dinner...

Sun, Kickers and Natural Lines

After over 2 weeks of snow and clouds we finally got to see the sun for three days in a row! Sunrise in the Backcountry before an unforgettable day on the first of three jumps.

Some last fine tuning on Jump #1

The landing of our jump probably had the seize of an average ski slope in Finland...

 We were having a nice session on this one and thanks to the huge landing and Elias shutteling me up with the sled I could ride this jump for 14 times within a couple of hours. I think I have never a hit a single backcountry jump that often!

 And the next day was acutally even better! We hit a jump which is called "the perfect one". And this is just what it feels like. Smooth take off and perfect landing.

Elias was killing it on this one! Be sure to check out his part in this year's People movie!

After another epic kicker session the day wasn't over yet but the most fun part was still to come. With the last light of the day we were shutteling each other up to some short but perfect natural lines.
This is what my first line looked like from the bottom:

 And this was the view from where I dropped in:

I have never ridden such steep terrain before. Thanks to the wet climate due to the short distance to the sea the snow in Whistler just sticks to the rocks like glue.

 Elias picked out a really nice line just 50 meters next to my one:

 

Of course we are not the only people here who want to enjoy perfect conditions like this and therefore you have to get up early to claim the spots. This means getting up at 4.30 am in order to have a decent breakfast:
 
 And then be ready at the parking lot at 6.30 am which is already packed with people at this time:

As the snow was already sun baked on most slopes after 2 sunny days we had to scout for some north facing landings for our third day. At first it seemed liked every kicker spot with good snow had been hit within the last two days until we finally found another perfect spot:



After only three hours of shoveling we had already set up a decent jump thanks to Cameron Hunter's ambitious shoveling!

              
Although we just had two amazing kicker sessions the days before this should be the one blowing our minds. The landing was as soft as feathers and the sunset was overwhelming!

We have had such a good time on this jump that we just did not want to end it even after the light was gone. The last time I hit this jump was at 8.10 pm and this is what the conditions looked like at this time when taking an iphone picture:
This was the perfect ending session of an amazin week full of experiences. We've been snowboarding six days in a row getting up at 4.30 am and arriving home at 10.30 pm!

Now I am looking forward to finally getting some sleep for more than 6 hours a night and letting the sore muscles (neck, shoulders, arms, thumb, back, legs,...) rest for a couple of days and wait for the next snow storm to bring fresh snow again!

We'll be waiting for you Whistler's Backcountry!

Waiting it out in the clouds...

The beginning of past week the weather was so bad that we could not even find our way up into the Alpine. This is what Whistler's Backcountry looks like on these days:

 After waiting 2 hours in the cold and grey we decided to make a "Canadian Fire" which would keep us warm until the weather was hopefully gonna clear up and we could drive further up with our sleds.

The fire was nice and kept us warm for another 3 hours until we finally gave up our hope on sun and decided to rather spend time Snowshoeing the forrest and filming natural features.

I found a super fun run through some kind of natural halfpipe! As a drop in I built myself a poppy corner take off consisting out of only three blocks.

 Building jumps only as wide as your snowboard can safe you a lot of work...

This way I can use my remaining energy to dig out my sled when I crash into trees for example.

By the way Elias has already invented his own signature move on how to get stuck on a sled in completely flat areas.

 If you can't find a frozen lake to try it out you could as well just do it right next to the cat trail!

On the third day we were lucky enough to catch a sunny window to get up to the zone where all the kickerspots are and even managed to set up two sick jumps for the next good weather day. Whenever this will be...

 But as we spent a whole day shaping on the two spots we were almost forgetting about how difficult it could be to find our way home in a snow storm.

When we finally tried to find our way out of the Alpine the view when driving looked like this:

 But as it was already 6 pm and we were the last people still on the mountain 15 km away from civilization we just had to figure out a way to get down as soon as possible.

After some silent moments caught in a snow storm on 2000 meters we started trying to find the way back to the cat trail by always having someone walking ahead and touching the ground to figure out if we were still on the cat trail (which was completely windblown). This way we could slowly make our way forward step by step.

This experience definitely gave me some more respect for the mountains and the always changing weather conditions out there once again. I am happy that we made it down before it got dark but I see it as a close warning.