aemka.ch

We headed up to this small resort in wallis for the annual eleven team week. I have never been in grächen before and was curious about the snow conditions there since in wallis the resorts are mostly rocky and really high altitude so the fresh snow can’t stay powdery long.

I met Kim André Eliassen on the way and later on we found Howzee in the Village with his cell phone trying to find our house. Finally we arrived in our crib which was at the end of the village but with lots of space around the house to build the traditional backyard shred, with a nice chillout lounge with a 900 channel tv and a tablesoccer court. Tablesoccer was one of our favorite occupations during the evening.

On the first days we spent a lot of time looking for spots around the whole resort and it was generally better to shape in the lower parts where the forest protected the snow from the nasty winds that froze up and carried away most of the snow. Also there were lots of rocks underneath the surface. In the village there were plenty of urban options like an abandoned indoor swimming pool that had a nice fence gap with a bonk pole and a flatrail to bombdrop.

We also found a nice pile of rocks where we could make a nice quarterpipe and a treeride in the forest. I knew from day one that there wouldn’t be a kickersession during the teamweek, but as adaptive as we are we found heaps of legit ways to express ourselves on ice, powder, concrete, metal, wood and rocks. The treeride was a full success as well as the urban spots down at the pool, which we even decided to session for a second time with different riders.

On the quarterpipe we only got one nice pic, but we had plenty of good material already. Every morning we split up the riders between the three photographers Creager, Howzee and Ruedi, then we headed up into the “battlefield” to meet again at dusk, always with plenty of crazy stories to discuss. And of course drink a beer and play tablesoccer.

One night we had an epic gap session right in our backyard, guys were flying over our patio while we were hanging out around the house.

At the end of the week there were heavy snowfalls and lots of fog so we shaped and chilled, a real bummer was when we got kicked out from a spot after only one try, which seemed to be really nice to ride…damn. But after the big dump hit, our minds were all set on dropping some nice pillows anyway. So on one day Andreas Arn and me headed into the Woods along with Howzee to get some Powder action. We were in paradise! We saw all these pillows and drops around us and couldn’t get enough until Howzee’s camera seemed to be at the end of it’s capabilities to swallow more water and we had to head back to a warm dry place. Ändu and I were totally over it but really hyped about what just went down, especially because we thought we’d never get to ride pow the entire week. Good times… eleven week is always fun, not every time easy to get the shots in but everybody is always really motivated and ready to put work in for it. And the house with all of it’s luxury like free drinks and lots of good food is perfect to collect enough relaxation and power for the next day. Thanks to everyone who helped make this ish go down! Props…