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Later this Spring Leandro from Eleven called me up and told me that they wanted to give me another advert (two seasons after my first ad) for winter 2010, and enlightened me about the whole concept. Yes, it sounded like a lot of work, especially because most of the snow was already gone by that time of the year and that meant a long drive from Zürich to Lauchernalp, a Resort somewhere in Wallis, to start shooting at dusk and then drive back home as soon as we’re done. The plan looked like this: doing a fs wallride with a drop of easily 5 meters from the highest point to the ground, several times, with seven different outfits until I get the best shot with each outfit. Honestly, I thought that I would do 2-3 takes for each one…but that was pure foolishness.
Ok, so we arrived at the Spot, we knew it was going to work because it has been tested already, so we got into things without delay. The thing was, we had to make a big enough landing pile because I
didn’t want to totally destroy my knees when hitting this obstacle about 30 plus times. After the landing there was a tricky counter tranny where we also had to dig heaps to smoothen the whole thing out. The kicker was there in a jiffy… and I must add, salt was our friend on this day.
All in all it took us a couple of hours to set up and the evening was kicking in right on time. I was the first of four guys to shoot for the 2010 ads so it was up to me to make it a good start. So first we got the main shots, which had me trying and trying, first I was to close to the camera and I had to go lower, then the style was wack or the clothes didn’t look right. On the picture with the yellow jacket, after four tries, I rode away and almost hit a window on the building, and ending up in a pile of dirt. With that happening the yellow jacket was over! After three and a half hours of hardcore shooting I think we were done at midnight, and my legs were wobbling all over the place. I guess I hit the wall about 40 times or more… but in the end everybody was stoked and we drove home partly sleeping and stopping at numerous places to sleep or get some stretching haha well, I was at home sometime in the morning totally wrecked.
This spring sometime in may, when the lifts in hoch ybrig were already closed alex schiller and his gang of shredniks joined us for a week of shooting in our home territory. Howzee and I showed them around and we started shaping our arms off on several spots. There was a brand-new spot we claimed that seemed like a perfect fit and two other projects that were more of a flop. The first good kicker we rode was a stepdown roadgap which was a lot of fun to hit, I got 4 different tricks and each of the isen crew was happy with the results. Rene had one really sketchy bail on a frontside 720 attempt where he didn’t clear the road and caught his heel edge on the knuckle and got a whiplash type smack to the back of his head, luckily he was ok after a minute of disorientation…anyway the sun was out with early summer temperature and so we got our tanning on for a short break. After that we headed back up to session the other two kickers we had built the day before, which turned out to be shitty, plus I broke my board on a hard nose-dive in the heavy slush. So we drank some more redbull cola, talked some nonsense and enjoyed a fun ride down to our cars. On the following days we were into shaping again, lots of shaping. We wanted to get another decent kicker since our rate was about one decent kicker out of three shaped objects. Plus there was also a down day. We were worried about the weather turning on us and rain washing all of the snow away. The kicker we started building did shrink a little bit until we returned a day later, but we just piled up more snow so it was rideable in the end. Michi and rene had their eyes on a grass gap that looked pretty nice, inrun, table, and a slope like grass gap wich ended into a small tranny landing with snow and a flat exit. An old rule proved itself true once again, sometimes the best shots are the ones that have the least work involved. I tested the kicker, but was very disappointed in its physics. Tobi tried two hits but didn’t think it was very safe either so we started a session on the grass gap, in which I dedicated myself to filming. Some hard slams and nice tricks were shown, and the Isen crew had some more shots that would definitely make it into the movie. the photos also looked way better than I would have expected, good stuff!
On the last day, the dudes from Isen had to leave earlier, since the had a long journey awaiting them. Fizzle joined us in company of his favorite toy besides the snowboard, the potato-gun!
We blasted some potatoes into the stratosphere and then headed uphill to get some jibbing done. Tobi had this crazy idea of jumping into a tree doing backside rodeos which had a highly entertaining note to it. At that time rene, michi and me started goofing around on a big branch that kind of looked like an alphorn. In the end we had our mini line with alphorn to mini rainbow rail. It was epic. Before the guys left we started shooting around more until we ran out of potatoes, so we loaded it up with dirt, yes, it looked like shit. That’s when we had the most brilliant idea of the week. We filmed michi’s naked ass shooting off a load of dirt at the hoch ybrig logo. Lol. That was a perfect ending for a week full of laughs at hoch ybrig.
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…
what a week! after driving for 6 hours straight our crew consisting of howzee the photodawg a.ka. “hauschka”, nik huber a.k.a. “fizzle” and me arrived at the beautiful villa excelsior, in the heart of a at first sight very idyllic town called bad gastein. it was saturday afternoon and the weather forecast for sunday wasn’t positive at all, so we had the brilliant idea to go out and get our drink on…the next day i had 2 hours of sleep and a missing tooth. on sunday we were pretty much chilling and sleeping all day long, and snowfall kicked in. in the evening we had dinner in a nice chalet with alot of ribs and fries followed by a super slow motion sled ride in the deep but heavy fresh.
on monday it was finally time to make it happen. me and howzee drove around town and searched for spots while fizzle and simon abt started shaping a small quarterpipe in front of a waterfall. as we arrived at the spot and started hitting the quarter we noticed that the snow that was really geat to sculpt obstacles kept crumbling apart and that the shots werent really the bomb. so we switched to riding a wooden rail right next to our quarter, also without the success of gaining a good photo.
thats when it was time to get serious… we stopped by a nice doublekink ledge on the rooftop of an abandoned indoor swimming pool, after we set up the spot we shaped a gap bomp drop and simon and howzee were shooting inside the complex, riding down a small set of stairs and jumping over the last three steps onto a tiled floor sprinkled with broken beer bottles. that definatley wasn’t worth ruining the board 
howzee took a hike to the other side of the canyon and shot me and fizzle on the doublekink, sniper style…i had to hit switch 50-50 and fizzle threw down some fs 50-50 gap outs, finally, our first bangers! the complex was located on top of a huge cliff and was three stories high and howzee caught it from the other side of the valley. as spectacular as the pics looked it was also a challenge for me being afraid of hights to strap into my board. my knees were shaking and after i cleared it i was totally relieved. it was time for simon to jump the gap drop. he got his shot after three tries. that was a rap, and we went home and i hit the sauna, drank a beer and went to sleep.
on tuesday we hit the mountain and i started off by jumping a cliff right next to the liftstation, but the pic was no good. we got one powderspray of simu and split up and started building two massive booters. simu and howzee were the first to finish while me and fizzle were busy with our “mission impossible”. we stopped shoveling and headed up to the other kicker and simu and me hit it one time and decided that the shape wasnt smooth to suit our speed and we could build another row of blocks onto the take off.
day 5, we created a monster… i hit kicker nr.1 only one time and landed a perfectly tweaked out bs7 mute and devoted myself to filming my fellas and shaping kicker nr.2. by now i had 2 shots clocked. fizzle hit the kicker numerous times and had alot of fun.
on thursday there was partly rain and clouds so we wanted to get some more urban action. we scouted around in my subaru and descovered a big fence that was made to protect the train station from tumbling down boulders and avalanches. we shaped a mini tranny to do some blunts and handplants. after shaping we headed back to the hotel to dry our boots that were soaking wet and get some rest. sauna time!
7:00 pm , it was slowly getting dark so we bought some salt and headed to the fence spot. we set up the generator with the spotlight and started riding right away, although it started to rain. we were lightly frustrated at the moment it turned out to be a good session with great shots and also a really funny crew shot featuring simu’s stack footy miniramp wich he built in protest to our scetchy quarter. after we got what we wanted we stopped by a little restaurant to eat pizza. we were totally over…
friday was our last day and also moment of truth for kicker nr.2. the weather was nice and we took the gondola to the top. temperature was well above 0° C and we had to discover that the kicker was melting away. it took us another 2 hours to shape. after that i hit the beast although i was really sceptical cause there were rocks hidden in the landing. i charged it full speed and landed on the nuckle ontop of mossy rocks covered with 10 cm of snow. thats when we thought: f*ck it!
so we met our dawg from pontresina, duck and drank some jägermeisters on the peak and hit the park and had alot of fun hitting a mini kicker line the rest of the day .
after a fun last party on friday evening we headed back on saturday morning back to switzerland… we arrived at 8pm at the nbc house. it was a long week and a real fight to get our stuff done. i was mashed…
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Just came back from a exhausting trip with the ridenow crew to saas fee. literally swimming in the slushy snow in the lower regions and scraping over the ice on the top, it was’nt easy finding the right spots to film. after all i must say it was a very pleasant experience filming with people i barely knew before i met them at the dom hotel on sunday night, and we faced challenge after challenge during the week trying to make the best out of the difficult snow conditions. after we got my typical jib and urban spots the friendly shapers at the park built us a big booter so we could head up to the park on thursday and friday and catch a bit of air after all the 3 meters to flat spots. my legs were totally over on friday and i headed back to my home resort hoch ybrig with some epic memories.
the movie will premier this may, keep in tune…
check out this short clip by ridenow films:
Ridenow Films Podcast Saas Fee from Ridenow Films on Vimeo.
http://www.ridenow.ch/film
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YEAH FOR IT!
we headed down to thyon straight from the warmtobel jam in wildhaus with our crew being bene, stefan “ghetto” pfister and raphael nerz and me to go visit local bataleon rider xavier marty in his hood…formed a gang and took the team battle title home on saturday. after the prizegiving (prizes being 50% alcohol, 10% rockstar energy drinks wich we lost somewhere on the road, a nice heli sking trip for the four of us and a head snowboard (lol) and some stylish accesoires such as caps, bandannas and shirts.) we started making our prizes useful right away and were partying the night away. on sunday one of our riders also got 500.- for best trick on the big kicker while we were making laps trying to get sober. it was a super nice contest with a good vibe and sunshine. see yall there 2010 i hope!
It was a very foggy day at hoch ybrig and we were riding powder the whole early season, so it was Time to get some work done despite the bad light conditions. Stephan “Mu” Maurer came by and we went for some warm-up powder runs taking it really mellow and looking for spots on the way down. We found this nice tree that kind of looked like a big genital or a hand giving you the middle finger. The trees in the back were all beautifully covered with fresh snow disappearing in the background mist. We all imagined how with a little howzee magic it would be a great picture. The session didn’t take long but the snow was horribly dry and we had to shape a nice transition to lead us over the tree and not into the tree. It was a little hassle but not a real problem for us three shape-experts. After getting our shots earlier than expected we almost seemed a little bit under-tired and thought we could might as well do a night shooting at a fence spot in a nearby village. So we went home for lunch and later on headed off to oberiberg’s soccer field. We built a little transition towards a 4-5 meter high fence, after some fighting with the snow that kept crumbling we were set to go. My first attempt was with about twice the amount of speed that would have been required, I got pressed towards the fence while on the way up and next thing I know I was floating over the top of the fence with my ass down. Considering that I just smashed out my tooth a week earlier made me think I was already pushing it to far again (haha). So after that I took it mellow steady going a little bit higher until my fs 720 looked good. Mu was trying all sorts of funny flips and hand plants which didn’t always turn out good, due to the fact he was regular we where all trying to think of a good idea which trick he should go for… in the end he was doing backside laybacks and got his shot too so we all had our smile going on and where looking forward to our sofa and a cup of tee.
Now it turned out that both of my shots are used in a gallery (whiteout and snowboarder mbm), that makes two double spreads in one day, stoked.
This was by far the most productive weekend of the 09 season. Photog Dominic Zimmermann, David Bertschinger Karg and I met in the NBC headquarters on Friday, the first time in our house that winter. The resort was still closed and the heating wasn’t on yet. On Friday we had the mission to make the cover of the next whiteout photoissue. We had the idea to make letters out of snow and let dave jump over them. I was equipped with a big plastic box and a massive bread knife. The snow was perfect for shaping, I could cut the letters straight out of the blocks. After finalizing my artwork, Dave started jumping over the letters. He tried and tried until his ollie looked perfect, and as if the buzzer went off in basketball, Dave nailed his last attempt and the letters started melting due to the crazy warm winds that were blowing like a hairdryer. So he went back up and smashed the letters and we headed home.
On day two, we got joined by Forum rider Mario Käppeli, and we already had our minds on the next coup. We wanted to build a stepdown quarterpipe on top of the 5 storey high parking garage. We first had to check if the roof is long enough for a tow in by car. So we started heaving snow from the upper to the lower floor for the landing… we lifted tons of snow, wet snow. We were shaping the whole day long, no lie. after shaping we headed back to the house for quick dinner. It seemed like everything was going to work out if no one kills himself by slitting his throat on those rasor sharp metal edges meant for stopping snow from sliding off the roof. Yes, they were right on the coping, hence the frightened facial expression on my shot while being head down over those bastards. Mario and me had some sort of pipe-battle going on trying to go higher and higher pushing of the metal coping and flipping over the top almost clearing the whole landing. On one mctwist mario landed into “wallride”, that was totally insane. Dave was trying to get a tap or something on the coping, but those metal edges on the roof repeatedly robbed him from his control to keep the board under his feet. Flips were the way to go… we were totally bummed we didn’t have a filmer around because those would have been sick shots, but never the less, we were all stoked on the photos. This is probably my favorite shot this season, since the whole weekend was a total blast!
On Sunday we had another crazy idea, actually it was one of the weirdest obstacles ive ever ridden. It was a small drop in made of snow that lead into the garage and through some metal struts to a landing in the lower floor, which was 180 degrees, that meant you land in the same direction you came from. This wasn’t always the case but oh well, it was innovative!