Verbier Ride 07

The 18th-19th of Feb saw the Verbier Ride big air and rail jam events. First up was the rail jam in which Brit's James Woods, Joe Tyler and Andy Bennett all performed well in, with highlights including Andy's butters onto the down rail, James’s 270 disasters on the flat down rail and Joe's 270's on and off the down rail. Sadly though the British judging trio of Nick Southwell, Dave Young and Jamie Cameron were unable to find spots for them in the finals. In the girls however it was a different matter with Beanie Milne-Home claiming first place with disasters on the flat down and kink rails. Some Success for the Brits!

The following day was the big air. Once again the British contingent of Andy, Joe and James performed well in front of the judges putting them in to the finals. Andy claimed 4th place with a super styled switch 7 mute, Joe came 6th with switch 7 high nose mute and James came 9th with a huge tail grab 9. Once again Beanie flew the flag for the Brits with a massive and styled 180 leaving her just behind Audrey Faivre in 2nd place. It was a hugely successful competition providing us with some awesome event footage.

Photos from Camilla Stoddart and Alison Ferte
For full coverage of the event go to:
www.verbierride.com

Verbier Booter and Thyon Park

Joe Tyler and James Woods were in town for the Verbier Ride so we all hooked up to get some freestyle shots. The Verbier park crew had just built a sweet booter so we decided we would stay up one afternoon and get some low sun shots on the new feature. One of the park crew even gave the riders a lift up on his sled so they didn’t have to hike. The lighting made some really nice shots and it was awesome to hook up with JT again and film Woodsy for the first time.








After the success of the previous day we took JT and Woodsy over to the Thyon resort park, which has some really cool rail setups. Another great day filming these two sick riders.

Fresh snow and Thyon Lines

After over 2 weeks of spring type conditions it snowed around 2 feet up the mountain. The first few days were bad weather so we spent most of the time in the trees around Verbier just enjoying the snow. Once it cleared we headed over to the resort Thyon with Nick Southwell and Joe Tyler, to step it up to some bigger lines. We got some sweet shots although the snow was pretty unstable; in the first shot of me you can see the face fracturing around me. Sketchy!

Hip

Once again heat waves throughout Europe devastated conditions in the mountains. With any sort of freeriding being virtualy impossible we turned our attention to construction. After three days of building we had created an enormous hip jump in Verbier’s back country and we were eager to see how it would work. We had a great day with athlete’s Andy Bennett, Phil hopper, Jamie Cameron, Sam Smoothie and Beanie Milne-Home, all sessioning the feature untill the sun went down. Despite the spring weather we are experiencing in early February the filming season is still going well and with many trips planned for the near future, hopefully conditions in other areas will be better!

Leftovers

After the snowfall from the previous week we went on search for some remaining freshies. Nick headed over to Davos where there was supposed to be more snow and I stayed in Verbier to shoot with Andy Bennett and Chris Southwell. Although it was tracked over most of the mountain Andy found some great areas with natural hits to do some backcountry freestyle while Chris hiked the peaks for bigger lines. Check out a few freeze frames from our past few days.