Hitting Kickers

Quick post to check in and appologise to anyone who has come back here looking for fresh content. Posting has been slack to say the least, and the worst part is I’ve got some good stuff to post. Plenty of video to come from last season including a fancy dress spectacular.

We’ve got afew guest posts lined up as well. Also appologies to anyone who has emailed in recently and not had a reply. I will be working back through the back log soon.

Also will be finding a new theme soon too. Have ended up with this shabby old one from 2 seasons ago following the hack in April. Any recommendations for a Wordpress theme gratefully received.

Cheers all. When will this summer end?

Just rocked back here to post a quick message. I’m off for one last snowboarding trip this season, heading back to trusty Cervinia. Should be a good trip. The snow is looking awesome for this late in the season.

Trying to load up this site, I was greeted with a PHP error that I don’t remember seeing before. Turned out I’d been hacked.

Not got time to work out if its cos of my version of Wordpress, my host or some plug in giving dick heads back door access. Fucking annoying, but bollocks to it… I’m off snowboarding. Will sort it next week. Meantime, back to the old theme.

An awesome week snowboarding in Serre Chevalier last week. Finally getting round to post about it. Here’s goes.

After a few large group trips, this was going to a small, hardcore, flat out snowboarding trip with just 3 of us in total.

Day one started at 3am in South London with taxi followed by bus to Stansted Airport for a 7am flight. Landed in Turin at 10am, picked up our hire car and started the 2 hour drive to Serre Chevalier.

Turned out to be a really easy drive, with some cool scenes along the way. Started getting exciting when we went through the ski resort of Montgenevre, before descending into Briancon and passing through Chantermerle en route to our destination, Villeneuve at Serre Chevalier 1400.

We couldn’t get into our apartment until 5pm, and at this time it was only lunchtime so we changed into our snowboard gear in the street, fitted our bindings and headed for the nearest telecabin.
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At the Metro Ski & Snowboard show last year I walked past several stands with novelty exercise equipment, tagged up for hundreds of pounds with some new spin on getting you ready for your ski or snowboard season without having to bust a gut. Seriously, just get yourself down the gym and stop taking short cuts.

Reminds me of a friend of mine at uni, who had some kind of electronic pad that you stuck on your midriff that was supposed to give you a six pack via a series of not too painful electric shocks. Ridiculous.

I digress…

One that caught my eye, and looked like a bit of fun at least was the iJoy Board.

If they had one in my gym I’d give it a go, but really, who would buy one of these? Get yourself a proper snowboard exercise plan.

Horses for courses?
There’s also the original iJoy Ride which seems to be hitting the shops here. Check out the classic video footage here. I challenge you not to laugh at this horse play.

Just saw this post up on Chamonix.eu.com listing - ahem - “10 great reasons not to become a snowboarder”.

Seeing as that site is run by an old mate of mine I thought I’d entertain a little post in response. Seems all good to me.

1. You will probably die.

Get busy living, or get busy dying. I know what I’d rather do.

It’s true… you can’t bake a cake without smashing a few eggs - you will most likley get hurt whilst you’re learning, but there’s no reason why after a couple of days learning how to turn and stop, that you can’t progress surely and safely to being a decent snowboarder.

2. You are going to look like a fashion victim.

Hmm, would you rather look like this

or this?

3. You will probably kill other people.

Just make sure they’re skiers. ;-)

4. You may well go to prison.

Of course, that doesn’t happen if you ski, does it?

5. You will hurt yourself.

No pain, no gain.

6. You will be traveling down the side a mountain at high velocity with both feet strapped firmly to the same piece of wood.

…making it statistically safer for your knees without all that rotational injury risk.

7. Skiing is much more versatile than snowboarding.

Steep, big mountain

Boardercross

Slopestyle

Halfpipe
Not to mention splitboard skinning, a bit of old fashioned jibbing, and a whole host of things that free skiing wouldn’t have without snowboarding, and lets face it - the world would be a worse place without!

8. Snowboarders are commonly known as ‘Gays on Trays”!

Lol, not heard that before, so not that common. Quite funny though… for a skier.

9. You don’t just become a snowboarder.

Yes you do.

S: (n) snowboarder (someone who slides down snow-covered slopes while standing on a snowboard)^[1]

Strap on a snowboard, slide down a snow-covered slope and you’re in.

10. It’s going to cost you.

Take it in your stride snowboarder. You’ve earnt it, now enjoy it. See you on the hill.

I’m going to Serre Chevalier for a week in early February, having booked up this week. I’m going with two friends who started snowboarding at the same time as me more or less, and who I’ve snowboarded more with than anyone else. This time we’re leaving our girlfriends at home, and planning on some flat out snowboarding with as much time on the hill as possible.

Serre Chevalier snow report and web cams
The conditions are supposed to be great at the moment (Serre Che snow report and forecast) acording to a couple of threads running on AdrenalinTrip.

Its looking all white on the webcams too.

Chantemerle, Villeneuve, Monêtier les Bains and Briançon
Serre Chevalier is made up of 3 villages - Chantemerle at 1350, Villeneuve at 1400 and Monêtier les Bains at 1500 - and the town on Briançon at 1200. We chose an apartment in Villeneuve. Whilst the closest runs aren’t the most exciting by the sounds of things, its fairly central giving easy access to the whole mountain, and also sounded like a good mix of nightlife and convenience.

We booked our flights and accommodation independently, and good a good saving compared with a travel operator package deal. Flights for £40 return and accomm for £160 each for the week - can’t argue with that!

The snowboarding
The World Snowboard Guide gives Serre Che 10/10 overall and says this:
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Snowboarding in England only happens on dry slopes and giant indoor fridges these days, right? Err, no aparently. On one of the Flow bindings posts here, Bazx6r left the following comment:

Dude, we went up to Yad Moss on saturday, 2 hour drive to get there but it was worth it, the lift wasn’t running but we wont let a little thing like the spoil the fun and i had to carry my heavy bindings all the way up the hill ha ha, not many people there but all snow boarders very cool

Here are some photos from his day snowboarding Yad Moss, a ski hill in the north of England run by volunteers from the Carlisle Ski Centre.

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Burton and HP have partnered up to produce some marketing videos with some insight into Burton as a company, how they’ve grown, the design and marketing processes. Check out the microsite here.

Working in online marketing, I found this really interesting on a few levels.

Firstly, interesting to see how Burton have grown from a small business with a few people with a common goal (the company I work with employs only 20 or so people currently) to the leading brand in the sector. Burton are synonymous with snowboarding now.

Also interesting that Burton are caned by loads of snowboarders for being the mega corporate company now. Not sure how this would go down with those guys. On one hand, a tie-up with Hewlett Packard must stink of big-business uncoolness. on the other, I think the videos show the opposite is true - a real small business, hard working ethic, a business run by snowboarders for snowboarders.

Finally, from a professional stand point, I’m interested in seeing how successful this type of campaign is for HP. I initially found the site after clicking a banner on the social network linkedin.com. I can’t remember the last time I clicked a banner, so their agency must be doing a decent job. The microsite has been built to go viral, with links to a load of social bookmarking and voting sites such as Digg, del.icio.us and Newsvine.
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Now Christmas is done and New Year is on its way, time for some resolutions:

1. Get fit for snowboarding
I really need get down the gym more. Last 2 trips I was hanging by the third day. I know I’ll get more out of my time on the hill if I’m in better shape. The mrs will stop giving me jip over the beer belly too, or at least less often. ;) So this is me putting a marker down. I should probably force myself to publish a weekly update on the level of snowboarding fitness work I’m doing, similar to last year. Noone wants to look like Out-of-shape-Arnie.

2. Get as many trips planned and booked as possible
A few snowboard holidays and trips are being talked about at the moment with different groups of friends. A possible (though unlikely) Whistler trip, a budget week somewhere in France, Italy or Austria (most likely), a fancy dress weekend at the end of the season (bring it on). Talk is cheap, lets get something booked!

There are probably some other important things I should be thinking about, but this will do me for now.

What are your resolutions?

Quick post to plug a new website covering the best of Europe’s snow parks, Snow Park Guide.com

Carina from SPG…

We have recently launched our new Snowparkguide.com Web site with tons of
interesting stuff about European’s most important and renowned terrain parks.
Besides there are many new features like the user profile function and the pic
of the week contest online.

Best of luck with the site. Looks like a good resource building there.

I’ve just had the pleasure of back-to-back weekend trips snowboarding in Cervinia.

Cervinia shares a ski area with Zermatt, which has a glacier that’s open for skiing all year round, so you’re guaranteed some snow even early season. Fortunately early season this year is of epic proportions in terms of snow right across the Alps. Austria lead the way a month ago, but Switzerland, Italy and France have caught up.

Day one and two we spent primarily in Zermatt. I’ve done this trip a few times before, but this was the first time I made it all the way from Cervinia over to the Riffelberg area. Managed to find some untracked off-piste pow, whilst the piste was generally in great form. The visibility was great too.

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Just got back from a couple of consecutive weekend trips to Cervinia, flying Ryanair. The flights were dirt cheap at about £20 return from Stansted to Turin give or take, but to take my snowboard added £31, more than doubling the price, though still reasonable value I suppose.

It would be handy if all airlines had a standard for luggage and sports equipment/excess charges, though I can’t see that happening. In the meantime, airport parking company APH have produced a summary of the charges - or lack of them - applied by 16 major airlines flying from the UK for carriage of ski and snowboard equipment.

Key points to note:

All of the following airlines will allow you to include skis/snowboard luggage within your usual allowance (typically subject to some weight parameters):
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Put your hand up if you like a little drink on the hill every now and then?

Its been known amongst my usual snowboarding group to bring out a hip flask full of Laphroaig, and dish out hits everytime someone stacks it hard or anytime someone stomped a run or kicker.

Cheers!

Only problem is the ole hip flask can cause murder on your ribs from your chest pocket if you fall awkardly. Here’s a genious solution…
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…well not me exactly, I kind of neutral on Flow’s and the eternal debate if that’s possible.

I’ve been looking through some of the keywords people are using in search engines to find this site, and found a few comical ones:

“I hate Flow bindings” - what about those that love Flow bindings?
“how to get fit for snowboarding” - I should probably have a read of that. Only 3 and a bit weeks til Cervinia.
“kickers horse” - eh?
“ski socks vs snowboard socks” - one that’s bitten me in the arse before. Get proper snowboard socks!
“Transformer snowboards” - sounds cool.

Living in London, you always look to mainland Europe when thinking about your next snowboarding trip. I’d been meaning to post this photo taken at Glencoe in Scotland earlier this year by the guys at Highland Instinct. What a cracking sight.

Added: just watched this cracking video of some lads hitting up Scottish backcountry…

Play

Following on from the last post, maybe its time to give a bit more credit to the resources here for snowboarding in the UK.
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