COVER “ Hôtel Chetzeron in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, is a beautiful high-altitude refuge, repurposed from the foundation of an old gondola lift. We were staying there thanks to an invite from the Vision Arts Festival and had breakfast in this room every morning, behind the massive window where the lifts used to arrive. Christian Weber and I agreed we needed to shoot something from here but every morning when we left the hotel, the winds were howling, making it near impossible, so we’d quickly head to another part of the mountain. On our final evening we had to give it a try regardless of the weather. What should’ve been an easy 10-minute shoot took nearly three hours as we scraped wind-blasted ice into a small, poppy jump. Christian sessioned it alone in gale-force winds while I sat inside in a nice comfy chair with a beer in my hand—my first five-star angle.” Photo: Ahriel Povich UP TOP 01 “Joe Lax and David MacKinnon on the third run of the day—a last-light push, after pillows and low alpine ramps. On the approach we bumped into two Ministry of Transportation avy techs who were finishing their day in the mountains. They thought we might be overly ambitious but wished us luck. We hustled to catch the January sunset, and made the ridge with time to take in the view—the perfect ending to a classic day in BC’s Coast Mountains.” Photo: Bradley Slack 02 “Bode Merrill has a unique vision on a snowboard—a perspective so dif-ferent his tricks seem borderline impossible. He can imagine hitting almost every spot with one foot out and when he lands it clean, you realize how talented he is. Case in point: this fastplant to boardslide through the kink in Madesimo, Italy.” Photo: Roby Bragotto 05 Yuta Watanabe and an end-of-the-day blind exit in Italy’s Dolomites. Photo: Tempei Takeuchi 06 This is one of many reasons to visit Switzerland: Gray Thompson, frontside and hauling ass on a bluebird and blower Saas-Fee day. Photo: Silvano Zeiter 03 “The Manboys built this jump in the clouds, waited a few days, then came back when the sun popped in the Whistler, BC backcountry. It wasn’t long before everybody had gotten a shot. Watching Chris Rasman do this frontside 360 was wild—he would kick the grab out late, putting him in what looked like an inverted method. Not a common trick by any measure.” Photo: Ben Girardi 07 “I noticed this spot while wandering the snowy path that led from my room at the Rocks Resort to the Indy Bar in Laax, Switzerland. I asked Lou ‘Mr. Backflip’ Staub if he could do a quick handplant for me, and of course he said, ‘No.’ With a nickname like that, I guess I should’ve known better.” Photo: Ahriel Povich 04 Ruiki Masuda finds a small pocket to set it down on a rare bluebird day deep in the Hakuba, Japan backcountry. Photo: Tsutomu Endo 08 Fresh out of the helicopter at 13,000 feet of elevation on Mont Blanc, Italy, Simon Gruber blasts a thin-air frontside 360. Photo: Roby Bragatto
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 16.1: Page 14
