COVER “After a few days of high pressure and the best conditions of the season in Haines, AK, our crew was up before the sun. We had seen good stability for the previous four days and confidence was high that this could be the best day of the year. As we pushed into the field it was clear there had been some natural activity throughout the range. A buried persistent weak layer was our main concern and had been for weeks. Due to warming temperatures and an overall transition into spring weather, we were seeing that layer starting to wake up. Thin spots in the terrain had persisted through the entire season and that, combined with the spring warm-up, had us on our toes. With that information we decided to choose an extremely steep, short zone with no secondary exposure. As Ryland Bell hiked up a spine trough to his starting point and dropped into this line, riding it clean, we felt we had successfully matched our terrain choice to the conditions. At the bottom, however, a deep slab pulled out. Although Ryland found his way to safety, it was a close call.” For more discussion about this line visit thesnowboardersjournal.com/ exclusive/covered174. Photo: Will Wissman UP TOP 01 Thomas Delfino halfway down a self-powered top-to-bottom line in Arolla, Switzerland, while filming for Shelter . With two natural waves back-to-back, Thomas didn’t have to choose between a slash and an air. Photo: Vernon Deck 02 “When shooting street spots in Quebec, you tend to meet some interesting characters. On the other side of this fence lived an older lady named Virginia who kept coming out to her backyard to check on us. She wasn’t annoyed that Ryan Paul was smashing into her fence every five minutes; she was just interested. Every time Virginia came out to watch, she was slightly more inebriated than the last, and by the time golden hour hit, she was full-on drunk. Shortly after Ryan landed this surf inspired wallride, Virginia rewarded us with a bag full of potent weed cookies and homemade wine.” Photo: Mike Yoshida 05 When you’re camped in the parking lot, it’s snowing this hard and you have an electric motorcycle, the next move is obvious. Austin Smith tows Knut Eliassen at Mt. Bachelor, OR. Photo: Bob Plumb 03 06 “During a winter in which every storm seemed to glide south of British Colum-bia, we had to abandon our usual routine of bouncing around the Canadian backcountry. Here, Eric Jackson takes advantage of the last light and the bountiful snow just south of the border near Mt. Baker, WA.” Photo: Darcy Bacha Sam Taxwood’s Instagram handle is @concretesneaks. We wonder if it has any correlation to his trick selection. Here, he creeps past a healthy slab in Helsinki, Finland. Photo: Oli Gagnon 07 04 “We had just arrived in Hakuba, Japan, and so had the storms. Despite a slow start to the season, mid-January saw a return to normal on Honshu, and Hana Beaman dropped into one of the first deep days in a while. It snowed nonstop for the next week and only got better.” Photo: Colin Wiseman “We nicknamed this line, likely a first descent, ‘the Hotspot,’ because there was a hot spot of light right before Nick Russell dropped in. He spied it and rode it on day one of a five-day camping trip at the end of April in the Eastern Sierra in the McGee Creek drainage not far from my house. Despite what you might think, he entered and exited the line from looker’s right—no ropes were involved.” Photo: Andrew Miller THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL 015
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 17.4: Page 17
