Peak Season in Whistler

Just incase you haven’t seen MTV’s Peak Season, Check it out all this week on CTV at 7pm Monday-Friday.
They will be showing back-to-back episodes of the reality series taking place in Whistler. I got a chance to be involved in the show and I am in 5 of the 10 episodes, so be sure to check it out in between your busy shred/work/school schedules!

Other then that, been busy working lots up in Whistler, should be coming down to Grouse Mountian for some shred soon!

Happy Holidays and hope to see you all on the hill this winter!

-Jenelle-Nichole

Sunny Days and Fast Laps in Quik Park

The Quiksilver Terrain Park is running stronger than ever as we’re nearing the end of 2009. The sun has been shining almost every day and winter break has brought a few new faces to the mountain. I’m not in much of a writing mood as I’m about to head up the mountain, so I’ll let my photos do the talking. Enjoy.

Corey Mcintosh sending a cork 5 over the jump

James Anderson with a tail 720 over the jump

Park Crew Ryan Belich with a backside 180 off the pole-jam

Grousepark's own Sam Masih sending it off the pole-jam

That’s all for now,

Frodo.

A Little Update from the Park Staff

What up? What up?!!

So we figured it was about that time again. After what can only be called the early season sadness that is rain (I got to spend that week frolicking the beaches of SoCal…suckers), we’re back at it for a little park rebuild.

For those of you who haven’t graced the park in the past week, get in there! Some highlights include a nice mellow jump with a hint of the wu for those who like to get inverted, a 20’ box gap 40’ box combo for your jibbing pleasure followed by a newly renovated s-rail and a handful of other goodies. So, now’s the time with the sick weather inversion to get up and get your shots in.

Below are some teaser pics of things we’ve been working on that you’ll be enjoying soon as the snow starts falling again, and some of the mountain folk on their rounds. Oh, and on that note, a huge shout-out to the Grouse Mountain snow makers, because without them we wouldn’t even be thinking about jumps and park rebuilds.

Dano cutting up puckboard for a fresh double kink box...keep your eyes out for it sometime soon

The crew sporking out the details on the newly designed Butterworth Kicker

A guest appearance by OG park staff Liam Mullaly, down visiting from his new home up in Nelson

A couple local shreds, sorry guys I forgot your names, who helped us out as we struggled to drag the rainbow rail around

Just a neat inversion shot

Tom Robinson showing us the proper technique with a spork. Aussies know best!

And last, I leave you with a teaser of new box pieces, some wood walls, and, if you look real hard, an oversized picnic table?

Warmest regards in this winter season,

Chris and the rest of the park fellas

Happy Holidays

With the holidays wrapping up, I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and will have a great New Years. While wandering the internet from Birmingham, England, I have stumbled upon Transworld’s Top 5 Snowboard Tricks. Wether your up the mountain or looking for Boxing Day deals, you should be sure to check out these videos.

In 5th place: Outta Nowhere Rail Skills, 50-50 to front 3 back to 50-50: Ethan Deiss

In 4th Place: Wrecking Rails - Jed Anderson’s back 1 to switch nosepress to switch back 1 out.

In 3d Place: Backcountry Double-corks

In 2nd Place: My personal favorite Dan Brisse’s Urban Death Gap

And in 1st Place Shaun White’s Double Corks

Happy Holidays

Safety First!

So, the time we have all been waiting for is here, winter break. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever you believe, they’re all here. More importantly, the freedom to snowboard or ski and be carefree every day is rolling through. This is a time for holiday celebrations, visiting friends and family and for riding every single day. Remember, throughout all the festivities you may start to get tired and, as we all know, the Lower Mainland hasn’t had that much new snow lately. The mountains aren’t exactly covered in powder at the moment, but don’t fret! Just remember to think about your safety and make sure you stock up on Red Bulls for the mornings you’re feeling tired. I wish you all happy shredding and a happy holiday as well!

My silly, broken wrist

Happy people being safe

These people know what's up!

Happy Eduard Mikulcik

Alice

Pre-Christmas Trip to Baker

Every year, I aim to make a trip down to Mt. Baker right before Christmas. For those of you that have never been, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Baker is one of Washington State’s most legendary mountains. The inbounds ski area is HUGE, with so many lifts, that there are never lift lines longer than 2 minutes. On any given day, you’re always bound to find a playground of powder somewhere on the mountain. If the inbounds terrain bores you, which it shouldn’t, you can always hike into the backcountry, given that you have a beacon, a shovel, are avalanche safety certified and a bunch of other things.

We left Vancouver bright and early, at 5:30 in the morning. Usually too early to be alive, I came up with the genius idea that instead of sleeping and struggling to wake up, I’d just stay awake till 5 in the morning. Needless to say, the drive there was a challenge (the drive home had it’s own pleasant situation. Ask me about it if you see me on the mountain, it’s a great story). In any case, we got to Baker at 9 am, after making a quick pit stop in Bellingham for a hearty breakfast at McDonald’s, where a super size meal actually means a super size meal. My buddy Charlie and I met up with Duke and Jordan, a couple Washington locals and hit up the mountain. There were freshies on the ground and not a cloud in the sky. It made for a perfect day of riding and was a nice break from the local skating rinks we’ve been riding. My words won’t do it justice, so here are a couple pictures that sum everything up.

: Sunrise on Old Baker Highway

: View from the parking lot

: Looking back from the very top at Jordan

: Mostly untracked going down

: Short break when the legs started to feel like Jell-o

: The active volcano itself

: This is how close the backcountry is

I was riding a 150 Rome ArtifactSK 1985 the entire day. For those of you that haven’t tried reverse camber in powder yet, it’ll change your life. I’ve never had such a fun pow day in my life. That being said, if you getting into the deeper stuff, you probably don’t want a super soft jib board with reverse, but seriously, reverse camber is the beeeest. All in all, a great day with good friends and new friends. Get up there if you can, they still have midweek discount lift tickets, so try to get there between Monday and Friday.

Lastly, from all of us at Grouse Mountain Terrain Parks and Grousepark.com, we’d like to wish you and your families a super duper Merry Christmas. Hope you all had a good one!

Sam

Christmas Eve

The holidays are always a fun time to be up Grouse Mountain. Everyone just seems much happier and today definitely followed that trend. I spent the day shooting with Shayan, Trint and Geoff. The sun was up, and the park was in prime shape, so we got to work and shot all day. The newly put in pole-jam definitely seemed to be ‘the feature’ for shooting today. Photogenic views and photogenic snowboarders made things behind the lens a lot easier.

Shayan with a big skate-style ollie off

Trint with a big front 180

Geoff with a front 180

Geoff with a back 180

And to mix things up, here’s a couple jump shots.

Shayan corking a 5

Geoff with a corked back 5

But what good are photos without some video footage to back them up? Well thankfully that was also covered today. Trint’s friend Wesley Kilpatrick spent the day manning Trint’s video camera, and Trint threw this little edit together of the day’s work.

Merry Christmas!

Frodo

Park Skiing and Ben Neil

Throughout my 2.5 seasons of skiing park, I have noticed quite a few things that I think separate park skiers from the rest of the ski industry. Aside from the obvious one of skiing in terrain parks and making use of having tips on both ends of our skis, we also have a very unique dress code that makes most of us easy to pick out of a crowd. The ‘gangster’ trend has completely taken over park skiing. Having a jacket that reaches your knees is no longer looked at as stupid and un-functional, but rather stylish and cool. With a jacket that big, baggy pants are a necessity to keep things looking proportional. As always though, there are some people who go against the trend and wear tight pants, which are slowly making their rise to popularity.

Along with the fashion side of things, we park riders also seem to have more of a ‘connection’ on the hill. Whenever I’m skiing the park alone, I can almost always find someone to do laps with. Whether I know the person well, or even know them at all, we share the common interest of park skiing. This was one of the things that probably kept me interested in the park scene back when I first started out. If my memory serves me well, this is how I started skiing with Ben Neil about 2-3 seasons ago. Ben got into the park skiing scene a season before me, and I remember in my early days before I got to know Ben, thinking to myself, ‘I wish I could ski that well.’ Well it’s 3 years later and Ben is still way ahead of me in the park, but that never stops us from having fun skiing together.

With that being said, Ben and I (along with a few others) spent Saturday doing photo-laps in the park and managed to come out with quite a few shots that I personally am very happy with. Here are the final results.

The man himself

Grabbed 3 over the jump

Corked 7 over the jump

Mid S rail

Small tail press on the down rail

That’s all for now,

Frodo.

Good Vibes

Hey all,

So its finally here. Winter break! Well, for some of us at least. For me, this is a time of shredding, relaxing and then…more shredding of course! Here’s a video by Tim Pierce, the man shooting for Winter of Wells. If this doesn’t get you hyped on riding hard all break, I don’t know what will! Its called Tim Pierce Showreel 2009. Check it out.

Keep it real Grouse!

Happy shredding from Eric B

Quiksilver Terrain Park

The season is already over a month in and it is nice to see Grouse Mountain’s park crew keeping things rolling smoothly with the Quiksilver Terrain Park already being loaded with features and operational from top to bottom. In previous years, it seemed Grouse’s park struggled a bit at keeping good flow throughout the park features. Last year saw quite an improvement and this year is already even better. It seems the only thing the park lacks at the moment is a jump line. But only mother nature can be blamed for that as more snow is definitely needed for jumps at this point. But even with only 1 jump in the park so far, the rail lines are doing a very good job of keeping everyone satisfied. So here you have it, some pictures of the lone jump and current rail features in the park. Enjoy.