An Introduction: It’s DJean!
Hi!
My name’s Jean Lavigne, and this season I have been chosen to be on board blogging for grousepark.com. I’m a snowboarder and a Grouse local. I’ve been snowboarding since I can remember and since then I’ve always called Grouse home. The last four winter seasons I’ve spent working up Grouse as a snowboard instructor teaching kids of all ages how to shred! I live on the North Shore and when I’m not at work or schooling, you can find me up Grouse lapping the park or hunting down pow on the Olympic Chair. I normally come up alone but always meet up with the shred posse, so if you ever see me around give a shout, I’m always down to cruise. THE MORE THE MERRIER!! Something else I’m really passionate about is music, and when I’m not busy with the above, I’m either listening or finding new music. I put together mixes under the alias DJEAN, so you can look out for some bangin’ mixes from me this season or from other local riders who too love to jump on the VDJ tables.
Look out for some edits and photos from me this season of all things awesome up Grouse, especially the park, we all know the talk about the snow this season, hopefully that pulls through because no doubt with enough the Quicksilver Park is going to be killin’ it.
Make sure to get Djean on Facebook, for all updates on the music side, Here’s a link to some of my older mixes, and I’ve got some in the works too so look out for those. Stoked to meet all the fellow park rats!
PEACE,
Jean.
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Late Pre-Season Update
We would have had this up earlier, but we had a lot going on.
Check out these photos from Jason McFarline and a video from Jeremy Cox.
Donkey
DFD
Pontoon
Box and Flat Down
Donkey
See you on the slopes!
Fun in the Sun
Skiing lately has been far too much fun and I haven’t really gotten around to doing much shooting. Today, I finally brought the camera up the hill and shot for a total of 3 laps, because once again skiing looked like too much fun and I decided to put the camera away. Jordan and Bryce were up with me today and I hope these photos can show how much of a good time everyone was having, as Bryce had a smile on his face in literally every shot.
Nothing special, hope you enjoy.
Bryce cruisin', all smiles
Jordan cruisin', same deal
Jordan on the flat down
That’s all for now,
Frodo.
Second That!
Saturday WAS a brilliant day! The park was sick and the vibes were good. I showed up slightly late but still managed to catch some very prize worthy action. Flips, spins, grabs, and hand drags were thrown down all day and it was all topped off with sunny skies and warm temperatures. Here are some more shots!
Cam Harris boosting over the hip with a 3
Method off the spine, so dialed
Grousepark.com's own Jason Frodo MacBaggins out getting some GoPro footage
There were a lot of flips hucked, almost too many, and Sam made sure everyone knew about it
~Bill
Oakley Year End Jam: Sunny Skies, Good Friends, Hecka Prizing
Yesterday afternoon, on a spring day that could not have been any more perfect than it was, with a park setup built especially for the occasion, the good folks at Grouse Mountain Terrain Parks and Grousepark.com threw a season ending jam for the ages. Shaw Butterworth, Marcus Cartwright, Adam Nicolls, Tom Robinson and Dan Ripper were up early yesterday morning, hoping to get some solid build time, only to run into technical difficulties. With all issues finally resolved at 10 am, they went to work to build a formidable set up consisting of two jumps, a hip and a variety of rails. The hip seemed to be the feature of the afternoon, with kids sending it bigger than I’ve ever seen at a local Grouse event. I won’t ramble on too much as the other bloggers will be bringing you better coverage, pictures and some Go Pro footage. I just want to thank everyone from park crew that was there helping with the jam. Rob Morrison came out for his afternoon shift and helped out huge with course maintenance and tear down. I also want to give a huuuge shout to Jeff Silcock, Grouse Mountain’s Events and Sponsorship manager. Jeff is a background guy, you don’t really see what he does, but without this guy, we’d have no park and the parks definitely would not have grown to where they are. Jeff was there taking pictures all afternoon and you can find them all on our Facebook fan page.
Sunglasses and smiles all around.
Thanks to our sponsors, Quiksilver, DC, Oakley and Roxy, as well as Pow Gloves for hooking up over $3000 worth of prizing. Also, huge thanks to everyone that showed up and ripped hard. Most of you took a tongue lashing from me and put up with it. Not that you really had a choice. It’s tough love, kiddies. You’ll thank me one day. I called the local scene out on their lack of A-game, but you all definitely brought the noise yesterday. We’ll be back next season with more prizing to give away, hopefully I’ll be back as well, but that’s up to Jeff and the crew downstairs. Here’s to hoping we can get the parks bigger and better next year!
No one took me up on my offer to dance for a pair of goggles. Weak.
Fresh Pow
I thought the season was over, I’d started to switch my thoughts from skiing over to biking and then suddenly.. dumps of snow! We’ve had over about a foot of new snow in the past 48 hours and it’s still coming so get up there and get some skiing done! A bunch of new runs are open and it’s almost like we’ve started the season over again. The other day a few buddies and I got up there and had the best day all season!
Photo Contest Finalists
Hey all,
We’ve finally got the finalists for the photo contest. The response was huge and we’re stoked on the submissions that came in. There were a bunch of good shots and narrowing it down was a challenge. In the end, our crew decided on four finalists, instead of the originally planned three. They are Colton Labou, Brian Choi, Josh Remund and Nate Konyi. Below are their submissions. As of tomorrow night, these pictures will be on the Grouse Mountain Terrain Parks Facebook page and you’ll have all Easter long weekend to vote on your favourite one. Come Monday morning, at 10am, the picture with the most likes will win the contest and the photog will walk away with a pair of Grouse Mountain/Oakley collab Crowbars and some out swag. Congrats to our finalists once again.
Photo: Colton Labou
Photo: Brian Choi
Photo: Nate Konyi
Photo: Josh Remund
The Grousepark boys are placing bets on the winner. All I’m saying is, if my guy doesn’t win, no one is getting a prize. Just kidding.
Happy Voting,
Sam
Urban with Voleurz…
A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to tag along with Chuck for a few hours of shooting urban rails up in Whistler for the new Voleurz flick. After setting up one gnarly rail, it started to dump snow so speed became an issue. Luckily, the lone rider for the day (and Grouse pro team member) Barry Hartman scoped out a down rail nearby with a natural drop in. After setting it up, half an hour was spent hitting it till Barry got the shot for the 2 filmers. I, of course, was shooting photos. Here’s what I came up with.
Barry Hartman, front lip.
Inspiration
Inspiration can come from a lot of places, but one thing that’s for sure is that when it comes, it can change a boring, unproductive day into one of your best days of shooting. The other day I was doing a research project for photo class on a photographer called Cole Barash and had one of those “inspiring” moments when I stood up and looked out of the library window. I quickly went home, grabbed my camera gear and called my friend Trevor Robson to go and shoot. Although it’s not skiing or snowboarding and not on a mountain we had an awesome time and got some sweet shots. Inspiration can be one of the best things to happen to a shoot, so next time your inspired, don’t let it pass, instead go out and make something of it. Here’s what came out of that little bit of inspiration for me, let me know what you think!
-Bill
Sunsets and Silhouettes
The days are getting longer and the sun is starting to set late enough for us school goers to be able to get up the mountain in time to catch some sick sunsets. I have been trying my best to shoot during sunsets lately (working with silhouettes mostly) and the other evening I just happened to have my camera on one of those nights where you get off the peak chair, walk to the run and suddenly bam! All you can see is what seems to be fire in the sky. So we decided to do some lifestyle shots. Here they are!
Also check out my personal blog to see some of the shots that haven’t been on Grousepark.com. There’s some cool stuff so if you have the time, take a gander to find out what I do off the mountain. I’m not just a ski and snowboard photographer.