So if you didn’t know, this past Friday was the second Oakley Night Jam of the year. Hosted in the Quiksilver Park, there were plenty of features to hit. The jam took place on the Flat Down and the Up Box, providing great fun for all. Congrats to everyone who killed it, I hope you got your prize. The prizes included the Oakley wallets, backpacks, laynards, toques as well as POW spring gloves. The final prize included 10 Boardroom gift cards which were given out to just about anything ‘unique’. The Jam was wrapped up with a raffle for a pair of Oakley Sunglasses and the new Shaun White A-frames. Be sure to come out to the next jam February 5th, 2010.
There may not be much snow on the mountain right now but that doesn’t mean the park isn’t still awesome! The park crew has used a little creativity and worked their asses off to somehow keep the Quik Park as sick as it always is. The best feature in the park right now is the up box. There are a bunch of other rails and boxes but the up box is definitely number one. Frodo and I went up the mountain last night to do some shooting and got a couple decent shots. They’re all of the one box, but we did our best to get creative.
Get up the mountain tomorrow night for the Oakley Night Jam, it’s gonna be fun no matter what. If you can’t get up the mountain, then you should go to Centennial Theater to check out the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, which starts tomorrow and goes till the 29th. So, if you’re sitting at home tomorrow night complaining that there’s nothing to do, then now there’s no excuse! Here are some shots to get you stoked for the Oakley Night Jam!
We put together a montage of less-than-par clips from 2009. Usually big fancy super-corporations like us would hide such footage as this, but the humor got the best of us.
So here it is… kersmashes, ball-boinkers, snaps, crackles and some pops from the film Outdoor Graduation:
At the end of the 2009 season, I was invited to film the Alterna Shoot alongside Charlie Grinnell. This was an amazing experience involving superb riding, course and location. The weather was in our favour, providing the shoot with soft snow and the occasional cloud. As both days came to a close, my P2 cards had been filled and I knew I had something. Here’s the edit of what I came up with, hope you all enjoy it.
On Tuesday night, we headed up grouse for a little bit of night riding. I met up with Corey Mcintosh and decided since it was such a clear night maybe it was the time to take some photos in the quik park. I am not very good with cameras…yet, but they are still pretty good shots of him. This was our first lap and my camera died right after this, but we had a great time! Then I decided it was only necessary to try and turn him blue, because that is what computers can do these days!
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 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.
Tomas Gibson on the Tram Rail
An Unknown Skier with a Tail 180. If this is you, leave your name in the comments.
Spencer Watson with a Gap to Tap over the C-rail
Shayan tweaking a mellow Japan Air
Peter Warkentin mid Tram Rail, trying to get fanny packs back in style.
