Quiksilver Showdown Over The City – View from the Beer Garden.

This years Quiksilver Showdown Over the City was an amazing first taste of sunny spring. The new location for the course lead to a perfectly situated spectators area. Knowing that the photographers and videographers showdowns would provide extensive coverage of the event, I took it too the beer garden to see who was hangin’..

Luisa Jeffery celebrates the fact the beer garden takes visa!

Snowboard Canada photographer Ralph Dammon on the scene getting the shot.

Always nice to see DC’s Logan Haubrich

Posted up for the day – Matts Kuli

Nitro’s Alice Gorton lucked out having her 19th birthday on such an amazing weekend.

8mile’s Johnny Lyall + Quiksilver’s Dario Phillips know they have two hands for a reason.

This guy is hyped.

Some good lookin spring boardin style.
Still got it: Chris Dufficy

DC’s Jody Wachniak + Quiksilver’s Matt Belzille enjoy the day off from filming.

Jon Versteeg wins promising 15% to the after party tab.

Steph Weber at the peak of her season.

Caley Vanular and Luisa Jeffery date laps.

Jack of all trades: Chris Brown

Altitudes Apres – Ending the day off right..

Brad Broughton knows how to judge what’s good.

Beer-utifullll day.

-CV

Part 2 – The List

For post part two, we thought we’d poke a little fun (and awareness!!!) towards the lameness that is injuries(seeing as you guys aren’t missing anything in the park)…

So, some shout outs include:

Andrew Nicoletti(park crew)-broken collarbone

Marcus Cartwright(park crew)-tweaked sciatica/strept throat

Trint Thomas(park volley)-broken collarbone

Pascal Schram(local die hard)-broken collarbone

Ryan Belich(park crew)-fractured wrist

Alice Gorton(Blogospondent)-broken wrist

These were just a couple from the past few weeks off the top of our heads, and we know there are tons more out there so we are encouraging everyone to keep this “list of sadness and despair” going and maybe throw a line or two of the story behind them as that’s always the best part….

Stay safe,

Park Crew

Hey Everyone!

Hey guys,

My name is Alice Gorton and I’m really excited to have the opportunity to write for Grousepark.com this season! I started skiing at Grouse Mountain when I was around 8 years old. I had no idea how to do it, I would just rip down the mountain and fall when I needed to stop. After that phase, I started snowboarding, I was 11 years old and I instantly fell in love with it. I am 16 now, and since then, Grouse has become like a second home to me. I have made some great friends through this sport and through grouse and together we have had some wonderful experiences. This season, I have been lucky enough to have ridden Grouse Mountain, Seymour, Whistler and a mountain called Sunshine in Calgary. However, Grouse Mountain has always been the go to mountain for me, as I live in Richmond and have a very convenient sky train, sea bus and bus ride there, which is actually a lot shorter than it sounds. Anyways, the game plan for this season is to have the best day ever, every day. I’ll also keep you updated with whats going on in snowboarding, whats going on at Grouse Mountain and who’s killing it. Don’t be afraid to come up and say hi if you see me riding this season! It would make my day!

Below are a few pictures of me snowboarding at Grouse mountain

Alice_Intro

Introducing the 2009/2010 Grousepark Blogospondants

10 Bloggers

After a lot of discussion over the past couple weeks, we here at Grousepark.com are excited to introduce the our 5 blogospondants for the 2010 season. It was hard narrowing it down to just 5 with the depth of applications we got this year. But, without further ado, here there are.

Alice Gorton
Eric Beckstead
Jason Macfarlane
Jeremy Cox
Richard Loat

I’m really excited to see what this season holds for these 5 bright, talented and young minds. If last year was good, our goal is to make this year fan-freaking-tastic, so you’ll want to keep your interwebs locked ongrousepark.com for all things board and ski related from people that live and breathe all things snow. Except for yellow snow, hopefully no one lives and breathes that.

You’ll be getting a short introduction from each of them in the upcoming week so let you know who they are. We have a bunch of locals, but some new faces to the Grouse Park scene as well. So, lady and gentlemen, welcome to grousepark.com. Strap in and kick it!

Random Rambles II

Hiya folks, you know the drill.

Fellow blogger Dan Jonas and I were able to get out paws on some 2010 Ride gear to take to Grouse mountain. With the help of Rodrigo Caula, proprietor of Choice Apparel, and two femmes from Grouse’s local J-Crew, Alice Gorton and Sydney Schram, we were able to test the Crush, Machete and DH on the men’s side, and the Canvas and Compact on the women’s side as well as a bunch of bindings and those crazy light boots. Keep your eyes peeled for product reviews coming soon.

Speaking of Choice Apparel, the new product was shipped out last Wednesday and the line is officially launched as of March 11th. If you haven’t already done so, hit up the site and get your orders in via email at choiceapparel@hotmail.com!

Some more Choice news. Grouse Mountain pro team rider, Jenelle Pritchard is the first girl on the Choice team. Yay!

It’s been flaking kittens for the past week and that good ol’ west coast snow is covering the mountains. It’s wet, it’s heavy, and it’s so much fun. Get out and play in the trees, but don’t slow down or get stuck.

Is it just me or is that quarter pipe amazingly fun? Good job, park crew.

I currently have no park board due to base delamination. Lucky for me, it’s been pow so I’ve been able to get my 159 out of retirement. Anyone wanna help me out with something a little/a lot smaller?

I’m going to be sitting down with the founder of Spacecraft Clothing, Stefan Hofmann, for an interactive interview this weekend. For those that haven’t heard, Spacecraft is an art project using clothing as a medium. Go and check it out. The product is sick and the art is even better. They’re currently based out of Bali and keep a grassroots feel to everything they do. Pacific Boarder will be carrying the spring line, so make sure you go and take a look. I’ll have more on Spacecraft in the next couple days.

Shreddies for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner,

Sam

Capita Snowboards: Super Scary Corporation

Capita has been on the up and up since 2000. This Seattle-based company currently has one of the sickest teams in the industry, featuring the likes of Danny Kass, Dan Brisse and TJ Schenider, to name a few. Capita created a lot of hype last season with their late release Horrorscope FK and had people raving about this soft park board. Just ask fellow blogger Dan Jonas, he’d probably marry his Horrorscope if it was a girl. Recently, I was able to talk to Mikey Scott, Marketing Manager for Capita and Union in Canada. Capita is sticking to the saying that you don’t change a good thing… unless you’re making it even better, and that’s exactly what they’ve done. The line up is super diverse and covers all your riding needs.

The big news for next year are the Green Machine FK and the Charlie Slasher Pow FK. This season, the Horrorscope featured Park FK, which kept the base flat between the bindings, reverse camber to the the effective edge and flat kick tips. This tech is featured on their Green Machine, which features a sustainable core to make construction more eco-friendly. If there’s anything us Canadians like, it’s eco-friendliness. Next season will mark the introduction of Pow FK, which is featured on the Charlie Slasher. This keeps the base flat from effective egde to effective edge then goes up into flat kick tips, to give the board more lift on those epic “I’m stuck in waist deep pow!” days… except you won’t be stuck with this deck.

Park FK on top, Pow FK on the bottom

Keeping it hippie conscious! The fine print says Mother Earth thanks you

Capita has also extended the number of boards that now feature Park FK. Decks that feature this tech include the Indoor Survival, previously my favourite Capita board with traditional camber, Horrorscope, Green Machine and Space Metal Fantasy for women. Needless to say, I’m super stoked on the Indoor Survival FK. All these decks look sick., but don’t take my word for it, judge for yourselves!

In addition to all the FK boards, the keystone Stairmaster and Stairmaster Extreme decks are back. As some of you may know, the Horrorscope is based off the Stairmaster series. It’s basically a FK Stairmaster, which explains why Stairmaster doesn’t feature FK. That’s just be silly and redundant. The Stairmaster Extreme in particular is looking amazingly rad with it’s tabloid collage influenced art work and screen printed base. Let this board be a reminder to all you wanna be rockstars. Keep your clothes on and you’ll stay off the front page.

Tried, tested and true, the Stairmaster Extreme is back

Mikey and Tony are also letting us grab a few decks off them to test THIS WEEK! The tests will be dropping on Wednesday, so if any of these decks look interesting to you, and they should, be sure to check back soon, as we will have have some feedback for you and even some video footage of how they ride. We even have the lovely Alice Gorton helping us out with the women’s boards, for you ladies out there.

Cheers without the beers,

Sam

Wednesdays at Whistler

Alright all you fellers, here is an update from a couple wednesdays ago when myself and local Grouse shredder Alice Gorton went up to Whistler for the day. Conditions were sun, and lots of it and with lift lines being mellow due to being a weekday, we did HOT LAPS all day long!!!

Grouse local Alice Gorton on her way to killing it in the Whistler park under blue skies!!

They day turned out to be super fun and super mellow. Whistler’s park is more jib oriented and even more so with the lack of snow up there season. But this is no excuse for the Whistler Park Crew as all their parks are always fun and packed with features. Note worthy features were the really fun tables, multiple array of downbars, the corrigated pipe and picnic tables! Alice was killing it all day as usual. You can usually find Alice lapping the Quiksilver Park most days of the week and she was throwing down. Front lips, back tails, nose grabs and front boards were dialed that day.

We ran into former Grouse local Adam and Ryan and they enjoyed some good times with us.