Alterna Shoot – Through the lense of Graham Dalik
Sunday March 29th was a beautiful day. Blue skies, warm temperatures, and a 70 foot stepdown manicured to perfection. The Showdown Over the City was a thing of the past but that beast of a jump used for the competition still remained, begging to be hit. Jeff Silcock, the Grouse Mountain Events Manager, invited the Alterna Films crew to come up and do a shoot on the monstrous jump. Mr Silcock also invited a small group of skiers: pro team rider Spencer Watson, local shredder and all around good guy Liam Casey, and yours truly. The jump was meticulously perfected by the park staff (and a few of the riders), and by noon, the session was on.
Unfortunately Spencer Watson was injured early on after overshooting the jump and landing nose heavy, on his left side, near the flat bottom. He went absolutely, unfathomably, HUGE. Spencer decided to call off the rest of the session. But don’t worry, he’s fine now.
I invited my good friend Graham Dalik to come up and shoot some photos. As promised, here are a few of his shots:

Waiting for the session to start.

Beau Bishop rocking the Westbeach tall jacket.

Huge.

Spotting some transition.

In living colour.

Backflip or BASE jump? CJ loves hangtime.

Liam Casey and CJ. Front flip and back flip.

Dan Jonas. Grousepark.com. Legit.

Gettin tail.

CJ corkin a 540.

Goin huge. Gettin corked. Grabbin tail.

Liam showing Grouse Mountain why he is the man. - Flat Spin 540.
You can check more shots from the session and some of Graham’s other work on his flickr page.
Grouse locals Jason Macfarlane and Brian Choi were also in attendance snapping shots. As this post is already getting a little photo heavy, I will save their shots for another time.
Hope you enjoyed. I sure did.
-cj
Showdown and an Alterna Tease!
The Quiksilver Showdown Over the City invaded Grouse Mountain this past weekend and I was lucky enough to land a spot in the judges booth as the event tabulator. Fortunately for me this made for an amazing place to watch the madness but, unfortunately left little time to get the shot. So bear with me on the action photos for this one.

MC's getting it done.
Anyways, as you all know by now, the jump was huge, the riders were stoked and the weather was…well, crap. But that’s how contests seem to go. The fog would roll in just as fast as it rolled out leaving precious windows of opportunity for the riders to drop. Taking full advantage of the few moments of clarity on Friday during the qualifiers were Wiley Tesseo, Warren Williams, Jason Wexler, Jesse Millen, Gordon Emery, Nathan Ramler, Tim Barker and Max Ritchie, all of whom advanced to the semi-finals on Saturday.

Someone getting a better shot than I...
Along with the semi-finals came the invited riders and the same blanket of fog as the day before. Regardless of the weather, the riders threw down. Making their way through the semis and on to the finals were Jesmond Dubeau, Sebastien Toutant, Dave Fortin, Immanuel Anderson, Chris Collard, Matt Munn (who also won the rail jam on Friday night, and a cool $3000, despite the six stitches in his forehead thanks to an edge to the face earlier that day…that’s $500 per stitch if anyone’s counting!), Atsushi Ishikawa, and the only qualifier to make it all the way, Warren Williams.

The pros.

Impromptu dance 3-6-0 battle while waiting for the fog to clear...
Just when you thought the fog couldnt get any worse, for a change, it didn’t! The sun almost came out (in patches) for the finals and allowed the final 8 to put on a show. As you may already know, Sebastien Toutant took the win and $10,000 with a beautiful double cork 1080, Jesmond Dubeau scored $4000 in a well deserved second, and Atsushi Ishikawa, who came all the way from Japan, took home $2000 with third place.

Judge Duff giving the people what they want.
What you may not know is Chris Collard took fourth, Warren Williams fifth, Dave Fortin sixth, Immanuel Anderson seventh, and Matt Munn eighth (for a full list of results check the Showdown website). These guys definitely deserved the top spots. It’s hard to imagine hitting a jump of that size in less than perfect conditions.
Speaking of perfect conditions…anyone check the Alterna shoot that went down Sunday? Here’s a little tease for now. Check back in the next few days for copious amounts of uber banger shots courtesy of my good friend Graham Dalik and a few others.

Beautiful... Photo: Graham Dalik
Ok, here’s one more…

Best session ever. Photo: Graham Dalik
Mmmhmm it was gooooood,
-cj
p.s. I heard they let some skiers hit the jump…
Digital Downloads now available on Alterna’s website!!!
Alterna Films has just announced the release of all current and past films in digital download format exclusively on Alterna’s website.
Now you can instantly own all these classics on your computer, iphone or other mobile device. I’ll work on them to create a Grouse compilation from the past 10 years…





