Schools Out!
Hey gang,
For most of you, including me, the coming up weeks are a sacred time of year. For a little over two weeks, young skiers and snowboarders get to put away their school books to shred their hearts out. It’s winter break! As you probably noticed, today was especially nice out, the sun was shinning, the birds were singing, and tricks were being stomped left right and centre. When I got up to the mountain, my jaw nearly hit the ground as I did my first lap through the quicksilver park checking out all the new features that were perfectly set up overnight. The park has variety, fluidity, perfectly set-up features, basically the sickest park I have ever seen grouse produce. Unfortunately right now I am on the injured list because two sundays ago, a certain flat rail and I weren’t getting along, which resulted in three broken bones in my hand. However, I came up with my camera to get some shots with a few of my friends. I hope everyone has an awesome holiday, and get’s the chance to check out the park. Big ups to the park crew and look out for an edit dropping real soon.
Cheers!
Simon.
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Weekend Edit
It’s dumping snow here right now at Grouse and now that we are putting a mellow week behind us, it’s about time that we’ve got some snow. Despite all the rain and slush, I had time to get some weekend laps in with my buddies. I was stoked to get some footy with my new camera and make an edit.
Check it out!
Look out for more edits coming soon.
- Andrew
An Introduction: It’s Dylan!
Hey all,
My name’s Dylan Gillespie and I’m super stoked to be one of the Grouse Park bloggers for this season! I’ve been skiing Grouse all my life, and got into the park/freeski scene a few years ago, though I love doing anything with skis on my feet. I live really close to Grouse, so you can be sure to see me lapping the park on weekends and after school. If you see me, stop me and say hi! I’m usually wearing a orange jacket or black hoody, and blue pants. I always enjoy meeting someone new and spining laps with another stoked rider!
Now overall, the weather’s been pretty good this season which has let the Grouse Park Crew put together an AMAZING park setup, week after week. Add a bunch of new and improved features for them to work with, and you’ve got one of the best parks Grouse has seen in a long time. So be sure to get up there as soon as you can and check out either the Quiksiver Park or the Paradise Jib Park, both of which are sweeeeet right now.
I will be posting numerous edits, photos, and videos thoughout the season, and you can check those out on my Vimeo page and my Flickr page (which shall be set up with content in the near future).
In the mean time, here are a couple of my favourite photos from my past season.
Skier: Dyan Gillespie Photo: Matt Hutchinson
I’m not going to sit here and claim I’m any good at photography, because I’m not. I’m really hoping to improve this year, because right now, I can’t tell the differance between f-stop and flash sync. But very, VERY rarely I can sometimes click the shutter button on my Casio point-and-shoot at the right moment, which I was luckily able to do here.
Skier: Casey Klimock Photo: Dylan Gillespie
That’s all I got for now guys, but keep checking back for more great updates from me and my fellow bloggers.
Peace!
-Dylan
An Update from GROUSE
There may not be as much snow on the hill as this time last season, but that hasn’t stopped park crew from keeping this running smoothly. If you haven’t been up lately, you’re missing out. The park has something this season that it has been struggling with the last few years, flow. A few new additions to Grouse’s park crew have helped keep this flow in the park. The other night I got up the mountain and did a few photo laps with Shayan, Park Crew Conrad and new Park Crew Anthony. Anthony and I had a bit of a close call with him almost landing me. I was shooting with a fisheye lens and, as anyone who has shot with a fisheye lens can tell you, it makes things appear to be much farther away. Due to this, I couldn’t tell just how close Anthony was until I felt him tap my backpack on the way down. Anyways, here are some shots from the night.
A close up of Anthony's face from the jump where he almost landed on me
Anthony looking a little less frightened this time with a 3-tap on the barrel feature
Shayan with a tap 1 in colour
That’s all for now,
Frodo.
Whistler Day Trip
So, if you haven’t heard, Whistler is AMAZING right now. To take advantage of this fact, Frodo, Kyle Jasper, Matt Whelan and I headed up there yesterday and oh ya, it was perfect! Started off with some park laps and found that every jump was absolutely perfect so we sessioned them for most of the day. Since we were having so much fun, I didn’t even bring the camera out till about the 6th lap and only managed to get a couple decent shots before heading in for lunch. After lunch we went up the peak to shred some pow. It had been almost a week since the last storm and there was still plenty of fluffy white powder to float on. We were all pretty tired, so we decided to head down on a good note. All in all, the day was sick and everyone reading this should head up to Whistler before the huge crowds arrive because it’s prime right now. Here are the few shots I got this weekend and hopefully I’ll be able to shoot some deep pow slashes up Grouse soon!
Matt Whelan stoked on the park (and life) after the first lap
Matt Whelan. 180 off the first perfect step over
Kyle Jasper on the up box
Getting artsy on the way home
Bill
Alterna Shoot
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.
Jeremy
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.
Quick Grouse Edit
Hey Guys, Went up filming Thursday night with Simon and Shayan to test out the Steadicam. The Steadicam was incredibly hard to use and in most cases was shakier then handheld … but I’ll get the hang of it. Anyways it was cloudy up there so I decided to mix up the colors a bit … lemme know what you think.
Alterna Films ELEKTRO Teaser
Hello All,
It has been a little while since the last post, but here is the long awaited ELEKTRO Teaser from our friends at Alterna Films.
[video]
Enjoy!
PYPeace.
Chuckles
PS, the PYP teaser is about 2 weeks away…
T’s in January… I’m Loving It!
This winter has been quite the weather reporters dream, especially in BC, but more specifically Vancouver. We went from a mild and wet fall to a freezing cold -20 with wind chill in mid December all the while being pounded with snow. Vancouver, in the city received roughly 100cm of the fluffy white stuff in December, and let me say… the city was not prepared (nor were its citizens), but it sure was perty to look at. And so here where we are wearing t-shirts in mid-January thanks to a temperature inversion. If you’re not sure what a temperature inversion is, the kind folks at wikipedia.org describe it as: ‘an increase in temperature with height, or to the layer within which such an increase occurs’.
There is nothing like a temperature inversion, you wake up its grey, ugly and cold so you think it’s like that everywhere, but when you get about halfway up the mountain you are pleasantly surprised with blue skies and a warmer temperatures the higher you go. The city is covered and you feel as if you are on another planet, standing on top of the mountain looking out at a sea of clouds.
If you have the chance try and make your way up one of the local Vancouver ski hills over the next couple days as it is supposed to remain an inversion until possibly Monday or Tuesday.
Enjoy.
Cashen