whatup! Long time no update eh… well I have been very busy with school and riding lots so I finally found time for an update.
A couple weeks ago we came back from our rail trip from the Okanagan which was a blast! And you have all probably seen the footage and pics! Here are a couple good ones i found…
Can you spot Liam Casey?
Scott has a Volksawagon Golf.
Liam eating a huge donut!
Charlie was pretty hungry, that my friends is a rotisseri chicken.
The alley rail!
Pat King getting the shot!
I snapped this great moment of Scott and Liam laughing at me.
OKAY, now for some snowboard talk. I got the chance to demo next years Ride Nitrane bindings which build off the Contraband chassis. Be ready to hear more of this in the future, this binding was awesome.
Sam, Alice and I will be demoing next years Capita, which I am super stoked for considering this years Horrorscope FK is my favourite board to date, and I don’t think I can ride any other board.
Gnarcore always has sick edits and posts about keeping snowboarding fun. Shayboarder always has fun, informative posts about this years and next years gear. Ashbury updates their blog multiple times a day and follows some of my favourite riders including Nick Dirks, Jed Anderson, Nima Jalali and lots others so check it out!
So to start off here was the crew: Charlie Grinnel Grinnell, Pat King, Graeme Meiklejohn, Spencer Watson, Dan Jonas, Liam Casey, and me Scott Titterington.
So around 3pm Thursday, I jump in my car, and go pick up Liam and Dan from their places in my little GTI. We managed to pack 3 pairs of skis and a snowboard, filled with cam gear, clothes, and just enough food to survive. Dan was in the back seat with gear crammed all the way around him, and well suprisingly enough we got a few odd looks on the way up to our first stop Westbank Kelowna. As we arrived from a 5 hour car ride we met up with the rest of the crew and got straight to work. The first night was sort of rough due to not skiing or riding for a couple days and starting off with such a gnarly rail. We still ended up with a couple wicked shots though, and quite a few crashes.
The second day we got out around 11ish and headed out to a handrail which was shot in one of the sandbox movies. As said by Spence the cops came and luckily enough they didn’t have any problem with what we were doing. I gotta say, I sure wasnt expecting the constables response to sliding a handrail in a residential alley… Later on that day we basically went to scope out what else was around town, and call it a day. Getting back to Pat’s place around12:30am, we uploaded our footage and went straight to bed.
So Saturday we went full out and headed out by 10 o’clock. We headed out to a steep handrail by a highschool. Shortly into the sesh we had a delay due to Dan catching a back edge and concussing himself. Charlie and Graeme went with him to the hospital as Spencer, Liam and Pat and I finished off this railing, and headed to the next spot. As Dan and the hospital gang were doing their thing, Liam went to scope out this pretty crazy line a few steps away. We had some time so we set up the line and shortly later Liam ended up stomping it like nothing.
After we got back from picking the rest up at the hospital we headed back to Pats place to upload footage once again. Once it got dark we headed up to Apex Mountain and shot a wallride for the most part. Liam and Spencer were celebraties. Liam gave some kids a couple Choice Apparel stickers, and Spencer gave away a Napking bandana. The kids gathered around and cheered them both on while they lit up the wallride. On the way back we started the generator up and hit some pow laps in the dark 15 feet from the highway which turned into a couple cool pictures. As which ended we headed back to Pat’s and slept the night away.
9 30am arrives Sunday and we pack up to go back home to either the Mainland or Whistler since most of us have school or work to get back to Monday.
ps. ill be posting some actual riding pictures in some future posts so keep an eye open!
So day 4 we woke a little earlier and made our way back to our first spot, a steep down rail. There had been a lot of snowfall the night of and now that Liam and Dan were here we thought they should have a chance to hit the steep down rail as well. Dan unfortunately fell first hit to his head causing a concussion. He was rushed to the hospital and was luckily all right. Liam did the craziest rail I had ever seen. You will see shots from it later on in an edit. After picking up Dan from the hospital we went home to rest for a bit. At around 6ish we went over to Apex to shoot a wall ride. I love Apex always a great vibe from everyone there especially the lefties! Anyways Liam again threw down hard and the Wall ride was the most fun jib I had hit all year.
Once Apex was over, on our way back down we found a little cliff on the side of the high way. First ever shoot in powder with lights at night was a great success.
TRIP OVER
Thanks Charlie, Graeme and Pat King for all the filming and thanks Scott for the pictures! Watch out for edits and photos coming real soon.
So day 3 we slept in till about 12 and then traveled to Vernon and searched for a rail. During this search we found a PVC pipe! It was so fun! It defiantly warmed us up for our next session on a super mellow down rail we found later on. Liam Casey threw down hard and Dan stomped a very clean nose press and front board. We were told off by some neighbor who told us the cops were coming, so we strapped up and clicked in and hit it as many times as we could. The cops came and we just kept sessioning. The cops were cool with it and let us continue riding as long as we cleaned up after! Anywas that’s what happened today and we found a really fun rail for tomorrow so look out for that one it should be a banger.
I’m sitting in the most uncomfortable spot in the most cramped car EVER. We are so packed with camera equipment and people that I can barely move. We are on our way over to Kelowna right now and I managed to grab my mac to type this up and keep myself from being bored. Its 6:37pm and we should be in Kelowna just before 12 midnight.
For those of you who don’t know Charlie, Graeme and Pat King and I are headed to Kelowna to shoot some rails and some other features. Trips going to last around 5 days and we will be meeting other riders up there! Were meeting Liam Scot and Dan up there so it should be a good time.
It all started when I got an email from my Westbeach guy Jon Cartwright about the “Ante up” contest at C.O.P in Calgary. I did the contest last year and it was a good time, a slope style event with nice jumps, everyone from our snowboarding cirlcle was there, and alot of the industry people too. So I though Why Not?
So we got a crew together, Mark Sollors, Hayden Rensch (filmer) and Russell Dalby (photog), and decided to drive out cause we planned on staying to hit some rails after the contest. We found out a couple days before leaving that the contest was turn into a 1/4 pipe contest… None of us are really into pipes but we had this whole thing planned out and we went for it anyways thinking “what the hell, lets just do it and then film some rails”.
The day we’re leaving the Coquihalla Hwy is closed due to mud slides! so we have to go north through Whistler, Duffy lake road, which is fresh with snow and gnarly. We pulled these aussies out of the ditch with Russell’s F-350. We finally get to Sicamous, and now Rogers Pass is closed due to Avalanches. So we meet up with our pal Jeff Patterson (Photographer). He’s been stranded there for Days waititng on the road to open and he’s telling us all about his crazy adventure. S0 we’re checking the road updates every 20 mins. At midnight the road opens so we book it! Of course it’s snowy and there’s black ice everywhere but we powered through it. Got to Calgary at 5:30 am. Yes we drove through the night.
So I’m super beat from the drive but still going cause of all the red bull I’ve been drinking. We sign up and it’s time to practice… My practice was doing park laps and I called it a day. The next day, contest day, I was feeling 100 times better then the day prior. I practiced on the 1/4 pipe, it was going ok. Mark was killing it in his heat with b/s 7 and going bigger and bigger till he hit the deck and hurt his back. He made finals but couldn’t ride anymore. I just made it through to finals after figuring out how to do b/s rodeos on the QP in the last 20mins of my heat. in finals I just tried doing the b/s rodeos as big as I could. then I started trying to bring them around to 7, but that didn’t go so well. I hit the deck and sprained my wrist pretty good. But in the end I got 5th place and won a little bit of money so I was super happy with that.
We were all injured after the contest so our rail trip didn’t go as good as we wanted it. We brought Jed Anderson along with us to Edmonton and basically watched him kill it on every rail. We drove back on a sunny day, the roads were dry and safe and the scenery was sweet. Now Mark and I are recovering from our injuries.
