Rain Rain, Go Away…
As Farmer’s Almanac predicted, this season has been an El Nino year. What this means is that there is lots of moisture and cold air in the early season, which resulted in lots of snow at Grouse Mountain and gave us an early start to the season. Following this, a warm ocean current comes up from the Californian coast, bringing lots of moisture with it. This means lots of rain, and anyone who has been at any of the locals in the last few weeks can tell you first hand that this is definitely an El Nino season. Still, the skies finally cleared up for a couple of days and I managed to get a few hours of shooting in before the rain came today with Bryce and Shayan who, by the way, are among the few consistently toughing out the bad weather this season.
Bryce Mclean with a tail press
Shayan with a 5-0 over the rainbow
Here’s to hoping for some good weather,
Frodo.
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More Quik Park
This Christmas break has been quite an interesting one. We have been lucky enough to run into only a few cloudy days and almost none of the typical rainy, miserable conditions that Vancouver is famous for. Still, everything has its downside. Next to no precipitation and consistent cold temperatures have lead to hard pack conditions, which are especially noticeable when the sun sets. However, with the help of Grouse Mountain’s fleet of snow makers this Christmas break, the park crew has done a good job of keeping things up to standard. Speaking of Park Crew, Shayan and I did a few filming laps with Ryan and Tom (and a quick cameo by Quentin Deboice!) when they weren’t doing maintenance and Shayan threw this little edit together. Enjoy.
Christmas Eve
The holidays are always a fun time to be up Grouse Mountain. Everyone just seems much happier and today definitely followed that trend. I spent the day shooting with Shayan, Trint and Geoff. The sun was up, and the park was in prime shape, so we got to work and shot all day. The newly put in pole-jam definitely seemed to be ‘the feature’ for shooting today. Photogenic views and photogenic snowboarders made things behind the lens a lot easier.
Shayan with a big skate-style ollie off
Trint with a big front 180
Geoff with a front 180
Geoff with a back 180
And to mix things up, here’s a couple jump shots.
Shayan corking a 5
Geoff with a corked back 5
But what good are photos without some video footage to back them up? Well thankfully that was also covered today. Trint’s friend Wesley Kilpatrick spent the day manning Trint’s video camera, and Trint threw this little edit together of the day’s work.
Merry Christmas!
Frodo
Quiksilver Terrain Park
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.
Frodo.
Oakley Night Jams The First
This past Friday, Grouse Mountain kicked off its annual free contest series, the Oakley Night Jams. The format this season differed from the Night Jams of past years in that there was a dedicated setup for the event where the Paradise Jib Park used to be. For the first jam of the season, that park crew had setup at 16 foot butter box, a downbar of equal or greater value and a C-rail set up in a semi circle with lips at both ends for your jibbing pleasure.
The jam started of slow as kids began to trickle slowly in from around the mountain. Our own Charlie Grinnell spread the word through the Quik Park and gathered bodies from all around. Coastal Riders was on hand as the shop sponsor for this first jam. With Charlie on the mic, things quickly got popping as he made sure the event was ski friendly this time around. Grouse Mountain local Brian Choi cleaned house on the ski side of things, so we’re banning him from the next jam. Just kidding. In any case, the skiers were killing it all night on all the features. Trint and Shayan repped hard for the boarders, but all you boarders need to step your game up in time for the next Oakley Night Jam on January 8th. Here are some pictures from Friday night.
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.
Quiksilver Park Now Open
It’s been just over 24 hours that the Quik park has been open and the usual gang already has an edit out. Here are Shayan, Trint and Spencer once again. For those that don’t know Shayan, that kid is 14. He’s gonna blow up, you mark my words.
Snow’s on its way. I would know, I’m kind of a big deal.
Sam
Another Grouse Park Edit
It’s been a sunny, clear week on top of Grouse Mountain. Great for filming and such, Here’s an edit not obscured by fog featuring Trint Thomas, Shayan Aghourlikhani, James Anderson and Ryan Belich. Great product placement Shayan, your sponsors must be real proud.
Filmed by Shayan and Trint, edited by Trint.
A Short Jib Park Edit
Since the season has started, we haven’t really had a chance to get any video content out of the jib park. This could also be due to the fact that low overcast makes for difficult filming conditions. Either way, Grouse local and Park Crew volly Shayan went up riding yesterday and threw together a little some’in some’in. Enjoy.
Sam
Walrus Design: Let’em Have Fun Contest
Hey folks!
For those of you that haven’t heard, I’ve recently started my own clothing company. I’m super stoked on this project finally taking off after a 3 year planning process. Before you get the wrong idea and think this is a “Look at me!” post, let me say that Walrus Design has finally taken off and there’s some hype around it. The team is growing and it contains an impressive line up of riders too! Okay, now you can think that this is a “Look at me!” post. However, I’m gonna make it worth your while.
This contest is specifically for the readers of Grousepark.com. You’ve been reading all season, and we here at the site value that. We’d have no jobs if you all didn’t read what we had to write. To show you that we feel the love, Walrus is giving out some shirts. All you have to do is, as the title states, go have some good, clean, PG-rated fun. Make a video or take a picture of you and your friends hanging out, going skating, singing along to Don’t Stop Believing by Journey really loud or exchanging high fives. Maybe all of the above! If you’re having a good time, I wanna see it.
All pictures MUST be in .jpeg format (if they’re not, I’m not gonna look at them, sorry…I’m lazy.) and all videos must be posted on a vieo hosting somewhere on the interwebs (YouTube, Vimeo etc.). You can email the pictures and links to sam@grousepark.com. Contest closes on May 18th, so get your submissions in before then. Top three submissions get gear and extras. Now go have some fun!
Left to Right: Nathan Jonas, Sam Masih (me), Shayan Aghourlikhani, Antosh Cimoszko and Michael "Giv'er" McClelland
Get your Walrus on!
Sam