Fresh Season Fresh Photos

What’s up Grouse Park blog readers? Jason Macfarlane here to put out content for another season. If you’re new to grousepark.com, this is my third season writing for the blog. I am an 18 year old skier from North Vancouver, currently enrolled in my first year of university. This year I am also a part of the Park Crew staff on Grouse Mountain. So I’ll be writing about the park, helping to build, maintain and keep it running smoothly.

Lack of snow has been a bit of a challenge so far this year, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t pulled off some good features. The Park Crew have worked hard (which hasn’t been me so far so I can’t take credit for this) and have put together an awesome line of rail features in The Cut park. Jam packed, it is probably one of the jib parks with the best flow the mountain has ever seen.

Recently, Trint Thomas and I spent a few hours in the sun shooting some pictures and video clips. Here’s one of my favourites from that day.

-Jason Macfarlane

Back Lip @ Grouse Park

Rider: Trint Thomas
Photo: Jason Macfarlane

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.

Fun in the Sun

Skiing lately has been far too much fun and I haven’t really gotten around to doing much shooting. Today, I finally brought the camera up the hill and shot for a total of 3 laps, because once again skiing looked like too much fun and I decided to put the camera away. Jordan and Bryce were up with me today and I hope these photos can show how much of a good time everyone was having, as Bryce had a smile on his face in literally every shot.

Nothing special, hope you enjoy.

Bryce cruisin', all smiles

Jordan cruisin', same deal

Jordan on the flat down

That’s all for now,

Frodo.

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.

Halfpipe and Rail Jams

Unfortunately injuries happen. Its the nature of our sport. They can (and will) happen at the most inconvenient of times. This weekend happened to be one of the biggest weekends of snowboarding the North Shore has ever seen. Fortunately for me there were plenty of events even a gimp could attend, so missing the 48 hours of winter, thanks to a strained MCL and meniscus, was not all that bad.

I got a call on Saturday morning from a friend who had come across two VIP passes to the LG FIS Snowboard World Cup Halfpipe event taking place later that day on Cypress. I gladly accepted the offer and we rolled up just in time to catch the finals. Some of the best pipe riders in the world were in attendance and all were throwing down under the slightly snowy skies. From the bottom of the pipe, we witnessed some of the greatest riding any of the local mountains have ever seen.

The pipe.

All the men were killing it but, to nobody’s surprise, Shaun White dominated the field and added another notch to the bedpost. The highlights of White’s winning run was his massive first hit and back to back 1080′s. Coming in second was Ryoh Aono from Japan and Iouri Podladtchikov from Switzerland rounded out third.

Kelly Clark took the win for the women with a mix of backside and front 5′s, lofty airs and a front 7. In second was Jiayu Liu of China and Hannah Teeter took third.

After sampling a few bevys in the athletes tent, we dropped down to Park Royal to check the LG Mountian Festival Rail Jam. The setup was fairly mellow which meant the riders could get tech if they wanted to. Jed Anderson slayed it and took home first. Jesmond Dubeau took second and Cory Gallon came third. For the women, only three competed and Jess Kimura ended up on top.

Rail Jam on top of Park Royal? Rad.

My camera could not keep up with the amazingness.

On Sunday the Park Royal rooftop played host to some of the local riding talent with the Shop Rail Takedown. Riders from Pacific Boarder, Second Wave, and Showcase competed for a 37 inch flat screen TV for their shop and $100 cash for their pockets. The riding was almost, if not as, impressive as the pros the day before, proving that the Vancouver riding scene is not to be taken lightly.

Blue skies, slush, and metal make for a perfect Sunday afternoon.

Front board.

Gettin the shot.

Pressin.

Spencer Lundin, who had been riding all night on Grouse Mountain, scored the TV for Second Wave and the $100 cash.

Lundin earning it.

Freestyling for the win.

All in all this weekend was a great taste of what is to come one year from now when the world comes to play in our backyard.

Video of both events to come soon!

-cj

Sunny Shred…JUMPS!

Ok so here’s the deal…Cashen already let the cat out of the bag on this one so I don’t feel bad about letting yall in…Grouse Mountain is SICK right now. As the city lays blanketed in fog, those of us who are fortunate (and smart) enough to make it up the hill in the past few days have been treated to some wicked spring like conditions. The fog has kept many of the weekend warriors bunkered down in the city while the rest of us shred lap after lap under sunny skies with no lineups.

The park crew has been hard at work, and it shows, the Quiksilver park is in PRIME condition right now. The soft, slushy landings make for some very huckable conditions. Here’s a little clip of yours truly having fun on the first jump on the left side:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SokLS0mHGrE&hl=en&fs=1]

The Quicksilver park is divided into two sections, a large, three jump line of the left, and rails on the right.

One, two, three on the left or rails on the right...

Coolpix gettin the job done.

On Thursday I took a few laps with some local kids. They were throwin’ down in the slush, getting some corks, and rodeos down. Let me know if its you, or you know who these guys are, I missed their names.

Spraffy?!

Workin the cork 7 mute.

Backside 3.

Practice makes perfect.

Rodeo 5 japan.

So all in all everyone is super pumped on the conditions right now. Who would have thought after the crazy cold temperatures and the epic amounts of pow, we would be shredding in +10 degrees and slush…in January…only in Vancouver.

-cj