Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Alterna private post showdown shoot...






After a successful two days of shooting the Showdown over the city.  We were invited by Grouse Mountain to hold a private media session. Riders in attendance were Matt Belzile, Craig Beaulieu, Seb Toots, JF Fortin, Chris "hungry balls" Rasman and a few other invitees who all killed it.  

It was an amazing sunset session that did not wrap up until the sun was entirely set.  These are the best types of sessions cause everyone was elevating their game and had a blast doing it.

Thanks to all the Grouse employees that helped us out and big thanks to Mr. Silcock.




Monday, March 30, 2009

Powder in April !?






Look at all this snow we've been getting in the Whistler backcountry, and it's almost the FIRST of April!!! NO - this is NOT an april fools joke. So here's some pics to prove it!

Rob


Behind the scenes of the Showdown Over the city...






So we just finished shooting the Quiksilver Showdown over the city last Fri and Sat. The conditions made it difficult to keep our gear dry but when the finals kicked in Saturday afternoon the skies parted and some pretty sick footage was captured. Seb Toots did not disappoint and stomped his signature trick the "tootsie roll" to ride away from the comp with 10gs. 

We will be releasing the Showdown video within 2 weeks so keep checkin back to see how the event unfolded.

PS We went up Sunday with a few Alterna riders plus friends and Murphys law it was completely blue byrd. Some pretty amazing stuff went down and will blog that shoot tomorrow. 

(BB Photos)

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Apples & Oranges on Rush HD


We are releasing Apples & Oranges on Rush HD it premieres on April 19th at 9pm ET, 6pm PT.

Knockout will also be released on Rush so we will make sure to give a heads up.

For more on Rush HD check this link...

http://www.rushhd.ca/

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Alterna Invades Aspen










So the boys are on the road again!  This time, we're traveling to the YOU ES OF EH !  Alterna riders Matt Belzile, Craig Beaulieu, Logan Haubrich; SBC Photographer John Scarth, and Alterna filmer Robert Brunton, were in attendance.  Like everything planned to perfection, this trip soon turned into a gongshow. . . 
Belzile had a layover in Arizona and was suppost to get in an hour after Scarth, Brunts, and Logan.  Beaulieu had arrived TEN hours prior to us, and when we got there, he was nowhere in sight.  No cellphone, no way of contact, airport pages wern't working - we were stressing out - Where is Beaulieu ?!  We waited two hours.  It was now 12:30 am, so we went to our rental Toyota Sienna, and got the fuck outta Denver before we got shot!
About an hour into our drive, we got pulled over for speeding.  Good ol' Johnny Scarth sweettalked our automatic courtdate and $250us ticket, into a $90 and a kiss goodbye.  It's now 430am.  We have arrived in Aspen, after coordinating our driving through Brunton's GPS on his phone, because he obviously forgot his real one in his truck.  We drop our gear in the hall and claim beds and crash.
Our 930am start was pushed back until 1230, when our eyes finally opened.  We got our gear and headed over to Buttermilk Mtn.  The great thing about Aspen is that you pay ONE FEE for FOUR MOUNTAINS! We shredded the most ridiculous, longest fucking parkline ever on Buttermilk!  They have a great park director; Greg Boyd - This line takes you seven minutes of the most funriding ever.  Endless raillines, massive jumplines, and tons of fun features top to bottom, scattered this hil.  At an altitude of 9,000ft about sealevel, the thin air really gets to you - Not to mention the +17C temperature heating you up! We hit the jumps all the way through sunset until we rode down the hill in the pitchblack.
Wakeup - Day two.  We are awakened at dawn by Craig on the phone with the airlines...  This is a blog within itself.  Let's just say kids: Make sure you double check your traveldates!  In the end, everything was butters, and we were up shredding bluebird again until night! By now, the temp had dropped and the snow was more like ice, so we banged off our shots and was back at the condo for 12.  After youtubing "slowmotion punch" for an hour, we crashed. Can't wait for another day of serious aspen slaying, and thanks to Melissa Rhines and Greg Boyd for all the help!


Monday, March 16, 2009

A night on the town (Ljubljana)








Tadej's friends host a party.
Several drinks.
Gaetan kisses hands.
Police and bikes.
Dirty Euro Elektro techno.
Underground.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Rasman Review - Made it to Venice, Italia !





After some interesting setbacks caused by the simple confusion of the Italian word for diesel, we managed to make it to Venice by sunset. One hell of a "floating city" ! We spent a few hours there, water taxing around and crossing tiny bridges over narrow canals with romance cruisers paddling through them. If ever in Venice, be sure to watch out for the many caniving swindlers, scalpers and other sketchy folk trying to pawn off useless items too you. Once you show the slightest interest, they are like flies on shit. You're the shit.. Anyways, we snatched a ton of amazing photos ( im sure Tifo's are better, but you can wait for the SBC article for those ) . Here is just a taste of the BEAUTY ...

Help Greener choose the right gas and win a Download






Ok so we were on our way to Venice for a day of lifestyle shots and we needed to fill up some fuel. Unfortunately we were extremely Canadian and put diesel into a gas car oh snap! not so good! It could have been any one of us but in this case Greener was pumping yellow gatorade into our car and we paid the price. First person to call out the correct Gas pumps wins an Alterna download of their choice.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

First day on the hill in Vogel, Slovenia






We had our first day on the hill in Slovenia at the Voegel Resort, it was a bluebyrd day and the the conditions were pretty sketchy. Greener got into a pretty scary situation when he tried a fs 360 off a jump that had the adriatic sea as the backdrop. He triggered a 2 foot deep slab and a 150 foot wide slide that took him 200 meters down the slope and almost covered him. Rasman and Gaetan were on the scene immediately but luckily Greener got out just fine. The film shot will definetely be worth waiting for.

With the avalanche danger lowering a bit we can now ride the resort at Kanin that has a meter and a half of fresh pow.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Hello my name is Vera and I am the new kid on the blog :)

here is a funny story from my second day out with the Alterna- Crew (which was today):

While JF and Vince were building this jump, Rob and I went scouting for some more natural spots. We pinned it across the lake, where another film crew was doing their thing. We checked out another zone but the snow there was super crappy. So we raced back across the lake, next to each other, and last time I checked we were going about 75 mph - and that's when my belt blew. Right on front of that other film crew. Of course Rob took off. (He actually went to talk shit on me to JF and Vince because he thought I had ditched him to go talk to those other boys.)

So here I am, out on the lake, torn apart belt pieces all over me, my sled, and the snow, and some curious boys waiting to see what happens next. It was so quiet, I could hear their thoughts "That's why you don't bring girls out here, man"
The ending is kinda boring. I threw on my spare belt (it actually required a little more force than that), waved my greasy fingers HELLO to those boys, and then took off back to Rob, JF, Vince, and Julien....

Three countries in one day...






After driving through Austria and Italy we have finally arrived at our first stop Kanin, Slovenia. We had to stay at a Bed and Breakfast last night at the Slovenian border because there was a snowstorm. Locals were claiming 6 to 10 meters of snow in the passes.

It has been dumping here and the mountains have been closed for a few days. Tomorrow will be the first time they open after a meter and a half of fresh Pow.

Our crew consisting of Tadej Valentan, Gaetan Chanut, Chris Rasman, Eric Greene and Phil Tifo are super jet lagged but ready for our first day on the mountain tomorrow.

This trip will be a feature story in an upcoming issue of Snowboard Canada so stayed tune for more Slovenian updates