Te sekkür ederim Turkey!

Our trip to Turkey is now officially over but the good times continue. We have experienced an unforgettable trip here with snow storms, earthquakes, 80 km/h winds, missiles, snowfleas, Bargaining at the Grand Bazaar, threats with knives, countless inquisitive stares from the locals, unparalleled hospitality, raki, 5 star hotels, Turkish Hamans and pretty much the most contrasting of cultural experiences one can imagine outside of North America.

For more information about booking your trip to the land of the Turkey contact:

www.argenttours.com

www.apricottours.com

Never seen so many cats in a city before these felines are stuffed by the locals with chunks of fish.

Wiley and Rasman join a group of kids for a game of futbol which is one of national pastimes here in Turkey the other is camel wrestling.

GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!

A tasty catch so many fish restaurants.

Short never stops exploring....

Here we are with our English buddy Mungo getting loose on the last night .

Thats not milk we are drinking its Raki.

Bataleon rider and team manager locked by their pinkys in Turkey, no big deal.

We found Nemo.
Rasman calling to check the weather back in Whistler...

Wiley teaching the locals a new dance move.

Hoşçakalın

Face shots in Turkey

Its been an awesome stay in Turkey. partying it up, meeting new people, hitting kickers and scoring some freshies. Riding with the Alterna crew has been fun times!! Stoked to be riding with new fresh meat and getting to know these crazy Canucks! Phil Tifo killed it on the organizing and Carlo is making magic happen!
A couple of more days in Ezerum and then heading back to Istanbul to get lose again(:

Shred the gnar!!
-marius

Pow and Huka!

It puuuked last night and the snow fleas are DEAD!

The crew after some well deserved pow lines.

Dont really know how to explain this one... Nese making us famous in the authentic Turkish heritage homes .

....then they insisted WE DANCE. Turkey style!

Letting loose after the heated dance party.. We could get use to this.

Erzurum has been around since 4000BC. This is a small fragment of it. the top towers origin story: engineer vs. student. they both build one tower, the student built the better one, so the engineer suicides, then the student feels remorse and suicides as well! Crazy huh!?

Oh yes. Tifo aka Brad Pit, after some turkish pow slashes.

Snow fleas & Missiles? in Erzurum...

We have scoped the palandoken mountain and come across a few projects for the next few days. The crew went in to town after our day on the hill and spent some time at the newly developed Erzurum ice rink. Thanks to Phil Tifo and the Turkey Tourism board for making this trip possible.

Little villa on the resort. Weve been told that this has been passed down through the same family for 500 years.

Day 2.. Instead of fresh snow we get 400 billion snow fleas blown in from, "bug-aria"... good one Short.

WTF ? Pretty sure these are not planes.. Were are boarding Iraq..

Come to Turkey to go ice skating? A blast, even with rounded blades of glory and buckles that unstrap themselves every 2 minutes.

Shorty killing it on a pair of high end Turkish skates.

Rasman with a creepy look. Nice sticker on the Turkish hockey stick, this kid rocks.

Marius giving us the Blue Steel.

Russians fans at the peak of Palandoken.

The Golden Turkey...

As we arrived to our destination at Erzurum in the Mountains of Turkey. Once again we have lucked out and were able to watch the most anticipated game of the year on a 10x10 projection TV at our Hotel. Kind of surreal seeing shots of Vancouver and the fans while we are all the way over here. Its really funny how it always seems to work out well for us. Literally, the middle of no where.. Nearly touching Iraq and Russsia. Now its time for some shred and "high octane apres" sessions.. Thank you lonely planet handboook..

Thanks again to the Turkish tourism board for all the amazing hospitality we have received on this trip.

Istanbul, Turkey - The Grand Bizarre...

After being awake travelling for over 35 hours we descended upon Turkey and made the most of a down day. We rolled into Istanbul and soaked in some culture before leaving on our first mission to the Palandonken resort in Erzurum tomorrow morning.

Tourism Turkey had it dialed for us. 50 people waiting for cabs and these vans out side of the airport, yet we get 2 of them for 5 of us. 1 van for our bags, one for our exhausted, smelly canadian bodys.

The legendary blue mosk. Probably one of the craziest man made things our crew has seen yet. Not too much blue about it though..

Sagliginiza!

...i think thats what you say when you do that..

We went to check out the Mall near the hotel we are staying at and found this little shred shop that for some reason sells tennis rackets. And Marius's pro model jacket!

Marius is big in Turkey! Pleasing the fans with some very facebookable photos..

We met the turkish santa! That smile was not going anywhere and it was making this guys soo much money. Everytime we walked by him later in the day he yelled "HELLO CANADA!"

The Grad Bizarre was a heeaavy culture shock for the crew.

No marked prices. Everything in this place is about haggling. You ask how much, they ask "how much you think"?, then its a fast paced price argument until one side caves.

These fellas seemed like our best turkish friends until we found out they marked up the turkish delight we bought by 200%..

Rasman building the turkish fan base.

Wicked times in Istanbul. Off to the east to do what we came here to do! See you in 2 weeks crazy city.

Vancouver Bound--->

Here we Come...

The war is over, and we are on our way back Home! We are currently in Vienna, staying the night before we catch our flight in the morning. The trip has been incredible. Bosnia was littered with the reminance of war, lots of meat+cheese and cigarette drenched clothing. Slovenia had great food, great people and fantastic night life! Even though the majority of our time was spent in Sarejavo, both places have cheap food, cheap drinks and an oozing European feel.

We are all stoked to get back home and are convinced you will like the Bosnia section in the up and coming Alterna Movie!

See you around,
Tadej, Domon, Jesmond, JF, John and Byron

Olympic Spirit

We came across a war struck hotel that was built for the 1984 winter olympics here in Sarajevo. Doesn't look like an elite hotel anymore! We also stumbled upon the Olympic Ski Jump from the '84 games. Defs a much smaller venue than what we got going on in Van!

The rain has started and we have a full day of travel to get back to Maribor. If there is enough snow left over on our way back through Croatia, we will hit 2 rails that have already been scoped for us!

Keep your fingies crossed for some left-over snow!

a day in the backcountry

Been out in the Whistler backcountry shredding with Dave Short and Hockenstein. We've been on a superfun program - just drawing our lines on to the white untouched mountains and exploring new valleys and bowls.
Here is a little video Brian made on one of those days last week…

A Day Out in the Whistler Backcountry from brian hockenstein on Vimeo.