Tuesday 26 November 2013

First few weeks back in the mountains!

It's been great being back in the mountains, and finally getting to shred!!

So far, it's just been glacier riding as the main ski resorts aren't open yet, but they're meant to open this weekend woohoo!! I've mainly been riding Hintertux as its pretty close to our house, but have also been over to Stubai a few times.
Keeping warm in all my new gear! Thanks Westbeach and Celtek!
My friend Chloe (Hardy) came out to visit last week for a bit of a pre season shred and see what Austria has to offer! We rode a few days up at Hintertux, with a mix of weather! And then went over to Stubai. The park there is pretty fun but again the weather was a bit iffy so we could only really hit the rails. It was lovely getting to ride with her again as we did a season together in Chile a few years ago :) She's one of my favourite people to ride with as were good at getting eachother to try things!



On an off day we went to the climbing wall down in Ashau. I've never climbed before, but Nathan used to do it a lot, so it was nice to have a taste to see what it was like! I really enjoyed it, it's fun when you fall a few times (but stay up as you have the rope) and then eventually make it past a hard bit. The hardest thing i found was gripping with my fingers on some of the holds, as i'm not used to that. But the actual climbing bit wasn;t too difficulty (i was only doing the easy ones!)

Nathan getting extreme!!
The novices :)


On Sunday I went over to Stubai again with a few friends for a competition. The 'Wie Schanzen' (we hills) tour. There are four stops all together around Austria. The weather (as always it seems on glaciers) was pretty bad, it was super windy, snowing hard and a white out!! It ended up just being a small rail jam as opposed to slopestyle. Everyone struggled to see and have speed to do tricks, but I managed to come away with third place so was happy :)


Girlie shred :)


Soooo, since then its snowed loads all the way down to town. Haven't really been up to Hintertux much as you can't see anything. We went to do a street rail on Sunday which was really fun! Although, speed wa sa big issue. The boys managed to hit it on their skis with two of us flinging it in, but I couldn't get the speed on my board. Next time!!

Joe setting up the down rail
The boys managed to get some nice shots, here's Nathan!


Sunday 10 November 2013

Back to the mountains!! :)




We're back!! Finally back to our nice little apartment in Stumm (near Mayrhofen). We drove out on Wednesday nice and early to drive through the day. It was raining sooo much in Germany, Nathan did really well doing all the driving!!! I was navigator and sandwich maker :) We made it 'home' by 9pm so wasn't too bad! We woke up to some cool cows jingling around in the field behind our house...MOOOOOOO!

Overview- 8/11/13
Thursday was set to be bluebird so we head straight up to Tux glacier for our first day of riding!! It was so nice to be back on real snow, the snow domes have been good to ride over summer but it was nice to cruise a bit and pick up some speed! 



The park set up is really good up there! We got there a bit late to hit the jumps as the light starts to go at about 12 behind the mountain at this time of year, so we just hit the rails. They're all really nice and you can get lots of hits. It's a much better set up than what we left last spring as they were still building everything for spring park at that time of year.
8M Down rail + Box + pyramid

We had two nice sunny days, then it was super snowy on Saturday.  I went up to hike with a friend Joe as its nice to try out some new things when the snows nice and soft! Even if you cant see that much! We went and hiked this little down rail for a bit, up at about 3000m! Hardcore altitude training! Nearly got landed on by Joe trying to get a cool shot!

So I'm all set now for another awesome season! I can't wait for everything to start opening, gonna head to a few more competitions this year as there are a lot in Austria. There's one in Stubai in a couple of weeks so we may all head over to that and check out their glacier setup. 


I'm also stoked to be on the Celtek UK team this year :) Keep my hands nice and toastie up at the glacier!! Check out all their cool and crazy gloves here!