VVVRRRR Tubing

In our last few weeks in the Zillertal Valley, we were hoping to ride Hintertux Glaciers sunny park everyday.....this was not the case! The park sits right on top of the glacier, which means it tends to hold the cloud. We've had a bit of a grey and miserable April...so most days the park sat in the middle of a nice bit fat grey cloud!! So we started to watch a new series to keep ourselves entertained; Game of Thrones... but in under a week we got hooked and managed to get up to date! 

So then we needed a new activity...Nathan drove up to Hochfugen one day, which is one of the resorts near us that has now closed, to see if he could find any snow to play on. He managed to find an awesome vvrrrrr tube (a corrigated tube) which we built into a jib and sessioned almost everyday for a week!! At first it was only a few of us, but one day pretty much all the left over seasonaires came and we had about 15 of us! The shaping got better everyday, when Si Cudlip came along he made it his masterpeice, and kept closing it for 're-shapes'...it was turning into a real park!! haha

Rowan's cork onto the tube!

 I think everybody learnt some new tricks, and as it was a nice mellow tube, tried things they hadn't done before. Rowan even went for a switch backslide cork 270 off the heels!! Which didn't turn out so well....once he removed the cork though, he nailed it! :) It all turned out to be a lot of fun! Now...back to Game of Thrones...

Back Lip / Front Lip

Hintertux Glacier

So, spring is here and after some really slushy last days up at the Penken Park, the park up on Hintertux glacier is finally open :) I've been looking forward to riding up here, as i've heard the jumps are really good, and we got here a bit late at the start of the season to catch the park. The shapers from Kaltenbach park are working up here, and they did a great job down in Kaltenbach, so I was excited to come ride the jumps...in winter snow and not slush! (The park is up at 3250m ish). 

I've finished work now, which is great as I kept missing all the sunny days and having cloud on my days off! But now we have another 2 weeks to ride here before heading over to Kaurnetal for the Board Test (Spring Break). The kickers are really nice, you can get a lot of air time on the second medium jump, which takes a bit of getting used to, but is also nice as you don't have to worry about knuckling :) We keep meaning to get more filming/photos done but there doesn't seem to be that many sunny days (even though it's spring)! And when we do get some sun, we just want to hot lap! But here's one from yesterday of me doing a Front 360 Indie :) (Unfortunately it came out a bit blurry as someone walked in front of the camera just as I dropped! Oops.)

There are also lots of nice single barrel down rails of all variations to ride, but they have a lot more jib features that'll hopefully be ready soon! Some are currently sitting at the bottom of the hill waiting to be heli'd/driven ? up to the park! But they look sick! And there seems to be some plastic tubes (donkey's and thin / thick tubes) which should be good for learning some new tricks on :)

Morzine and the PBRJ European Finals

So, after a few days in Tignes, it was straight over to Morzine for the Peanut Butter Rail Jam European Finals! I have done this competition for the last few years, and the finals are always a great day, and it's awesome to see the (very high) level of riding across Europe. Once again, for the third time this week, it was dumping with snow on the day of competition! This didn't matter so much for me, as I was keeping warm hiking and riding, but it meant Nathan was standing in the snow watching for the third time in 5 days! Luckily, Volcom are really awesome at putting on these events, and provided lots of food, drinks and even a BBQ!

Here's the Setup: (We went back on a nice day to get photos, the camera had already taken a bit of a beating in the snow this week! So no pictures of me riding unfortunately).

Practice went well, I made it through the rails, although it was a bit slow as it was quite a flat run in. In qualifiers I didn't ride quite as well as I had hoped. It is a hard competition, not only because of the level of riding, but also the format. You get a 15 minute heat, where you need to hit all three rails. Your best trick on each rail is added together to give your score. It was quite a long, hard hike as the run in was flat they had built a snow mound to drop in off. So, you need to really land your tricks first, if not second time as you don't get many hits.

I got OK tricks on the Down Flat Down and Down Rail, and then tried to hit the double rail to down rail....this didn't go so well. I was a bit scared, as it was a metre gap onto the double rail, and then a gap to the down rail, but I knew i'd regret not giving it a go, and only one other girl had hit it, so thought I'd go for it. I managed to slip out of my boardslide and got tangled between the double rail, hitting my shins pretty hard. I had to weave my way out of the rails, shake it off and hike up to get a hit on the lower down rail (missing the double rail this time). But now I am left with a numb shin..I guess that's better than pain!

So, I didn't get into the Super Finals on the day, but oh well, I tried! It was fun anyway, and nice to get to ride with Miss Katie Blundell a bit more too (she had qualified in the Laax qualis). We stayed in the freezing cold to watch the Finals and Prize Giving. There were some real bangers! The level of riding in Europe is very high, the Finnish ruled on the day. I think they podiumed in every category!

Here's a link to Volcom's video, to see what went down on the day! https://vimeo.com/63245388

With all the comps done, we stayed on in Morzine for the rest of the week catching up with friends. Both myself and Nathan have done seasons there, so it feels like home! My sister was also out for the week, so I got to spend some time with her too!! Now were back in Austria, Kaltenbach and Mayrhofen are closing now, but we have a month to ride Hintertux glacier, and the park up there should be rad! I'll get some pictures/footage of that!

The Brits

Last week we got some time off work and took a trip over to France, firstly to Tignes for the Brits, and then over to Morzine for the PBRJ. It was a LONG drive over to Tignes, we got a ride over with Charlie Rowland, but unfortunately took the wrong route and ended up driving up a wiggly Italian mountain road that eventually turned into a piste...the sat nav didn't warn us it was a summer road! 12 hours later we got to Tignes at about 2am!

Tuesday morning was the first event I was entering, the Bangers & Cash Rail Jam. In true Sabrina style, even though I got up in plenty of time, I still managed to go the wrong way and get there late and the first round had already started! There was 15 minutes left, but luckily I got my safety tricks down first time and got myself through to the finals! :) 

An hour or so later, the finals started. It had started snowing even more by this point, which made it a bit hard to see, but that didn't matter too much as it was a Rail Jam. The setup was really fun, there was a short channel gap box into a down rail/box. There was about 5-10m between the two features which was just enough time to get stable and ready to hit the second feature. This was really fun, as I havn't hit many features like this, so it was a nice challenge. I was really happy as I got some nice combos, like switch tail slide on the box, to front blunt on the down rail. And also some switch ups on the first to switch back blunt on the down rail. I've been working on my switch tricks a lot this past year, so it was a good time to mix it up.

There was also a gap to wall ride feature to hit, so once we worked out the speed for that, or should I say once Katie (Blundell) worked out the speed, I also started hitting that :) I got a nice stalefish to wallride on my second hit which I was pleased with.  I ended up in 3rd place, winning 50 euros, some Skull Candy headphones and a Penny skateboard :)

After a super snowy day, I was ready to have a rest before slopestyle on Thursday. Nathan was planning on doing slopestyle (skiing) on wednesday, and it turned out to be absolutely bluebird!! Unfortunately he was too late to enter on Wednesday morning, but managed to get into a French Slopestyle on the X-games course instead, which he was equally stoked on and rode really well, spinning both ways on the BIG X-games jumps! Chloe (Hardy) did manage to enter the ski slopestyle in time, and came out 3rd overall!! Well done Chloe!!

Thursday was slopestyle, and it decided to dump with snow again! woopeee!! We got up to the course and couldn't see a thing! I even fell down the side of  a mound just riding slowly through the course! In the end they decided to just do the last kicker and the two rails after, which was the best we could do in the conditions. I was happy in practice as I did some front 3's on the largest jump, which I usually wouldn't want to do in such snowy flat light conditions. I don't think anyone would have attempted to ride park that day if it wasn't for the comp! Unfortunately I fell in my qualifying run so didn't get into the finals. But I was still pleased, as last year my goal was to spin on the big jumps, rather than straight airing them and spinning on the mediums. :)

Charlie Rowland rode really well in the men's finals, stomping 2 really clean runs! Cork 7 japan, to blind switch up through the gap box, to front 1 on, cab 3 off the donkey dick!! Unfortunately he just missed out on the podium, but we were all super stoked for him landed such a good run in such harsh conditions. Well done Charlie. I was really impressed with how well everyone rode in so much snow, all the girls were spinning the big jump in finals, and Katie ended up in 1st place! :)

So then, it was off to Morzine for the Volcom Peanut Butter Rail Jam European finals!!! 

Here's a link to the Westbeach Blog, and a write up of the event.