I was supposed to be on my way to Rodal, Norway for the first Freeride World Qualifier of the 2010-11 season. I hope those guys have a great time up there! I’ll make it to Norway another time.

My friend Sebastian Hanneman, whom Janina and I have been staying with in Germany had to head into Munich the other day. We decided to tag along for the ride and check out the city. That place is pretty sweet! There’s all sorts of amazing architecture, like most European cities and a year round outdoor market.

Exiting the train station to the city center of Munich

The first thing Janina and I did was check out the market of course. Great food was to be had everywhere!

I don’t remember what this fruit is called but it was amazing. I guess Janina used to eat it all the time growing up in Indonesia. I believe it’s from Thailand. It looked bizarre but tasted great! Munich was the last place I thought I would run into an exotic fruit like this.

Mmm Thailand has yummy fruits!

Later on we met up with the boys and headed to The Hofbrier House. I’ve heard Janina speak about this place for months now. Even though the boys are German they had never been and we found that Janina the Kiwi was our tour guide through Munich.

Look at the excitement on her face!

I swear beer drinking it’s Germany’s national sport. Everywhere we go there are beer gardens and massive drinking halls with massive beers!

Weight lifting in Germany...

This morning Seb and I dropped Janina off at the train station. She’s headed back to New Zealand! If all goes as planned I’ll be meeting up with her again in a few month’s. Safe travels Janina!

That area is so pretty this time of the year. It reminds me of New Zealand with the snow capped mountains and green grass down low.

My shoulder was still a bit sore the first day so I took some time off to rest. Janina came and joined me for a bit.

After Diedamskopf we all headed to Zillertal Austria to rest up for a few days. Janina and I then quickly headed to Asolo Italy to check out the Dal Bello factory. It was pretty interesting to see the whole process of how the boots are made. What I love about Dal Bellos is the fact that the boots are so interchangeable!

They took some photos of us as well. The green Krypton boots are the new ones we received!

Dal Bello was kind enough to set us up at the Hotel Asolo! The next morning we awoke and decided to check out Venice for a bit. That place was pretty cool. Definitely filled with tourists, but still a great spot to check out. All the architecture was so amazing and how the whole city was designed along the water with canals and water ways throughout the city. It was so cool to see a piece of history right before our eyes!

The next day we headed up the mountain to check out the venue. It took me a while to decide on a line to take. In the end I ended up taking the first line I saw. It was a great line choice. I had a great run going but hit my cliff a little too much to the left and landed on a rock I had intended on avoiding. Somehow I skied away and almost recovered, but about 30 ft down I ran into some bad snow before I had fully recovered which resulted in a fall. Oh well, better luck next time I guess! Here’s a look at the venue:

The night before the contest there was an opening celebration. All the athletes where called up on stage for the bib draw and prior there was an autograph signing.

This morning Willie Schneider and I skinned up to ASI to check out some areas. We woke up at 5am with an attempt to make it up to the summit before sunrise. It took us a little longer than expected, by 7:30 we started heading on our way up. We noticed that the snow was pretty wind buffed and not quite as soft as Willie was hoping.

We discovered on the way down that there were some good pockets of snow. It was a pretty nice early morning trip. After we headed over to Sugarbowl for the Silverbelt Bonzai skier cross.

Well it’s March 9th and I’m hanging out in the Unofficial house resting up for one of my final comps of the season. I started off in Chamonix with Tim Dutton, JT Holmes and some of the official unofficial guys. It was a good time but my comp did not go as well as I had hoped. I guess my head wasn’t really in it when I was over in Europe. I was skiing ok, but not good enough. So the results were the same, ok but not good enough.

After a fun but somewhat disappointing trip in Europe I was back to Squaw for the third stop of the tour. Well kind of, I was first on the wait list hoping to get in. They made me sweat for it. After a few no’s they finally decided to give me a chance! Well it was pretty much all or nothing from that point on. I knew I really had to prove myself if I was ever going to be able to compete on this tour again.

It was the morning of the comp and it had been once again moved to Silverado instead of the Tram Face due to poor avalanche conditions. I wasn’t in much of a rush to get up to the course. I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go I just wanted to see some of the guys runs first. Most of them where going into the area I wanted to. I was concerned about landing in their bomb holes so I decided to go over them, well, atleast try. My plan was to go from the top. I spoke to Jimbo my Electric TM and he said as long as I went straight from some of the pepper at the top I should be fine. Well after landing an ok size cliff I headed straight for that pepper and like Jimbo said let it run from there!

I landed and bounced again another 20 feet or so. When I landed on my feet again I was a bit surprised to still be on my feet. I guess I was just so determined to prove myself and land it that I did. It was in the same area that a lot of men had bounced and not been as successful as me. After run 1 I was in the lead for both the women and men!

Go here to check out my run!



Click here to view the embedded video.