A couple weeks back I saw Travis Rice at European X Games who told me all about Nick Perata and Mark Sullivan organizing the King of the Hill again after 10 years off. He told me I should show up. A couple days later I contacted Perata and a week later, I was arriving in Valdez in an RV to shred those amazing mountains!

I had heard about that event quite a bit, especially since Axel Pauporte had won the last sword. And I have to admit I was a bit anxious on what to expect as far as terrain goes. I had never participated  in a freeride event before and the mountains in Valdez are knowing for never ending very steep slopes. But really the event was just a very good excuse for me to go shred those amazing mountains.

David and I landed in Anchorage and stocked our RV with tons of organic food. We got to Valdez 7 hours later in the evening.  And of course we started our trip with getting stuck on the parking lot straight away! And that’s were you see who your friends are – the ones that help out and push! Haha! That was such a classic move! Luckily we got saved by generous locals and Eric Themel pushing the RV with the help of a 4 wheel drive!

The weather is unpredictable in Alaska and for most of it I was expecting long down days. But the next morning I open my eyes to discover bright bluebird! Time to screw some bindings on my board and I was standing on top of that mountain wondering how the snow was going to feel like. I had a blast on my second run, where I took Travis’line with a bs 360 on a fun hit. The atmosphere of the event was super cool! After shredding our lines everyone was staying all together at the bottom checking out everyone else’s run and cheering! The 3rd run was on the golly to death in sun baked and windpacked crap snow. The kind of run which makes you appreciate good ones. I heard a lot of noise on Travis and Scotty Lago’s runs. But they were dropping in before and I couldn’t see their lines. But looking at their lines, they definitely killed it. The stand out line I have seen that day was Mike Basich dropping that impressive double cliff.

We had a great party after the sword giving… Of course Travis was the new king and I was pretty stoked to hear I finished second… Shaun Farmer lost tied 6th place arm wrestling against Mark Landvik but took revenge freestyle rapping later on that night! The dance party was awesome and I can tell you that Mike Basich’s got moves!

Luckily we had a couple bad weather days to chill before the sun came out again for 4 days in a row heliboarding! We were staying in our RV on the pass with lots of other fun shredders. That was the whole concept of Tailgate Alaska! A big camping party up in the mountains and it was great! We shared heli time with Martin Cernik and his crew which was pretty sweet. They were 5 big dudes sharing an RV, and it was nice to realize that ours didn’t smell bad at all compared to theirs! Haha! The mountains are sik in Valdez and the people are really cool! Can’t wait to be back next year!

www.tailgatealaska.com

www.annefloremarxer.com

February went by so quickly this year again… On my way to ispo, I stopped in Arlberg to shred with Rudi Kröll for a day. It had just snowed but the conditions were quite sketchy and we decided not to go too far out of the slopes. We spent the day doing fun lines and pow slash. Pretty fun mellow day until my car broke down on the parking lot in Zurs.

Then Munich for ispo super busy between meetings, long time no see people, and the parties!! Thanks to DJ Loli for the insane beat! After 3 days of madness I was stoked to make my way back into the mountains. I joined the Aesthetikers in Zillertal to film with Mone Monsberger, Beckna, Chris and Rudi Kröll, Steve Gruber and the whole crew.

I arrived with the cold temperatures 10 days of -15!! Brrr… too cold for my taste! The advantage is that the snow stays good when it’s cold but then again, building kickers with sugar isn’t so easy!

The first day we got to shred sick pow runs in the trees, snow was great in the forest but the wind had blown too strong higher up and the amount of snow was too small anywhere lower. The next few days we discovered a small zone with landings everywhere. And we went there again everyday to build another kicker. Even though a good part of them didn’t work out so good because the snow was too soft and sugary. We got a few sketchy hits as soon as we pushed a bit too hard on our edges.

This kind of protected zone don’t come for free. We had a good 40 minutes hike out waist deep before reaching the ridge and dropping back into the slopes, luckily it was often at the end of afternoon when the light transforms the landscape. And the best part of the day was yet to come! The best in shredding in Austria is all about the Apres Ski: where everyone dances and drinks on the bar with their ski boots!

Another day we found a pretty fun step down, but by the time we needed to build it, the wind had picked up strong enough to be quite dangerous. No one really wanted to try it out with the risk to end up thrown sideways by the wind. We Roshambowed for it and of course I lost. Luckily it went all good and the wind stopped soon after that. The snow pack was again not super safe. I touched the bottom several times.

The wind had transformed quite a few areas on the mountain and it became more and more difficult to find good snow, so we went back to our kickerland area. Where we had found another spot to build. But then again the snow was super sugary, it took us a whole day to shape it and still the kicker was way too soft to hit it. We needed to let it sit for a night. A night which turned into 3 days because of weather troubles. Then we hit it, but we couldn’t get the right speed for it. The list of unsuccessful kickers keeps on growing this winter. Not so easy to deal with mentally. I’m really looking forward to hitting a fun jump one of these days. Luckily the Aesthetiker crew are super fun to shred and hang with! The weather forecast is predicting snow for this week… fingers crossed!

ww.annefloremarxer.com

www.aesthetiker.com

www.lifewithoutandy.com

www.loliland.tv

AFM, Jenna, Chollo

Welcome to the magic of Noboarding! The best sensation ever!

Trust me it’s 100 times better then snowboarding! I’m so hooked! It feels like surfing on pow. You take full control of your body’s impact on your board through your toes and your heels. It’s such a great adrenaline rush, all the way, all the time!

The GT memorial is the one event I wouldn’t miss for the world. It’s a No board race organized in the dead end of the Kootenays to commemorate Greg Todds who died in an avalanche 5 years ago. He, Cholo and their crew had decided to get rid of bindings in deep pow and developed that pad which allows you to surf and skate on powder.

Vanessa and I started the adventure with a bit of trouble because of bad rental car service in Castlegar, where everything closes at 4.30 PM apparently, we got stuck there for the night hoping to get a car early enough to drive all the way to the race in time. The rental car thing didn’t get any better when we realized they didn’t have any 4 wheel drive or any proper mountain car at all. We over packed the small car they gave us and then realized the car had summer tires. that was super sketchy knowing we ‘d have to drive on quite small snowy slippery mountain roads. But it was that or hanging out in that ugly town doing nothing for the whole weekend.. so we jumped in the car and somehow just made it in time.

GT Memorial

Our luck came back as soon as we arrived in Noboard land for the 5^th annual GT memorial. We showed up at the same time then Gigi and Shandi Campos, who took us straight to the sledding spot. Of course we didn’t have any sled but there again we got instantly picked up and doubled up all the way to the race field. It was soo cool to show up and find Romain, Jussi, Benjie, Shin, Rube, Mikey, etc. and of course the local legends Scott Penner, Cholo Burns and Jenna Lowe. I met Scott years back and he got me in love with Noboarding, and looking at what he can do without bindings, he is my hero!

I had missed the women’s race but I got a run with the last guy’s heat. And the place was tracked already! It was my first run in 2 years and still I had so much fun riding down that field of pillows and trees! A good part of the fun is knowing you are definitely gonna crash at some point! Of course guys like Gigi and Terje killed it but the locals rule at that game, we are in their backyard and it’s Young Dave who won the race. I had never seen a contest winner holding on so much to his cup, he probably spooned with it after partying with it all night! We all went down and an auction was organized to raize money for Greg’s kids. I couldn’t believe how much stuff was sold. And then we danced all night on DJ Solomon’s tunes! The weekend was a blast, there was such a great vibe!

Gigi killing it

We stayed some extra days with Cholo and Jenna to shoot a couple of things. We went up and spent the first day doing no board runs in heavy but super fun no roping snow. It was a bit sketchy with snow conditions and what can happen when the conditions are not right happened. At the bottom of a run, Cholo set a small avalanche off. It wasn’t big nor deep. And what appeared to be just a small slide, was enough to fully burry him. Luckily this happened right before our eyes. So we all ran and got him out in no time at all and he was fine. That was a serious wake up call.

A couple of days later we went back up and the conditions were even more dangerous.

We set 2 avalanches off and decided go home. That day I had that weird feeling. We were not welcome in the mountains and I was relieved only when we got back to the cars. Happy and lucky to be safe and alive. The highway was closed because of avalanche danger and we had to drive all around the mountains on small roads. It took us 15 hours to get to Vancouver.

Some days the mountain is a fun playground, and some others it’s a giant monster ready to eat you up. It’s crucial to listen to your surroundings and hold back when the conditions are not right. The few days we spent with Cholo and Jenna were amazing, I won’t forget their extra ordinary hospitality. Long life to Noboarding! My favorite thing ever! Be safe.

www.noboard.ca

www.vanessandrieux.com

www.annefloremarxer.com

Jenna and Cholo noboarding fun

The Kootenays are definitely my favorite mountains to shred ever! There is something about that place, the people, the terrain, the vibe. Everytime I get there, I get pow and sun and it’s always a blast! And how could I get a better start of the year then a full week in Retallack organized by Billabong and Oakley with Marie-France Roy, Grete Eliassen and Jenny Jones?

AFM and MFR

Retallack is a cat skiing operation in interior BC, their terrain is great, steep runs in the trees, pillows and cliffs everywhere in amazing pow! Cat riding is the best way to hit fresh pow on each run and eat delicious gourmet food! I had been to the surrounding mountains before but not to that one yet. I was a bit worried as far as the amount of snow we would find, as the side road banks looked very poor, but the second we made the turn to Retallack all became white and powdery!

Carl the Gnarl

As we arrived it snowed the first couple days so we found some sweet pillows in the trees and a dope log on the second day. We were quite a big crew but we all found a different cool spot to shred and shoot along the cat track which made it easier on the flash carrying. Our cat driver was Carl the Gnarl, and that day he lit up a fire for us. Pretty unusual but so nice to hang by the fire after shooting in big pow..

Carl is pretty awesome! He is the master of stokeness, always cheering for us… I’d hear his encouragement from the top of a cliff on the other side of the valley. He would fuel us with schnaps on the last run of the day, pretty fun to ride down the cat track all the way to the lodge hitting the sides and airing every time you get a chance to. A bit tipsy too which makes it especially fun!

Goats

This was a girls trip and times are fun when you hang out with those girls! Major singing and dancing sessions on the lift up in the cat, fun times and laughs but also goat imitating sessions. Yep, this is how we do it!

The weather turned to blue sky for the next couple days, and we hit more pillows, more cliffs and more pow! In the evenings Carl would read us the poem he wrote about each day! And they were funnier every time! Of course he wasn’t shy of telling everyone about our stupidness on the mountain nor about my female standing pee device. Yes these things a great! Backing it 100%!

Grete and MFR

Seriously we had so much on that trip! Jenny got the whole lodge to play charades, after dinner, and that’s besides playing normal stuff like ping pong or pool! We for sure had a great time, and once again we had great conditions!

I love you girls! Thanks for the great times! Thanks to Oakley and Billabong for taking us there! And thanks to Retallack for giving us such a great time!

www.retallack.com

Photo: Vanessa Andrieux

Photo: Vanssa Andrieux

Hello everyone and Happy New Year 2010!

I m happy to announce that I ride for Neff ! Stoked on my new headwear sponsor… Check out the website neffheadwear.com
thanks to all my sponsors, Billabong, Oakley, Swatch, Les Ettes, and Neff !

I wish you all sweet powder days!

ipetitions.com/petition/womenairandstyle

So I ended up running around with my piece of paper and it was great to see all the positive feedback from the public and the industry… Thanks to all of those who signed it!

This weekend I went to Avoriaz for the Rock on Snow Tour. It was fun to ride around even though the snow conditions are very poor in France at the moment, a lot of ski lifts are closed and none of the tree runs are ridable.
When I went back to my car the road was super icy, there had been an accident and I got stuck on the road for half an hour, so I decided to turn around and wait in a cafe… When I tried to turn around my car started slipping in all directions. A couple guys had to come and push my car into a parking spot. So I decided to leave it there for the night and go back up to the resort.

And that was such a good decision, not only I avoided ending up in a gutter or crashing into another car but also when I got back up I found my good friends PP and L’Arrogs from the Psykopit crew. Sylvain Bourbousson, Mathieu Crepel, Nico Droz, Mamar, Alfie, etc. It was really fun to get to hang with those guys like in the good all times! Hope I’ll get to see them again soon!

That’s always the coolest thing to go to events at the beginning of the winter, you get to meet all the good friends you ahven’t seen for a while and it’s always great fun to get to shred some slopes together!

The temperatures have dropped and I hope it will translate into snow by the end of this week. I’ll keep you posted very soon!

We left New Zealand in our snowboard gear and landed in Fiji in our bikinis!

Vanessa and I had decided to stop over on our way to California and seriously that was the idea of the century!

My Billabong team manager Andrew had the same idea and was staying in Tavarua, and somehow we got lucky enough to be able to join him there for a few days. It was Paradise!! The Island is so pretty, everyone is so nice and the surf was soo good!

We went straight to Cloudbreak (super sick lefthander) as we arrived, I was pretty scared as I m not a master in terms of duck diving yet and the reef is pretty mean there. The first thing that happened was a pro surfer who had just smashed his head into the reef and had blood all over his face with a broken nose. No big deal, we all got back into the water after that. Andrew was killing it! I even got to catch a wave wow! That one wave made my whole day, i was so stoked on it that i didn’t even try to catch another one!

Then the swell got way too big and i ended up in the water going like “how did i end up out here? But that wave was so perfect, it was just magical for me to be sitting on my board looking at it.. well in between the waves where i was paddling out for my life! the swell got even bigger the next day and as all the big guys all went to Cloudbreak i decided to go on that right on the other side of the island, and that was the session of my life! We were only 4 on it, and we all had a blast!

Then the wind picked up and luckily our new friend Tom took us fishing. we went out twice during the day.. fishing is super fun it’s pretty much hanging out in a boat and laughing. I like the concept! we caught some small fish and a shark!! yeah no big deal.. happens all the time!! what!?! a shark! we obviouslty released it (never eat what can eat you)

We also walked around the island, long boarded, stand up paddled, danced in the jacuzzi and on the swimming pool bar, played ping pong, pool and laughed 24/7. I’m in love with Tavarua and i can’t wait until i’ll be back there! you guys should definitely check this place out! It’s so good!!

Thousands of thanks to Tavarua Island for being such an amazing place in the world! Check out their website and book here: www.tavarua.com

Thanks to Thomas Servais for all the fun we had fishing and not fishing with him, check out his amazing photography on his website: www.tomservais.com. Thanks to Vanessa for being such a fun travel mate and for all the photos: www.vanessandrieux.com

www.annefloremarxer.com

I’ve been traveling heavily the last couple months and have a couple blogs to share with you. I’ll begin with the Billabong Shoot in New Zealand we just had.

Going to cold winter in the middle of the summer always feels funny. I always forget half of my gear, and get half sick. This time we all got sick at some point. Luckily the Fifa Xbox game kept all of us happy and alive through the down days. The house was quite full and I was staying in an RV through the whole trip. And most of you already know it is my favorite!
I really enjoyed hanging out with all my team mates, Sylvain, Clint, Jenny, Wolle, Jamie etc. Them and Vanessa, Eric, Woody, Andrew, Danielle, Nick and David.

I arrived right on a sunny day with powder. We went up to Treble Cone and slashed some pow, the view is beautiful from up there, overlooking lake Wanaka. The next day was still sunny and we took the opportunity to go heli boarding.
After that the weather got bad and we shot all the catalog stuff we needed. We had many shots to get with all next year’s gear and it didn’t leave much time for adventure. But we all had a good time. plus I got to add another 10 soups to my pumpkin soup list. YUM!
All together we stayed 2 weeks and, as we had to fly over the pacific ocean, on the way back Vanessa and I decided to stop over in Fiji and I’ll tell you all about it in my next blog.

Thanks to Vanessa Andrieux for the photos and to Billabong for the fun trip!

On Sport Trip I’ll take you with me on several trips, each in a different location in order to try another sport. Morocco was my first destination, and our first stop was in the Tamuda Bay on the coast of the mediterranean sea in the north part of Morocco. It was my first time scuba diving and it was great! We spent the day on the boat in a charming creek, I even saw and touched an octopus! The weather was beautiful and Boubker, my scuba instructor, took really good care of me. It was funny to see my two cameramen setting up their camera infrastructure on a very small and slippery rock in the middle of the birds and water!

From there we traveled to Rabat, which is the capital of Morocco and went horse riding in the Royal Equestrian Club of Dar El Salam. I hadn’t ridden a horse for a while and was stoked to ride through the forest and do a couple of mini jumps on my horse! My horse teacher, Ali, was such a cool guy and all his mini women students were adorable!

We spent the next day golfing right next door, at the Royal Golf Club which is absolutely stunning, it’s also the biggest in Morocco. It was really hot that day but I was more than happy to get to work on my golf skills. Even though I had a hard time to concentrate in that heat! That night we were walking in Rabat, filming some lifestyle when I injured my leg stepping on a piece of metal. But I was lucky and could to walk home after some stitches in my leg. The temperature went up to 45 celsius the next day and I was lucky to rest that day… Unfortunately I won’t be able to get into the water for the following sport trips and we had to leave the next day.

Hosting this TV show was pretty scary at first, and luckily my cameramen Guillaume and Alexis where super cool and really helped me going through this! I was really sad not to spend an other week with those guys, but hopefully I’ll get to work with them soon again.

Thanks to Sebastien Laugier, Eurosport and the Tourism office of Morocco for giving me this opportunity, and thanks to Amine, Bradley, Atman, Guillaume and Alexis for making this trip so much fun!

visitmorocco.com
onmt.org.ma
terre-azur.com
royalgolfdaressalam.com
nousautres.net/guillaume

We just had a fantastic weekend in Seignosse, France at the Billabong Girls Days. 150 girls came to share the week end surfing and skateboarding. Kealla Kennelly, Lea Brassy and I came to share our experiences with these girls and I have to say it was much more a big party week end on the beach then anything else!

We first started with surfing. I shared waves with the Spanish crew, those girls had created the female surf association of Madrid and had driven all the way for this event. We spent around two hours in the water in the rain, but somehow it was just really fun and no one cared about the weather. After that we had a yoga class on the beach followed by half an hour of massage. Then Keala, Lea and I answered to all the questions the girls had for us, about the sport, some tips, the personal side, the travels, the product development, the fun etc.. It was pretty cool to get to share some of my adventures with these girls, who were so thirsty for the board sports fun!

The weather got better and the afternoon went on with an african dance class which got us all sweating big time, then the girls gave us a fashion show wearing the new billabong line.. We all clapt to the songs of Vaïtiare who was playing acoustic guitare in the sunset light.
Keala started mixing for us and the whole dancing mood translated into a full on dance battle between the spanish girls and the young local crew! we kept dancing on the beach until dark and I’m pretty sure we covered all the dance moves from Elvis to Tecktonik including Micheal Jackson, Abba and the duck dance!

I was exhausted after a full day jumping around surfing and partying. the next day went along with more surfing, skateboarding a graffiti workshop and some environmental tips from the Surfrider Foundation. The waves were actually pretty good that day and we got some fun surfing. Keala was still around the next day, and we got lucky enough to get in the water the one hour no wind of the day. I was so stoked, it was my last day on the coast and the waves were super good, plus I had Keala cheering for me as I was paddling into the waves! It gave me that extra stoked motivation and I was pretty much blown away by watching her surf! YEEHEE! Now I can leave the beach with a great feeling and memory from the Billabong Girl’s weekend and that sweet last surf session.

Thanks to all the girls who came surfing with us, thanks to Billabong for organizing this really fun weekend and to Keala for the surf tips!

billabonggirlsdays.com
myspace.com/vaitiaremusic
annefloremarxer.com