The height of summer was no excuse for snowboarders to be lazy. The pipes were still full to bursting with fresh snow porn, and we were like the older kid at school who knew by which railtracks the goods were to be found…

AUGUST

Though it’s sweltering in the Northern Hemi, down under it’s deep winter and shit’s going down. At Mt Buller they’re sick and tired of your common-or-garden slopestyle, jib or big air contests and knock together a sheep shed and send it off that bad boy for the Dew Hut Jam. We show off our finest investigative journalism skills by leaking the Transform Gloves range, Northern Germans escape the heat of summer by taking to the big fridge in Bispingen en mass, and with everyone still talking about his triple cork, we decide to talk to Torstein Horgmo himself to see what was in his head when he took on that jaw-dropper. It’s also August that the jock-ish sounding Red Bull Snowboard Performance Camp hits NZ. After a few days of airbag hucking, the kids bring it to the proper booters and put down a succession of double cork firecrackers. That’s what it takes to be a pro these days…

Following on from our session chronicling the funtimes the Forum team had in Les Deux Alpes last month, we sit down and chew the fat with Andreas Wiig and Pat Moore to see what’s up in their world, err, field. Erm. Yes. Kids go wild at the Australian Rookie Fest, it’s still pissing down with teasers as I’m With Stupid, In Color, Hooked and the almighty Euro Gap 3 stand out, whereas in the Yankeedoodle glaciers Mt Hood seems the place to be with several cuts coming out that hunk o’ ice, including a Game of Shred with LNP vs Johnny Lazz, but summing up the vibe and the riding level best is perhaps this bad boy from Windells …

Swinging our lens back down under, the NZ Open wraps up and though the slopestyle’s foggy as hell Christian Haller and Jamie Anderson remember their yellow lenses to take top spots. It’s better conditions for the pipe finals, though, where Iouri Podladtchikov and Kelly Clark take the honours, and the TTR takes the opportunity to introduce the innovative Snowboard Live Scoring system. And here’s how it works in practice…

And the TTR’s Chris Morris hands back to Onboard’s Alan Partridge as we don our finest sports-casual blazer to get the chat from Cheryl Maas, do our finest cross-platforming by bringing you videos of our Riders of the 00s that backs up our mag article that’s out at the same time, and cause a ripple of controversy with our personal pick of the Top 5 Teasers thus far. Stylewars looks set to rock out in Oz again until the weather kicks it in the balls so they have to settle for a rail jam, the Advita crew’s significant jib skills are on show in 2 Alpes, and being that we’ve once been drunkenly serenaded by him in Laax, we’re a little gay for I-Pod and so posting some stalker’s footage of him throwing down and getting wasted in the bar is right up our street…

See, even at the hight of summer this snowboard dog’s a bitch on heat, rubbing herself ungraciously up against all four corners of the earth. Imagine what happens in September…