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TEXT: TOM COPSEY & DANNY BURROWS

Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

Iceland is a most unlikely incubator of snowboarding talent. This spiked protuberance of igneous rock mushrooming above the Mid-Atlantic ridge is famous for many things – it’s unique geological combination of glaciers and volcanism that famously inspired Jules Verne; spectacular scenery; the Cod Wars; and the eruption of one of its unpronounceable volcanoes that subsequently brought the aviation industry to its knees, to name a few – but the fact that it’s slap bang in the middle of the ocean, 200 miles from the nearest landmass (and that’s Greenland), and home to a mere  318,000 inhabitants means despite mountains, glaciers, regular snowfall and a few modest ski resorts, snowboarders from Iceland flew well under the radar. Until recently.

Then came Nikita, the Iceland Park Project and now the Helgason brothers and compatriot Gulli Gudmundsson. When we received shots of these three getting radical back home, we decided it was time we took a closer lookat Iceland, its scene and how a few rapscallions from the land of fire & ice came to hold it down in the ultracompetitive global shred scene.

THE INCUBATOR

“I think the first people that brought snowboarding to Iceland picked it up from what they saw abroad. It was 2 or 3 local guys around 1985-86,” says Asgeir ‘Geiri’ Hoskuldsson, marketing manager of Icelandic brand Nikita and a geyser of knowledge when it comes to his country’s shred heritage. But it wasn’t until Rúnar Ómarsson (who would later co-found Geiri’s current employer) started importing snowboard equipment with a buddy in 1989 that more than folks became tuned in to the shred. He then went on to open the fi rst snowboard shop, Missing Link, in 1992. When the store opened Icelandic snowboarders could be counted in the low hundreds, but Missing Link went on to organise sessions, contests and trips to foster the newborn shred community, and between 1992 and 98 there was a real buzz around snowboarding. “It was a tight family in the beginning, everybody knew everybody,” Geiri recalls, but quickly it exploded. “I reckon there were around 5000-6000 people snowboarding (or that owned a snowboard) by 98,” he adds. No small fry, but when you consider there’s not much more than 300,000 people on the whole island it’s a huge chunk of the population sliding sideways.

Eiki Helgason, Frontside Bluntslide to Hardway 270 Out, Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

As happened in so many regions where snowboarding began to mushroom it inevitably encountered a resistance from the traditional snowusing community so it was left to the riders themselves to blaze their own trails: “Snowboarders in Iceland have always had to be creative as 99%
of the stuff that has been done is done by the snowboarders themselves,” states Geiri. “The Helgasons did not grow up riding perfect parks. They had to build their own rails, drag them to a spot and then session them.” Today, things have improved somewhat with the Northern resort of Hlidarfjall – a short drive from the Helgasons’ home town of Akureyri – putting effort in to set up hits, but there’s still nothing like your average European park for local riders. Not anymore, at least.

Halldor Helgason, Frontside Boardslide, Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

IPP

In 2000, Bjarni Valdimarsson, Rob Wyke and Graham MacVoy were shaping for the SPC Camps on the Hintertux glacier. They’d been mulling over the idea of setting up their own summer camp in central Europe, but with most of the glaciers already taken they started looking further afi eld. “Bjarni, being Icelandic, knew of this glacier (in Iceland). He had some distant family connection with it or something,” recalls Graham. After a scouting mission, the prospect of stunning backdrops, midnight sun and nearby surf spots had the three amigos convinced it could work. The Iceland Park Project was born. For the next fi ve summers the camp was operated on the Snæfellsjökull glacier (the setting for Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth) offering the possibility to ride a park with panororamics of the Atlantic.

Gulli Gudmundsson, Pole Jam Stalefish to Wall, Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

With a couple of kickers, a hip, rails and a wallride it was no mega park but the unique set-up attracted mag crews and riders from the UK, US and Europe. You might have thought that such international exposure would have injected drive into the development of the Icelandic shred facilities, encouraging resorts to see the potential of such freestyle setups, but according to Geiri this wasn’t the case. “IPP was the best summer, snowboarding, drinking, meeting awesome people project ever! It gave Iceland a lot of exposure and helped the Helgasons and Gulli establish themselves. But to be honest not that many Icelanders took part in it. The 50 to 100 hardcore snowboarders turned out for it (not all at once), but most of the people running the resorts and general public still had no clue what IPP was or is. Rob, Graham and Bjarni deserve a lot of praise for making it happen. So IPP gave Iceland a lot of exposure in the snowboard media but the fi ght still goes on to improve facilities for snowboarding in Iceland.”

Halldor Helgason, The Miller bird, Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

As Geiri hints, although it may not have impacted the wider Icelandic conscience one of the upshots was that the übercore kids turned up and were exposed to not only pro riders, but the shooters and scribblers who hold sway in the industry. Amongst these locals where ‘Team Devine’ from Akureyri, which included a fl edgling Eiki, Halldor and Gulli. “Eiki had a broken leg so he wasn’t there but Gulli and Halldor were riding sick (they were only 11 and 14),” remembers a stoked Graham, “but they kept saying we should see Eiki ride. They hadn’t really done big kickers by then but they slayed the rails. I’ve got a great clip of Halldor trying a double backfl ip on a tiny punter kicker when he was 12…”

THE MALUNG FACTOR

Team Devine had grown up riding street rails, pissed off and uninspired by the lack of commitment by their local resorts towards snowboarding. They were self made riders who were “mad stoked” on JP Walker, in particular his part in The Resistance. In fact they were so mad for JP that all their hotmail address started with ‘jpwalker’. They were already ripping when the IPP came to town but the camp exposed them to kickers as well as international pros and media and for two seasons they all worked as shapers on the camp.

The real turning point in their development, though, came not in Iceland but Sweden – or at the Malung Snowboard School specifi cally. The story goes that three older Icelandics returned from the school, ripping and extolling the delights of this centre of snowboard higher learning. “There was no doubt that that was the school we had to go to” Eiki Helgason told us.

Eiki was the first of the two Helgasons to wing their way to Sweden in the company of fellow rippers Gulli Gudmundsson and Viktor ‘Helgi’ Hjartarson and when Eiki came home at the end of term with a bag full of new tricks Halldor’s mind was made up to follow in his brothers footsteps.

Malung is divided into two schools, Locals and Riks, with the former taking on the majority of foreign students. According to the Helgasons the regime at Locals was far more lax, which suited the brothers and their gang. They rode the school’s perfect park nonstop, or as Eiki put it they “were the fi rst ones up and the last ones down,” pushing their riding to new levels. These dudes who had been riding homemade stuff and street rails now had a real park in which to hone their skills. They also took full advantage of the opportunity to learn Swedish, as well as the business of  snowboarding beyond the hill.

Gulli Gudmundsson, Front 180 to 50-50 Swtich Back 3 Out, Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

THE NEXT ERUPTION

Geiri remembers getting to know Team Devine back in 2001 after attempting to become some sort of business grad but failing. He once asked Eiki on the hill what he wanted to become, with Eiki shooting back that he wanted to be pro. Leaving Malung he and his crew were well on their way; or in the words of Geiri “they all fell into a pot of magic elf potion at the same time” and came out ripping. It must have been this potion that bagged them a host of A-list sponsors and some killer parts in the Rome movie, Factor Films and Actionhorse on graduation from Malung.

Eiki Halldor, Backside Tailslide, Photo: OLAV STUBBERUD

Although Gulli and the Helgasons are stars in the wider world of snowboard, with outstanding parts in Standard and the Pirates in the past season, according to Geiri they are still pretty unknown back home. Here the scene remains mainstream and although the Icelandic Snowboard Association are organising events and trips he believes that what is needed to kickstart the local scene is another IPP or Ak Extreme event, and apparently the latter may well be on the cards.

But the question is: who are the next Team Devine? Whose email addresses might perhaps bear the name of these homegrown heroes?

Words: Matt Georges

Onboard Senior shooter Matt Georges took a trip to the land of the Nipple-Deep Pow with yes boys Romain de Marchi, JP Solberg and tadashi fuse, with tadashi promising to lead them to some top-secret areas of hokkaido, and in the process became a snow nerd…

No two snow crystals are exactly the same; each one is slightly different. Ok, so you’ve heard that before. Yet one snowflake couldn’t look more like another, and their shapes usually fall in several basic forms. the World Weather Organisation classifi es snowflakes into seven different categories: plates, starshaped, columns, needles, dentrites, rimed and irregular, the last of which encompasses three other forms of precipitation: graupel,
snow pellets and hail. among these categories, the forms, weights and volumes vary widely. You get the idea: it’s pretty complicated stuff.

Romain de Marchi Frontside 3, Photo: Matt Georges

The shape of the snowflake is determined broadly by atmospheric pressure, electric fi elds, wind, humidity and the temperature at which it is formed. It is this last factor that is crucial to the form and shape of the snow crystal. All other things being equal, temperatures between – 5°C to – 10°C will lead to the development of needle or hollow column type crystals. Between – 10°C to – 12°C, you tend to get plates, and from – 12°C to – 18°C, crystals form into stars with six branches. These branches can often form into further complex growth patterns with dendritic features. Oh, and fi nally between 5°C and 20°C it rains, which means it’s all over!

JP Solberg, Photo: Matt Georges

But why exactly am I going on about all this? Simply because I did a bit of research on the internet to fi nd out why the snow in Japan is apparently
lighter than anywhere else. Ever since I started snowboarding people have kept going on about the quality of the powder in Japan, and I thought is was about tim

Romain De Marchi, Photo: Matt Geroges

e I went to check it out for myself. Snow analysis aside, let us focus on the main players in this story. Our crew was made up of Swiss-Canadian karaoke diva Romain de Marchi, Norwegian fi sherman JP Solberg and Japanese snowboard legend, guide, organiser, businessman, fi lm-maker Tadashi Fuse. Oh, and there was also meant to be French Canadian kicker killer David Carrier- Porcheron but unfortunately he wasn’t able to make it in the end. Tadashi was born in the Land of the Rising Sun a little over 27 years ago, in the province of Yamagata, located on the main island of Honshu, north of Tokyo. He learnt to snowboard in the surrounding mountains and various other different islands that make up the archipelago before moving to Whistler, Canada, a few years later, where he now lives with his wife and two little girls. For this trip, he wanted to unveil a few well-kept secrets on Hokkaido, the most northern island where most of the winter resorts are found, along with erupting volcanoes, huge forests and that worldrenowned fl uffy white stuff.

JP Solberg, Photo: Matt Georges

Hokkaido weathers constant heavy snowstorms brought in by winds from Siberia. The island is flanked by the Pacifi c Ocean (to the east) and the Sea of Japan (to the west) and Okhotsk Sea (to the north). It’s separated from Honshu by the strait of Tsugaru. What would we do without Wikipedia and the Internet! Technology is quite something. You know absolutely nothing about something and with a few clicks of a mouse you can have it all there in front of you! Hokkaido is the equivalent to Mecca for powder riding: the best you can get.

When it comes to writing a text like this, where you have to ramble on about super light powder, it’s often tempting to try to put your readers at ease with little jokes that often aren’t very funny. You could nearly take all this as just being filler. But a trip to Japan is worthy magazine content
whatever the angle.

Romain De Marchi Switch Back 5s, Photo: Matt Georges

After landing in Sapporo, the island’s capital city, Tadashi put together a little programme for us. I could give you the name of the idyllic place we stayed at for a couple of days but out of respect for the calmness of the place I will refrain from sharing any information. To tell the truth, my goldfi sh memory can’t remember the long and complicated name of the place anyway. We slept on traditional tatamis in beautiful silk dressing gowns, ate on the fl oor (on patterned tatami) enjoying the succulent local food while struggling to use our chopsticks correctly. When we weren’t eating, we
went and rode incredible spots just outside our front door, a Bed & Breakfast stranded in the middle of the mountains, at the end of a road to a closed pass, allowing us to access a number of sick spots by foot. In the evening, after our crazy sessions, we’d all go and drink beers at the Onsen thermal baths. The Japanese absolutely love a thermal bath and can spend hours bathing in these places. This reminds me of quite a funny story. I’m not sure she’ll be happy that I told it but last year we went on a trip to Japan with Anne-Flore Marxer and happened to test the famous Onsen baths. I didn’t actually get to witness the scene, seeing as the baths aren’t mixed, but from what I heard all the local Japanese women took her for a total weirdo at the sight of her blond hair, blue eyes and western bodyhair removal…

JP Solberg Frontside 3, Photo: Matt Georges

After a few days spent living in the strictest Japanese tradition, we moved onto Asahikawa. Located at a junction of two main roads, by getting up super early it was quite easy for us to organise day trips to wherever the powder happened to be, then return at nightfall for a big bowl of noodles and some good old karaoke before getting some sleep. Unfortunately Tadashi injured himself on the fi rst day by banging his knee against an ice block hidden under the snow. He spent the rest of the trip sipping green tea while Jean-Pierre and Romain unleashed turns in the bottomless powder runs.

Romain De Marchi Front 3 Handplant High Five, Photo: Matt Georges

The days were long and busy and at the end of every day we’d stop off at the first supermarket to fuel up on hot coffee (served in a can), noodles and
sushi: nothing quite beats it after a long day of riding. As all good things come to an end, our two weeks were quickly over and we had to return home. We made the quick trip to Tokyo where we spent a night in one of those peculiar capsule hotels (check them out on Google – it’s an interesting experience, that is if you’re not claustrophobic!) before flying home.

Bye bye Japan…

Romain De Marchi, Photo: Matt Georges

JP Solberg, Photo: Matt Georges

Romain De Marchi Hokkaido, Photo: Matt Georges

Tadashi Fuse Stalefish, Photo: Matt Georges

Words: Danny Burrows

Sani Alibabic, Peetu Piiroinen, Fredi Kalbermatten, Stephan Maurer and JP Solberg join Terje Kaakonsen to rip the snowcapped volcanoes of Kamchatka…

Peetu Piiroinen discovers that outside of icy parks there’s this soft stuff called ‘powder’. Woop!

Kamchatka hangs from russia’s east facing head into the Pacific like a great elephant’s trunk, its hide pockered by living volcanoes. Our outpost of Snow valley, comprising five newly built wooden lodges, is two hours by truck from the nearest conurbation and 20-minutes fl y time to the lines of the peninsula’s suppurating cones. Beyond the camp an expanse of snow and skeletal trees, black and bare, drapes down from the shrouded heights like bridal trails. as Sani put it, it’s the end of the world.

JP Solberg.

Absinthe’s Brusti negotiates sulphurous slop.

When the crew had scored enough face shots it was time to build. JP Solberg sends it long on a backside 7 at the end of the trip.

We are a big group by snowboard standards, with three still photographers, me, Adam Moran and Russian snapper Andrew Piromov; Brusti is here to film for Absinthe’s new movie NowHere and Burton filmer, Tim Manning, is also onboard. Maxim, a local of these parts and founder of the Kamchatka Snowboard Association, is our main fixer and guide and our murder of rippers reads like the guest list of a snowboard blockbuster: Terje Haakonsen, Sani Alibabic, Peetu Piiroinen, Fredi Kalbermatten, Stephan Maurer and JP Solberg. And last but not least there’s Svein, Terje’s friend and physio. This would be his sixth time on a board and he had been quite literally dropped in at the deep end; however you wouldn’t have known it. He was throwing down McTwists off a corner we built near the lodge and doing backfl ips off the big kicker in the backcountry, none of which he landed but the idea and guts to try were there – with a little time he would stick them. According to Terje, whatever sport he tries is mastered.

The sleds allowed access to some fun terrain down low. Fredi Kalbermatten boosts a Method.

We had flown eight hours from Moscow to Petropavlovsk, the Kamchatkan capital, leaving behind a city shattered by two explosions on the rush hour subway. Suicide bombers from the troubled provinces of the Caucasus had brought war to the city, killing 37 and wounding dozens more; another sad note in the diaries of a country with more scars than a failed bare-knuckle fi ghter and for us not the most reassuring introduction to Russia.

Sani and Maurer

Terje & JP get the Russian Heli 101

Terje Haakonsen makes good use of heli drop No. 3,796 on his ever-increasing list.

Our trip was the culmination of two years of brain storming between Terje and his friend Maxim and once rolling the rest of us jumped the cart to help pay the $5000 daily levy on the helis, and I guess for a bit of company on the hill. The vertical here, according to Sani, is like that of Japan with heaps of potential for getting your shred on and as well as lines there’s also spaced tree runs to cut. With strong winds, though, the snow on the
mountains proper was blown and it felt sketchy with no pits being dug, but our guides according to Maxim were the best in Russia. On the second drop of the fi rst day, on what was a mellow line by Sani’s standards, he asked the guide if it might slide. The answer was a little ambiguous: “Maybe, but not likely.” Sani’s line was safe but when Maurer dropped next, hitting a lip, there was that unmistakable deep ‘whoomp’ as an avalanche triggered. “I remember looking down seeing this big spider web appearing in front of me. My fi rst thought was “what the fuck is this?” ‘cause it took me a second to realize what was going on ‘cause I really didn’t think that something could slide there and then that was followed by “oh fuck, an avalanche, that’s what it is! Get the fuck out of here!” He kept his speed and momentum and cut left and out in time to watch the face slab and funnel into a narrow gully. For Sani it was the sketchiest part of the trip.

And there was us thinking cats had an aversion to water. The Sprocking one slashes the pool.

Fishy Method on the lower fl anks from Stephan Maurer.

What makes riding here unique is that we were riding volcanoes, cutting lines between vents, ceracs and fi ssures that have cooked through to cauldrons of yellow-stained rock and patches of hot, black lava. In the crater of Mutnovkiy sulphur spewed in rolling cotton blooms from these openings and burned the lungs as we hiked back to the heli. There’s even a valley at the base of the Kikhpinych volcano called the Valley of Death where on still days gases hang thick enough to kill and cat-like the valleys river regularly deposits its victims downstream. Thankfully, it wasn’t on the itinerary.

Bad-weather days are a no-go for helis, but a short sled ride meant Fredi found something to play on. Tree ride to backfl ip out.

The helis here, all MI8s, are like fl ying school buses. We sit 14 to a chopper facing each other on canvas seats, with our gear stacked at our feet. There are no seatbelts and the pilots seem intent on trying to scare the living shit out of us, setting the craft into steep dives that leave us weightless. We hang on the assurances of Maxim that our pilot, Dimitry Zaderey, is the best in Kamchatka; he’s been fl ying heli trips here for over 10 years but still amazes Maxim with his control of his bird. The funny thing is that with the high winds that we’ve had any other crafts would be grounded – not ours.

Sani Alibabic lays one out on his way to peer into the earth’s guts.

Great piloting and guiding aside there is nothing stronger than nature and on our last day in the country, while we were out sledding and hitting kickers, one of these helis with a full payload of riders was taken out by an avalanche 2.5 meters deep and 400 meters wide. The exact details of the crash were murky but according to Maxim it was just one of those freak accidents. He went to see the wreckage after and said that the remains of the
heli resembled waste paper. 10 people died in the accident.

While the other guys went to build a jump, Terje said to Sami “I’ve built enough kickers in my life, let’s do something different.” A quick bit of shaping and the classic Haakon Method was busted out.

Of the ten days that I’ve been in Kamchatka we’ve ridden nine: three drop days from the MI8s, six on sleds and one day at the beach where we braved  the Pacific to surf. Where the snow had been assimilated into the sea, black sand contrasted the whites of winter. The water was dark and cold and the waves a glassy 2- to 3-feet, but as Terje put it, “any drive to get surf is always worth it.” Out there, somewhere, subs from Russia’s main base in Petropavlovsk sleuth the depths, their periscopes trained on the shores of America where Sarah Palin, eyes bulging on the stalks of her binoculars, brushes up on world politics.

Solberg, Fredi and a guide enjoy some afternoon delight - beer and fi sh. ALLBOOK117-ENG.

In Kamchatkan mythology the volcanoes are inhabited by huge fl ying ogres. At dusk they lumber up on the thermals, swirling masses of black soot, and glide out to sea to skewer whales on their harpoon-like fi ngers. They return in the night to grill their prize in molten lava, lighting the sky with fl ickers of fi re. These beasts may not be real but what they represent – the power of nature – is the lasting image that will stay with us all of this wild outpost of Russia. We drew lines down volcanoes that overnight are whipped clean; swam in a pool heated by thermic energy from the earth, which at any moment might burst through winters veneer and roast us all.

There’s not many places on the planet that boast such a backdrop. Terje lets one rip by the Pacific.

Man soup.

Russia exists in its own sphere of reality, brutal and yet beautiful. Here none of us are bigger than nature.

Look closely and you can just make out the GoPro rig sticking out of Maurer’s pack. GoPros, so hot right now.

Maurer broke the trip down to simple stats for his blog.
Days on the road: 15
Days on the mountain: 9
Bad weather days: 1
Hiking days: 0
Sledding days: 6
Heli days: 3
Days fl own with a MI-8: 3
Days riding on an active volcano: 1
Runs taken that went all the way down to the ocean: 1
Lost credit cards: 1
Longest period without Internet: 168h
Days without real cell phone reception: 11
People that knocked themselves out while partying at the lodge: 1
People that fell asleep in a strip club: 1
People that took off their shirt while getting a lap dance: 1
Suicide bombings in the subway on the day of our arrival in Russia: 1
Tragic helicopter accidents in the Kamchatka region during our stay: 1
Descent size avalanches that were set off on the trip: 2
People almost sending it over a 30m cliff to total fl at: 1
People jumping head fi rst onto a huge ice block: 1
Bottles of vodka that were bought fi rst thing after landing: 11
Average time spent in the pool every day after riding: 2h
Amount of lifebuoys in that pool: 3
People that fell into the pool with their snowboard gear on: 1
Powder sprays done on the trip: 1348
Really cold water surf days: 1
Ski poles on the trip: 1
New things learned about how to drink vodka the right way: 5
Average speed Dmitry drives through Moscow: 107km/h
Number photos taken on the trip: 22,394
Fun: A LOT!