This week GoPro brought together a bunch of their heavy hitting international team in Laax for 5 days of chilled out shred and afternoons spent nerding off learning the possibilites of the new Hero3 camera. Check the rad gallery of selfies and a lowdown of the haps…

Would I like to spend 5 days with GoPro riders Sage Kotsenburg, Eric Willett, Jamie Anderson, Iouri Podladtchikov, Ralph Backstrom, Elena High, Xavier de Le Rue and Hannah Teter while getting schooled on how to use the magical box of tricks that is GoPro’s Hero3? The fact that it was being held in Laax – right up there in my list of ‘Most Awesome Resorts In Europe’ – only hastened my reply in the affermative. Having said that, even if they’d held it on a dryslope in Bognor Regis the chance to hang with that crew of bosses and tinker with the GoPro would have been too hard to pass up.

Ralph Backstrom, still smelling of Champagne from his winning of the whole damned Freeride World Tour a couple days before, was already there by the time I rolled in, while the rest of the crew, who’d been crushing the Euro X Games, cruised into town on the 12-hour party bus a little later accompanied by a bunch of dudes who boast a knowledge of what those little black and silver boxes can do that borders on the extreme.

This was to become apparent the next morning when we met up for the first of many clinics on how to work the Hero3. Now, previously I’d pretty much only ever hit Go and Stop, so to get the lowdown on what that camera can actually do, and how to do it, was an eye-opener. Videographers I know have expressed bafflement at the amount of sheer tech they can cram in and the quality of the output the Hero3 produces, and we’ve all marvelled at the Hero3 promo video, but to truly get the most out of the camera you really need to learn the modes, the software, the different ways of mounting it and so on.

Reeling with a mind full of ’1440p for POV’, ’30 shots in 2 seconds’, ‘timelapse mode’, ’4K capability’, ’720p shoots at 120fps and can be slowed down to 1/4 speed’, it was interesting to see how into it all the riders were. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as it offers them the chance to provide a unique angle on their riding and to pump out a bunch of content without even needing to wait for the filmer to drag his ass out of bed. You had Iouri strapping himself into a back brace with a pole jutting out the side and grilling the tech dudes on what was possible and how to achieve shots he’d been dreaming up, Elena having a bizzarre extension grafted on to her helmet and Hannah being wowed by the app that connects using WiFi so you get a live view of what the camera sees.

Ordinarily such technically-focussed nerd-offs would have sent many to sleep, but the media specialists they brought in from the US were just a bunch of laid back shredders who managed to strike the right balance of information and bro down-ery so it never felt like being at school. Of course, it wasn’t just about the nerd room and when up on the hill the guys and girls cut loose as they filmed and shot themselves, follow-cammed each other, while us media types failed miserably at bagging anything more than a Finnish faceshot. The riders earn their coin for good reason and bagged a bunch of bangers lapping Laax’s epic freestyle setup – Eric and Sage even managed to pass the camera between them mid-air, which is so insane that when you doubtless see it in a GoPro ad you’ll probably think it’s faked, while Ralph and Xavier sent it off the booters before heading off for some steep action.

Undoubtedly the highlight was the last day when the weather really turned it on and we were able to stay on the hill late for a sunset session that will have produced a heap of sick footage, the crew all smiles and high fives reflecting on this few days of deserved wind-down after a hectic season of travelling, filming and contests.

Yes, I was fed well and they bought me a couple of drinks, and, no, I have not tried any of the competition, but the fact is that the GoPro is an incredible bit of kit that allows everyone – from these cats on the team to Peter Punter – to create a ton of super high quality photos and videos. Are there any faults? My camera froze up from time to time (to fix just take out the battery and put it back in again), the software, while very good, is not the most intuitive, to get the best result you need to learn the modes and the post-production software, and they’re not cheap – the Hero3 Black edition with the WiFi remote is in the region of €450 – but if you’re into shooting yourself or your homies shredding, surfing, skating or whatever, it’s an investment you won’t regret.

We’re trying to get an edit of the trip dialled, but in the meantime peep this one from the DC Finland team for an example of what this box of tricks can do..

Last night Iouri Podladchikov dropped the world’s first Cab double cork 1440 in a halfpipe as his fourth hit in the X Games finals in Tignes. That’s a whole lot of spinning and flipping all at once. And he was so happy to have come out of it alive that he forgot to land in the pipe for the last hit, crashing down from the coping before throwing his board into the crowd in celebration. The crash cost him his place on the podium, but he probably didn’t notice that either.  

Check the women’s superpipe final podium runs from last night in Tignes, plus the top three men’s qualification runs.

WOMEN’S FINALS

1- KELLY CLARK

2 – ELENA HIGHT

3 – ARIELLE GOLD

MEN’S ELIMINATIONS

1 – Louie Vito

2 – Scotty Lago

Check this. Another rad look at the winners from the recent Arctic Challenge and how the overall World Snowboard Tour was decided. Contains more AYUMU, and therefore viewing is mandatory…

TAC 2013 – 1st – Iouri Podladtchikov

TAC 2013 – 2nd – Yiwei Zhang

TAC 2013 – 3rd – Ayumu Hirano

Overall World Snowboard Tour 12-13 Winner – Peetu Piiroinen

Here’s the World Snowboard Tour’s wrapup of proceedings at TAC, and at the Nescafe Champs that went down in Leysin at the same time.

At the final men’s Halfpipe event of the season, The Arctic Challenge, Peetu Piiroinen was crowned World Snowboard Tour Overall Champion in Oslo Vinterpark today. “It feels so incredible of course that I was still able to win the Overall title after Ståle got it last year. It’s just so hard nowadays, because the riding level in both Slope and Pipe is getting higher and higher. It’s a lot of work, if you want to be good in both disciplines. Ståle and I had a really good battle, unfortunately he didn’t make it to the final here at the Arctic Challenge, it would have been nice to battle it out till the end.” Peetu commented on his 4th World Snowboard Tour title.

After a steady season with 7 top 10 results and 2 podium places, Peetu beat his rival Ståle Sandbech, who had trouble with his flow in the first heat of the semi-finals. He couldn’t land as clean as we usually see him do in Pipe. Peetu came in 5th overall; he was surpassed by Iouri Podladtchikov (SUI), Chinese surprise Yiwei Zhang (CHN) and World Snowboard Tour Halfpipe Champion Ayumu Hirano (JPN).
 
As one of the favourites for the Arctic Challenge title, Iouri took the win with his second final run, laying down a Frontside 900 Tail Grab, Backside 900 Mute Grab – Frontside 1080 Tail Grab to Cab 1080 Double Cork Mute Grab and finally a Frontside 1080 Double Cork Truckdriver, scoring 90.28 points. With the last run in reversed order, first placed Iouri had to lay down his last run first, only scoring a 58.85. He followed the competition trying to beat his score from the hot seat.
Iouri commented: “The Arctic Challenge is a contest that I used to wait for, because it’s always been in the end of the season and it’s always been on a high level; of technical difficulty and also a high level on style. I am very proud that we still represent that today; really represent snowboarding the way that it should be – for example those big Backside Airs and some really really good grabs that you don’t see often, that’s important to me. And to be the winner right now is just insane! I’m excited to ride more contests with Ayumu in it; he’ll obviously be there in the future. There are not too many riders that have a little bit of skate style. I’m a skater and he’s a skater. I really like to watch people that have a little bit of skate style in their riding. So excited about that, and I hope that he’ll develop his tricks even more.”

Second sensation of the evening was Chinese Yiwei Zhang from Harbin, China. With the next World Championships of Snowboarding moving from Oslo to Yabuli in 2016, Yiwei received a wildcard to ride the Arctic Challenge and fully exploited the opportunity to show his amazing ability here. With a very impressive final run consisting of a huge Backside Air to Frontside 1080 Double Cork Frontside Grab – Cab 1080 Double Cork Stalefish -Double Crippler Frontside Grab, he captivated the Vinterpark crowd.
 
Landing his final 6Star event on the podium, Ayumu Hirano casually picked up the trophy for his already awarded World Snowboard Tour Halfpipe title, happy as ever.
 
The World Snowboard Tour 12-13 came to an end here today, but at the same time the 5Star Nescafe Champs marked the first Slopestyle event of the new 201314 season. Nescafé Champs 2013 podium:

Men                           
1. Janne Korpi
2. Spencer Link
3. Scott Moline

Women
1. Ty Walker
2. Jordie Karlinski
3. Phoebe Novelle

Riders have the chance to stock up on World Snowboard Tour points in different disciplines early this season, giving them a head start before a packed winter schedule with the Olympics in Sochi, Russia is on the horizon.
 
With the 5Star Spring Battle in Flachauwinkl, Austria on next weekend, and the first 6Star event X Games Tignes from 20th till 22nd of March, the best action in snowboarding is guaranteed for spring.

The king cobra of snowboard disciplines, halfpipe riding, didn’t open its box of mental trickery at last night’s X Games in Aspen. Swiss rider Iouri ‘I-Pod’ Podladtchikov came in first while Shaun White effortless cruised to a second spot in qualifications.

Still, this is an unfamiliar position for Shaun White, who is used to winning his X Games Superpipe gold (five so far) from the top position in qualifications. It was Iouri Podladtchikov who claimed the latter with a one-third of a point lead.

And here’s some extra weirdness thrown in from the Don’t-call-me-Flying-Tomato. We quote straight from the ESPN website:

“White had a chance to reclaim the lead Thursday night but instead coasted down the pipe without hitting a jump, his fist raised high in the air. He left the venue before anyone had a chance to interview him.”

And for the record, neither of the first two showed their full potential, something the antsy American public are eager to sea on Sunday night. White’s run consisted of a 19-foot, 2-inch backside air and a frontside as well as cab double cork 1080s. Podladtchikov, too, said he was saving “a mystery trick” for Sunday. We. Can’t. Wait.

Scotty Lago qualified third, and interestingly, 14-year-old Japanese phenom Ayumu Hirano also made the final in sixth.

Shaun White: Weird guy

X Games Men’s Halfpipe Qualification Results

1 Iouri Podladtchikov 87.33 R
2 Shaun White 87.00 R
3 Scotty Lago 82.66 R
4 Markus Malin 81.00 R
5 Matt Ladley 80.00 R
6 Ayumu Hirano 78.66 R
7 Christian Haller 76.00 R
8 Louie Vito 74.66 R

Alas, the patented Shaun White winning face was obscured by his gangster shit. Videos below...

Oh look, there’s a Pope wearing a funny hat and a bear taking a dump in the trees. Shaun White won the X Games halfpipe in Tignes by posting a 98, edging out the multi-corking Louie Vito and Iouri Podladtchikov’s safety run. Check the videos…

We’re still digesting what we made of all that so our chin-stroking will come shortly. [UPDATE - due to the speed at which time moves on the internet, we've posted our brief musings on the stunt ditch sliding in our report of the Winter X Games Europe men's slopestyle finals.] ]Till then, here’s the videos. Fair result?

1ST – SHAUN WHITE

2ND – LOUIE VITO

3RD – IOURI PODLADTCHIKOV

Seppe Smits was the first to nab a TTR title, his second place at the Billabong Air&Style enough to take an unassailable lead in the Big Air tour stakes. As the 6-Star pipe and slopestyle contests rolled on a little longer than the single jump events, we had to wait a while longer for the rest to be determined but with the US Open now a wrap the points have been tallied and the winners announced.

SEPPE – CROWNED AT AIR&STYLE

The women’s slopestyle, unsurprisingly, went to Jamie Anderson who’s domination of the discipline is pretty much unprecedented. Sure, Spencer O’Brien knocked her off her perch at the World Snowboarding Championships but that was the exception rather than the rule. She came first at ever major slope event this season bar that and as well as being as tech as it gets the girl’s style is just something else. Seriously, there’s a lot of dudes who’d kill to be able to ride so smooth.

ANDERSON – BEO 1ST

Another girl who’s on her own level is Kelly Clark and, despite having her incredible winning streak ended at the US Open by Elena Hight, her second place coupled with a list of firsts longer than your arm were enough to take the TTR pipe title.

CLARK – BEO 1ST

In men’s slopestyle the inaugural crown went to Canadian cowboy Seb Toutant whose hyper hucking in Stratton netted enough points to just edge out Chas Guldemond, while the halfpipe title was bound for Switzerland as despite not having the best of times at the US Open, Iouri Podladtchikov owned the recent BEO and showed consistency throughout the year that guaranteed another bit of bling will sit in the cabinet nicely next to his WSC pipe trophy.

TOUTANT – US OPEN 1ST

IPOD – WSC PIPE 1ST

The overall title went to Ståle Sandbech for the guys and Cilka Sadar for the girls, and rewarded them both for ripping as hard in the pipe as they do on the jumps. This, for us, would be the true crown – the glory going to riders who’ve held it down the hardest, no matter the terrain, throughout the whole tour – but the fact is that as the level of riding has skyrocketed, so has the focus of the riders on specific areas of snowboarding. Adapt or die, we guess.

SANDBECH – AIR&STYLE 3RD

The 2012/2013 season which officially begins with the Quiksilver Spring Battle taking place March 28th to 30th, 2012.

Without further ado we give you yet another episode of Henry Jackson’s Jackson’s Hole. Watch out for a cameo by the Onboard crew, appearances from Danny Davis, i-Pod, Jack Mitrani, and Peetu Piiroinen. Good stuff.

[All photos: Danny Burrows]

The last day of competition at the 13th edition of the Burton European Open came to a close today here in Laax with another day of scorching bluebird and event hotter shredding as Switzerland’s Iouri Podladtchikov took his first senior pipe crown and Kelly Clark made it 16 wins on the trot. Check how it went down…

As we mentioned yesterday, the usually immaculate Laax pipe was feeling the effects of the relentless solar energy that’d been pounding down all week and there were concerns that the temperatures would negatively affect the pipe finals as the walls and flatbottom got chewed up. Not so. Big props must go to the shaping crew here who were up all night and early this morning to ensure that the halfpipe lived up to the stellar level of riding the guys and girls had flaunted in the slopestyle a few days before.

The women were up first and got to enjoy the more solid conditions. All the talk before had been about if anyone would be able to interrupt Kelly Clark’s freakishly long winning streak, and it turned out the answer was an emphatic ‘no’. She’d recovered from her dose of the flu and sent it pretty hard in the first run to take the early lead, with Gretchen Bleiler hot on her heels. We thought of having a sneaky fiver on Gretchen, who’s been riding super smooth and super tech of late, to be the one to halt the Clark procession, but sadly on her second run Bleiler caught her nose on the lip on her second hit back 9 and bounced pretty much to the flat. It was pretty brutal and she was forced to sit the final run out, but happily when we saw her at prize giving the all-American smile was back in business so hopefully she just endured a bad hipper and nothing more.

But Kelly was not holding back and in the second run improved her score with a run that broke down into the following: frontside 900 Frontside grab to Backside 540, going into a stratosphere-scratching Frontside 1080 and a Cab 720 Mute. There was never really going to be an answer to that, especially with Gretchen out. Japanese rider Yuki Furihata tried her best, but couldn’t improve on her second run that had her in third, so it was the familiar sight of a Kelly Clark victory lap that rounded out the event for the females.

The men’s contest had some surprises, some killer riding, and some results that weren’t all that surprising. Call it an unsurprising surprise box of kerosene-fuelled awesome. There was plenty to keep the purists stoked, what with Mini’s Creative Use of Space award up for grabs and we felt sure that Fredrik Austbø was a shoe in for his ballistic frontside alley-oops that had us frothing all week, but we didn’t figure in Christian Haller sneaking in an alley-oop seatbelt down the bottom of his run which bagged him the 5k. Markus Malin was booting the first hit as is pretty much the norm for him but though he dropped a couple of doubles into his runs he wasn’t able to repeat his first place Semis qualification, while 15-year old Tim-Kevin Ravnjak was getting jaws to drop for his monster slow spins.

Danny Davis dropped in and immediately applied his unique style to the situation, half cabbing in to cab 1080 and dropping the patented Davis dub down the line while Ryo Ayono was managing to hold on to his grabs a little better than in the semis and still maintaining the ungodly height that his runs are well known for, but ultimately these two were only good enough for 2nd and 3rd respectively. First place was all about Iouri Podladtchikov and achieving what he’s threatened to do here in Laax for a while. It wasn’t looking good for the recently crowned World Champion as he decked out on his back on his double McTwist in his first run, but he dusted himself down and mixed it up to take the BEO pipe crown on his second. Back to back 9s, back to back double 10s and some stuff down low that we missed as we were going nuts gave him the points that weren’t to be bettered, and a clearly stoked Ipod milked the local love. ‘It was so sunny today and you can just boost,’ he said. ‘There is a sick crew out here, pipe held up, sick crowd and its home turf for me so I can’t even talk right now, its incredible!’

And with that the BEO was a wrap. Arguably the best slopestyle contest to date, a heavy pipe final, style being thrown around like there’s no tomorrow, hyped crowd, men dressed as astronauts, tropical weather and the confirmation that the BEO will stay here for another 3 years… this place and this event is the bomb so we’ll see you next year. Might lay off hitting the Long Island Iced Teas so hard next time though…