If a picture is worth a thousand words, surely a washed out digital polaroid of a rider’s eye view of the rockstar life you wish you were living has got to be worth a quick butchers. If you fancy stalking some famous dudes, you could do worse than to download yourself  the instagram and see them the way their iPhone sees them (other handsets are available). You could even stalk us @onboardmag while you’re at it.

Everybody imagines that their heroes live in a rose tinted world of free flowing beers and bottomless pillows, which is fortunate since nobody can resist the temptation to insta-age their life with filters, blurs and borders until it looks like you’re back in the 60s, and snowboarders are no different. What’s that you say? It’s waist deep in junk out there on the internets, possibly more than you can manage to wade through whilst waiting for a gondola, however nifty you are with the Google. Well have no fear, we’re here to help lighten the load. We’ve compiled a who’s who of snowboarders stroking their egos with the knowledge we’d rather procrastinate in their virtual company than with the real people sat around us, so you don’t have to do the legwork yourselves. Phew.

10. Kicking things off is Jamie Anderson at number ten, setting the standard pretty high for vast snowscapes and fluffy pillows we all want to get stuck into. But frankly we don’t need to know what beetroot dinner you’re eating or what colour tea you’re drinking. In fact if it weren’t for the  delicious selfies and lady-yoga shots peppered between the all the self help slogans and your dietary requirements, you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near this list. And we know you live by Lake Tahoe, we don’t need to see the view again. I’m wondering now if this should have been a ‘top 9′ instead…

@JME_ANDERSON

9. In at 9 is the affable Gigi Rüf, an Austrian unfamiliar with this end of any competition. ‘Shred Dad’ is still keeping it real in between his trophy collecting trips in far off fluffy places as well as producing his own planks to do it on. This guy knows his way around an instafeed, mixing life on the hill with artwork, landmarks, and his mates standing by adverts of themselves on busses. What Gigi lacks in rock and roll he makes up for in stoke, which it’s immediately clear his kiddies have inherited.

@GIGIRUEF

8. Next at 8 is Kevin Pearce, the second coolest Kevin of the week. That dude’s grin must have a lot to do with why he has 9931 followers lapping up his every instamove. As our man on the ground in the FRENDS house, he’s pretty handy with the camera. After hard months of rehab pics it’s great to see some riding creeping back into this guy’s feed.

@KEVINPEARCE

7. Number 7 is Frank April, whose online persona is just what you’d expect from someone who in real life spends his days gliding down handrails like a boss and his nights necking Grand Marnier. His feed is a one stop shop for gnarly places to sleep, beer bongs on wakeboards and empty booze collections. The man’s got plenty of rockstar in him and mayhem around him – get your glimpse here.

@FRANKAPRIL

6. The top Kevin of the internet is Kevin Bäckström, our 6th Favourite instasnapper. A healthy portion of his 15,000 followers are swedish girls who seem to like nothing better than to scrawl his initials on their perfectly hemispherical buttocks in order to qualify his status as Scandinavia’s favourite rebel son to hate. In between tattoos, parties, and moody portraits, there’s snaps of lines and from events as well as plenty of reminders of his initials.

@KEVINBACKSTROM

5. Shaun White is like Marmite in whatever he does, and it’s no different here at number 5 in our oh so crucial list. No doubt he’ll be devastated with most likely his worst result of the new WST year. Those of you outraged by what he choses to dress himself in each day will get no end of amusement here, where bare chests, hawaiian shirts and cravats are just the start of it. If dog beauty pageants are more your thing or you want to know what he’ll look like in 25 years time before your man crush goes head over heels for him, you’ll be well catered for. And If you can’t remember what Lake Tahoe looks like since Jamie last reminded us, he’s got that covered too. 

@SHAUNWHITE

4. Mark Landvik is actually quite good at taking pictures which, combined with being privvy to some banger action most every time he goes riding bags him spot number 4. Silhouettes, tilt shift, double frames, you name the settings and Landvik’s all over them. If it’s too long since you were last out there getting after it, let Landvik lend you a glimpse from his drop in for you to dream a line down. Cats have been winning the internet since before it was dial-up, and mark’s is one ridiculously hairy feline. Shaun’s bulldog’s never had a chance.

@MARKLANDVIK

3. Eric Jackson takes home the bronze medal today, albeit with a little help from his friends. It’ll not surprise anyone that the man who apparently never stays still has done a few things recently that might blow your mind. Luckily for us, he had the good grace to share the stoke from along the way. He’s got fish on hooks, ridiculous lines and heaving barrels up in his page there, and a beard to be proud of too.

@EJACKSHREDS

2. Second place goes to the man with the most pets and guns in the industry, Scotty Lago. Man’s got style for days in the pipe, and he’s none too shabby behind the camera either. Also, his was the only page with a horse’s head mask, always a winner. What more could you want?

@SCOTTYLAGO

1. The biggest of the instadogs of snowboarding right now is Xavier De Le Rue. It was always going to be tough for anyone to compete considering what the Frenchman’s been up to. Then he went and dropped the ‘waterslide with a penguin’. There was no looking back from that really, was there? Big lines, big hair, and big animals are a winning combination even in real life, and right here they’re all that mattered. Hats off to you Xavier, we wish we could’ve been there.

@XAVIERDELERUE

Almost two years after suffering a traumatic head injury, one of our all-time favourite snowboarders was finally able to strap back into his bindings and go for a couple of runs in Breckenridge/Colorado. We hope this will improve your day as much as it did ours.

From “I Ride for Kevin” to “We Ride with Kevin” it’s been an amazing recovery. Keep it up, KP!

To say that this Frends crew part is a little crazy would be an understatement. But to say it is fucking hilarious isn’t one.

“This Frends edit was intened to be in the new Givin “ONE”. Unfortunately, Jack send the wrong hard drive to the Givin Crew and now there is not enough time to slot it in the movie. Fortunately for youTube viewers, it is at your convenience just one click away. Enjoy!”

As you know, Kevin Pearce sustained a severe traumatic head injury on New Year’s Eve 2009. He has been informed that had he not been wearing a helmet, he would not have made it through his ordeal. Check this talk he gave to campers at High Cascade about the importance of wearing a lid.

the 2009/10 season, age 22, Kevin Pearce sustained a severe traumatic brain injury on December 31st, 2009 while training in the halfpipe in Park City, Utah. Recovering well and hoping to be back on snow as soon as possible, Kevin Pearce, still is one of snowboardings living legends – endlessly entertaining and inspiring to millions. So in tribute to all his skill and the adversity he’s over come this last year we made this video – The Best Of Kevin Pearce. It features all the highlights from his many years on the TTR World Snowboarding Tour and some of his funniest moments.

October’s traditionally the month that, if you were in a novelty folk duo, you’d be singing “It’s business, it’s business tiiime. You know when I’m down to my socks it’s time for business, that’s why they’re called business socks, ooh!” Glaciers are opening. Premieres are on. Conditions are perfect…

OCTOBER

The month begins with a bang as we not only bring you the most excellent HaraKiri teaser (including a skier getting his head blown off) but the lowdown on the film with director Manu Vivion too in one swollen package. The Slim Ripper, aka L’Arrogs, drops us the Bataleon Superpark edit which is none too shabby either, Hintertux opens its doors for another autumn of pre-season fun festing, the Ästhetiker embark on another season of webisodes, and young Norwegian buck Ståle Sandbech is not content with scoring a cover and an interview in our print mag, oh no, so he pulls Factor Films’ Petter Foshaug out of snow porn retirement to chop together a heavy online part. Watch it…

Well that was alright, wasn’t it? Also rather alright is the sneak peek of 9191 that sees Gigi and Jake Blauvelt give a natural terrain masterclass; an all-new special cut of the F’ It teaser; Jon Weaver‘s musings on the opportunities the internet offers riders and the consequences for traditional forms of media; and the fact that finally, after years of badgering, our geek unit finally bows to our demands for being able to offer you free downloadable desktop wallpapers, and Cole Barash’s shot of JP Solberg has the honour of being our first. We’re also so stoked on the edit of Rome boy Johnnie Paxon‘s time at the Team Challenge that… oh what’s that?… yep, it’s the Fist of Nuff Embed touching his knuckles…

We’ve got nothing but love for Seppi Scholler and his loved up Lovelution teaser, while your calendar gets wet at the prospect of the Air&Style dates AND the World Rookie Tour dates being inserted in its moist pages. Ståle Sandbech continues in his efforts to own snowboarding on the internet as another online clip surfaces, this time it’s a Day in the Life and it reminds us that he’s still only 16. What the hell?! Other news includes Tyler Chorlton bouncing from Bataleon to APO, footage surfacing of a monster booter in Sölden at the end of last season, updates on the injury to Torgeir Berre, and how Kevin Pearce is getting on with his rehab. And, oh what’s that? It’s only a fine edit of the Buffalo Session on the biggest kicker the Pyrenees has ever seen… Stick that in your face marbles.

Continuing their rich vein of occasional webisode form, Isenseven unleash the edit of their trip to suckle on Mother Russia’s teat; there’s more behind-the-sceneing from the Flow crew; Ethan Morgan hops on the bandwagon with ‘Full Online Part’ daubed on its side, as does Kevin Backstrom; Analog kick off their awesome Design Unlikely Features contest that should have the creatives amongst you salivating; and as this paragraph comes to its maximum allotted length, we hit up Hintertux with some of snowboarding’s finest to see how they prep themselves for winter in our first Access All Areas. Check that bad mother…

Wow, October was a busy one… Moving on, the Frontline Rail Jam goes off again in Stockholm and we have highlights of all the hammers while in our spanking new office with central heating and everything we hit up Halldor Helgason for a chinwag. Finding a couple of shillings behind the sofa and with nothing better to spend it on, Nike 6.0 dragged their team to Folgefonna in early summer and now release the cut of the D-Pad Session. It’s pretty sick. Also sick is the news that Travis Parker is back, and back on K2, the dropping of the first of the Pirates’ behind-the-scenes Pirates Logs, and the beginning of our Artec/Onboard Snowboard Design Contest. Sadly our tank of inspiration ran dry when it came to naming it. And to put the final nail in October’s coffin, we’ll leave you with the Day in the Life we did with our favourite deadpan Slovenian, Marko Grilc, as he put himself about at September’s Freestyle.CH.

As you can see should you have made it this far, October most certainly was business time on the merry-go-round of snowboarding. And because we appreciate you sticking with us, here’s a special secret bonus treat of comedy gold that maybe helps clarify the randomness of this post’s intro and outro. Up next, November…

For those of you across the globe who get all jazzy on the 24th, may we wish you a Merry Christmas, invite you to sit on our Santa-suited knee by the fireside and listen to our boozy ramblings of what went down in snowboarding in the month of May. Now get us another brandy would you, son…

MAY

The Numbskull teaser has the dual honour of being the both the first teaser of the month and having one of the most gruesome shin gashes we’ve seen committed to film – actually maybe skip that one if you’re eating… Snowboarders, like the majority of the world’s citizens, are still grounded by Iceland’s troublesome anus, but for the K2 guys it’s a blessing in disguise as they get the chance to shralp Euro mountains some more, and there’s yet more good news on Kevin Pearce‘s recovery from his horrific accident as not only is he released from hospital, we get to hear him talk about his progress for the first time. Staying stateside, the Grenade Games wraps up it’s several days of debauched funtimes and seriously non-competitive competitiveness and we have the highlights, which you can watch here so we can neck some more moonshine.

Once again, Felix Urbauer and the Head team combine to drop another webisode that we’d be bored of referring to as slick if they weren’t so slick, this time from the U.S and A, while we have a chinwag with Herr Gigi Rüf about his at-the-time mysterious 9191 project. Torstein Horgmo reaffirms our suspicions that he’s stupid good on a snowboard with his Camp of Champions edit from the previous summer, and staying on a Norwegian tip we’re sad to hear that Factor Films, them dudes that brought you awesome movies like Notes and They Came From… had closed the door on their time as a snowboard movie-making outfit. It’s not all doom and gloom on the video front (or maybe in a way it is when you think of the implications), as Tim Humphreys spunks 350 bucks on a GoPro, shreds Mammoth for a couple hours and cuts together this gem.

Staying Stateside, Snowboarder’s sick Superpark session sees some severely spanking slams, and this hack wins a bet with himself that he couldn’t alliterate over 10 words. Son, more brandy! Eero Ettala becomes the latest to hitch a ride on Planet Sports’ happy bus, and in other ‘Ehr-Ro’ sounding news Ero One Films release the first teaser for their movie, Voila, which is not only rather good but they use an Edith Piaf tune which, also rather good, works really rather trés bon. A bunch of dudes in Portland or somewhere equally hip, going by the name of COMUNE, release their teaser for the longest-named snowboard movie in the history of the genre – Black Holes and Invisible Forces Bending Time Through Particle Deformation Creating Infinite Freedom in the Garden On The Moon. Despite their blatant self-dating, it’s nothing special. What is pretty special is Nils Arvidsson coming within a gnat’s whisker of landing the first ever triple cork, which we would have embedded here had Halldor Helgason‘s knuckle handspringer not been the best thing ever done on a snowboard in the history of space, time, the universe and everything. Click play and prepare to be dazzled.

Hard as it is to top that, Eero Ettala recaps his season in a nice bite-sized portion which ain’t too shabby including, as it does, perhaps the best slopestyle run ever amongst other nuggets of shred gold, while COMUNE release their second teaser which we don’t get. We give birth to This Year in Snowboarding‘s snotty little brother, This Week in Snowboarding, and the TTR release their plans for global domination, involving sharks with lasers, a lair in a volcano and a pussy cat to stroke. Or was it the Snowboarding World Championships? That’s almost all for May, folks, but there was enough time for Northern scamp Jamie Nicholls to release an end-of-season highlights reel, which just might have got our Fist of Nuff Embed had Niki Korpela and Ethan Morgan‘s minishred session not made us laugh so hard some wee came out. Here it is…

And that was May. We shall now recommence drinking the Christmas cheer and be back with a hungover vengeance on the morrow to rain nostalgic vomit all over June. Till then.

PART 1

PART 2

2010 has been quite a year. From the brain bending rise in riding level across the board, to a contest season that saw Peetu claim his second TTR title and Shaun his second Olympic gold, to Torstein boldly going where no man has been before with the triple, a whole bunch of awesome went down in snowboarding over the last 12 months and so as 2010 approaches its final curtain call we’ll be recapping the highlights of each month. Starting with January. Today. Enough waffle, here we go…

JANUARY

With the last part of 2009 being dominated by the insane level of progression that was sweeping the sport, the year kicked off with a nightmare dose of reality check as snowboarding was stunned by the news that Kevin Pearce sustained a severe traumatic brain injury practicing double corks on New Year’s Eve. Inevitably, being an Olympic year, there was some bullshit banter from mainstream dullards like Christine Brennan, but the outpouring of goodwill from the shred community was representative of how highly KP is respected as a person and a rider. Thankfully despite some sketchy times he is making smooth progress in his rehabilitation, as this recent video shows…

Early Jan was also when another teaser for the at-the-time mysterious Jeremy Jones 2-year project, Deeper, hit the pipes. Warm up runs? Yeah right. Of course, now we all know it was a whole bunch of awesome as it came free with Onboard 117. We caught up with Antti Autti as he was getting back on it from injury, and in contest land it’s game on in Davos as the O’Neill Evolution gets the TTR underway for the new year. Marko Grilc has the bookies slashing his odds for the Tour title as he follows up his December Air&Style win with 1st in the Slopestyle. Ursina Haller takes the women’s pipe, and it’s eyes on the double corks in the men’s pipe, with Iouri Podladtchikov coming out on top.

Despite Ursina Haller’s Evolution pipe win, the Women’s TTR is all about young Finnish rookie Enni Rukajärvi as she nets another 6-Star win by continuing her stomp fest to take the Roxy Chicken Jam Europe title. Few had heard of her till she won the 2009 Horsefeathers Pleasure Jam, and yet here she was, sat atop the pile of women’s finest snowboarders. What a mental image that is.

After two banging teasers, the elusive Norwegian Ducksjen crew releases their movie in its entirety and we’re pumped at what kids are churning out of their MacBooks these days. Ahead of the looming Olympic Games, Onboard (being a well-respected international publication and therefore on some spammy PR database that regular brands only look at once every 4 years) receives the first random press release with Olympic association, and we lap it up.

The BEO rolls in to Laax, and by the time it rolls out it’s all change in the Men’s TTR tour. Having nabbed 3rd in Slopestyle & Pipe at the Evolution, Peetu Piiroinen wins his first ever 6-Star event, taking 1st in the BEO Slopestyle, and then bags his second by winning the pipe too. The women’s tour is still all about Enni as she nails first in the Slopestyle, with Paulina Ligocka taking the pipe crown.

Alas, January brings yet more bad news as we get word that Danny Davis injured himself badly falling off a snowmobile after some late-night revalrie following shortly after he put down one of the best pipe runs of all time. Head Snowboards kick off the first of what would prove to be a pretty awesome season of webisodes by following Fredrik Evensen from the Air&Style to Korea, and we get inside Markus Keller‘s head for a lap in the Laax pipe. We were gonna link to it, but just watched it again and it’s so rad we’ve taken the executive decision to post it here. So, enjoy…

January winding down meant that the Olympics was on many people’s lips, and the US announced their team of badly dressed ambassadors, and to counter all that contest guff about medals and that, Standard Films release Halldor Helgason‘s sterling full part from Black Winter, which everyone who likes snowboarding should take some time out and watch now. That’s your cue to press play below then…

Media companies circle jerk themselves into a frenzy of new media opportunities as Lord Jobs drops the iPad on the world, and we at Onboard are no different so we show off our new touch-sensitive, zoom-friendly ‘magazine’. And to finish off January 2010 in style, Snoop Dogg gets the Neff hookup.

So that was January in a not-insignificantly sized nutshell. What were February’s highlights? Check back tomorrow for another Brandy-fuelled stroll down memory lane…

Local Vermontian news outlet WCAX.com posted a video showing Kevin Pearce making more progress after his traumatic brain injury at the end of last year. This is too good not to share it with you…

Keep your motivation, Kevin, you are truly inspiring!