In only a few seasons, Mathieu Schaer has climbed up the shred ladder to become one of the main riders in the Absinthe crew. In fact, you only have to watch this overtalented Swiss ripper to realise how good he is, and how naturally he evolves in the backcountry. This, plus the fact that he also goes to university at the same time leaves us speechless. Like with Jari Sorasalmi, we met Mat in Meribel during the DC Shred Days and asked him about this mystery…

This season is now nearly over for most, how did it go for you?

This season wasn’t as good as the last one for me. I’ve been injured quite a bit and this knee injury bugged me for longer than expected this winter. I guess I got back too soon, and in the end it wasn’t a great idea. It’s kind of hard in the head when you know it’s going to hurt if you don’t land correctly… I also had less time to ride because of university. It was hard to get back into it as well since I had stopped my studies last year to concentrate fully on snowboarding. But next winter I will be more free again and will have more time to shred.

We always wonder how you manage to combine snowboarding and studies. How do you find the time to succeed in both?

Good question, ahah! I don’t really know. I do work a lot, I’m very motivated and I always try to organise my stuff in advance. It’s not always easy, for sure, like trying to study after a day out riding. But the good thing is, I love to switch from one to the other. Studying offers me more perspective than just snowboarding, and shredding help me stay focussed on what I want to achieve. Plus I get to meet all kinds of different people, and I sometimes have the impression to live 2 different lives! So I take it as a privilege, even though it’s demanding sometimes.

What was your best snowboard trip this winter?

We went twice in the Dolomites in Italy, it was cool. We had a crazy amount of snow there, and the mountains are beautiful and fun to ride. The good pizzas at cheap price don’t hurt either! They also put signs everywhere to stop people riding off piste, so most people stay on the piste and the backcountry stays spotless for days! That’s the best thing about it when you compare with how it is at home!

With Standard not making a video this winter, Absinthe got a few more riders on its rooster. Who are the ones that really impressed you?

Yes, we were stoked to get to ride with those guys. For example Mathieu Crepel, Nils Arvidsson and Victor Delerue are really sick riders and I was stoked to rider with them. They are not new in the game, but just shredding the backcountry with them is so amazing!

How was it to end your season in Meribel for the Shred Days? Generally park isn’t your thing?

The Shred Days were cool, it’s nice to be there and see all this people and feel the brilliant atmosphere. For sure park isn’t really what I’m used to, so I don’t go crazy. But it was really fun to ride there with the whole team, and watch the rail machines destroy the park. But it seems the season isn’t over for me yet! At this moment, it’s snowing in Saas Fee, so I’m off there now! After a good season like this, I wonuldn’t be surprised if there’s stuff to do until like end of May, for those who don’t mind walking a bit!

I know Alaska is one of your favorite place to ride. What’s your best story from this place?

Alaska is amazing, it’s like time stops when you’re there. This one time this fisherman brought us a King Crab, alive and enormous, saying that this was the best ever and that it’s really rare to find one, especially that big. Then he explained us how to prepare it. First you go by the ocean, put your hands in the animal’s mouth and pull his head back and crack it open. The you empty it, alive… You throw all the organs into the ocean and just keep the eatable part. Then you simply boil it into sea water. The best taste ever, but it was very disgusting to do all this to this poor animal. Especially the ‘head breaking technique’ didn’t go as well as expected… It was a bit of a carnage. But the taste was amazing, best thing I ever tasted!

Read all about Mathieu in the Profile we published a while back. Also check this short edit of Mat in his hood.

To read about the previous Miniviews, click this tag.

DC sent a crew of their top riders to Meribel Mottaret last week to shred the shit out of their Area 43 park. Which they dutifully did, and even bagged a few pow sprays while they were at it. We liked it almost as much as the girls in the bar that Lauri Heiskari, Mat Schaer, Piotr Janosz, and the rest were were showing off for. Check it out.

For more about what went down and a gallery of banger snaps, have a look here.

The DC Area 43 Mottaret park in Meribel saw 3 days of fun and shred from an all-star cast, despite the changing weather.

The DC Chalet has been busy all season long but last week was kind of the apotheose of a full, fun and productive season for the DC crew. For this final gathering, some of the team’s superstars showed up, as well as most of the Euro, French, GB and Spanish teams. Check it: Lauri Heskari, Mat Schaer, Piotr Janosz, Jani Sorasalmi, Elias Veijola, Rachida Aoulad, Dimitri Biau, Petr Horak, Mons Roisland, amazing 8 year old Benni Fridbjornsson, Lucas Benacchio, Franck Moissonnier… The list was long, and the show at the bottom of the piste on Wednesday was epic. The minishred course built after a first day on the park was taken by force by thousand of tourists and seasonnaires at the Rond Point, and 8 year old Benni pretty much killed it and got the respect of the crowd with pretty nice airs on the corner and frontflips on the volcano.

Lauri also brought his friends Eero Ettala and Heikki Sorsa along to film some ore for the fifth episode of Cooking with Gas season 2. They also represented proudly on that minishred session by throwing some of the biggest airs of the day, way above an half drunk half ecstatic crowd.

The park was where the stuff happened all season but for the Shred Days it all started on a street rail the night before: Jani and Elias pretty much destroyed a super long rail in Mottaret village – didn’t count the stairs but it was freaking long before the things even started. At least Elias will go back home with a banger, because injury didn’t leave him alone for very long: the gap flat down on the park punished a front board with a bad slam on the shoulder. And on the same day, Basa Stevulova, who was around with the rest of the Roxy crew, took also a super hard slam on the rail into town (the one from the first night), and had to go to hospital for a head check – she’s now fine. In the park earlier that day, Elias and Jani managed to transfer the massive hip in the middle of the park – that’s just before Elias got hurt… While Lucas and the Frenchies were concentrating on 7s from the two mid down kickers.

The second day on the park was pretty foggy and white, but that didn’t stop neither the little boardercross style course, country by country – I think the Frenchies won this – nor the BBQ up the hill. But you know, the Shred Days are also about the parties, and every night was a great night, filled with surprises, like this amazing magician playing tricks to Lauri and his friends.

The final day was more mellow, and the visit to the park got shortened by a pretty wintery weather. But the mission was easily accomplished, and that’s not even talking about the final night with concert on the ice ring, lead by Ministry of Sound / London.

Thanks again DC for the great times, we always love to come to Meribel, and we’ll be back!

More photos here: www.facebook.com/DC.Area43

The third episode of WhatWeWantFilms’ second season of podcasts follows Julien Emch hitting Swedish street rails with Kareem El Rafie while Ville Uotila and Féfé Pellacani rip alpine pow with Mat Schaer. 

Here is the 3rd episode of our second season of podcasts. As usual we share with you the shots that will not make it into our next movie. Our new young swiss jibber Julien Emch spent some time up in Stockholm to film with Kareem El Rafie and Leo Crawford while Ville Uotila and Féfé Pellacani have been riding powder and kickers with Mat Schaer in the Alps for a few days.

Stay tuned for more! New episode dropping soon and a full movie in September 2013.

Music: Iggy And The Stooges – Gimme Danger

Check the DC team, including the likes of Torstein Horgmo, Lauri Heiskari, Devun Walsh and a bunch of the Euro dudes, putting the smackdown on DC’s Area 43 setup in Meribel-Mottaret. Booming granny, it’s pretty dope.

For the second year in a row, the DC Area 43 snowpark spends the winter in Méribel-Mottaret, France, in the heart of the 3 Valleys ski area– the largest in the world. A vast playground for beginners to expert skiers and snowboarders, Area 43 has quickly become a notable feature in France and in Europe.

Last year, more than 825,000 people visited to shred the snowpark! Conveniently located at 2,400m altitude and surrounded by about twenty artificial snowmakers, the park benefits from optimal snow conditions. With 1,200m to slide down from the top to the bottom of the park, with quality features ready to be hit all winter long. DC Area 43, with it’s 90 000 m2 of features – 250m of handrails and boxes – over four areas to meet every rider’s needs: a boardercross to enjoy freestyle in a playful way, a beginner/ intermediate zone, an expert zone and a special “DC” area with new and original features, even open during photoshoots or events organized by DC Shoes. But wait there is more! The big new feature is undoubtedly the 22 feet half-pipe with XXL dimensions, ready to host the best freestyle skiers and snowboarders! Objective: making the DC Area 43 a training park of choice for the best riders by offering world-class and top-of-the-range features, to aid them towards the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games. Other new features are also here to brighten up the park.

Check out the original Plattières old gondolas which are recycled and ready to hit, plus all new handrails complete the park offerings for the season. More news, although there is no more mini-ramp to skate at the bottom of the park, it’s now replaced by a small skatepark (private) housed in the former adjacent cable car station. All of this is accessible using the new cable car of Plattières which guarantees access to the park in 9 minutes from the snow front of Mottaret!

To design and shape this amazing park, DC Shoes is surrounded by the crème de la crème of shapers: Benjamin Ravanel – Winter X Games Tignes’ Superpipe shaper, Nicolas Marduel – another great shaper, all working with the great team of Hilltechnics Snowpark Consulting. To get the job done, they have a fleet of impressive machines: two dedicated snow groomers, one mechanical shovel and the superstar of the groomer, the Zaugg Pipe Monster 22’’ recently acquired by the resort. The only machine able to produce the 22 feet famous halfpipe! Finally, the DC chalet, a cozy home, is the landmark of the DC Area 43, hosting DC Shoes team riders throughout the winter, plus media and partners. This year again, Julien Vaury, the ‘DC chalet keeper’ and his super great FORD Transit Custom AREA 43 car will be available for DC’s dear guests keeping them happy for the season.

AREA 43 MÉRIBEL MOTTARET DC Area 43, Méribel-Mottaret (FRANCE) | 3 Valleys Area Opening : December, 08th 2012 to April, 20th 2013 | Access : Chatelet Chairlift ; Plattières Cablecar Lift passes rates: 44€ (Méribel Valley only) | 53€ (3 Valleys) www.dcshoes.com | More info HERE.

Find all DC Area 43 news during the season through many podcasts! Visit the YouTube channel DCShoesFilmEurope Last season, more than 250 riders from 15 countries were the special guests of DC Area 43. Many events are scheduled during the winter season: photo-shoots, meetings with DC Shoes Europe Team riders, the famous DC Shred Days (3 days early April) with the DC Shoes International Team riders such as Devun Walsh, Torstein Horgmo… Then to end it all in April, let’s party at La Folie Douce for the closing day of the season! The famous highaltitude clubbing concept and inescapable after-ski break place, recently opened in Meribel, is one of the top partners of DC Shoes and DC Area 43. A co-branded range DC x Folie Douce will be launched and available exclusively at the Folie Shop at La Folie Douce!

The Absinthe crew KILLED IT in St Luc filming for Resonance. Check out this frankly bonkers riding from Pat Burgener, Mat Schaer, Lucas Debari & Sylvain Bourbousson.

The Absinthe crew scores great weather, perfect snow and no shortage of terrain options in St. Luc, Switzerland. Young guns Pat Burgener and Mat Schaer send it during a double cork session. Sylvain Bourbousson, Lucas Debari and Mat tackle more natural kickers and lines.

Here it is, the new Absinthe movie teaser. Resonance “brings shred fans deep into Absinthe’s world of powder and powerful riding”.

Featured riders: Eric Jackson, Gigi Rüf, Nicolas Müller, Bode Merrill, Lucas Debari, Blair Habenicht, Scotty Lago, Sylvain Bourbousson, Mat Schaer, Brandon Cocard, Danny Kass, Manuel Diaz

Available in your local snowboard shop and selected theatres soon, and available on iTunes on 25 September 2012.

Here’s the full list of European Resonance tour dates.

Photo: Matt Georges

Read this in-depth profile on Mat Schaer from last season, spiced up with some of his footage from all over the web.

Mat Schaer’s name gets mentioned a lot when it comes to emerging European backcountry talents. We do it, too. Mat Schaer is awesome.

Mathieu Schaer, The Quiet Achiever

[Words: Youri Barneoud]

In the space of just two seasons, the 21-year-old Swiss backcountry ripper has turned heads both in his home country and abroad, while intergrating into both Ero One’s and Absinthe’s film crews – all off his own back.

Growing up in Geneva in the footsteps of older brothers Samuel and Nelson, Mathieu started out attacking the slopes of La Clusaz every spare weekend he had. If you’re familiar with the resort and surrounding mountains, it’s easy to understand why Mathieu has developed such a talent for backcountry riding. But surprisingly La Clusaz isn’t what inspired Mathieu to turn professional, although his passion for powder certainly stems from there. It was a couple of amateur contests in Les Crosets and then a few TTR events that revealed his potential, while at the same time leading him to meet the Ero One crew, who would take him under their wing. Chosing between contests and shooting video was an easy choice. “Contests are often a way of getting your name out there to sponsors and can be what they ask of you to begin with,” he explains. DC, his main sponsor, was quickly happy for him to shoot with the Ero One crew rather than join the tour. Unlike many others who attend specialised sports schools where they focus on half-pipe riding, Mathieu has never been forced to take part in comps.

Ero One’s Voila - Féfé Pellacani, Sam & Mat Schaer & Chris Cunningham

“I never really spent much time training in the reputed snowparks in the States either, but I don’t feel like I missed out on much. That’s not where you’re going to pick up on essential backcountry skills anyway,” Mat says. He finished school in Switzerland two years ago, in a standard state school in Geneva, and since then he’s spent all of his time up the mountain. “For the moment,” but let’s get back to that in a moment…

Mathieu’s first video part came out in ‘Stick’Em Up’. Starting with a bang, his short but punchy part set to breathtaking big mountain backdrops displayed his impressive natural terrain skills. That year he was still in school and itching to be able to dedicate himself to snowboarding full-time. In the winter of 09/10 he’d finally be able to do just that, but things didn’t quite work out the way he’d expected. Mathieu suffered a serious ankle injury in January 2010 more or less putting an end to his season, but thanks to a good start to winter and a particularly productive couple of months he still managed to put together a respectable part in ‘Voilà’. Once again his rounded backcountry riding off kickers, cliffs and windlips surpassed all expectations. Following in the steps of Jake Blauvelt, he admits to “having a preference for natural terrain where there’s little, if not no, need for shaping”. And in fact a goal of his is to one day submit a part in which nothing has been shaped, featuring everything from straight backside airs to switch backside 1080s. He adds, “Dropping a cliff, it’s something you only do once. You don’t necessarily know how the snow is going to behave, you have to adapt, improvise in real time if you want to land your trick.” That kind of skill is something you can learn through repetition, but for Mathieu it’s still a different game entirely to training in the halfpipe. While he admires the guys who continue to push snowboarding in snowparks (like his friend Pat Burgener and his switch backside triple cork 1440) at the same time he believes that it’s easy to lose sight of certain things with that side of snowboarding, commenting “It’d be terrible if snowboarding started to resemble acrobatic ski jumping. For me that’s not what snowboarding is about.”

Mat Schaer – Stick ‘Em Up

His highlight from last winter was without doubt the opportunity to ride with Gigi Rüf and the rest of the Absinthe crew while shooting for ‘twe12ve’. “I spent 10 days with Gigi, it was a real learning curve. I listened and watched as he went about his business.” Everything about Gigi is inspirational to Mat, as much his riding as his persona and the way he approaches life. “Gigi thinks all of his jumps through carefully, he sees things that others just don’t pick up on. And yet, in the time it takes me to find one spot in the backcountry, he will have discovered 10!” To find himself part of the Absinthe crew and learning from the backcountry elite was a dream come true. “With Absinthe, I knew I was going to learn fast. And Gigi, he’s continually learning stuff and gaining local knowledge of new places too!” The other great advantage of shooting with a crew like Absinthe is the opportunity to travel abroad to where the conditions are best. So while Europe witnessed yet another terrible winter for snowfall last year, Mathieu, Sylvain Bourbousson and Absinthe cameraman David Vladyka jetted off to Canada for two months. Mathieu finally got to enjoy a full season with suffering any injuries or having to go to school.

With the support of Ero One (whom he’ll also have a video part with this year), Mathieu is ready to trade pow pow turns with the best of them and take his riding to some of the most renowned locations in the world. “I realise now that the last few years I’ve never really got to ride with any of the best pros. I spend a lot of my time still boarding with friends. It’s been a real wake up call. I’ve never really been on any trips abroad and to be honest never really thought I’d be given the opportunity, it’s a crazy world out there! My main reason for finding a sponsor initially was just to be flowed free gear every once in a while and I never dreamed I’d get this far!” We were keen to know what the highlights from this first experience with the Absinthe crew were. “Our trip to Revelstoke. I noticed that all the spots we hit up were actually accessible to everyone. All you had to do was scout your line, walk for half an hour, shape your jump and off you go! We didn’t even need sleds, we’d just catch the cable car and then spend the rest of the day walking.”

Ero One’s La Cassette – Mat Schaer

Of course, not to say that Absinthe isn’t all about charging Alaska and heli-boarding, but Mat highlights an interesting point. How do you keep the general public interested in things that aren’t accessible to them? “We weren’t in some far off lodge with the chopper waiting outside. In the end, a good video production is not simply down to having an unlimited budget to fly anywhere, but to take every aspect of the job seriously. Getting up early, making sure all your gear is in place, scouting out your spots in advance, networking with local contacts. But most all, staying motivated is the number one thing.” In this regard we’re curious to know what he thinks of The Art Of Flight, or for now the two teasers they’ve released so far? “It’s mental! A real dream come true, those guys really are the best backcountry riders on the planet. But as I said earlier a lot of people will perhaps find it hard to relate to. I’m hoping that with Absinthe’s new release they’ll experience a different impression. And I also hope it’ll show people that they need to familiarize themselves with out-of-bounds snowboarding before going out and doing just anything.” Having the right safety equipment is essential, but even more important is knowing how to analyse the snowpack and dangers of the terrain in front of you. As Mat himself highlights, “the mountains above all demand experience and if you haven’t put in your time then don’t think that you’re just going to be able to improvise yourself out of trouble.”

Besides snowboarding, environmental studies is something that Mathieu also feels strongly about and can even see himself working in in the future. But for now he’s staying focused on snowboarding. “Snowboarding seems to offer two pathways: a fair number of young guys chose to go to snowboard schools, join teams, attend training camps. Others, like me, prefer to do things on their own and just as much backcountry as possible. But both options continue to progress. We might not be able to bust double corks over bulletproof kickers but that’s not to say we’re not pushing our own limits!”

Either way, it’s clear that building a pro career today is much harder than in the past, and no doubt easier than in the future. This goes for contest machines who now have to have double corks on lockdown, as it does for backcountry freestylers who not only have to keep pushing their limits but also battle for visibility in magazines and videos. With the internet offering so much free video content, a career in shooting video parts is no longer what it used to be. Fortunately for Mathieu he has both Ero One and Absinthe to lean on, and it’s well merited.

Sponsors: DC, Electric, Nixon, Superpark.

Head over to their website, their Facebook page, and being French we’re sure they’re on Minitel, too.

Filmed by : Jon Vital & Julien Roserens.
Supported by : DC Shoes, K2 Snowboarding, Head Snowboards, Imperium, Horsefeathers, Analog, Unleashed winch, Thyon 4 Vallées.