Peep our boy Jamie Nicholls warming his legs in the park on the Hintertux Glacier courtesy of his sock sponsor Sterling Socks. We won’t lie: his ‘warm up’ is a little more awesome than what we’d consider a ‘warm up’.

British rookie Jamie Nicholls will shortly be heading to his homeland to take part in the London Freeze (get your tickets and info here – www.relentlessfreeze.com), where he’ll be hoping the home crowd will roar him along to another major event win following his first place at the Ride Shakedown Europe at the end of last season.

Here he is getting his legs going in Hintertux, filmed by Sterling Socks‘s honcho Dan Wakeham. We’re digging that back 7 and back 10 late cork melon, but, Jamie, watch them hands kiddo…

Our homies over at Planet Sports just fired us over this neat-o edit of Marko Grilc, DBK and Tim-Kevin Ravnjak knocking the back out of Saas Fee’s park. Amazing how cats can pull doubles off such little jumps these days…

In terms of pre-season warm-ups, here in Europe it seems to be all about Hintertux and Saas Fee right now. We’ve seen a fair few from both in recent weeks and now Planet Sports team riders David Bertschinger Karg, Grilo and Tim-Kevin weigh in with their edit. You will learn some bad words in Slovenian from this edit, see some steezing, funshred and double corkers.

The park was in sterling condition as ever. All photos: Christian 'Eli' Eberl

[Make sure you also check out the video highlights from all the days at the Hotzone Hintertux Opening.]

Last weekend, the Austrian glacier resort of Hintertux rang in the new season in style with another banging edition of the Hotzone Hintertux Park Opening. The TTR’s Francesca Page made the pilgrimage with our German ed and hit us up with the lowdown…

Blazing sun, blazing kit and blazing riding pretty much sums up the Hotzone.Tv Park Opening at Hintertux last weekend. With a recent snowfall on the Glacier, both the pros themselves and the general public took to the Austrian mountain to mark the onset of the winter season. Held between October 30th and September 2nd, the Better Park shapers boasted a new playground of rails, boxes and solid kickers for every rider to hit.

If you need us to tell you why we refer to Beckna as a 'legend', there is no hope.

The official opening on Saturday provided no end of activities. Once up at Fernerhaus, the public were confronted with products from more than 20 brands being offered to test free of charge. In the park itself, Pros and Ams provided some great entertainment for snow junkies, which was soon followed by the ‘Hotzone Session of the Dudes.’ Here Marko Grilc stole the show with his backside 10 Double Corks, frontside 3s, backflips and a 5 to switch double shifty, bagging himself the ‘Most Impressive Rider’ award. Peter König took the title of ‘Most Stylish Rider,’ with his backside 5 to Cab 5 and double frontflip to backside rodeo combos on the two-hit line, while Roland Tschoder was given a ‘Special Award’ for the tricks he laid down. In between all the snow sessions, there was no problem grabbing some complimentory hot wine at the Rhythm tent, or just hitting the BBQ terrace at the Tux Fernerhaus whilst being entertained with beats from DJ NLP.

Marko Grilc killed it all day. Here's one of his proper back 10 doubles. Not bad for an 'old' guy...

Roland Tschoder getting the one-footer done.

As the burning sun gave way to mountain fresh air, everyone headed down to the ‘Aftershed Session’ at the parking lot of the Hintertux glacier gondola. Here the entertainment continued with a Gloryfy ‘Bag Drop Bomb Session’ where public were dared to take a 6-8 foot drop onto a big air bag…. not for the fearful of heights! If falling from a crane wasn’t your thing, you could head over to see K2 who were running the ‘Pop This: Highest Ollie tournament,’ where Sebi Müller topped the competition with an impressive height of 1m. Yet for those who simply wanted a break from all the riding, the Analog tent offered an après ski beer to cool down after a day in the park. Hitting the party on Saturday night, Rhythm had expanded the outdoor area of the usual venue Hohenhaustenne, with a vast tent and vast amount of boozing! To begin with there was the video world premiere of Argon Films’ (a new Austrian movie production company) movie Euphoria, which fired the crowd up for a night of great tunes with a great atmosphere.

Test centre.

Pop that shit.

After a long night, for those up and ready to roll on Sunday, the top shredders headed to the ‘Cash for Trix Session,’ where Michi Schatz, Simon Pircher, Seppi Scholler and Georg Obermeissner all stood out and bagged some cash. In the afternoon, some companies had even devised special highlights for visitors, such as the Billabong Kids Session where rookies could have their picture taken by  Pleasure mag’s Senior Photographer Markus “Fischi” Fischer, or get personal tips from snowboarding legend and Billabong team rider Wolle Nyvelt. The most impressive tricks the kids shot here were a 270 front board, frontside boardslide, and even a backside 360, one-footed!

Groms went wild for Fischi's lens.

We're betting this cat bagged some cash for this styley back tail.

All in all, blessed with great weather and great people Hintertux provided a weekend that truly marked the opening of both an impressive park, and an impressive season of snowboarding ahead.

- Francesca Page

The infamous Austrian season opening is gearing up to rock out on its 25th anniversary.

This Friday, October 15th, the Kaunertal glacier will celebrate its 25th opening and welcome shredders to the snowpark opening and the start of the winter season 2010/2011. Well-known pro riders have already confirmed their attendance at the contest and the snow park, testival area, parties and concerts will offer full-on fun for three days in a row.

Top riders confirmed

Also in 2010 we are happy to have already confirmed many pro riders, who will be taking part in the BIG PARK minishred Pro Contest and fight for USD 7.000 purse. The 10 ‘Lucky Ones’ in the snowboard contest, who were chosen from the amateur contest registration, can get ready for a heavy fight.

Watch out for the Pirate Gerome Matthieu who is also last year’s winner overall and very eager to take home the prize money once more. Some other top names, however, will try prevent that happening and with Peter König, Alessandro Boyens, Benny Deeg, Mario Wanger and KTO best rookie 2009 Tor Lundström in the starting field we can be looking forward to an exciting contest. Conny Bleicher and Tini Gruber will be competing too – there’s gonna be no easy rides in the girls’ category either.

Park info!

There is also some good news about the snowpark. All season long the fresh set-up is going to provide the perfect ride with two jib lines and a kicker line. While the mini shred comes up with tons of playful jib options and two new butter boxes, the big obstacle line is going to score with a brand-new double kinked rail and another up-down combination for a playground with thirty obstacles on the whole and fun guaranteed. Two innovative “surprise obstacles” will complete the park pleasure for the Kaunertal Opening. Beside the new facebook site www.facebook.com/snowparkkaunertal the new website www.snowpark-kaunertal.com will go online in October with movies, photo gallery, news and much more about the snowpark.

Side events at KTO!

In the testival area more than 30 companies with nearly 50 brands will be giving you the chance to test their brand new stuff for 2010/11. Besides that there will be the Rail Session presented by Gloryfy, downdays.eu and Grounded Freestyle on Friday at the Gletscherrestaurant Weisssee. The rail will stay there for the remaining weekend and be ready for everyone to jibb. The guys from Air2Bag by Air(Bag)Patrol will be ready at your disposal for jumping their colossal airbag and a less risky training on Saturday and Sunday.

Full information on: www.kaunertal-opening.at

As you’ve come to expect by now, the beginning of October signals the kick-of to the season as Hotzone.tv invites the cream of Europe to the opening of the Hintertux Betterpark. Characterised by heavy riding, heavier partying and even heavier lack of internet connection tucked in a quaint little corner of the Austrian alps, this year’s edition went off despite bad weather onFriday and Saturday. And when bluebird came for Sunday morning, it went double off.

Due to the crapped out internet connection mentioned earlier (seems to happen every year, bless ‘em) our Pulitzer Prize-winning reportage of what went down each day will never be published, but we’ll post our impressions in a wrap-up shortly. In the meantime, check out what went down each day with your hosts Peter König and Werni Stock, and make sure you check Sunday when blue skies meant the park could get nailed good and proper.

Friday

More Snowboarding Videos >>

Saturday

More Snowboarding Videos >>

Sunday

MPORA Action Sports >>

PK and Werni check out the park prior to this weekend’s Hintertux Opening.

Ahead of the legendary Hotzone.tv park opening, Zillertal boys Werni Stock and Peter König hit up the park and more to see what’s up. There’s some shit shooting, training for the 2018 synchronised slopestyle event and, more importantly, you get a good idea of how the park’s looking.

The park opening’s on this weekend, with better weather forecast, so if you need your fix and are anywhere near the Zillertal, make a beeline for Hintertux and be part of it.