Cab 9s for days in this Burton Snowboards clip featuring Danny Davis, Mikkel Bang, Marko Grilc, Christian Haller, Mark McMorris, Seppe Smits, Peetu Piiroinen, and Roope Tonteri. Flat spins, cork spins, double cork spins, and even Seppe’s crazy spin-rewind thing all look good during these spring park sessions from last season.

Seppe Smits took top honours for the third year running at the Spring Battle in Flachau. For those of you who didn’t tune in on Friday night to the webcast from Flachau’s Spring Battle, you missed out on all kinds of shenanigans. For a start, snowboard raps. Yes, you heard it right, a bunch of white dudes rhyming about riding. Incredibly relevant, clearly. In between video judging of the riders’ best runs. It was like a pilot episode of X Factor meets snowboarding, the rappers providing the cringe and Henry Jackson as Ant, Dec, and Dermot too. Everybody there was sufficiently inebriated so as not to notice or care though, and one by one the riders would be up on stage to, umm, well they might as well talk about their tricks and plead a bit with the judges. Long legged ladies kept the ever changing leader in the big throne in the corner refreshed, and left us feeling like we at home were about to miss out on a suitably shambolic party that was slowly snowballing along, rappers and all. Smits trumped Carlos Gebber with a backside double 10 nosegrab, no mean feat given the variable light and the falling snow. Since this was the first 5* event of the new season, Smits will be returning to Belgium with 17 grand and a fistful of 850 World Snowboard Tour points for the new year.

Here’s what the organisers had to say about it:

Oh, what a nice edit of Mark McMorris, Mikkel Bang, Seppe Smits, Roope Tonteri, Werni Stock, Marko Grilc, and Peetu Piiroinen slushing about at Heavenly and Sun Valley.

Usually spring is the time when most riders start to hang up their gear, but for riders like Mark McMorris, Mikkel Bang, Seppe Smits, Roope Tonteri, Werni Stock, Marko Grilc, and Peetu Piiroinen, it’s the time to start laying down the hammers. Those guys sure tore the spring kickers at Heavenly and Sun Valley a new one. Check out all the carnage in part 1 of the Spring Park Sessions.

After the triple-festing madness of the dudes’ Big Air there was no letup in the slopestyle. Once again, it looked like video games need to step up as the real world riders are doing things that you’d struggle with on your Xbox. Doubles mixed with triples were the norm, and Mark McMorris walked away with the title thanks to his last run that detonated over Aspen and scored a huge 98 points. It was also nice to see that despite not even coming close and their supposed ‘beef’, Shaun White was sporting enough to congratulate Mark on his win. In the women’s, Jamie Anderson once again continued her domination of female slopestyle riding, following up tree hugging with another display of silky smooth steeze. Sochi will be stupid.

MEN

1ST – MARK MCMORRIS

2ND – MAX PARROT

3RD – SEPPE SMITS

WOMEN

1ST – JAMIE ANDERSON

2ND – SARKA PANCOCHOVA

3RD – SPENCER O’BRIEN

This edit has more corking than a winery. Here are a bunch of backside double corks from the likes of Mikkel Bang, Mark McMorris, Shaun White, Seppe Smits, Mikey Ciccarelli, Jussi Oksanen, and Mikey Rencz.

Check out a whole bunch of frontside-rotating 900-degree spins from the likes of Mark McMorris, Danny Davis and Jussi Oksanen. 

There really isn’t much to say about this other than, “Here are a bunch of frontside 9s from Mark McMorris, Mikey Rencz, Danny Davis, Marko Grilc, Mikkel Bang, Mark Sollors, Seppe Smits, Roope Tonteri, and Jussi Oksanen.” Even with 1080s and beyond being pretty standard, the frontside 9 is still one of the most technical tricks, can’t spin too fast or too slow… just right. Which one was your favorite?

The park opening on the Hintertux glacier rang in the season in style a week or so back, now you can relive the highlights both on and off the hill in this sweet edit. 

The Hotzone.tv Park Opening went down from 5 to 7 October on the Hintertux Glacier in Austria. Once more Europe’s earliest park opening boasted good weather, world class snowboarding and a unique party schedule. The excellent park conditions and the many international snowboarders make the annual event one of the most important dates in the snowboard season.

Burton continue on their shred trick love-in with this fond look at the backside 720. Check Jussi Oksanen, Mark McMorris, Peetu Piiroinen and more putting their own spin on things…

Back leg poke, front leg poke, Mute, Indy, no-grab and more… here’s an overload of back 7s from some of the finest snowboarders around. Watch Peetu Piiroinen, Werni Stock, Roope Tonteri, Mikey Rencz, Danny Davis, Mark McMorris, Jussi Oksanen, Seppe Smits, Mikkel Bang, Marko Grilc, and Stephan Maurer do the old double helicopter.

Check the action from Hintertux last weekend, featuring heavy hitters like Seppe Smits, Roope Tonteri, Marko Grilc and more throwing hammers in the Session of the Dudes…

Above is the edit from Saturday’s contest, where there’s some intense spinning from the dudes, while this below has Sunday’s grom photoshoot. The mini men were killing it. Skip to the bottom if you’re keen on Friday’s action.

[Sunday Grom Session.]

Here’s a rundown of events in text format, should you be able to read…

The weather conditions could not have been any better for the Saturday of this year’s Hotzone.tv Park Opening. Despite last night’s activities – the fun- and goodie-filled UNIQUE8 premiere as well as the Pirates and the Shred Warm Up Parties – the hungry snowboarders encountered many happy faces already quite early in the day. Blue sky, no wind and pleasant temperatures just above zero degrees made for the typical Opening flair in the busy test area and the Skullcandy Lounge and for perfect conditions in the Betterpark.

At the Session of the Dudes a lineup of top riders like Marko Grilc, Chas Guldemond, Christian Haller and Gigi Rüf showed that the pro line is once again the benchmark in Europe. And while Roope Tonteri scored the Overall Winner trophy with his extremely technical tricks, local hero Werni Stock showed run after run that he was the clear winner in the Style category and the Best Rookie Award went to Tim Kevin Ravnjak from Slovenia. And apart from the big kickers rider crews and filmers swarmed around most other obstacles, too. It did not take long to spot a one-footed boardslide or a backside rodeo.

In the afternoon, the Hintertux parking lot turned into an event arena: Bag Jump, tarp surfing, many other activities and a glass of beer in the sun were perfect to wind down after a day on the mountain. Come nighttime the dance floor of the Hohenhaus Tenne rocked during the Analog Opening Night. The Wax Wreckaz DJ collective, DJ NLP, local act SMOK1NG FING3RZ and London-based DJ IRK were just some of the reasons for a long night after a perfect Opening day. And on Sunday in the morning the focus shifted to the youngsters at the Billabong Kids Shoot, where motivated mini shredders had a chance to re-finance their trip in the Cash for Trix Session starting 12:30, plus have the man, the myth, the legend that is Fischi point his lens at them.

All in all, epic as ever. Season’s on!

[Here's Friday's action, if you missed it.]

Check out some of the stompers from the semis and finals of the 2012 edition of Freestyle.CH, all edited together in hyper-über-mega-mo.

And while we have your attention, you NEED to watch this edit below from the qualifiers. Skip to 00.40 and enjoy the best frontside 360 ever, performed by your boy Halldor Helgason.