Our search for the best shred spots in Europe continued as we visited the Rome Park in Zell am see. And despite the fact that the park is quite young (less than two years old) the dedicated crew have managed to create a little shredorado just a few hundred meters above the world-famous resort town.

Stefan Trenkwalder on the Jib Line, Photo: Danny Burrows

QUICK FACTS

The park’s focus is defi nitely on its many jib features, most of which can be linked into one long park lap. The kickers and the corner are small to medium-sized but always shaped to perfection. This allows for countless hours of fun and a smooth progression of your riding.

ROME PARK SCHMITTENHÖHE

The park was only established in early 2009, but it already has a crew of devoted locals. The dedicated on-hill team and their great shaping abilities aside, this is also due to its affi liation with and support from the infamous La Resistance snowboard shop in town. The park itself consists mainly of jib obstacles and a few small to medium sized kickers. It stretches over the entire length of the Hahnkopf T-bar lift, which is great for doing quick park laps. The small corner is good fun, too.

When we visited the Schmittenhöhe resort it had dumped a good 30 cm overnight, and the crew kept ogling the face of the Maurerkogel above the park, which apparently boasts top backcountry lines. Equally tempting is the Kettingalm chalet at the foot of the park, which offers great food and some reasonably priced accommodation.

RESORT

Schmittenhöhe (939-1,949m)
26 lifts, 77km slopes
1 snowpark (Rome Park Schmittenhöhe)

PARK SET-UP

KICKER

Kicker (5m table)
2 x funbox (6m table)
2 x funbox (4m table)
Corner (20m)
Kicker (10m table)
Kicker (14m table)

RAILS/BOXES

Stair setup
12m down-fl at-down rail
6m handrail
8m kink box
Down box
5m rainbow box
8m A-frame
C-box
6m butter box
Picnic tables
Jib barrel

Simon Pircher, Robert Ahm, Photo: Danny Burrows

GETTING THERE

CAR

From Vienna: Vienna B 227 – A1 – St. Pölten – Salzburg A 1/E 55 – Reichenhall A 8 – Steinpass B 312 – Unken – Zell am See B 311

From Munich: Munich A8 – Interchange Inntal A8 – Traunstein B 306 – Exit Siegsdorf – Steinpass B 312 – Unken – Zell am See B 311

TRAIN

From Vienna: Vienna – Linz – Salzburg – Bischofshofen – Zell am See

From Munich: Rosenheim – Wörgl – Kitzbühel – Zell am See

PLANE

Closest airports are Salzburg, Munich, Innsbruck

WEBSITES

www.schmitten.at
www.kettingalm.at
www.la-resistance.at

Words: Matt Georges

Onboard Senior shooter Matt Georges took a trip to the land of the Nipple-Deep Pow with yes boys Romain de Marchi, JP Solberg and tadashi fuse, with tadashi promising to lead them to some top-secret areas of hokkaido, and in the process became a snow nerd…

No two snow crystals are exactly the same; each one is slightly different. Ok, so you’ve heard that before. Yet one snowflake couldn’t look more like another, and their shapes usually fall in several basic forms. the World Weather Organisation classifi es snowflakes into seven different categories: plates, starshaped, columns, needles, dentrites, rimed and irregular, the last of which encompasses three other forms of precipitation: graupel,
snow pellets and hail. among these categories, the forms, weights and volumes vary widely. You get the idea: it’s pretty complicated stuff.

Romain de Marchi Frontside 3, Photo: Matt Georges

The shape of the snowflake is determined broadly by atmospheric pressure, electric fi elds, wind, humidity and the temperature at which it is formed. It is this last factor that is crucial to the form and shape of the snow crystal. All other things being equal, temperatures between – 5°C to – 10°C will lead to the development of needle or hollow column type crystals. Between – 10°C to – 12°C, you tend to get plates, and from – 12°C to – 18°C, crystals form into stars with six branches. These branches can often form into further complex growth patterns with dendritic features. Oh, and fi nally between 5°C and 20°C it rains, which means it’s all over!

JP Solberg, Photo: Matt Georges

But why exactly am I going on about all this? Simply because I did a bit of research on the internet to fi nd out why the snow in Japan is apparently
lighter than anywhere else. Ever since I started snowboarding people have kept going on about the quality of the powder in Japan, and I thought is was about tim

Romain De Marchi, Photo: Matt Geroges

e I went to check it out for myself. Snow analysis aside, let us focus on the main players in this story. Our crew was made up of Swiss-Canadian karaoke diva Romain de Marchi, Norwegian fi sherman JP Solberg and Japanese snowboard legend, guide, organiser, businessman, fi lm-maker Tadashi Fuse. Oh, and there was also meant to be French Canadian kicker killer David Carrier- Porcheron but unfortunately he wasn’t able to make it in the end. Tadashi was born in the Land of the Rising Sun a little over 27 years ago, in the province of Yamagata, located on the main island of Honshu, north of Tokyo. He learnt to snowboard in the surrounding mountains and various other different islands that make up the archipelago before moving to Whistler, Canada, a few years later, where he now lives with his wife and two little girls. For this trip, he wanted to unveil a few well-kept secrets on Hokkaido, the most northern island where most of the winter resorts are found, along with erupting volcanoes, huge forests and that worldrenowned fl uffy white stuff.

JP Solberg, Photo: Matt Georges

Hokkaido weathers constant heavy snowstorms brought in by winds from Siberia. The island is flanked by the Pacifi c Ocean (to the east) and the Sea of Japan (to the west) and Okhotsk Sea (to the north). It’s separated from Honshu by the strait of Tsugaru. What would we do without Wikipedia and the Internet! Technology is quite something. You know absolutely nothing about something and with a few clicks of a mouse you can have it all there in front of you! Hokkaido is the equivalent to Mecca for powder riding: the best you can get.

When it comes to writing a text like this, where you have to ramble on about super light powder, it’s often tempting to try to put your readers at ease with little jokes that often aren’t very funny. You could nearly take all this as just being filler. But a trip to Japan is worthy magazine content
whatever the angle.

Romain De Marchi Switch Back 5s, Photo: Matt Georges

After landing in Sapporo, the island’s capital city, Tadashi put together a little programme for us. I could give you the name of the idyllic place we stayed at for a couple of days but out of respect for the calmness of the place I will refrain from sharing any information. To tell the truth, my goldfi sh memory can’t remember the long and complicated name of the place anyway. We slept on traditional tatamis in beautiful silk dressing gowns, ate on the fl oor (on patterned tatami) enjoying the succulent local food while struggling to use our chopsticks correctly. When we weren’t eating, we
went and rode incredible spots just outside our front door, a Bed & Breakfast stranded in the middle of the mountains, at the end of a road to a closed pass, allowing us to access a number of sick spots by foot. In the evening, after our crazy sessions, we’d all go and drink beers at the Onsen thermal baths. The Japanese absolutely love a thermal bath and can spend hours bathing in these places. This reminds me of quite a funny story. I’m not sure she’ll be happy that I told it but last year we went on a trip to Japan with Anne-Flore Marxer and happened to test the famous Onsen baths. I didn’t actually get to witness the scene, seeing as the baths aren’t mixed, but from what I heard all the local Japanese women took her for a total weirdo at the sight of her blond hair, blue eyes and western bodyhair removal…

JP Solberg Frontside 3, Photo: Matt Georges

After a few days spent living in the strictest Japanese tradition, we moved onto Asahikawa. Located at a junction of two main roads, by getting up super early it was quite easy for us to organise day trips to wherever the powder happened to be, then return at nightfall for a big bowl of noodles and some good old karaoke before getting some sleep. Unfortunately Tadashi injured himself on the fi rst day by banging his knee against an ice block hidden under the snow. He spent the rest of the trip sipping green tea while Jean-Pierre and Romain unleashed turns in the bottomless powder runs.

Romain De Marchi Front 3 Handplant High Five, Photo: Matt Georges

The days were long and busy and at the end of every day we’d stop off at the first supermarket to fuel up on hot coffee (served in a can), noodles and
sushi: nothing quite beats it after a long day of riding. As all good things come to an end, our two weeks were quickly over and we had to return home. We made the quick trip to Tokyo where we spent a night in one of those peculiar capsule hotels (check them out on Google – it’s an interesting experience, that is if you’re not claustrophobic!) before flying home.

Bye bye Japan…

Romain De Marchi, Photo: Matt Georges

JP Solberg, Photo: Matt Georges

Romain De Marchi Hokkaido, Photo: Matt Georges

Tadashi Fuse Stalefish, Photo: Matt Georges

In our constant search for the premier shred spots in europe we went to visit the dC area 43 in Kitzbühel. Since we were told the park catered for all riding abilities we talked ethan Morgan and Marco Smolla into coming along for the ride. None of us regretted going there. read on for the lowdown on this great park…

One hell of a setup. Photo: Roland Haschka

QUICK FACTS
A great park for stepping up your jib and kicker game. Countless features in a long park allow for hammering down your perfect line. Mellow booters and hip for your pro friends.

DC AREA 43 KITZBÜHEL
Let’s do away with some confusion straight off the bat. There are actually two DC Area 43s in Kitzbühel, one each on the Northern and Southern side of the resort. While the small but fun Northern park is catered towards intermediate riders, the Southern park – actually closer to Mittersill than Kitzbühel – is where you should really focus your freestyle mojo. It boasts a huge variety of small kickers and jib features, a massive down rail, some boxes and picnic tables, and a pro line including a decent tabletop booter and a great hip feature. An all new park section is in the pipes as well, but the QParks crew told us to keep this information ‘top secret.’ To get to this shredorado just take the gondola from Mittersill, traverse to the Hanglalm lift and you’re there! For the sake of completeness we should add that on powder days the resort offers a wealth of backcountry runs – ranging from easy tree lines to some gnarlatronic cliff drops.

Captain Morgan consults the charts. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi

RESORT
Kitzbühel (800-2,000m)
53 lifts, 170km slopes
2 snowparks (DC Area 43 North + South)
DC Area 43 South

Backside Rodeo 7 with some proper tail poke from Ethan Morgan. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi

KICKERS:
Beginner line: 3 kickers (2m – 4m)
Intermediate line: 3 kickers (5m – 7m)
Pro line: 3 kickers (8m – 11m)
2 additional kickers (2m and 3m)

Morgan presses one out on the down bar. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi

Rail:
11m downrail
Miscellaneous:
- Up-tree
- Up-down tree
- picnic tree
- tree jib
- curved tree
- 2 picnic tables
- chill area

EVENTS
DC Rookie Contest
Sick Trick Tour

GETTING THERE

Car
From Vienna: Westautobahn
towards Salzburg – Zell am See –
Mittersill (430 km)
From Munich: Autobahn towards
Kufstein – St. Johann/Tirol –
Kitzbühel – Pass Thurn – Mittersill
(170 km)

Train
From Vienna: Westbahnstrecke
Wien – Linz – Salzburg – Bischofshofen
- Zell am See; Local train
to Mittersill
From Munich: Rosenheim – Wörgl
- Kitzbühel – Take the bus for
Mittersill over Thurn pass
Plane
Closest airports are Salzburg,
München, Innsbruck

WEBSITES
www.dc-area-43-kitzbuehel.com

Smolla sends an air to fakie on the hip. Photo: Sami Tuoriniemi

BOXES:
- Rainbow box 6m
- Straight box 6 m
- Up-down box 6m
- 2 Butter boxes small
- 2 butter boxes large
- Kinked Box 11m

Words: Danny Burrows

Sani Alibabic, Peetu Piiroinen, Fredi Kalbermatten, Stephan Maurer and JP Solberg join Terje Kaakonsen to rip the snowcapped volcanoes of Kamchatka…

Peetu Piiroinen discovers that outside of icy parks there’s this soft stuff called ‘powder’. Woop!

Kamchatka hangs from russia’s east facing head into the Pacific like a great elephant’s trunk, its hide pockered by living volcanoes. Our outpost of Snow valley, comprising five newly built wooden lodges, is two hours by truck from the nearest conurbation and 20-minutes fl y time to the lines of the peninsula’s suppurating cones. Beyond the camp an expanse of snow and skeletal trees, black and bare, drapes down from the shrouded heights like bridal trails. as Sani put it, it’s the end of the world.

JP Solberg.

Absinthe’s Brusti negotiates sulphurous slop.

When the crew had scored enough face shots it was time to build. JP Solberg sends it long on a backside 7 at the end of the trip.

We are a big group by snowboard standards, with three still photographers, me, Adam Moran and Russian snapper Andrew Piromov; Brusti is here to film for Absinthe’s new movie NowHere and Burton filmer, Tim Manning, is also onboard. Maxim, a local of these parts and founder of the Kamchatka Snowboard Association, is our main fixer and guide and our murder of rippers reads like the guest list of a snowboard blockbuster: Terje Haakonsen, Sani Alibabic, Peetu Piiroinen, Fredi Kalbermatten, Stephan Maurer and JP Solberg. And last but not least there’s Svein, Terje’s friend and physio. This would be his sixth time on a board and he had been quite literally dropped in at the deep end; however you wouldn’t have known it. He was throwing down McTwists off a corner we built near the lodge and doing backfl ips off the big kicker in the backcountry, none of which he landed but the idea and guts to try were there – with a little time he would stick them. According to Terje, whatever sport he tries is mastered.

The sleds allowed access to some fun terrain down low. Fredi Kalbermatten boosts a Method.

We had flown eight hours from Moscow to Petropavlovsk, the Kamchatkan capital, leaving behind a city shattered by two explosions on the rush hour subway. Suicide bombers from the troubled provinces of the Caucasus had brought war to the city, killing 37 and wounding dozens more; another sad note in the diaries of a country with more scars than a failed bare-knuckle fi ghter and for us not the most reassuring introduction to Russia.

Sani and Maurer

Terje & JP get the Russian Heli 101

Terje Haakonsen makes good use of heli drop No. 3,796 on his ever-increasing list.

Our trip was the culmination of two years of brain storming between Terje and his friend Maxim and once rolling the rest of us jumped the cart to help pay the $5000 daily levy on the helis, and I guess for a bit of company on the hill. The vertical here, according to Sani, is like that of Japan with heaps of potential for getting your shred on and as well as lines there’s also spaced tree runs to cut. With strong winds, though, the snow on the
mountains proper was blown and it felt sketchy with no pits being dug, but our guides according to Maxim were the best in Russia. On the second drop of the fi rst day, on what was a mellow line by Sani’s standards, he asked the guide if it might slide. The answer was a little ambiguous: “Maybe, but not likely.” Sani’s line was safe but when Maurer dropped next, hitting a lip, there was that unmistakable deep ‘whoomp’ as an avalanche triggered. “I remember looking down seeing this big spider web appearing in front of me. My fi rst thought was “what the fuck is this?” ‘cause it took me a second to realize what was going on ‘cause I really didn’t think that something could slide there and then that was followed by “oh fuck, an avalanche, that’s what it is! Get the fuck out of here!” He kept his speed and momentum and cut left and out in time to watch the face slab and funnel into a narrow gully. For Sani it was the sketchiest part of the trip.

And there was us thinking cats had an aversion to water. The Sprocking one slashes the pool.

Fishy Method on the lower fl anks from Stephan Maurer.

What makes riding here unique is that we were riding volcanoes, cutting lines between vents, ceracs and fi ssures that have cooked through to cauldrons of yellow-stained rock and patches of hot, black lava. In the crater of Mutnovkiy sulphur spewed in rolling cotton blooms from these openings and burned the lungs as we hiked back to the heli. There’s even a valley at the base of the Kikhpinych volcano called the Valley of Death where on still days gases hang thick enough to kill and cat-like the valleys river regularly deposits its victims downstream. Thankfully, it wasn’t on the itinerary.

Bad-weather days are a no-go for helis, but a short sled ride meant Fredi found something to play on. Tree ride to backfl ip out.

The helis here, all MI8s, are like fl ying school buses. We sit 14 to a chopper facing each other on canvas seats, with our gear stacked at our feet. There are no seatbelts and the pilots seem intent on trying to scare the living shit out of us, setting the craft into steep dives that leave us weightless. We hang on the assurances of Maxim that our pilot, Dimitry Zaderey, is the best in Kamchatka; he’s been fl ying heli trips here for over 10 years but still amazes Maxim with his control of his bird. The funny thing is that with the high winds that we’ve had any other crafts would be grounded – not ours.

Sani Alibabic lays one out on his way to peer into the earth’s guts.

Great piloting and guiding aside there is nothing stronger than nature and on our last day in the country, while we were out sledding and hitting kickers, one of these helis with a full payload of riders was taken out by an avalanche 2.5 meters deep and 400 meters wide. The exact details of the crash were murky but according to Maxim it was just one of those freak accidents. He went to see the wreckage after and said that the remains of the
heli resembled waste paper. 10 people died in the accident.

While the other guys went to build a jump, Terje said to Sami “I’ve built enough kickers in my life, let’s do something different.” A quick bit of shaping and the classic Haakon Method was busted out.

Of the ten days that I’ve been in Kamchatka we’ve ridden nine: three drop days from the MI8s, six on sleds and one day at the beach where we braved  the Pacific to surf. Where the snow had been assimilated into the sea, black sand contrasted the whites of winter. The water was dark and cold and the waves a glassy 2- to 3-feet, but as Terje put it, “any drive to get surf is always worth it.” Out there, somewhere, subs from Russia’s main base in Petropavlovsk sleuth the depths, their periscopes trained on the shores of America where Sarah Palin, eyes bulging on the stalks of her binoculars, brushes up on world politics.

Solberg, Fredi and a guide enjoy some afternoon delight - beer and fi sh. ALLBOOK117-ENG.

In Kamchatkan mythology the volcanoes are inhabited by huge fl ying ogres. At dusk they lumber up on the thermals, swirling masses of black soot, and glide out to sea to skewer whales on their harpoon-like fi ngers. They return in the night to grill their prize in molten lava, lighting the sky with fl ickers of fi re. These beasts may not be real but what they represent – the power of nature – is the lasting image that will stay with us all of this wild outpost of Russia. We drew lines down volcanoes that overnight are whipped clean; swam in a pool heated by thermic energy from the earth, which at any moment might burst through winters veneer and roast us all.

There’s not many places on the planet that boast such a backdrop. Terje lets one rip by the Pacific.

Man soup.

Russia exists in its own sphere of reality, brutal and yet beautiful. Here none of us are bigger than nature.

Look closely and you can just make out the GoPro rig sticking out of Maurer’s pack. GoPros, so hot right now.

Maurer broke the trip down to simple stats for his blog.
Days on the road: 15
Days on the mountain: 9
Bad weather days: 1
Hiking days: 0
Sledding days: 6
Heli days: 3
Days fl own with a MI-8: 3
Days riding on an active volcano: 1
Runs taken that went all the way down to the ocean: 1
Lost credit cards: 1
Longest period without Internet: 168h
Days without real cell phone reception: 11
People that knocked themselves out while partying at the lodge: 1
People that fell asleep in a strip club: 1
People that took off their shirt while getting a lap dance: 1
Suicide bombings in the subway on the day of our arrival in Russia: 1
Tragic helicopter accidents in the Kamchatka region during our stay: 1
Descent size avalanches that were set off on the trip: 2
People almost sending it over a 30m cliff to total fl at: 1
People jumping head fi rst onto a huge ice block: 1
Bottles of vodka that were bought fi rst thing after landing: 11
Average time spent in the pool every day after riding: 2h
Amount of lifebuoys in that pool: 3
People that fell into the pool with their snowboard gear on: 1
Powder sprays done on the trip: 1348
Really cold water surf days: 1
Ski poles on the trip: 1
New things learned about how to drink vodka the right way: 5
Average speed Dmitry drives through Moscow: 107km/h
Number photos taken on the trip: 22,394
Fun: A LOT!