From tomorrow on we’ll have to get used to writing down ’2011′ on all official documents. People from the UK are always appalled at our sense of fireworks safety measures. “My first New Year’s Eve in Munich was like being back in Vietnam,” was the way our English ed put it. Oh well, there has to be something Germans are unorganised about. Pro tip for fireworks: Don’t use them on New Year’s Eve, store them in a dry place for later! Now you can terrify friends and family all year long. Happy New Year!

December

Like in the previous month we started things with an ancient shred flick – this time Isenseven’s first ever movie ‘New Noise‘. Our senior photog Matt Georges appeared in this neat Billabong clip. David Bertschinger Karg got his own video profile from Smith Optics. And All Plugged Up was an excellent free movie. We really suck at filming and editing, but somehow our little interview with Peetu Piiroinen got a lot of attention:

Then there was the Air&Style in Beijing. Think of it what you want, but we created a live blog and posted the best tricks and a highlight video. Get in the Van 2 was a banger of a free movie. Like so many good riders before him Halldor Helgason signed for Nike 6.0. And the Pow-Pod caused quite a stir, and so did Dan Brisse’s full part from Poachers X. But quite honestly, everyone preferred Scott Stevens‘ clip:

Torstein revealed his love for… his board, the Austrian Sanesation movie was quite popular, Kareem El Rafie’s video part was solid, and we visited Fredi Kalbermatten at home:

The YES. crew rode the Whistler back- and frontcountry. We posted all Airblaster Family Portraits in one go. The Euro Nike 6.0 team rode Keystone in a shockingly bad edit, and Jamie Anderson posted a shockingly good edit of herself riding in Tahoe. Xavier De Le Rue launched his own webisode series called Timeline. And how to describe Eero Ettala’s part from the Nitro movie? Doesn’t matter – just watch it yourself!

The Dew Tour kicked off in Breckenridge and Torstein Horgmo, Louie Vito, Jamie Anderson and Queralt Castellet won in their disciplines. The Willett brothers showed that they are insane, we posted a gem called ‘Bad Santa‘, and then we started summing up each month of the year in posts called “This Year in Snowboarding.” No wait, this cross reference might damage the space-time continuum.

Have a good one everyone, see you on the other side!

We’re not really writing this on the day of its publication. That’s not how we roll at Onboard. In fact, right now it is still well before Christmas, and it was only a few minutes ago that I realised that I’d gotten all dates wrong for these reviews. I made the ‘necessary amendments’ in all earlier posts, but now I ran out of ideas for anything funny for today. Hope you enjoy the epic day that December 30th always is. And here’s the best and worst of November 2010!

November

We kicked things of with a true banger – we unearthed the long-lost Euro Gap 1 movie as part of our Euro Gap 3 week. Other great posts included the Niki Korpela interview, some Joni Malmi chit-chat, Jaako Itäaho talking about the new Euro Gap 3 movie, Euro Gap 2, and of course Euro Gap 3 in all its glory.

Marc Swoboda rode his way in great style through the Nitro flick, and Jamie Nicholls was yet another young, innocent pro who posted his online video part:

Ted Borland’s part from All Plugged Up/The Leak was also noteworthy. Then there were the Finnish movies Mortal Wombat, High Guality, Wannabe, and Homework, but the Onboard crew decided to go to Innsbruck for a game or two of football. Nitro dropped their Road Warriors full movie, the Wappulounas peeps were already watering our mouths for next year’s event, and Joe Sexton showed what we were to expect from his Cheers video part:

The Dump Em Out full movie was released next, and it features Forest Bailey. Reason enough to watch it. Frames came next, and it was supposed to be the slowest snowboard film ever. Reason enough to skip it. Solberg and Fuse’s parts got remixed, which seemed to be a trend in November, and using Bungee cords was obviously a trend all last winter. This was all nice and good, but what really blew us away was Process Film’s Shot in the Dark teaser:

(Well, the Commotion full movie was also pretty, pretty good. Watch at least Keegan’s, Harrison’s and Ted’s parts!) Next thing we knew Jeremy Thompson and Tim Humphreys stopped by our office, and we forced them to play a game of Knowledge. Pat Moore captured Shaun White’s best pipe run ever, the Frontline Rail Jam went down in Sweden (and marked the first European comp of the season), Erin Comstock presented herself as a gnarly rider in the Roxy Refreshments episode 1, Seth Huot presented himself even gnarlier in his full Cheers part, and the Helgason’s Cha Dang! immediately becomes a modern classic. But after seeing all those clips we decided it was time we did something on our own and sent our new filmer Will to Saas-Fee:

Then we learnt that the Air&Style will return to Munich, and that the Gothenburg Rail Battle was also quite a success. Mario Käppeli joined the ranks of online video part publishers, and Mikey LeBlanc those of the chosen few that dare to make a drop like this. Finally Torstein Horgmo kicked his wicked webisodes off with his take on tall tees, Mammoth saw 7ft of snow, and Mac Spedale went nuts in his Commotion remix.

And that was November’s haps and we’re nearly hitting the present day. In fact, writing this before Christmas as we are, we’re wondering how the hell we’ll get round the Space-Time continuum to figure out what happens at the end of December. All will be revealed tomorrow!

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…

Today is December 27th, usually the worst day of the year, as everyone is pretty messed up from the days before. Also, it is the perfect day to awkwardly return all those unwanted Xmas gifts. However, you might have escaped it all, travelled to the mountains, and sit in a chalet after an epic day of riding freshies. But then, why would you read this? Before it gets more complicated read on to find out what was going on back in September (aka the ‘full movie month’)! Voilà, it’s yet another month of This Year in Snowboarding!

September

First of all, we continued our Most Influential Riders of the 00s list with White, Jones & Dakides, de Marchi, Rüf and Maas, and Rice, Müller and Clark. People started flocking to the glacier resorts, just like Greenshields, König and Klocker. Or they went to Turkey like the Ride crew. What are you saying? You have a headache and can’t concentrate on my writing? What the hell, here’s the full bHappy flick ‘Happy Thoughts’! (See you in 2o minutes…)

A little late we received the sick Treats teaser and an interesting edit of the ‘Marco’s Mansion‘ project in Sölden, featuring Mr. Smolla and a bunch of other Nike 6.0 riders. The Norwegian Government finally approved the location for the World Shred Championships in 2012, … and Absinthe kicked off their new season of Flipside episodes. Also, Flow Snowboards dropped their Witness the Sickness full movie, and Relentless their second episode of Lives of the Artists. Danny Larsen faces Stian Solberg in yet another Knowledge battle. Two final HCSC clips marked the end of the summer shred edit frenzy. The Nitro team flick was presented in a slick teaser, but, really, the Ducksjen teaser is still a pleasure to watch:

The AK-based Bear Cubs full movie kept us off work for a while (and featured Gus Engle and Chris Brewster, among others), and so did the Icecoast flick Numskull, we spent two quality minutes with Dan Brisse and JP Solberg, and we almost creamed our pants when we saw this 9191 sneak peek and the Cheers trailer. Hot Dawgz & Hand Rails was the first competition of the season. And we visited Basti, the Pirates‘ captain, at home. And when our chief editor walked past me while I was watching the Gremlinz teaser, it should change his outlook on snowboarding for good (more about this in his myline in our print mag #120):

Where to go from here? Well, we convinced our homie Jon Weaver to contribute to a bi-weekly column called Gossip from the Good Life. Then we went to the Swiss boozefest called freestyle.ch. Peetu Piiroinen was flashing his brand new Nike 6.0 gear, and fellow team rider Gjermund Braaten won the event. Of course we posted the highlights video. At around that time Burton launched their successful theliftline.tv site, and we countered this effort with our terribly successful Change of Scenery weekly wallpapers. Isenseven, however, took us to California in this short but classy edit:

September was a month of sad news, too, as Torgeir Berre sustained a serious back injury while filming in New Zealand, and the Euro Roxy Chicken Jam got cancelled. And we closed the month with a nice chat between Joni Malmi and Niki Korpela on back in the days vs now.

Now pop that aspirin, go back to bed early, and check back tomorrow for a light-hearted review of October’s haps!

The height of summer was no excuse for snowboarders to be lazy. The pipes were still full to bursting with fresh snow porn, and we were like the older kid at school who knew by which railtracks the goods were to be found…

AUGUST

Though it’s sweltering in the Northern Hemi, down under it’s deep winter and shit’s going down. At Mt Buller they’re sick and tired of your common-or-garden slopestyle, jib or big air contests and knock together a sheep shed and send it off that bad boy for the Dew Hut Jam. We show off our finest investigative journalism skills by leaking the Transform Gloves range, Northern Germans escape the heat of summer by taking to the big fridge in Bispingen en mass, and with everyone still talking about his triple cork, we decide to talk to Torstein Horgmo himself to see what was in his head when he took on that jaw-dropper. It’s also August that the jock-ish sounding Red Bull Snowboard Performance Camp hits NZ. After a few days of airbag hucking, the kids bring it to the proper booters and put down a succession of double cork firecrackers. That’s what it takes to be a pro these days…

Following on from our session chronicling the funtimes the Forum team had in Les Deux Alpes last month, we sit down and chew the fat with Andreas Wiig and Pat Moore to see what’s up in their world, err, field. Erm. Yes. Kids go wild at the Australian Rookie Fest, it’s still pissing down with teasers as I’m With Stupid, In Color, Hooked and the almighty Euro Gap 3 stand out, whereas in the Yankeedoodle glaciers Mt Hood seems the place to be with several cuts coming out that hunk o’ ice, including a Game of Shred with LNP vs Johnny Lazz, but summing up the vibe and the riding level best is perhaps this bad boy from Windells …

Swinging our lens back down under, the NZ Open wraps up and though the slopestyle’s foggy as hell Christian Haller and Jamie Anderson remember their yellow lenses to take top spots. It’s better conditions for the pipe finals, though, where Iouri Podladtchikov and Kelly Clark take the honours, and the TTR takes the opportunity to introduce the innovative Snowboard Live Scoring system. And here’s how it works in practice…

And the TTR’s Chris Morris hands back to Onboard’s Alan Partridge as we don our finest sports-casual blazer to get the chat from Cheryl Maas, do our finest cross-platforming by bringing you videos of our Riders of the 00s that backs up our mag article that’s out at the same time, and cause a ripple of controversy with our personal pick of the Top 5 Teasers thus far. Stylewars looks set to rock out in Oz again until the weather kicks it in the balls so they have to settle for a rail jam, the Advita crew’s significant jib skills are on show in 2 Alpes, and being that we’ve once been drunkenly serenaded by him in Laax, we’re a little gay for I-Pod and so posting some stalker’s footage of him throwing down and getting wasted in the bar is right up our street…

See, even at the hight of summer this snowboard dog’s a bitch on heat, rubbing herself ungraciously up against all four corners of the earth. Imagine what happens in September…

How was yesterday? Did you meet the dear family, practice the art of keeping up our booze levels from the night before, and unwrap unwanted gifts? If you answered ‘yes’ more than once, the following lines, links, and videos might console you a little. (Or make things worse)

JULY

Lisa Filzmoser kicked the month of heat and holidays spectacularly off by blowing her ACL in the True Color – Japan clip. To this day we wonder what she was trying to accomplish. Then there was the Catch Me teaser, also from Japan, which featured Eelo Ettara and other great riders of the East. We don’t remember when exactly we started it but our mostly ignored This Week in Snowboarding feature must have been created around that time, too. It was possibly because the summer camp clips got out of hand, and we somehow had to keep track of them: Here’s a Camp of Champions edit, here are the HCSC sessions #2, #3, and #4, and here’s yet another CoC clip (of session B), and another (session C). And some Windells stuff, too.

The Pirates announced the title of their next movie, Hooked, which – as we now now – was once again the best European riding has to offer. The Homies crew dropped the Homies 3 teaser, the Transitmies teaser features heavy rail riding from Finland, and Nike 6.0 released the D-Pad session teaser – which looked great, but it was not quite as outstanding as the teaser for the upcoming Standard movie The Storming:

After winning the World Rookie Fest a month earlier Roope Tonteri also claimed the title at the Summer Rookie Fest 2010. Seb Toots returned after his horrid Air&Style injury. David Benedek roamed through his archives and sent us a clip on how to make a splitboard. Travis Rice revealed details about his new movie project Flight, and Alterna drop their excellent teaser for Hello World. Oh, and around the same time we discovered this young, innocent filmer called Will Nangle, and sent him out on a mission to meet the Forum team in Les2Alpes. (we’ve since taken him on as our regular video man)

And then there was the Relentless: Lives of the Artists series featuring Jeremy Jones and Xavier De Le Rue. Everyone loved it.

The post quality in July was extraordinary, seeing that we posted the Absinthe Now/Here trailer alongside an interview with El Brusti himself.

We had a bit of a debate whether the Flow ‘Witness the Sickness‘ teaser was shot in 3D or just artsy (it was just artsy, by the way) After months of actually working we published our annual Product Guide (one of the best we’ve done in the past two years!), and the X Games skateboarding big air somehow made snowboarding look lame…

Merry Christmas and see you tomorrow for an epic August retrospect.

Champagne [read pikey Prosecco] for breakfast, the bird in the oven, kids crashing about fired up on sugar, and relatives smelling of public toilets about to descend… It’s December 25th. Happy Christmas! An all-day bender is no excuse to slack off from This Year in Snowboarding, though,  so without further ado here’s…

JUNE

The Homies crew drop their cut of the funtimes that were had at Superpark, while over in The People’s Republic of Teaserstan there’s several more hitting the pipes on the first few days of the month, with The Saturday Night Ride, KBR’s Homework, and Isenseven’s Don’t Panic being the pick of the bunch. We even stumble upon a neat interview with Brain Farm duo Travis Rice and Curt Morgan where they rap on filming, tech stuff and their new project, Flight, so everything seems to be ticking along nicely in a ‘Oh, it’s June so let’s wrack our brains for something fresh that doesn’t involve glaciers as they ain’t opened yet’ kinda manner. Then we get a mail from Torstein Horgmo, titled simply ‘The Triple Cork’ and prepare ourselves for some funny-assed spoof. Oh no, he’s serious. WTF?!

Seriously, where do you go from there? Luckily the Helgasons have the answer and quickly pull together a triple cork spoofer while we sit down with Isenseven head honcho Alex Schiller to get the 411 on what we could expect from Don’t Panic, and if he was a big Douglas Adams fan. The improbably-named Moose With Hat teaser has us pumped and Nitro’s slams teaser for their team movie has us scared. Happily the glaciers are opening their parks so we can bring it with real, current riding rather than a teaser avvie and chit-chatting till we’re blue in the face, and Peter König and co’s one from Hintertux touches our special place. Mmmm, summer. Let the good times roll…

Keegan Valaika uses the down days of summer to go all bidnezz and launches Gnarly Clothes, things kick off in the Southern Hemi and Diaries Downunder decide to document the season, we get our first look at the Forum/Foursquare/Special Blend team flick with the F’ It teaser and begin in our quest to bring you the finest spots to ride in summer with our series of Summer Shred Guides. It’s game on on the US glaciers too as the first edit from Windells shows, another Diaries Downunder pops up to let us know how things are progressing in Kiwiland, and the Pirates release a Day in the Life with Teo Konttinen, which you can watch here as not only is he good at snowboarding, he’s a cool kid. Who said nice guys finish last?

Mid-June is when Seb Toutant won the first of what we’re claiming will be many TTR titles this season, as he double cork 12s his ass to win the Billabong Ante Up on home soil, while the Euro/Canuk alliance that is YES Snowboards wins their first award and release an amusing acceptance speech. The latest glacier shredit to come in is from Les Deux Alpes, and it’s action stations in Teaserland as the avalanche continues – Bon Voyage is good ‘n’ grimy, FODT is good ‘n’ gangsta, and 9191 is good ‘n’ about Gigi. The first session of HCSC edit makes us wanna bail to the US until we see what’s going on down the road in the Zillerwalley, when Steve Gruber and Mone Monsberger have us über-jealous as they nab themselves the elusive summer freshies up in Hintertux.

Right, that’s your lot. There’s several bottles of booze with our name on demanding serious attention, so once more Merry Christmas and we’ll be back from our 2-day bender tomorrow to recap July…

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.

Welcome back to our daily review of the 12 months that made up 2010. After the Olympic month of February and the TTR title fight in March you would have thought things were rather mellow in April. But in retrospect it wasn’t only the Eyjafjallajökull volcano that exploded that month…

APRIL

April seemed to be the month for snowboard teasers. The Sandbox teaser dropped, the teaser for the Buffalo session at Cerler was released, and so was the Sanesation trailer, the so-fresh-it-drops-in-2011 Rome movie The Shred Remains and the Finnish Unionfive teaser.

Then the Intercrew comp goes down in Chamrousse and the Twisted Tricks session in Tourmalet, which maybe made April more of a late contest month. Further proof was added with the Absolut Park Spring Battle, the Ride Shakedown in Canada, the PBRJ in Laax, and the legendary Onboard/Vans Junk & Funk comp (it is so legendary not even a video exists of it). And of course there’s still the Wängl Tängl – Europe’s true indie comp. Here’s the Highlights Show.

In other event news Roope Tonteri became World Rookie Champion, again, and Enni Rukajärvi continued her winning streak at the Oakley Girlssession in Finland. Oh, and there were a few noteworthy team trip edits: The Head Team went to the US. The Völkl team travelled to Spain, and the Nitro team did Bulgaria.

Regarding riders and their antics the month saw a lot of videos, and interviews: Kazu and Torstein ripped Northstar. We caught up with Marco Smolla. Elias Elhardt curtailed his winter. And we spent a whole day with Mario Käppeli.

What else? The Grenade Games went down again, almost half of our team went to the Kamp K2 and is still stoked about it. Martin Kalliola became the Horsefeathers King of S.N.O.W., the Rookie Fest highlights dropped, the DC Monster session went down in France, the second teaser for the Peace Process drops, and finally the Vans Dawn of the Shred movie got a whole island excited.

See you tomorrow for the month that was May 2010…

Our review of the highs and lows of snowboarding’s rickety rollercoaster continues today with the month of March under the microscope…

MARCH

So Bill Shakespeare warned us to ‘Beware the ides of March’, did he? Luckily we cut class that day and don’t know what he was banging on about so we were fully able to enjoy 2010′s third month. If you thought the Olympics being done and dusted meant some time off the contest merry-go-round you’d be wrong, as we bring you news of Peetu Piiroinen adding another hunk o’ bling to his bulging sack by winning the Toyota Big Air and Yale Cousino bagging the Burn River Jump in Livigno. Thankfully Franck Moissonnier dropped over a sweet full part of his Nike 6.0 protégé Victor De Le Rue‘s bangers to give us some competitive respite – this year every man and his dog is chowing down at the ‘Full Online Part’ table, but back then it was something of a novelty. VDLR went on to score an interview in the mag later this year, so you know he’s a bit tasty on a shred sled. Watch it…

In our irregular quest to find the wisest pro riders in the game, we hit up Nico Droz and Tonton Holland to see who’s got The Knowledge, Scotty Lago continues to live the dream on TMZ, Nicolas Müller allows us to poke our noses round his new pad and gives us the lowdown on signing for Nike in his Day in the Life, and Peetu gets the TTR World Tour title in his special Finnish headlock by winning the Arctic Challenge and making a mockery of the ‘Tour-defining US Open’ by securing the crown with time to spare. Shaun White may have put on a show at the Olympics and money-shotted with the double McTwist 12, but Iouri Podladtchikov quickly steps up to bat and learns them for himself to become at the time the only other rider with this mind masher in his armoury. Here’s how he stomped his first one…

From that madness, we get back to the roots as The Farm session at the backyard Heisä Park gets the video recap treatment, marvel at Peetu’s consistent sickness and the rad new judging format at the Arctic Challenge, face-off Chris Sörman and Hampus Mosesson in the latest edition of The Knowledge, and the Winter X-Games makes its European debut in Tignes, with Jenny Jones & Eric Willett taking gold in Slopestyle, and Kaitlyn Farrington & Iouri Podladtchikov getting the business done in the halfpipe. We laugh at American pronunciation in our Minute-by-Minute report of the men’s pipe, but seeing as a picture paints a thousand words a movie must be like a million, so we figure it’s easiest for you to just watch I-Pod put down the highest scoring pipe run in X-Games history…

Over in Austria the Wängl Tängl, one of our favourite contests like ever, wraps up with the locals owning the always-creative setup, while in the US we get some great news as Kevin Pearce posts his first update to let us know in his own words how his rehab is going. For those who care about pro riders’ sponsor deals, Anne-Flore Marxer cushed up with DaKine, our favourite internetting Icelanders, the Helgason brothers, hopped on Skullcandy, and Head Snowboards drop another slick webisode, this time making us jealous we weren’t on their Japan trip. In fact we liked it so much we’ll drop it here for you to enjoy…

Up north in Sweden Nils Arvidsson steps his game up by getting his landing gear under a switch back 12 double cork. Say what? The revered US Open goes off once again in Stratton, with Candrian & Bang taking the Slopestyle and Clark & Kokubo winning the pipe. As everyone knows Peetu had the TTR World Tour in the bag already but he picked up his trophy and still managed another payday by securing the BGOS title, though. Another hundred thousand dolleri, moi. This side of the pond it’s JibVid time in Mayrhofen, which goes off again, and the Onboard team wins. Again. As a wise man once said, “It’s not going to suck itself…” so here’s how Tom Elliott, Fredrik Evensen and Ethan Morgan came out on top for us…

Damn, March was busy so to wrap the month in a quick-fire manner… DCP reminds us all of the need to be aware in the backcountry, Xavier De Le Rue shows he is clearly mental in this clip of his Verbier line, Enni Rukajärvi is awesome, winning the Women’s TTR at the first time of asking, and to finish it all off, the Oxborn Session in Sweden was insane, with some of the most progressive kicker riding to date on show. Here’s how it played out…

So that was March. And if you think April was any less awsome you’d be a fool so come back tomorrow for the full what-went-down…