The last couple of days have been adventurous…from the locations to the riding to the injury report. By now you’ve heard about Kevin Pearce and Danny Davis…the picture above is our good friend and shred Alex Andrews, fresh back from the hospital after getting his spleen removed. A fluke snowboarding fall (on a tiny park rail) resulted in a ruptured spleen. Alex is in good spirits and knows he’ll be back in a couple months’ time to start shooting and filming again. Get well soon Alex! Check out Alex in Big Bear’s Sunday in the Park #6 here.

When not dealing or hearing about injuries lately, we’ve managed some really good sessions around Ogden, SLC and Park City. Zak Hale flew in from Big Bear to join our crew as we made the daily adventure up to Ogden, which is holding snow. Each day has brought on plenty of time behind the shovel manicuring kickers and landings, but the creativity of Zak, Sean, Tucker, Brandon and Forest has made for great action photographs.

Since the final two Grand Prix contests are this weekend in Park City, the pipe crew is in town and ripping up the transitions. I made my way to Park City on Wednesday for the first day of practice to hang with Jack, Ellery, Ben, Lago and Shaun. Everybody is working on any tricks (within their contest run) they don’t have dialed one hundred percent. It’s a cool process to see each rider gain more and more confidence every time they drop in and give it a go.

For those of you not in the know, this is Grand Prix Olympic Qualifiers number four and five. Only Shaun White and Kelly Clark have secured spots on the USA Olympic Team that will give it a run in Canada only 27 days from now. That means two more men and two more women will make the cut depending on podium placement this Friday and Saturday evenings. If you’re around Utah this weekend, you should definitely make the trek over to watch the showdown.

After my day in the pipe, it was time to visit another set of Utah staples…El Chubasco Mexican restaurant and The Click Snowboard Shop. The great thing is…they’re right next to each other! After filling up on a delicious burrito (with one of the best salsa bars ever) I walked next door to purchase the last Deathwish “Low Life, The Passion of Lizard” skateboard deck in stock. If you haven’t seen one of these in person, check out the photo below. For more information on The Click and El Chubaco…click here and here. Click “Continue…” for more

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