The Saas Fee mission is over…what a good time chilling at The Blick with the Kalbermatten family and the beloved folks from Aspen!

The taxi showed up, we all said our goodbyes, then Martin and I loaded up the rental car and pointed it to Zurich. After a couple of coffees, some roadside photos, a few ollies and easy driving conditions, I dropped Martin in ZRH and went back to the Zurich Airport (flughafen) to catch my flight to Oslo.

I land around twenty-three hundred hours and my filmer Andro should be waiting. We’ll grab the rental car and head to Mikkel’s spring session in Filefjell. Report back to y’all ASAP…Blotto

The Dorfblick sits about twenty meters (60 feet) from the Alpin Gondola in Saas Fee. It’s open year-round to any and all visiting Saas Fee. Visit their website and ask about availability and pricing.

What’s better than riding powder in the Swiss Alps and living next door to the gondola!!! Not much!! Check it out if you’re thining about a European shred vacation.

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Everywhere you go around Lake Tahoe, peeps are repping these Keep Tahoe Blue stickers…or some sort of quirky spin-off/translation. Wonder where I can pick one of these up for my rental car, I want to fit in. Click “Continue…” for more.

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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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The adventures of KP continues…this time we find Kevin at Northstar at Tahoe joining the Burton Team for the filming of the big B. This weeklong photo shoot was the final chapter in a season long escapade of backcountry adventures, urban missions, park jumps and half pipes, all for the making of The B.

The B structure was a giant undertaking by the crew at Snow Park Technologies (SPT)…the feature was 22 feet tall, 75 feet wide and 100 feet long…taking one week’s time to build using five snowcats on 16-hour shifts. The job couldn’t have been in better hands with SPT, so it was definitely going to be built proper and on time.

What you can never predict is the weather…and Mother Nature decided to drop three days worth of rain on the lower elevations of Northstar. Luckily for us, the feature was built just above the rain/snow line, so we were spared the constant pounding of raindrops, and instead given some wet sloppy snow to deal with. For the first three mornings it was definitely stressful hoping the temperature didn’t rise (along with the rain/snow line). With the structure complete, the SPT crew had to deal with maintaining (clearing out) the new snow that fell on the obstacle every day.

On day four, the skies cleared and we made our way up to the spot to get this session going. We now had five filming days to get the intro and film the entire closing of the movie (5 minutes worth of footage). This was a giant undertaking considering we had just lost three critical days to rain, but in my mind it was no big deal because you had riders like Kevin, Jack, Danny, Jeremy, Kazu who would do whatever it took to make it happen.

And that’s how it went down…five days of nonstop riding from the entire team, morning till evening…making it happen. Warming up to the obstacle, figuring out lines, sequences, doubles, triples, how much speed was needed to hit the 100-foot tabletop and on and on. It was quite a show to document with so much always going on. Once the final day and the final shot were captured, we had what we needed and that was that. The snowcats moved in and started tearing down this beautiful structure.

Meanwhile, KP, Jack, Danny, Aaron and I headed up the mountain to enjoy the sunset and throw a few high-fives around to a great session.Click “Continue…” for the rest….

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Greetings from the Midwest…all has been well since my last post about the fire scare with Zac. We’ve been moving right along day after day, night after night. The locations have been non-stop as well as the work hours…we’ve been logging 15 to 16 hour days then chill (sleep) for 7, and then do it all over again. The type of snowboarding madness I really enjoy.

As the year 2009 comes to a close, I want to thank each and every one of you for checking into the website on the daily, emailing in requesting stickers and of course a huge thank you for repping and placing the sticks. I’m super hyped on the support.

I hope everybody enjoys their New Years celebration under the blue moon; we’ll be out in the Midwest streets ringing in 2010 with a few photos and film shots. Also, sending my prayers out to Kevin Pearce who suffered a bad snowboarding crash today while riding the half pipe, send him your best wishes for a speedy recovery.

All the best in ‘010! Click “Continue…” for the rest of the photos.

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The phone call came in Sunday night to meet the People Crew in the Midwest…I was on the plane outta Phoenix the next morning, excited to hang with this motivated posse once again. During the Christmas break, the Midwest was getting pounded with two plus feet of snow…a perfect amount to do what we do: snowboard, film and take photos.

The direct flight out of Phoenix was easy…no delays, no connections…just take off to set down. Once on the ground it was right over to the hotel room to rearrange the gear for shredding and head on out the door. Jeremy and Zac swung the cars around, I hopped in and we were off to spot No. 1. After a hearty meal of shoveling, setting up lights/strobes/flashes and numerous attempts, location uno was a wrap with shots in hand.

I’ll be here through the week with Zac, Jeremy, Seth, Simon, JoeJoe and my media sidekicks Mathis, Minhondo and Sam. Check back in, I’ll post up shots as often as possible. Click “Continue…” for more.

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Our filming mission has come to a close with an eventful final day on the sloping streets in eastern Canada. We attempted three different locations with one of them being very very productive. Our other two spots didn’t work out so well for a variety of reasons, but fun was had nonetheless…especially when our local homies brought a giant bag of seed to feed the ducks (this big kink rail we set up was in a city park). We were soon overrun with our feathered friends looking for feed!

As we ran out of day light, the drop-in ramp was crammed into the rental van, we found some good eats then headed over to a wicked straight-bar that kept us busy till 1AM. After some technical snowboarding moves, another round of breaking down the gear, packing up the vans and saying good-bye to our new found friends, it was time to pack the travel bags up and hit the airport for the 5AM departure.

That’s it for the People Crew mission…what a great time! Click “Continue…” for the rest of the photos.

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