Oneill Big Mountain Pro

We had an early wake up on Sunday, 05.30am, because the weather was perfect; sunny and no wind and we wanted to get up to the first face as early as possible. It was the first competition day and the avalanche danger was on level 3.

Oneill had organized two helicopters for us for the whole day. The face was located at the area of Verbier, in the Nendaz valley. It wasn’t a really big face, approximately 300m vertical and northwest direction. I was looking forward to getting up to the top in the heli. Before it was my turn to hop in, I took some pics just 2m from the heli when it took off. It’s a scary feeling when you feel all the power from the “iron fly’s” blades.

Soon the filming crew, riders and all the media was up at the top of the second peak, where there was a perfect view to the competition face. The snow looked ok, even though two slides already had gone down on a previous day. I chatted with Jules Raymond, he explained his route to come down and I got myself ready to enjoy the comp. All the riders packed in to the heli that took them up to the peak. All good so far.

But just when nobody expected, Mother Nature came between us. A small avalanche from almost the top emerged to a big slide that stopped at the bottom causing huge cloud and lots of heartaches for the spectators. Luckily there was only one guy at the bottom putting up flags, when the slide stopped just before him. I bet he shitted in his pants, when watching 20 + meter snow-cloud rolling towards him. At this point, Nicolas, the event manager, had to make a decision to cancel the comp for today and let all the riders have free afternoon. So, sorry, still no action shots.

Today’s plan was to head towards Italy, Courmayr area. But in the morning we’d check out Super St. Bernard resort on the way to the “pasta land”. The resort’s only gondola took us up to the altitude of 2700m, where the weather was part cloudy. The scene up there was like from action movie when the police bust the drug dealer’s hoods: everyone splits out. Since I was still half crippled from last weeks knee injury, I followed the easiest looking way, or at least that’s what it thought. It turned out to be 200m steep face to a big bowl. Got some shots from Kaj and Joonas, skier guys though, but better than nothing. And we all ride here together anyways. It’s a first time everyone feels like one big family and don’t give a s”t if you go down with a skier or a snowboarder.

Tomorrow looks good in terms of weather, so thumbs up for good comp day. Keep on checking out more in the next couple of days.

For more info of the tour, log in to the www.bigmountainpro.com