Freeride Qualifier Chandolin

On Friday the 9 of March we (Jochen and I) started our journey to Chandolin. At our first stop we picked up Nadine and Geli. 3 hours later we ended up at a red sign: “Operalppass closed” Hurray, good work navi! We had to use another mountain pass which took us two additional hours just to be 25 km closer to our destination. So it all became something like a road trip. Finally we arrived at Dago’s place.


Day 1:
The Face was very wide but short so it offered a lot of possible lines and it was hard to chose the best one. After choosing our lines and getting up to the start we ended up in kind of chaotic starting situation. There was no starting order at all so you had to battle for your spot, so it was a little bit harder to prepare for our runs. Unfortunately one of Jochen´s binding ejected at his 360 so he got rewarded with zero points. After waiting for three more hours, Domi and I weren´t able to perform as planned, so to summarize the first day: Not good at all;-)
So the highlight of the day was the BBQ ;-)!



Day2:
Jochen had a really progressive run, but couldn´t stomp two tricks clean and finished the day with the third best score! Respect buddy! Too bad, that he crashed on day one. I also was a lot more satisfied with my run (Day2: 9th)
Nadine on the other hand, showed her skills with two awesome runs and took home the second place. Congrats!!

Here are the final results:


Although it was a really short trip, we all had an awesome time.
Thanks a lot to Dagobert for his support and the video footage. We look forward to ski another comp with you. Get well soon!!

Hope you like our small Trip-Edit:

FWT Juniors Fieberbrunn

Hey Guys,

I'm just back from an awesome weekend in Fieberbrunn.

On Friday afternoon Manuel, Phillip and I headed to Fieberbrunn for the second FWT Juniors stop of the season.

In the evening we had the riders meeting and the bib draw. After bib 57 in Chamonix, I was lucky this time with bib 14, which meant that I was the first skier.

After having some nice dinner at Max's Place (by the way thanks for everything Max) we went to bed not to late.

When we woke up at 6 AM, we where pretty stoked about the weather conditions BLUE BIRD!!

After the breakfast we had one hour of face check on the bottom of our contest face.

Unfortunately a lot of cliffs where closed by the organizer because they where "to dangerous".

I choose a pretty safe line because I really wanted to finish this competition. 

I landed a little backseat at the first cliff and got a little to short on the second one but all in all my run was quite OK.

In the evening there was a really cool party with all the riders and the "Urban Knights" which was organized by Swatch.

I am looking forward to the last Junior competition in Verbier in two weeks and hope the party will be as good as in Fieberbrunn ;)

By the way congrats to my friend Fabian Lentsch who got 16th in his first FWT comp. 

Raphi

My Line

FWT Juniors Fieberbrunn from Raphael W. on Vimeo.

My last months..

Hey guys,
long time since my last post, but i finally made it.
Till now the season was pretty good, with a lot of snow in the last two months.
I did some trips to Switzerland for Touring as well as staying at home for riding deep pow.

In January I participated at the Ankogel X-Treme Invitational which was organized by the Finnish Snowboarder Niklas Hollsten. There where two types of competition, one Freeride and one Chinese Downhill. I won the Chinese Downhill and crashed at the Freeride competition 10 meters before the finish. All in all the event was a lot of fun and I met a lot of really cool people.

Two weeks ago Philipp Wechselberger and me traveled to Chamonix for the first FWT Junior competition of the season.We arrived there at Friday evening and had the possibility to stay at a friends place. On Saturday there was a total "White Out" so the safety workshop had to be hold on a small T-bar lift. The competition started at Sunday around midday, but unfortunately had to be canceled after 35 starters. I got bib 57 so there was no competition for me this time.
Phillipp stomped a huge cliff, but wasn't judged that good because of taking to much risk...
We had to wait till Monday to get back to Austria because of heavy snowfall in the Alps.

I'm looking forward to the next Junior competition which will be hold in Fieberbrunn.
Here you can see some pictures and an edit of my last few months.

Keep you guys posted
Raphi

Awesome riding

Flatspin at the Zillertal

Chamonix

waiting for the train to Chamonix

Phillipp taking a break in Zurich

Big Mountain Open (Hochfügen) + some news

hey,

caused by the huge amount of snow the last weeks and a stressful university schedule it has been a while since I wrote something.

So here are a few words about the last weeks:
- We had an awesome New Year's Eve together with good friends at my girlfriend's sister's place in Prutz

 

- Afterwars I spent some time with the El-Flamingo Crew. We had a fun time shooting for the upcomming movie [11]. Check on Facebook to keep up to date: El-Flamingo Fanpage

- Last Saturday I participate at my first competition this season. At the Big Mountain Open in Hochfügen I managed to put some little freestyle elements in my run and get rewarded with the 1st place. I'm quite stoked that the judges liked my way of skiing.

 

Here is a little Edit of that day - thanks to all for the awesome time:

-  Well... yesterday was also quite fun ;)

The next two/three weeks are going to be full of learning, so see you in Febuary or at the ISPO. Haha!

The last weeks ... and some Sponsornews!

Hey,

after a long time, here are some words of me. ;)

Because the winter hasn't appeared yet in Tirol, we hiked some nice faces the last week.

I spent some time at the Taschachtal with Fabi, Domi and Leo (see at: http://www.fabianlentsch.com/).

A few weeks later we (Marius, Pati, Raphi and I) hiked the north face of the Weißseespitze at the Kaunertaler Glacier (see at: http://mariusschwager.com/).

Afterwards I did some Park Runs with my Rockers getting used to the Tricks with the bigger skis - awesome time!

I just came back from the best Trip so far: Domi, Fabi, Raphi and I have been in Wallis to hike the Dufourspitze (Monte-Rosa-Massif). It was a really impressive trip out there in the expensive Switzerland, haha. Here are some nice shots, which say more than words:

... epic scenery during the hike to the new Monte Rosa Hut...

... Mr. Steinbock enjoying the sun.

 ... well the long and dry period has also produced something beautiful. ;)

 

... hiked up during sunrise...

  

... the last view steps!!

 ... pure beauty while skiing down...

... epic sunset back at the hut.

Finally the weather forecast is more like it should be at this time of the year, so we can look forward to enjoy some powder runs. =)

I also want to use this post to announce my new sponsors. 

I signed with Majesty, an upcoming brand situated in Poland. They make innovative skis and fancy goods like poles, accessories, etc. Majesty is also associated with the SKIS4TREES Project, a nice way to take care about the environment. Don't hesitate to check their website: http://www.majestyskis.com/.

Last week I received a nice package from Oxbow. They combine awesome quality with nice style. I'm definitely looking forward to have some nice days on the mountain with their outerwear!

To keep you guys updated with some edits, I'm supported by Contour. (Filmed with the new Contour ROAM: Into the wide...).

As last season, I'm very proud to be a part of Adidas Eyewear, Evoc Sports, Zanier Gloves, Bliss Protection, Sionyx Headwear and Squeezy Sports Nutrition.

Powder, Slush, Vulcano, Marmolejo and back home!

Hey guys,

the last days in Bariloche were super nice! Argentina pleased us with one more deep powder day. We were so stoked about the snow that we actually didn’t take a lot of pictures that day. So, sorry for that ;)  The bad thing was, that spring came pretty early this season, so we had some slush snow sessions as well. 

 

A few days later we started our journey to Santiago. We decided to drive through Pucon and hike the Villarica volcano. As you know we already tried it some weeks before, but we got a lot of bad weather and winds. This time it was bluebird and hardly any wind. We drove up to the Villarica ski area and started our hike from there. 3,5 hours later we reached the top and were able to look into the huge crater and enjoyed the great outlook.  Unfortunately the upper part of the mountain was pretty icy and not really fun to ski. Therefore we had great firn the rest of our descent. 

 

As I told you in my last blog entry, Leo and me were searching for a nice mountain to climb, before we had to leave Chile. We decided to hike the Marmolejo, which is also known as the southernmost 6000m-plus peak in the world. Marmolejo is actually 6108m high. We almost drove all the way to Santiago, into the Maipo valley. We parked the car at km80 and started packing all the stuff we needed for the next 5 days.

 

Day 1

The next day we started our expedition towards the first camp. Jonas took some last shots of us leaving the car park. He couldn’t join because he had to go back to Santiago to catch his flight. Unfortunately Leo and me were quite insufficient equipped. We neither had a map nor a altimeter.  So we already went the wrong way on the first day. We were supposed to overleap the base camp and go further to camp 1 on 3800m. We ended up hiking from 2300m to 4000m and put up our tent there.

 

Day 2

After a pretty bearable night we hiked up even further and figured out that we went uphill too early on the day before. We decided to ski into the end of the valley where we spent our 2 night on 3800m.

 

Day 3

We stood up at 7 in the morning and started our third hike at 8am. We had to go through a very steep snowfield up to the rich. As we could see the rest of the mountain from the rich, we were shocked to see that less snow. Although we knew that the descent won’t be any good we kept our skis and hiked to the 3^rd camp. We put up our tent on 4500m and started to melt snow because we had no water left. After a short acclimatization hike and a super delicious meal consisting of  soup and strange noodles we went to bed.

Day 4

The alarm woke us up at half past 3 in the morning. We dressed quickly and stepped out of the tent. It was cloudless and the moon shined so bright that we didn’t even had to use our headlamps. It was really cold and windy. We reached the peak much later than we expected. It was really hard to breathe in this high altitude, so we hiked really slow and had to stop several times. We also used every bigger rock to hide from the strong winds. I guess we needed like 1 hour for every 200 height meters. :D  As we finally reached the peak we were really happy. The panoramic view was just awesome and we could finally eat the chocolate we saved for the peak.

We left our skis about 200 meters underneath the peak. Skiing down from 5900m to 4500 was my most exhausting run in my whole life. We had to spend one more night on 4500m and skied down to the car on the next day.

Back in the civilization I noticed that I unfortunately had frozen my nose, cheek and all the toes on my right foot. I actually still can’t feel two toes on my right foot, but this will be good in a few weeks.

We spent our last days in a nice Motel in the Maipo valley to recover. We also had a great day at the beach in Vina Del mar. I needed 45 hours to get from Santiago back to Innsbruck. I arrived there on Monday morning and had to go to school directly. Leo continued his journey in Peru and will return end of October.

Last weekend I already spent some time in the mountains at home. Check it out  ;)

There will be a helmet cam edit of South America soon, I’ll keep you guys posted!

Cheers

Fabi