Jacob Wester

3 days have passed on our Eurotrip and we are loving life! A bit bummed I’m not doing the FIS Copper mountain Grand Prix right now, but at least the wrist is healing up quick and should be all good for park in just a week or so. In the mean time, what could be better rehab than shooting pow turns and playing with pillows! Finally took the time to sit down and throw together a little recap, so here it comes for y’all:

First of all, let me introduce these two characters that I am currently bumming around with, a long time friend and photographer Daniel Rönnbäck:

Daniel on the plane frothing for some powder

And a new aquaintance, Åre ripper Erik Sunnerheim:

Erik

Together we have set out on a 3 week journey through the heart of the Alps, starting in Austria, then working our way to France on a search for the elusive powder snow. Enjoy!

Me getting psyched up driving through souther Germany on our way into Austria.

German church

At the first resort we arrived to, Stubai, we were promised some decent snow but there wasn’t really any to be found, anywhere in the region. It had been a few days since the latest dump so everything was pretty packed out and windblown. There was however, more to come in the forecast so we decided to play the waiting game and in the meantime check out the mountain:

Not the best weather day, but we just couldnt pass up so much fun lift accessible terrain.

Better have some of that alpine erfahrung.

Erik on a sketchy little ridge promenade in search for pockets of good snow.

Don’t trip.

Even if the snow was marginal, overlooking these mountains on a narrow ridge still makes my day, any day.

Working the 3 cm dust on a crust!

The following day 3 new cms had landed in the village and it looked like it was snowing more higher up. We decided to head back up to Stubai.

By the way, let’s pause for a moment and admire the new Magic J graphics. Sexiest ski out there! Can’t wait to mount these up after the next storm.

Arriving in Stubai we opted not to head up to the glacier in the overcast conditions, but instead we skinned up this fun little pillowfield right next to the parking lot. It actually turned out to be a perfect little jib garden and we got a ton of shots:

Erik on a fun little mogul run.

Backflips were mandatory.

Just enjoying life!

After the session, we packed the car and headed out into the night, St. Anton bound.

Somewhere in the west Tirol.

The day after we awoke excited because of the news of 30 fresh centimeters on the mountains. We decided to head up to St.Cristoph, just past St.Anton, a zone I visited 7 years ago and was stoked to go back to, because I had no idea how to ski powder back then and wanted to see how things had changed. Fortunately, everything looked the same, drenched in knee deep perfect powder:

Fun zone

Erik catching air under the lift at the resort. So much lift accessible terrain here and no one really skies the gnarlier stuff so you have fresh powder to yourself all day even on a saturday. It was hard to keep working and not just doing freeruns.

Blower snow.

This photo shows pretty well how happy I was today.

Finishing off a successful day with a fun little 360 under the lift. Felt good to be in the air again, and stoked my wrist isn’t hurting too bad.

Going to bed now to catch some sleep before another full day of shredding tomorrow. Stay tuned, we are filming a bunch as well so expect an edit in a week or so!

Jacob

~ by jacobwester on January 12, 2013.