mitch blog

You know when it didnt snow for a long time and you see the rocks and the grass on the dry mountains it gets hard to belive or even hard to imagine that there could ever be enough snow again to ride. And than it starts to snow and with the first snowflakes and the first centimeters on the ground the imagination and the feeling are coming back, and what did seem so far away is all of a sudden here. One good storm can change everything! And the happy kids are playing again…

Powder snow is the essence of snowboarding. We are dropping into late november and there are no clouds on the horizon of the alps yet. By chance i got a hold of this two inspiring clips that capture the essence of powder with something like 40 years in between. enjoy, i am still positive that winter will hit to us in december…

To the end of the last season we were driving up my dads campervan filled with snow and surf eqipement to the north of norway. After a weak season in the alps we wanted to hike and ride some lines, meet up with some local friends and than also meet up with the austrian skiers and friends Stefan Häusl and Björn Heregger to film for the third project of our hike series -  hike3.

My initial motivation for the hike series, HIKE, HIKE2ride and now the latest production hike3 was to find out  and also to proof to an audience what kind of freeriding would be possible in our home backcountry and also without the support of helicopters or snow machines.
After realizing the first two movies  in the austrian alps and because of a  ‘lowtide’ snowseason  in our  home mountains this time our search for snow brought us up to the northern part of norway.
The mountains up there are insane, some of them stick right out of the ocean and are about 2000m high. it can be quiet a mission to reach the lines you want to ride so beside some experience and knowledge it is good to bring everything you need for exploring. As days get longer and longer so far north until it doesn’t get dark at all anymore we once had our last run at 10pm before getting up at sunrise at 3am again to hike up for our next mission. The most difficult challenge for us was the weather which was always changing and made it impossible to plan action ahead.
I would say we got it all from bad weather frustration to powder in the woods to magic moments in an unreal beautiful mountain environment….

This year, for the first time, we did put our project in a producers hand, Stefan Tauber from illuminatifilm who than brought our longtime friend and cameraman harry putz along to join us in the norwegian mountains.Thanks to both of them for the great work!
Also thanks to Jarkko Henttonen and Aadne Olsrud for supporting us with their local konwledge and providing a base to stay up there in Tamok Dalen.

here a link to the whole hike series, all trailers plus the first two films on vimeo, not the hike3 movie yet of course:-) : http://vimeo.com/channels/hike

click here for all posts on the HIKE SERIES and scroll through the last 3 years of this freeride project…