mitch blog

After finising our filming in Tamok and Lyngen for this years HIKE project we were heading southwest towards the infamous Lofoten islands. Our dream was to get perfect snow and waves in the same day. Well, dreams dont always come true perfectly at the first try… By the way the water there is frigid (6 celsius) but the golfstream also brings a lot of wet and kind of warm rainy weather. During the drive to the lofoten the sun was shining but than we got stuck there in some bad weather for a few days. Here some impressions from that trip and a little clip we made about our  `snowboard and surf the same day´ mission…

Bridges, tunnels and ferrys

the geitgaljern range where we hiked up

unstad beach small but sunny

mountain lake and ocean

sometimes you are lucky and see the sunset

stockfish is cod fish

the lofoten of the ferry

For the last week we got a good S/SW swell making us surf 5 to 6 hours a day. The surf forecast for our remaining last  week in mexican summer is looking small and we are getting ready to move on for climbing and snowboarding some vulcanos in Ecuador with the crew from the summits4kids project.
From board shorts and paddling in warm water to winter gear and hiking up to over 6000m peaks in the snow. What a trip!

a nice last summer swell made us surf all day

tropical snow and ice are waiting for us, that is one of the vulcanos we want to climb in Ecuador, the Cotopaxi

A little more than a week ago we got a solid 10 to 12 foot swell at playa zicatela, puerto escondido, mexico. just coming over from austria to visit our friends living close to puerto all of a sudden the game was on to tow into some solid waves.

During the night everybody woke up by the thunders produced by the fresh swell hitting the sandbar at the nearby beach. We got up in the dark to go to Zicatela and to get out there with the first light to play and tow into the biggest waves i have ridden so far. Watching the others towing and surfing and getting the first few rides myself it all started to feel so comfortable and fun! With the jetski everything feels pretty easy and safe. You catch the wave way early and having the straps on the board makes it feel like snowboarding down a steep face. At the end of the wave or if you pull out over the shoulder the jetski most of the time is right there to get you. The biggest difference though is that the face is moving and changing the shape, what a trip!

When i got towed into my most intense wave, a pretty big righthander (Stan called it a 15foot face, chris a 20foot face) i was doing big turns down the face. At the bottom i saw a spot up on the lip where i planed to do my next turn, up there i was looking down realizing that what was a nice big hill before turned into a steep drop back to the bottom, whoow, what a feeling!!

Towin surfing feels like heliboarding

red flag means ready for tow in

its a lot like snowboarding, only this time its moving water instead of snow

I took a picture of this guy getting a nice righthander