Dropping in 5 seconds!

"Dropping in 5 seconds!"

Marko Grillc's voice rang out from the top of one of the scariest in-runs
I'd ever seen in my 6 years of shooting.  I put my eye to the viewfinder as
"The Grillionaire" pointed it across the snow bridge we had constructed and
aimed for the steep lip of this particularly poppy jump. We had spent 2 days
building and now that the take-off was perfectly manicured, the sun had
decided to poke out to highlight the session.

The boys had played a game of odds to decide who would jump first and Lucas
Goeller had lost (or won if you are one of those guinea pig lovers).  His
first attempt was nearly perfect. He judged the speed well, floating a
slightly corked frontside 360 towards the sweet spot. Somewhere between
returning to earth and riding away stoked, his nose went under and he wound
up in a pile at the bottom of the landing. He'd have to hike the jump again
before he could hit the apres ski hut.

From the angle that I had chosen to shoot from, I couldn't see Marko on the
take-off.  As he dropped in, I rolled film and waited for him to launch into
my frame. He popped into a double backflip, landed on both feet (he prefers
to land on his neck) and rode out clean. Nice way to start the day!

As I finished up the shot, I had a brief moment to imagine what kind of wild
moves Sani and Drew would attempt when they took their turns.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't get a chance.  Looking up from my camera, I
watched the last remnants of the landing come sliding down in heap.
Grillo's stomp had caused the snow to fracture and now all that was left of
our precious jump was a crusty base layer that would have been just fine for
ice hockey.

Sadly, this was not the first time this had happened to us on this trip.
Huge amounts of snow, falling in short periods of time had made for some
epic conditions in the Austrian Alps, but had also kicked the avy danger up
a notch to "turbo gnar." For those unfamiliar with this term, it basically
means don't sneeze, or your ass is getting buried on the bunny slope! In
less than a week, two of our landings came down within the first couple
jumps and one slid before we even had a chance to hit it!

Considering the state of the snow-pack in the mountains at the time, none of
us were really surprised by the way our landing pads were behaving, but we
were frustrated.  Heartbroken even. Drew admitted to almost crying when the
poppy jump's landing slid before he got to hit it.  Sunny days have been
very hard to come by this season and jumps don't exactly build themselves -
so the double whammy of bad luck and un-productivity was tough to handle.
At the same time we were humbled by the signs nature was providing us with
and felt fortunate that no-one in our crew had been buried or harmed in our
encounters with fragile conditions.

Since we didn't really have anything better to do, we waited for things to
settle down and eventually got to rebate a couple of our jumps.  I haven't
seen the footage yet, but I have a feeling it was worth the wait.

Photos by Sani and J-Holiday