Trip to Italy and France

We left the Pirate home base on the 9th of January with the boys: Jocki Koeffler, Emeric Front and Lukas Goller heading over to Prato Nevoso, a resort in North Italy located in the South-west of the Alps. On the way, we met Wolle Nyvelt in a gas station, who was having a coffee was also heading to Northern Italy but to a different place.
We arrived there at night and met Gary who is in charge of the snowpark there, he hooked us up with 2 flats and lift tickets for everybody. Stoked!
Flo joined us with Danny Larsen, Hans Ahlund aka “Dirty-Fresh” or “Haze”, Eirik Haugo and Juuso Laivisto and also Viktor Skogvist later in the night.
So it was 2 crews, working in the resort and also on the side of the road.
My crew went in the trees and we shot a few cliffs.
Then I was ill for 2 or 3 days, so Flo had to shoot 2 crews alone. Not stoked!
They hit up the side of the road, then some could shape something up while the others were shooting.
A couple of pillow lines later, I was able again to go shooting and we teamed up with Flo to film an interesting roof gap with a nice fluffy pillow on top. Jocki opened the session and pulled a nice bonk. Emeric went straight for Frontside 180 nosebonk on the pillow to switch back 180 out, stomped it first try. Then we hiked fast with my boys to the top of a ridge and tried to get a nice pillow line shot from the top, but didn’t worked as we expected. Too bad…
Maurino tip us on contacts in Prato Nevoso, beside that Lukas was the only one who spoke Italian, so he organized the whole trip for us pretty much, dealing with all kind of stuff, such as lift tickets, hotel and restaurant deals also hospital and dentist session, getting help from friends and locals… Thanks to Massimo Galfré for his help in Cuneo and for the lift with the sleds.
Then the 2 crews hit the road for Argentera, a valley ending on the ”col de la Magdalena” on the other side of Vars, right on the boarder of France.
Flo’s crew built a few forest kickers on the side of the road, while we went to explore the resort. We found a road gap, nice cab 180 for Jocki, switchback for Emeric, and Lukas switch olliing, manage to slam his back in to a hole at the beginning of the landing that had slid down one meter since the previous day. Crazy slam!
The day after, we built a step down and Lukas had his revenge,
Butter Front 180 to Switch back one, and Butter front 180 to switch back 540. Jocki did a really nice Switch back 5.
After a shot of Genepi, a good home made meal from the lovely old people we were staying with in Roburent hotel and a good night of sleep,
we headed to the “col de la Magdalena” to hit some small shoots on the side of the road. A nice line from Emeric ending with a tight landing ollie and a few shots too for Haze and Eirik: Switch turns in a shoot to cab 3 over the rocks. That’s where he got the nickname of Jeremy “Haze” Jones…Eirik did a Frontflip to straight line off a wind lip. Killin it on the frontflip steez!
The next day, we got kicked out from a nice spot Haze was trying. He was riding down a roof then gap to another roof to a 4-meter drop, but the Carabinieri a.k.a. the Cops caught us and we couldn’t get the shot.
The day finished in the local hotsprings, enjoying a hot sauna and a warm pool session. Sooooo nice!
Bardonecchia was our next stop! Daniel Blom joined the crew there. Christian Fillipone, the guy in charge of the park, organized our lift tickets and 2 big flats. Thanks a lot Bro!
We did a few shots there, had dinner with Giacomo Kratter and Roby, the pipe shaper.  Haugo was not feeling too good cause of food poisoning and so we decided to leave for Meribel for the next reset, the home resort of Emeric.
Then we roamed around Meribel tryin to get some shots but it was big time avalanche danger, so after a few slides the guys and I got caught in, we got back on the side of the road for a few jibs. Emeric showed he was the owner of the place and that he is actually a pretty good jibber too!!!
Then he brought us to a home spot, totally natural hit, no shaping at all, where Tyler pulled out a sick frontside 540 stuck first try almost at the end of the landing. Lukas showed again his cat skills able to land almost everything he tried, and even switch method with backpack at the end of the session.