Heimvorteil - freeriding in Tirol

... after a lot of work, commitment and all the other necessary things I´m proud to present you my first movie ;-)
Starring Alex Hoffmann, Michi Trojer and myself. For those who never heard about us, the film is a mixture of snowboarding (Alex), telemarking (Michi) and skiing (myself). We wanted to show that it is not absolutely necessary to travel the world to get some of our beloved pow pow :-) so every scene is filmed around my hometown Innsbruck.
We had already shown the movie at the Arlberg Filmfest, Zirler Filmfest, Wattener Filmfest and Freeridefestival Innsbruck.
It was a great experience to see the audience watching our movie while having a smile on their faces and getting rewarded by their final applause at the end.
We will show Heimvorteil in Nürnberg (D) on dec. 15. in the Marmot Store and in the K2 Lodge in Penzberg (D) a bit later.
So what more can I say more than thx to our camera team and everybody else who supported us,
Enjoy!

BurgerTV Season 2.0

... here we go, I know you´re all waiting for snow, but here is a small thing that could raise your mood a bit, I guess :-) Me and Joi decided to keep on producing high professional, serious, unbelieveable and unforgettable ski-action-thriller movies, which you all know as BurgerTV ;-)
By the way, we created a facebook page of BurgerTV as well and as you can imagine, we got a million fans and likes in 30 minutes!!
No way, I´m just kidding! But the page does exist now and at this point I should describe what and why we are doing here...
BurgerTV is a parody about everybody who takes himself too seriously!
It takes skiing to a whole new level of extremly dangerous and gnarly die hard dedication to FUN! Ingredients: pure organic manure combined with a stunning moderation by Schoaschi the Anchorman and special appearances by incredibly famous super action snowsport heroes!
Enjoy!
Burger

2nd day on skis...

... with less pain.
Those few powder turns gave me enough positive energy to work on hard, to be able to charge again, as soon as possible.
In the next two weeks I´ll have some more controlls and doctor visits, so I hope they gonna tell me - you can go for it ;-)

cheers,
Burger

17. filmfest st. anton - berge, menschen, abenteuer

Got some pretty good news for you... I proudly can say that arlberg was great success! Everything was pretty awesome and we got some very good feedback from the audience as well as from the organisation team. Standing on stage representing your own movie in front of all the people also was great experience altough I have to say that i was a wee bit nervous...
BTW: Buddie Max Zipser and his (freeride) friends got the best votes from the audience in the category "best movie of the filmfest"... Congratulations to them!!!




Long story short - legendary experience! =)

the trailer of our upcoming movie

..."Heimvorteil - freeriden in Tirol" is a ski/telemark/snbrd movie, starring my buddies Alex Hoffmann, Michi Trojer and myself... every scene was filmed in Tirol, following the idea of enjoying the easy things in life. Means, money can't always ensure the loved whiteroom, but with a die hard dedication and unstoppable commitment to this magical white sensation it can also be found around your hometown ;-)
The full movie will be first shown at the 17th edition of the Arlberg filmfestival on august 26th at 10:00 pm.

BurgerTV episode 4

the last episode of this season... just right for the summer brake ;-)

Enjoy!!!

Cheers,
Burger

today is BurgerTV

at 8 pm

... at prime time, like always ;-)

tomorrow BurgerTV

2 days till BurgerTV

achilles injury - season ender

On April, 2nd I was still searching for some north sided venues with powpow, especially because I had to cancel my first Alaska trip a few days ago. We got the advice from the local heli operation that we should not come, because of low and bad snow conditions (plus I got ill too). So I was not really happy about that, but I tried to make the best out of it... that means ski your frust away while getting some faceshots ;-)
I went to a local ski resort with my buddies Michi, Fabi (better known as Junior) and Joi where we expected some good runs. And thats what we found...

Joi / Burger - posing shot ☺

But it was no surprise that wind and especially sun always gets stronger at this time of the year,

so conditions were changing and sometimes pretty gnarly and tricky.

Just one more reason to ski some northfaces where the snow was stable and still powder. After we skied all the easy accessible stuff, we decided to hike a bit and try something new.

What should I say, this hike brought us a super cool run with a steep entry followed by some nice faceshots...

Joi droped in first

and got rewarded

followed by myself

and Junior

Unfortunately that is not the whole story, but it was fun until that point...
After this powderturns we had to go through a channel which brought us on the next slope, which was wide open but not northsided anymore. There was about 5cm firn on alot of frozen snow and it was nothing special anymore, more or less just a field that brings you back to the traverse into the ski area. As Joi skied before us we´ve seen that it looked good, so I skied a bit faster and more to the left of his tracks and there the shit started. I was in a big right turn when I got into a field of wind created snow rips, I was able to compensate the first hit, followed by some more, till I got poped out and crashed really bad with a few cartwheels.
Thereby I cracked my Achilles tendon, my in-band ripped out of the bone at the same ankle, some ruptures of the muscle fibres below my ass, my groins were also hurting alot and my left knee's in-band is teared. Nice Package, hm?

At this moment my body was just full of pain, but I didn´t know that it was that bad, so I tried to ski further down, because I was in an uncomfortable dangerous position of the slope... but after a few meters I realized that I wasn´t able to manage it on my own feet. Thx to my buddies that they reacted so well and brought me out of this avalange zone while ordering the rescue heli which brought me to the hospital.

At least surgery went good and everything will heal again without a permanent damage at all. Yesterday the cast has been removed and I already started the physio...

I´m feeling better now and I´m really motivated to train hard to get back on skis in autumn...

Fotos by Michi Troyer
Cheers, Burger

Marmot rides Sulden

Last week I was on a Team meeting of Marmot in Solda - Italy. Had a great time, a lot of fun and still some pow...
check it out

BurgerTV episode 3

enjoy...

today 08 pm BurgerTV episode 3

don't miss it ;-)

tomorrow... BurgerTV

08 pm. in your living room

2 days... episode 3

... excited??!

Freeride Festival, Powder hunt, Filming, Competition

Hello my friends,

here you get some impressions of the last 4 weeks...

first I drove to the Montafon Frerride Festival which was organized by Eric Themel. Thx again, for all your motivation and ability to set such cool happenings up!

Foto by Paco Reich

Then I was searching for snow in Switzerland, nearly went to Italy the day after, but then we got some fresh snow at home. Not too much, but if you chose the right resort or area, sometimes with a bit of hiking, you get rewarded with 30- 60cm of the white gold we all love so much…


Fotos by Alex Hoffmann

Of course the next thing to do was to set up the film crew, choose one of those destinations and get ourselfs into the car again…
but it was really worth it, cause we got some good shots out of it, had alot of fun and enjoyed some nice faceshots while filming.

Snapshot by Simon Platzer

Then after a while our lovely powder was not so easy to get to anymore, so the hiking and the exploring of possible north faces started again…
but I can tell you, we found some really great faces!!

Snapshot by Burger

Last weekend I went to Nendaz (Switzerland) to compete in the 4* event of the Freeride World Qualification Tour. But due to the changing conditions it was not so easy to ski and I had quite some problems to find my flow while skiing. So I got 17th, but only 12 went to the final… final result was 29th, but at least I was able to reinforce my position on skis in the tour so I’ll be allowed to start in the top events next year. (actual seeding list 33)

And now I proudly present you my new skiboot sponsor !!! DALEBOOT !!! Amazing custom made skiboots since 1969... so they have alot of experience and their fit is just perfect! Thx Rob!!!
If you're interested feel free to visit their homepage Dale Boot



Now I´m looking forward to some fresh snow for the next days…
Cu,
Burger

coming soon... BurgerTV episode 3

Big Mountain Hochfügen 4*

This weekend the 4* FWQ Big Mountain Hochfügen has been taken place,
since Hochfügen is just 50 minutes from Innsbruck it felt like a home-race and I was pretty focused to show a good run.



So I had some discussions with my buddies Max and Alex about the snowconditions and possible lines.


Finally I decided to ski as it is shown in the pic. It was a line which allows you to ski fast and fluid, but still with a lot of jumps and features in it. (the view is from the side, so it looks a bit like traversing)
On competition day it was sunny, but we had a strong wind at the top. Luckily the snowconditions were not bad, a bit changing from a windpressed start, to a tracked but powdery middlepart and a hard endzone. The venue is a bit hard to orientate at the top, because there is a plateau which is rolling into the next plateau and then it gets steep at the bottom part.
3, 2, 1 drop in


A small drop at the start oft he run,


some turns heading forward to the double drop,


which actually did not has a nice middle-landing anymore,


then I wanted to do a backflip over this kicker-rock, but I underestimated the transition to the steep take off, so I lost all my speed and I barely jumped a straight air over it.


Afterwards I had to ski down through a tight, pretty skied out steep passage to reach my exit drop,


I didn`t jump with too much speed, because I was not sure about the snow conditions in the landing and didn`t want to lose my skis again at the last drop.
I stomped it and I was so happy to reach the finish gate on my skis after a safe and fluid run.
Of course there were some passages I could have skied harder or some bigger cliffs I could have taken, but I got 9th!!!

That`s a good result for not taking too much risk and it`s nice to know that there is even more possible... stoked :-)


So I`m looking forward to go to the Montafon this weekend, for Eric Themels invitational freeride festival…

Fotos has been shot by:
Tobias Haller (Pics 2 & 10)
Daniel Zangerl (Pics 4 & 5)
Big Mountain Hochfügen photographer (Pics 7 & 9)

Cheers,
Burger

Engadinsnow 2011 FQT 3*

… another competition weekend is over, unfortunately not a successful one.
It would have been the first time that I was really happy with my run. I`ve chosen a line were the snow was really good (except for 2 turns) and it was fun to ski too.
I was a bit surprised that I felt quite strong and really motivated at the start gate, because 2 days before I was sweating under the influence of fever in my bed. Anyway the venue was not to long, quite steep and filled with alot of opportunities. St. Moritz didn`t get any snow the last 2 weeks, but the temperature stayed under -10°C, nearly no wind and the sun is still not too strong, so we had some good old powder. The only hard parts in my line were below the first cliff, that`s why I decided not to jump the whole thing and one turn before the inrun to the last cliff was frozen too. The rest of the venue was fun to ski.


Till the the last cliff I was able to stomp my drops clean and I skiied fast and fluid. So I was totally focused on my last drop, which was a bit like a downhill jump. I needed to jump off with a good portion of speed to come over the rocks below it. But there was still my „double eject“ of La Clusaz in my head,, so I`ve chosen this kind of jump, because the impact of the landing should not be too hard and it was still steep enough. So I gained enough speed, jumped off, everything went perfect…

Foto by Javier Procaccini

… stable position in the air, landing. But there was some sticky even older foul snow under the 20 cm of powder. So I came in this old sticky layer of snow, got stucked for even less than a second and my skis were off again. Thumbling without skis, I LOVE IT. So I really needed to change something with my setup, cause it sucks so much if your material works against you. Thats why I changed my binding and mounted it on another position. We`ll see if it works, I HOPE SO. Because the next comp is on saturday in Hochfügen and I don`t wanna crash again, especially not here at home.
See you soon

no luck in La Clusaz

... I'm back from La CLusaz radikal Mountain, which was a 4 star event of the Freeride World Qualification Tour. La Clusaz is a nice little village in France with alot of possibilities to get stoked from some sick or smooth freeride action. Normaly.
Unfortunately it was raining up to the peaks a few days ago, so we did not have any nice pow pow.


The face was was about 600 vertical meter and with this conditions it was really exhausting...
I got the last start number (for man 71), so I had to deal with changing conditions and alot of tracks. Anyway, I skied pretty fast in the upper part of the venue and stomped the first cliff,


so I thought the hardest part was done.

But close before the end I jumped over a pumb with some bushes and landed in a bomb hole of an earlier competitor.


That was the end of my run... my bindings double ejected.

ready for the competitions

I'm feeling really fit, after all the preparation training and a short trip to Barcelona.
So now it's time to start the competition season, therefor I'll start my way to La Clusaz (France 4* comp) in a few minutes...
it's about 7 & 1/2 hours drive from Austria, through Switzerland, to France.

Here are some pix which were shot in the end of december by Mad Moe.

enjoy




... sd card was full,
oh my good, these amateurs :-)
so let's go on with the end of the same jump I did 5 min earlier...




... ssstuuuuuschhhhh ...


... aaaahhhhhh ...

see you soon, hopefully with some good news ;-)