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