Nendaz 3* FWQ

Last weekend was the Nendaz 3 star Qualifier in the french part of Swizerland. I got a ski starting place in the open... so after after a few traffic jams on the highway around Zürich, nearly no space in the car and 7,5h later we arrived in Nendaz. Which is a really nice little village in a typical old swiss style :-) The next day was the open, where we were able to choose two out of three contestfaces. It didn't take me a long time to decide which faces I would like to go. So the first one was not very long, but steep and with a lot of features in it. A couple of lift rides and a 40min hike later I was on the top and ready to go. But there was a first come, first serve system so I had to watch some riders going down first. Finaly the starter gave me the countdown to go... The venue was a bit steeper than I expected it, but it was fun to ride and I had a very good run.

The second face was a little bit longer and we were only allowed to do the inspection from the side (which was somehow strange). At the top I had to wait about an hour watching one going down after another... I had a good feeling about the line that I had chosen... a fast line with 3 drops and the highest in the middle... so I droped in, a few turns and first drop. The landing wasnt soft at all, but still good to land... I knew I had to do two big turns and then to the right to get to the next cliff... I dont know why but I missed this entry and went too late to the right side, so there was only the last small drop left and in the end I just had a solid, fast, but not really spectacular run...

In sum I got 19th of ca. 65 ski competitors, but only 12 were chosen for the final... so I'm pretty sure if I wouldn't have missed that cliff, I would have been really close or maybe in the final... but at least I got the reassurance to be able to compete on ski too :-) thats nice!!! So the next day I brought some beer up to the mountain to watch the final... which was a really great show!!! Cool to watch!!!


Alex in the middle part of the final face


Me and Joi watching the show...

... and also Check out my two runs on video...

DCR at Nendaz 3star FWQ from Daniel Regensburger on Vimeo.

Pitztal Wildface

After some snow yesterday we had a beautiful weather and good conditions today.
The Pitztal Wildface is a offpiste time race with 6 direction gates and a vertical drop of (a bit more than) 1500m and 4,6km length...

This view shows the whole run from the top of the mountain to the scott tent

after I saw some crashes from the starting gate, I expected difficult conditions, especially with my high starting number, so I decided to go for a fluid but safe run...
while my run I figured out that it was much more exhausting than I expected it, so the real challenge was to keep on skiing fast over all the tracked terrain, but I made it to the 7th place!
In a time of 08:31.91min

Congratulations to Alex, who won the Snowboard ranking and Fabi "a.k.a. Junior" who got 3rd on Skiis!

Junior at the first few meters of his run

All in all it was a cool, but massive exhausting day :-) now I have some days to prepair for the Nendaz 3 star qualifier in Nendaz, which will be next weekend...